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The expensive part of Uber isn't the SaaS app or even the engineers. It's the overhead of running a law-avoiding lobbying business that explicitly seeks out to

The expensive part of Uber isn't the SaaS app or even the engineers. It's the overhead of running a law-avoiding lobbying business that explicitly seeks out to just do everything as evil as possible. Hell, Uber tried being a predatory car loan business for quite some time, which you would think would be one of the easiest ways to make surefire money, but they lost on that one too: http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-subprime-auto-loans-running-it-off-the-road-2017-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-subprime-auto-loans-runn...

moduspol 9y ago
Even if your claim were supportable, it wouldn't explain how competitors not "seeking out to just do everything as evil as possible" have competitive prices.
- zanny 9y ago
  Because the competitors are like comparing Sonic to Comcast. One operates in one state between two cities and has a hundred thousand customers. The other is a national monopoly that abuses over a hundred million people. Sonic can be competitive with Comcast where it operates, but it is still a tiny blip on Comcasts radar. Uber has way, way more market volume and penetration than any one competitor, and in many places are the only game in town.
- Jasper_ 9y ago
  There can be an argument that Uber's expensive policy-mongering is enabling the competition. Lyft doesn't have to do any lobbying, it just has to lie in its wake while Uber does everything for it pretending to be the nicer company. As long as Uber is out there wreaking regulation havoc, Lyft is happy to sit back and let Uber do that. Perhaps Lyft doesn't want Uber to die, since they're basically the ones spending money to make Lyft viable at all.
  - moduspol 9y ago
    Then it's very polite of Lyft to price competitively to allow Uber to stay relevant when they could easily undercut them, due to their much smaller line item for "expensive policy-mongering." This is conspiracy-theory level evidence and rationalizing.
TheCoelacanth 9y ago
I was under the impression the the really expensive part was driver incentives to keep more drivers on the road than is economically sustainable with current levels of rider demand to allow them to grow more quickly.

moduspol 9y ago

Even if your claim were supportable, it wouldn't explain how competitors not "seeking out to just do everything as evil as possible" have competitive prices.

zanny 9y ago
Because the competitors are like comparing Sonic to Comcast. One operates in one state between two cities and has a hundred thousand customers. The other is a national monopoly that abuses over a hundred million people. Sonic can be competitive with Comcast where it operates, but it is still a tiny blip on Comcasts radar. Uber has way, way more market volume and penetration than any one competitor, and in many places are the only game in town.
Jasper_ 9y ago
There can be an argument that Uber's expensive policy-mongering is enabling the competition. Lyft doesn't have to do any lobbying, it just has to lie in its wake while Uber does everything for it pretending to be the nicer company. As long as Uber is out there wreaking regulation havoc, Lyft is happy to sit back and let Uber do that. Perhaps Lyft doesn't want Uber to die, since they're basically the ones spending money to make Lyft viable at all.
- moduspol 9y ago
  Then it's very polite of Lyft to price competitively to allow Uber to stay relevant when they could easily undercut them, due to their much smaller line item for "expensive policy-mongering." This is conspiracy-theory level evidence and rationalizing.

TheCoelacanth 9y ago

I was under the impression the the really expensive part was driver incentives to keep more drivers on the road than is economically sustainable with current levels of rider demand to allow them to grow more quickly.