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The scooter business it's proving to be a real life experiment of the many fucked up factors and forces that influence an urban modern society: vandalism, hoard

The scooter business it's proving to be a real life experiment of the many fucked up factors and forces that influence an urban modern society: vandalism, hoarding scooters for profit, tension between governments, companies and users, blatant violation of traffic rules, etc... As you scale something like this the problems become more evident and harder to manage. These businesses looked pretty solid when they had small fleets, but now that they are scaling it's pretty easy to see the cracks. Watching how this unfolds in the next two to three years is going to be a hell of a ride (no pun intended)

koliber 8y ago
I came to believe that these negative forces are all around us. They are constantly at play. As the landscape changes, they adapt to the new realities, but are mostly invisible. When a big company comes is with a sudden alteration to the "environment", these negative forces respond, with a force that is congruous to the speed at which the original change happened. If a change in society happens quickly, it is very visible. All the reactions also happen quickly and are also very visible. If the change happens slowly, the reactions also follow gradually and slowly, and everything seems less drastic and less noticeable.
- Tepix 8y ago
  If you put hundreds of vehicles on the streets that cost $500 each you need to seriously think about people taking advantage of you, even if it amounts to stealing. You must not make it too easy and intriguing. "Gelegenheit macht Diebe" - "Opportunity makes the thief"
  - sschueller 8y ago
    Especially if your headquarters is across the ocean you just dumped theses things all over a foreign city with permission.
    - chrisweekly 8y ago
      with -> without?
      - amyjess 8y ago
        If the flood of bikeshare companies in Dallas are any indication, it's "with". The Dallas City Council passed a law allowing dockless bikeshare, and suddenly about six Chinese companies all dumped hundreds—if not thousands—of bikes each in Dallas, causing every kind of externality you can imagine. Dallas opened the door a crack, and the companies stampeded through hard enough to break the frame.
        mikestew 8y ago
        Upvote for the metaphor I’m going to steal one of these days. Credit to the Dallas council for at least the appearance of progress, debit for not thinking through the externalities.
  - goobynight 8y ago
    In my opinion, transportation theft needs to be punished more severely than other theft of the same value. Let's put it on the order of years, not just for Bird's sake. bicycles are a unique combination of valuable, vulnerable, and hard to catch the theft of. When society does catch someone doing this, we should be putting them away on the order of years. Just my opinion though.
    - dralley 8y ago
      Years? Are you serious? A $500 theft should not put anyone in prison for "years". That's nuts.
      - Scoundreller 8y ago
        Sure. If it’s your primary mode of transportation and one of your biggest assets, it’s a hard hit to take. Setting arbitrary minimums for investigating thefts just means only rich people’s losses are deemed important. This is basically a discussiom about negative externalities, and the negative externalities are harsher when you steal 10% for a thousandaire vs. 10% from a millionaire.
      - justtopost 8y ago
        Stealing a horse used to carry a death sentance. Depriving someone of their transport is more devistating than having your xbox lifted.
- jedmeyers 8y ago
  > I came to believe that these negative forces are all around us. You mean people putting their own interests first?
  - koliber 8y ago
    There are many ways of stating what is happening and reasoning why. I tried to shy away from controversy and wanted to point out that there is nothing inherent in scooters that brings bad behavior out. It's just that the scooters arrived so fast caused the bad behavior to also arrive quickly, and that is why it is so noticeable.
    - will_brown 8y ago
      Well there is something inheriently bad about a private company littering public spaces and walkways with their shitty products. I mean if I could litter crap all over the homes of the founders and investors of these companies, what do you think would happen?
drpgq 8y ago
At the least, there will be plenty of PhD economic thesis material.
TheCondor 8y ago
Is there an incentive structure that will fix this? Or one that can fix it? I suspect you’d need some sophisticated machine learning that can adjust the incentive model to each users’ specific antisocial behavior. Even then, it’s not clear to me you’d have a net profit, there might be classes of users you just have to ban. I wonder how much of the antisocial behavior is subconscious
amyjess 8y ago
I find this interesting, because in Dallas the scooters have proven much less problematic than the bikes. The bikes could best be described as "a throbbing mass of externalities", but the scooters have largely avoided these problems... except for the issue with people illegally riding them on the sidewalk and nearly running pedestrians over. But that's minor compared to all the problems the bikes had.
- distances 8y ago
  I'm not familiar with the bike problem, mind sharing?
  - amyjess 8y ago
    It started when the Dallas City Council passed a law allowing dockless bikeshare, and suddenly about six Chinese companies all dumped hundreds—if not thousands—of bikes each in Dallas. The biggest problem is that bikes were strewn everywhere. People would leave bikes in the middle of the sidewalks, often without even bothering to drop the kickstand. There was a pretty big stink about how a blind guy got injured tripping over a bike that was just laying in the middle of the sidewalk. And they'd throw the bikes down on people's front lawns and all over private property in general. And there was this massive glut of bikes. Six companies, hundreds if not thousands of bikes each, mostly concentrated in the middle of Dallas. Oh, and then the retaliation started. The population, pissed at the glut of bikes, began vandalizing them en masse. People would saw the bikes in half, throw them into ditches and creeks, and make impromptu art sculptures out of bikes and bike parts. If you weren't tripping over a bike some careless jackass left on the sidewalk, you were tripping over the mangled husk of a bike some vandal threw on the sidewalk to make a point. The bikes only stopped being a problem when a) scooters took over most of the demand, and b) Dallas passed a law requiring bike companies to clean up their messes at their expense. A couple of the companies pulled out, and the rest are shrinking their fleets.

koliber 8y ago

I came to believe that these negative forces are all around us. They are constantly at play. As the landscape changes, they adapt to the new realities, but are mostly invisible. When a big company comes is with a sudden alteration to the "environment", these negative forces respond, with a force that is congruous to the speed at which the original change happened. If a change in society happens quickly, it is very visible. All the reactions also happen quickly and are also very visible. If the change happens slowly, the reactions also follow gradually and slowly, and everything seems less drastic and less noticeable.

Tepix 8y ago
If you put hundreds of vehicles on the streets that cost $500 each you need to seriously think about people taking advantage of you, even if it amounts to stealing. You must not make it too easy and intriguing. "Gelegenheit macht Diebe" - "Opportunity makes the thief"
- sschueller 8y ago
  Especially if your headquarters is across the ocean you just dumped theses things all over a foreign city with permission.
  - chrisweekly 8y ago
    with -> without?
    - amyjess 8y ago
      If the flood of bikeshare companies in Dallas are any indication, it's "with". The Dallas City Council passed a law allowing dockless bikeshare, and suddenly about six Chinese companies all dumped hundreds—if not thousands—of bikes each in Dallas, causing every kind of externality you can imagine. Dallas opened the door a crack, and the companies stampeded through hard enough to break the frame.
      - mikestew 8y ago
        Upvote for the metaphor I’m going to steal one of these days. Credit to the Dallas council for at least the appearance of progress, debit for not thinking through the externalities.
- goobynight 8y ago
  In my opinion, transportation theft needs to be punished more severely than other theft of the same value. Let's put it on the order of years, not just for Bird's sake. bicycles are a unique combination of valuable, vulnerable, and hard to catch the theft of. When society does catch someone doing this, we should be putting them away on the order of years. Just my opinion though.
  - dralley 8y ago
    Years? Are you serious? A $500 theft should not put anyone in prison for "years". That's nuts.
    - Scoundreller 8y ago
      Sure. If it’s your primary mode of transportation and one of your biggest assets, it’s a hard hit to take. Setting arbitrary minimums for investigating thefts just means only rich people’s losses are deemed important. This is basically a discussiom about negative externalities, and the negative externalities are harsher when you steal 10% for a thousandaire vs. 10% from a millionaire.
    - justtopost 8y ago
      Stealing a horse used to carry a death sentance. Depriving someone of their transport is more devistating than having your xbox lifted.
jedmeyers 8y ago
> I came to believe that these negative forces are all around us. You mean people putting their own interests first?
- koliber 8y ago
  There are many ways of stating what is happening and reasoning why. I tried to shy away from controversy and wanted to point out that there is nothing inherent in scooters that brings bad behavior out. It's just that the scooters arrived so fast caused the bad behavior to also arrive quickly, and that is why it is so noticeable.
  - will_brown 8y ago
    Well there is something inheriently bad about a private company littering public spaces and walkways with their shitty products. I mean if I could litter crap all over the homes of the founders and investors of these companies, what do you think would happen?

drpgq 8y ago

At the least, there will be plenty of PhD economic thesis material.

TheCondor 8y ago

Is there an incentive structure that will fix this? Or one that can fix it? I suspect you’d need some sophisticated machine learning that can adjust the incentive model to each users’ specific antisocial behavior. Even then, it’s not clear to me you’d have a net profit, there might be classes of users you just have to ban. I wonder how much of the antisocial behavior is subconscious

amyjess 8y ago

I find this interesting, because in Dallas the scooters have proven much less problematic than the bikes. The bikes could best be described as "a throbbing mass of externalities", but the scooters have largely avoided these problems... except for the issue with people illegally riding them on the sidewalk and nearly running pedestrians over. But that's minor compared to all the problems the bikes had.

distances 8y ago
I'm not familiar with the bike problem, mind sharing?
- amyjess 8y ago
  It started when the Dallas City Council passed a law allowing dockless bikeshare, and suddenly about six Chinese companies all dumped hundreds—if not thousands—of bikes each in Dallas. The biggest problem is that bikes were strewn everywhere. People would leave bikes in the middle of the sidewalks, often without even bothering to drop the kickstand. There was a pretty big stink about how a blind guy got injured tripping over a bike that was just laying in the middle of the sidewalk. And they'd throw the bikes down on people's front lawns and all over private property in general. And there was this massive glut of bikes. Six companies, hundreds if not thousands of bikes each, mostly concentrated in the middle of Dallas. Oh, and then the retaliation started. The population, pissed at the glut of bikes, began vandalizing them en masse. People would saw the bikes in half, throw them into ditches and creeks, and make impromptu art sculptures out of bikes and bike parts. If you weren't tripping over a bike some careless jackass left on the sidewalk, you were tripping over the mangled husk of a bike some vandal threw on the sidewalk to make a point. The bikes only stopped being a problem when a) scooters took over most of the demand, and b) Dallas passed a law requiring bike companies to clean up their messes at their expense. A couple of the companies pulled out, and the rest are shrinking their fleets.