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I've always wondered how necessary something like Uber or Lyft really was. Centralized networks lead to critical mass and that's what I always saw as the appeal

by jalami 10y ago

I've always wondered how necessary something like Uber or Lyft really was. Centralized networks lead to critical mass and that's what I always saw as the appeal. No one wants to hunt for something manually. I feel like something like craigslist, but with an ebay-like "95% driver approval rating" would do the job well enough. Sure, there are people that won't use it for security reasons and lack of standards, but if that's the case an alternative should prop up that ensures these things with standards for their drivers. One being cheaper as all funds go between driver and driven, the other providing a middle man that spends some of these funds to filter bad actors. In my opinion, the mandatory regulation isn't really necessary if competition is healthy. If there's enough demand for finger-printed drivers, a service should crop up to provide it. Facebook though sounds like a terrible medium for this kind of thing. People will use what's familiar I guess.

pessimizer 10y ago
> I've always wondered how necessary something like Uber or Lyft really was. Not necessary at all. Austin got by for nearly a century of automobile use without one. > I always felt like something like craigslist, but with an ebay-like "95% driver approval rating" would do the job well enough. Sure there are people that won't use it for security reasons and lack of standards, but if that's the case an alternative should prop up that ensures these things with standards for their drivers. One being cheaper as all funds go between driver and driven, the other providing a middle man that spends some of these funds to filter bad actors. So a private tax to not be murdered? Makes sense. We could also move to regulating our food supply like this - you could buy your food through a service that would vet it for evidence that it hasn't been poisoned or adulterated with broken glass. In the spirit of consumer choice, maybe have a different service for each type of food, with no standardization or regulation to compare the assurances that every service claims to give you. Then, there would be a great opportunity for a meta-service to vet services to vet each type of food you choose to eat. Since all of those services would add layer upon layer of middle-men and bureaucracy, having lots of layers with an easily verifiable reputation would cost more, and people who chose ala carte, or with fewer guarantees of safety would pay less. A meta-service for the wealthy, and total lack of regulations or minimum guarantees for people who couldn't afford them - sounds like a perfect libertarian dystopia to me. Not that this Facebook thing isn't even worse. All this to avoid the pretend horror of taxis.
- natrius 10y ago
  > All this to avoid the pretend horror of taxis. Taxis consistently fail to show up in a reasonable amount of time (or at all). They have a solid track record of preferring riders who aren't large black men, like I am. I am a happy Arcade City rider. I avoid the actual horror of taxis.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    Or you fix your taxis, like most of the rest of the world has. I can use taxi.eu to order a taxi in minutes, it will be clean, it will be there quickly, it will be cheap, and anyone can easily start their own taxi company if they have a commercial drivers license and commercial car insurance. That’d liberalize the market. Uber gaining a monopoly is not a free market. Hell, the whole fucking Unicorn thing, no, the whole fucking startup thing is about monopolies, breaking Antitrust laws, and it’s all intentional. The whole point of startups like Google, Facebook, Uber, etc was to outcompete competitors by doing predatory pricing thanks to VC funding (for example, Uber pays drivers in several countries more than the ride brought them in profit), then getting a monopoly (for example, Facebook paying people’s data costs if they’d spend more than X time on FB, and automatically inviting friends in the early years in Europe), increasing the costs for competitors to enter the market (For example, Facebook’s Internet.org campaign trying to ensure competitors would have a huge disadvantage without lots of funding). If you want to get the best result for you as customer, you have to basically ban any VC-funded fast-growth focused startups from the market you are in, and then try to reduce remaining regulation as necessary. These startups are not there to improve the service for you.
    - natrius 10y ago
      Taxis are bad because it's profitable for taxi companies and politicians for them to be bad. "Just fix your taxis" is a pretty ridiculous suggestion in the face of regulatory capture. I have no desire for an Uber monopoly. I desire decentralized marketplaces that are controlled by their users. Adding regulations won't help to get those.
      - 10y ago
cortesoft 10y ago
One of the best parts about Uber is that you just request a ride and it shows up. The whole process takes seconds to complete, and a driver is there within a few minutes. If I had to peruse a list of drivers close to me, find a balance between price, rating, and proximity... then request a ride from that driver.... and then have to repeat that process when the driver declines the ride or has already taken another fare.. I think I would call a cab. The entire key to the success of Uber is the ease with which you can get a ride fast. Your idea of a craiglist-ebay hybrid for selecting a ride wouldn't work.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jalami 10y ago
  I think you're right. It's not perfect, I just gave a lowest-tech example that would be serviceable to some people with low middle-man cost. A lot of Uber drivers aren't loyal though, they'll have both apps open in order to get fares and I think that's the end-game. Discovery services often live and die by their exclusives and if there's no viable way to force driver exclusivity, the discovery medium becomes way more important than the driver. I'm sure I'm being naive, but I don't think Uber is all that special of a service. It handles queues, paths and estimation. Other services could out-feature it with relatively low-tech provided the regulatory overhead isn't prohibitively expensive, especially if U/L chose not to operate in a that geographic market.
- sjs7007 10y ago
  Plus the fact that it is available in so many countries.

by jalami 10y ago

pessimizer 10y ago

> I've always wondered how necessary something like Uber or Lyft really was. Not necessary at all. Austin got by for nearly a century of automobile use without one. > I always felt like something like craigslist, but with an ebay-like "95% driver approval rating" would do the job well enough. Sure there are people that won't use it for security reasons and lack of standards, but if that's the case an alternative should prop up that ensures these things with standards for their drivers. One being cheaper as all funds go between driver and driven, the other providing a middle man that spends some of these funds to filter bad actors. So a private tax to not be murdered? Makes sense. We could also move to regulating our food supply like this - you could buy your food through a service that would vet it for evidence that it hasn't been poisoned or adulterated with broken glass. In the spirit of consumer choice, maybe have a different service for each type of food, with no standardization or regulation to compare the assurances that every service claims to give you. Then, there would be a great opportunity for a meta-service to vet services to vet each type of food you choose to eat. Since all of those services would add layer upon layer of middle-men and bureaucracy, having lots of layers with an easily verifiable reputation would cost more, and people who chose ala carte, or with fewer guarantees of safety would pay less. A meta-service for the wealthy, and total lack of regulations or minimum guarantees for people who couldn't afford them - sounds like a perfect libertarian dystopia to me. Not that this Facebook thing isn't even worse. All this to avoid the pretend horror of taxis.

natrius 10y ago
> All this to avoid the pretend horror of taxis. Taxis consistently fail to show up in a reasonable amount of time (or at all). They have a solid track record of preferring riders who aren't large black men, like I am. I am a happy Arcade City rider. I avoid the actual horror of taxis.
- kuschku 10y ago
  Or you fix your taxis, like most of the rest of the world has. I can use taxi.eu to order a taxi in minutes, it will be clean, it will be there quickly, it will be cheap, and anyone can easily start their own taxi company if they have a commercial drivers license and commercial car insurance. That’d liberalize the market. Uber gaining a monopoly is not a free market. Hell, the whole fucking Unicorn thing, no, the whole fucking startup thing is about monopolies, breaking Antitrust laws, and it’s all intentional. The whole point of startups like Google, Facebook, Uber, etc was to outcompete competitors by doing predatory pricing thanks to VC funding (for example, Uber pays drivers in several countries more than the ride brought them in profit), then getting a monopoly (for example, Facebook paying people’s data costs if they’d spend more than X time on FB, and automatically inviting friends in the early years in Europe), increasing the costs for competitors to enter the market (For example, Facebook’s Internet.org campaign trying to ensure competitors would have a huge disadvantage without lots of funding). If you want to get the best result for you as customer, you have to basically ban any VC-funded fast-growth focused startups from the market you are in, and then try to reduce remaining regulation as necessary. These startups are not there to improve the service for you.
  - natrius 10y ago
    Taxis are bad because it's profitable for taxi companies and politicians for them to be bad. "Just fix your taxis" is a pretty ridiculous suggestion in the face of regulatory capture. I have no desire for an Uber monopoly. I desire decentralized marketplaces that are controlled by their users. Adding regulations won't help to get those.
    - 10y ago

cortesoft 10y ago

One of the best parts about Uber is that you just request a ride and it shows up. The whole process takes seconds to complete, and a driver is there within a few minutes. If I had to peruse a list of drivers close to me, find a balance between price, rating, and proximity... then request a ride from that driver.... and then have to repeat that process when the driver declines the ride or has already taken another fare.. I think I would call a cab. The entire key to the success of Uber is the ease with which you can get a ride fast. Your idea of a craiglist-ebay hybrid for selecting a ride wouldn't work.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jalami 10y ago
I think you're right. It's not perfect, I just gave a lowest-tech example that would be serviceable to some people with low middle-man cost. A lot of Uber drivers aren't loyal though, they'll have both apps open in order to get fares and I think that's the end-game. Discovery services often live and die by their exclusives and if there's no viable way to force driver exclusivity, the discovery medium becomes way more important than the driver. I'm sure I'm being naive, but I don't think Uber is all that special of a service. It handles queues, paths and estimation. Other services could out-feature it with relatively low-tech provided the regulatory overhead isn't prohibitively expensive, especially if U/L chose not to operate in a that geographic market.
sjs7007 10y ago
Plus the fact that it is available in so many countries.