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It seems so insane to me that we have a company that is spending billions of dollars per year to break the law all over the world by undercutting while making a

It seems so insane to me that we have a company that is spending billions of dollars per year to break the law all over the world by undercutting while making a loss to corner markets, that is breaking labour laws all over the world, is a horribly toxic place to work, and this is just... okay and fine? Why is this a thing? Imagine all the useful things those billions could do. Feeding and housing all the homeless people in the USA, for example.

ddustin 9y ago
It's making peoples' lives better along the way.
gruturo 9y ago
That's Kalanick's genius: people HATE taxi drivers so much, they'll be ok with almost anything to avoid dealing with them. This is the real business opportunity he saw.
tim333 9y ago
I got one the other day. £7, I was happy, the driver presumably was happy. Pre Uber I would have got the bus. There's a lot of value created for ordinary people on limited budgets.
- alphaalpha101 9y ago
  The reason we have laws that constrain businesses from doing what Uber is doing is not that we don't want people to have cheap taxi rides. It's that it's fundamentally unfair and anti-competitive to be able to simply lose money on purpose, undercutting a market, driving other firms out of business. And that's because cornering markets by doing that leads to unfair lack of competition. All Uber wants to do is gain a monopoly then raise their prices once they've trapped the market. If Uber came along, didn't make much money and undercut the taxi companies then that would be one thing. But they're actively losing money on purpose in order to undercut taxi companies. That's anticompetitive behaviour. Meanwhile they're also abusing their employees. Again, the reason we have labour laws is that you shouldn't be able to offer a service for cheap just by fucking your employees over. And they are employees, even if Uber claims otherwise.

ddustin 9y ago

It's making peoples' lives better along the way.

gruturo 9y ago

That's Kalanick's genius: people HATE taxi drivers so much, they'll be ok with almost anything to avoid dealing with them. This is the real business opportunity he saw.

tim333 9y ago

I got one the other day. £7, I was happy, the driver presumably was happy. Pre Uber I would have got the bus. There's a lot of value created for ordinary people on limited budgets.

alphaalpha101 9y ago
The reason we have laws that constrain businesses from doing what Uber is doing is not that we don't want people to have cheap taxi rides. It's that it's fundamentally unfair and anti-competitive to be able to simply lose money on purpose, undercutting a market, driving other firms out of business. And that's because cornering markets by doing that leads to unfair lack of competition. All Uber wants to do is gain a monopoly then raise their prices once they've trapped the market. If Uber came along, didn't make much money and undercut the taxi companies then that would be one thing. But they're actively losing money on purpose in order to undercut taxi companies. That's anticompetitive behaviour. Meanwhile they're also abusing their employees. Again, the reason we have labour laws is that you shouldn't be able to offer a service for cheap just by fucking your employees over. And they are employees, even if Uber claims otherwise.