6 ms·
You haven't really made a point, just made a few vague but very strong statements. Uber impacted my life by vastly increasing my mobility. Can you give an exam
by hsod 9y ago
You haven't really made a point, just made a few vague but very strong statements. Uber impacted my life by vastly increasing my mobility.
Can you give an example of what you think should (???) be the most important company of a generation?
- evanlivingston 9y agoSure: first, I would push back against the idea that Uber has vastly increased mobility. It's made mobility slightly less annoying in certain places for certain groups of people. But most parts of the world have had taxis for a long time. You've been able to schedule a taxi for decades, something which Uber just recently added. Prices are a bit better with Uber, but it's unclear if the VC subsidized pricing is sustainable. In places like Cuba and Cambodia the taxis and tuk-tuks have been excellent and painless methods of transportation for generations and often require zero wait and have zero barrier to entry other than the price of the transportation, that is; it requires to smart phone, no data plan, no credit card. I don't perceive Uber as having done anything other than contribute a level of convenience to transportation. I don't feel as though it's provided mobility to anyone who didn't have it before, it hasn't decreased congestion or pollution. How many lives has it saved? How many people who desperately lacked needed resources has it helped? How much has it decreased dependency on non-renewable resources? I think companies that provide life-saving resources to people or companies that increase equality are much more important. Creating the technology to get everyone access to clean water or drought resistant crops are some ideas that come to mind.
- stickfigure 9y agoI'm guessing you don't live in San Francisco, or at least didn't before Uber. I can recall a number of times waiting on street corners trying to flag a cab for an hour, only to give up and walk home. Calling the taxi company on a busy night was a joke. At least in this city, transportation was broken. Clean water and draught resistant crops are great in general, but on a personal level I'm still drinking and eating more or less like I was five or ten years ago.
- evanlivingston 9y agoI admit to nitpicking at this point, but my OP was mostly to trying to say that for a company to be called the most important of our generation the value judgement needs to look past the personal level of affluent people who already have their basic life necessities met. Personally, I think the criteria for the greatest company needs to account for all classes of people. If poor people are replacing broken or otherwise overly expensive transportation systems with Uber and those pricing models are sustainable then I'll admit to not giving them enough credit. Also, Bart allows bikes, San Francisco is always pretty pleasant riding weather, the busses are robust and have provisions for bikes, there's an assistance program for public transit in the bay. But damnit Bart why can't you have 24 hour trains.
- olalonde 9y agoUber did help a lot of less affluent people make money.
- evanlivingston 9y agoIs there data to back this up?
- alphast0rm 9y agoCan you give some examples of existing companies you consider in that league?
- evanlivingston 9y agoI don't know much about lifestraw, but they seem to have made a dent in access to clean water. Do non-profits count? Kiva seems like it does good work and really helped popularized a new idea to help individual aquire loans. As far as transportation, Global Electric Transportation and Pangea Motors created crazy cheap electric busses to replace the outdated busses in the Philippines.