Then I would have dug car out of the snow and drove to the airport. I would not have been any worse off. The difference is that the LA Times wouldn't write a story about me.
What unrepresented party to this story do you think you belong to? People who are upset that uber isn't around to serve them? Again, this is entirely dependent on circumstances that you haven't made clear. Maybe Uber and their pro-market pricing think that you're in a region they can't make a profit in, and therefor will never be an option for you anyway.
Are you just in the class of people who are upset that taxis aren't available in bad weather in your area? Again, do you live up on the top of a mountain? Are you hard to get to? Again, it's not clear.
It just sounds like you're unhappy with your local taxis, and support unrestrained market policies, which frankly, isn't interesting or relevant to stories about Uber, their places in existing market places, and whether they're serving their customers well with surge pricing.
He's not trying to complain about his local companies, or anything like that, he's merely pointing out that this sort of pricing can be beneficial to some people, not just to Uber.
That doesn't mean it's the best system overall, it doesn't even mean this anecdote owner thinks it is, it's merely a discussion point.