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Yes, it's true that by essentially hacking Uber and Lyft's systems, you could create an app that siphons away business from them. But what would happen if such
by jawns 8y ago
Yes, it's true that by essentially hacking Uber and Lyft's systems, you could create an app that siphons away business from them.
But what would happen if such a technique were to become legal and ubiquitous?
Suddenly, no one wants to invest in a company that requires significant capital, because they know that as soon as the company becomes successful enough to become a target, there will be other companies that will swoop in and attempt to exploit its technology so they themselves don't need to invest significant capital.
The damage to the market would be severe.
That said, as a fan of distributism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism I am also a huge fan of cooperatives, and I think worker-owned co-ops can be successful in the ride-sharing space without needing to resort to such tactics.
- WhiteMonkey 8y ago> Suddenly, no one wants to invest in a company that requires significant capital But this is the point: the reason Uber is successful isn't particularly because of their technical excellence or innovation, it's because they've used massive amounts of capital to very knowingly buy the market. This is an example of one of the nefarious sides of capitalism -- a flaw -- not a celebration of how great it is at solving problems (which is genuinely is in a lot of circumstances). If Uber didn't have as much capital, smaller distributed co-ops may well have prospered.
- jawns 8y agoI am no cheerleader for capitalism, but for any business whose core offering is a marketplace (as with Uber/Lyft, who connect buyers of rides with sellers of rides), then building out that marketplace requires solving the chicken-and-egg problem, and typically that is done through advertising, marketing, pricing, customer loyalty, etc. Much of that requires capital, and the asset you end up with after investing that capital is a large user/subscriber base, which can lead to other competitive advantages. It is true that having a large user/subscriber base does not imply technical excellence or innovation, but it is a business asset nonetheless. But if that asset can be easily siphoned off, then there is less of an incentive to build it out to begin with.
- icebraining 8y ago> If Uber didn't have as much capital, smaller distributed co-ops may well have prospered. Then why didn't they until Uber came around?