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> Simply: Tax money is wasted. That is similar to saying that you're wasting money by paying a plumber to fix your pipes, instead of buying all the tools and f

> Simply: Tax money is wasted. That is similar to saying that you're wasting money by paying a plumber to fix your pipes, instead of buying all the tools and fixing it yourself. If the government doesn't have the capital, expertise, or budget for investment in infrastructure, it makes perfect sense to outsource it. Why would a county pay a bus driver, mechanics, and invest in a fleet of buses when it's less expensive to outsource it?

kuschku 10y ago
> Why would a county pay a bus driver, mechanics, and invest in a fleet of buses when it's less expensive to outsource it? That’s a good argument. Especially once economics of scale come into play. But that’s not the case in this example. The government is outsourcing something that would be massively cheaper if purpose-built for their town. Uber has a lot of expenses and complexity to handle corner cases that will never occur in this town – outsourcing is wasteful. That’s like building a heating system into a house in Phoenix.
- jimmywanger 10y ago
  > But that’s not the case in this example. I don't understand. Software has ultimate economies of scale. Also, they're not paying Uber a fixed cost, they're strictly subsidizing the ride. They can opt out at any time, if I'm reading the article correctly. > Uber has a lot of expenses and complexity to handle corner cases that will never occur in this town – outsourcing is wasteful. That’s like building a heating system into a house in Phoenix. One of us is misunderstanding the point of software. Just because you're not using certain capabilities doesn't mean you're charged extra for them. To your point, did you waste money by buying your IDE if you don't use each and every feature, because outsourcing your dev environment is "wasteful"?
  - kuschku 10y ago
    > Just because you're not using certain capabilities doesn't mean you're charged extra for them. But you are. Such a system for a small town doesn’t need native apps, it doesn’t need to look beautiful. You can use a single PhoneGap app for all OSes, also the same on the web. You can avoid the entire payment infrastructure, and have riders pay the drivers directly. Alternatively, use Square, and you won’t have to make your own payment system either way. A lot of uber’s costs only appear at huge scale. This town doesn’t need uber, it needs a simple ride sharing service like every town in the second or third world has – and those even work without any app.
    - jimmywanger 10y ago
      > But you are. Explain that last bit. Economies of scale work very well for software. Whenever there's a new security patch or a feature that Uber implements, you get it for free if you use Uber as a platform, in that you don't pay any additional cost. Also, you don't need to pay money for maintenance/servers. At this point I'm not quite sure if you're trolling or not. That'd be like advocating that a town's government use a home-coded text editor instead of Microsoft Word, because you don't need any of that fancy stuff that you get for no incremental cost.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Trundle 10y ago
  Where are you getting that it could be massively cheaper? Developers aren't cheap.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    I’d develop the base system for free, if they would agree contractually not to use Uber. There. Cheaper. If anyone of you is a city and wants that: Email me under the address in my profile.
    - jimmywanger 10y ago
      > I’d develop the base system for free, That's not a valid point. You're subsidizing a good. That's like me saying that since I'm willing to buy my friend a beer, then beer is free. Development time is most definitely not free, and neither is software update, ops, or support. Things that Uber gives for free.
      - kuschku 10y ago
        Some companies have built systems like Uber, cheaper, and more reliable. Just a lot smaller in scope. See Mercedes' ridesharing offering in the EU, it's exactly that. Only a few dozen devs, yet cheaper than Uber, with similar features.
        jimmywanger 10y ago
        The choice isn't between paying Uber to build an app or building a simpler app on your own. Uber has already built an app. The city is subsidizing people for transportation. There is no more software development that needs to be done. You comparing cheaper services to Uber is like comparing a large industrial farm to a local farm. Sure, the industrial farm costs more, but you're not paying for it. You're just paying for food stamps. Why would you duplicate effort that already exists?
        kuschku 10y ago

kuschku 10y ago

> Why would a county pay a bus driver, mechanics, and invest in a fleet of buses when it's less expensive to outsource it? That’s a good argument. Especially once economics of scale come into play. But that’s not the case in this example. The government is outsourcing something that would be massively cheaper if purpose-built for their town. Uber has a lot of expenses and complexity to handle corner cases that will never occur in this town – outsourcing is wasteful. That’s like building a heating system into a house in Phoenix.

jimmywanger 10y ago
> But that’s not the case in this example. I don't understand. Software has ultimate economies of scale. Also, they're not paying Uber a fixed cost, they're strictly subsidizing the ride. They can opt out at any time, if I'm reading the article correctly. > Uber has a lot of expenses and complexity to handle corner cases that will never occur in this town – outsourcing is wasteful. That’s like building a heating system into a house in Phoenix. One of us is misunderstanding the point of software. Just because you're not using certain capabilities doesn't mean you're charged extra for them. To your point, did you waste money by buying your IDE if you don't use each and every feature, because outsourcing your dev environment is "wasteful"?
- kuschku 10y ago
  > Just because you're not using certain capabilities doesn't mean you're charged extra for them. But you are. Such a system for a small town doesn’t need native apps, it doesn’t need to look beautiful. You can use a single PhoneGap app for all OSes, also the same on the web. You can avoid the entire payment infrastructure, and have riders pay the drivers directly. Alternatively, use Square, and you won’t have to make your own payment system either way. A lot of uber’s costs only appear at huge scale. This town doesn’t need uber, it needs a simple ride sharing service like every town in the second or third world has – and those even work without any app.
  - jimmywanger 10y ago
    > But you are. Explain that last bit. Economies of scale work very well for software. Whenever there's a new security patch or a feature that Uber implements, you get it for free if you use Uber as a platform, in that you don't pay any additional cost. Also, you don't need to pay money for maintenance/servers. At this point I'm not quite sure if you're trolling or not. That'd be like advocating that a town's government use a home-coded text editor instead of Microsoft Word, because you don't need any of that fancy stuff that you get for no incremental cost.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Trundle 10y ago
Where are you getting that it could be massively cheaper? Developers aren't cheap.
- kuschku 10y ago
  I’d develop the base system for free, if they would agree contractually not to use Uber. There. Cheaper. If anyone of you is a city and wants that: Email me under the address in my profile.
  - jimmywanger 10y ago
    > I’d develop the base system for free, That's not a valid point. You're subsidizing a good. That's like me saying that since I'm willing to buy my friend a beer, then beer is free. Development time is most definitely not free, and neither is software update, ops, or support. Things that Uber gives for free.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      Some companies have built systems like Uber, cheaper, and more reliable. Just a lot smaller in scope. See Mercedes' ridesharing offering in the EU, it's exactly that. Only a few dozen devs, yet cheaper than Uber, with similar features.
      - jimmywanger 10y ago
        The choice isn't between paying Uber to build an app or building a simpler app on your own. Uber has already built an app. The city is subsidizing people for transportation. There is no more software development that needs to be done. You comparing cheaper services to Uber is like comparing a large industrial farm to a local farm. Sure, the industrial farm costs more, but you're not paying for it. You're just paying for food stamps. Why would you duplicate effort that already exists?
        kuschku 10y ago