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> it's too easy for any local city to have a dominant "Uber for our city" which isn't Uber I disagree. By virtue of being in the city, and only in the city, it
by crdb 9y ago
> it's too easy for any local city to have a dominant "Uber for our city" which isn't Uber
I disagree. By virtue of being in the city, and only in the city, it would be too small to withstand pressure from local interests for long, and would end up like the local taxi monopolies. This will be especially true in countries "with lower GDP per capita".
Uber's international nature with its HQ in a country where corruption is relatively low, clearly enormous political and financial connections, track record in neighbouring countries or cities with clear and visible benefits to the customers (aka electorate), and willingness to fight (which is public knowledge, thus becoming signalling) allow it to scare off such pressure. Uber has more to fear from Apple than from Paris' UberX clones.
- rdl 9y agoThat's true if Uber didn't ever exist, or if uber ceased to exist. I think it would be relatively straightforward to have a "local competitor to Uber", perhaps propped up by some stupid local regulation, once the taxi mafia is broken. Austin sort of has this, but not really, now.
- michaelt 9y agoIf you believe the 'taxi mafia' is caused by regulatory capture of local government by taxi operators, in the absence of Uber you might expect local regulation to hinder, rather than help a "local uber"
- linkregister 9y agoIf Uber has done the hard work of lobbying away local taxi regulations, any local competitor can reap the benefits.
- rdl 9y agoIt is going to be much harder to take away ride sharing from consumers who are already using it than to keep it out of a third tier city which doesn't have it and where most of the potential users have never used it before. Austin is an outlier.