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The study's not published and expecting the two page preview of the working paper to have a 'discussion of potential problems with methodology' section is utter

The study's not published and expecting the two page preview of the working paper to have a 'discussion of potential problems with methodology' section is utterly unrealistic. They're clearly trying to gauge incremental costs, not fixed costs, and each of insurance/maintenance/repairs/fuel/depreciation are incremental. The breakdown between the personal and ride-hail vehicle use is part of the study and appears in the sentence previous to the quoted one as "the vast majority of drivers report that the bulk of the miles they drive are for ride-hailing".

malandrew 9y ago
> The study's not published and expecting the two page preview of the working paper to have a 'discussion of potential problems with methodology' section is utterly unrealistic. In that case, it's grossly irresponsible to publish what little they have. Society is still struggling to correct the "statistic" that a woman earns 70 cents for every dollar a man earns. This new statistic about how much TNC drivers make is going to be accepted as fact from here on out, when it's grossly misleading. > "the vast majority of drivers report that the bulk of the miles they drive are for ride-hailing" That doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of the drivers would already have that car as a sunk cost whether they drove the vast majority of those miles for ridesharing or not.
- elgenie 9y ago
  That's a misunderstanding of what a sunk cost is. Which of the following are sunk costs? A car has a resale value. That resale value decreases with each additional mile on the odometer. That's the depreciation incremental cost. A car requires insurance. Insurance rates fluctuate based on miles driven per period (and also based on whether the car is used in ride-sharing). A car requires maintenance and repairs are incurred on a per mile basis. For example, when a $30 oil change is needed every 3K miles with 300 miles of trips to the grocery store and 2700 miles of Ubering, it'd be asinine to assign that cost in a way other than $27 of that going to Ubering. A car requires fuel. The same logic as the oil change; $30 for gas to drive 30 miles to the grocery store and 270 for Uber can be uniformly distributed per-mile.

malandrew 9y ago

> The study's not published and expecting the two page preview of the working paper to have a 'discussion of potential problems with methodology' section is utterly unrealistic. In that case, it's grossly irresponsible to publish what little they have. Society is still struggling to correct the "statistic" that a woman earns 70 cents for every dollar a man earns. This new statistic about how much TNC drivers make is going to be accepted as fact from here on out, when it's grossly misleading. > "the vast majority of drivers report that the bulk of the miles they drive are for ride-hailing" That doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of the drivers would already have that car as a sunk cost whether they drove the vast majority of those miles for ridesharing or not.

elgenie 9y ago
That's a misunderstanding of what a sunk cost is. Which of the following are sunk costs? A car has a resale value. That resale value decreases with each additional mile on the odometer. That's the depreciation incremental cost. A car requires insurance. Insurance rates fluctuate based on miles driven per period (and also based on whether the car is used in ride-sharing). A car requires maintenance and repairs are incurred on a per mile basis. For example, when a $30 oil change is needed every 3K miles with 300 miles of trips to the grocery store and 2700 miles of Ubering, it'd be asinine to assign that cost in a way other than $27 of that going to Ubering. A car requires fuel. The same logic as the oil change; $30 for gas to drive 30 miles to the grocery store and 270 for Uber can be uniformly distributed per-mile.