Economists see "consumer and producer surpluses", supply-demand analysis, innovation, and disruption, and get doe-eyed about Uber.
Looking forward to kleinbl00's takedown of Uber as a race-to-the-bottom evil empire run by a team of sexual predators that doesn't give a fuck about drivers.
It's a complicated world we live in.
Fundamentally, this article is arguing that economists love Uber because it's a $22b experiment in the rational marketplace. The argument is that consumers rationally always want to pay the best price, therefore they love surge pricing because they know that they'll always pay what something is worth. Unfortunately, everyone hates fucking surge pricing because neither individuals nor markets are rational (there have been two nobel prizes in Economics in the past ten years about exactly this). And it's dumb shit like "surge pricing at the airport? Take an Uber to the nearest hotel, then take uber from the hotel to where you're going! Now you're only paying surge pricing on a fraction of your ride!" (or, you know, just hop a free shuttle to the Marriott and then take an uber from there).
The Uber study wasn't particularly flawed, by the way. There were two questions that might be interpreted to mean $8 an hour instead of $3.37 an hour. It's still a shitty, shitty wage.