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Very interesting process going on right now with Lyft & Uber both losing money and some of their drivers trying to stage protests and strikes. The drivers appea

Very interesting process going on right now with Lyft & Uber both losing money and some of their drivers trying to stage protests and strikes. The drivers appear to rely on the company as their primary source of income and want more money yet at the same time the companies are operating at a loss. Were they to increase wages (as % of every ride) it stands to reason the losses would widen. If they get to wide the company goes out of business and the drivers lose their jobs. I understand that this same standard can be applied at any company but this is a gig / 'work only when you want' job so it is different. The strikes were small so the effects on both companies were negligible. I would be curious to understand what changes the drivers (who work only when they want) expect and how they think a company running deep in the red could meet them. Not trying to pass judgement on the strikers just trying to understand.

SilasX 8y ago
That would only be true if their unit profits were low or negative. On each ride they make a lot of money. They lose money because of their huge, ride-count-independent fixed costs, like legal defense and marketing. So it's not necessarily true that giving the riders a larger cut would widen the loss, if it came with a scale-back on all the marketing.
- beachwood23 8y ago
  I have the understanding that they actually lose ~$1 per ride.
  - SilasX 8y ago
    That figure comes from taking total losses and dividing by the number of rides. It's not the same as saying that the costs of providing the ride itself are $1 more than they charge for the ride. (The fixed vs variable distinction I was making above.) Uber's costs of providing a specific ride are: Driver's cut, maps licensing, cloud charges, data transfer. That is rarely more than the cost of the ride. Remember, Lyft took flack for the outrageously high 14 cents a ride in cloud costs.
    - guntars 8y ago
      You’re forgetting the cost to develop the software itself. It’s like saying a gigabyte of data on a wireless carrier cost them pennies in electricity and bandwidth.
      - bmm6o 8y ago
        It's still not a per-ride cost.
      - SilasX 8y ago
        >You’re forgetting the cost to develop the software itself No, I'm (correctly) excluding it from the list of things they have to pay for to provide one more ride. >It’s like saying a gigabyte of data on a wireless carrier cost them pennies in electricity and bandwidth. It's more like: Verizon is unprofitable. People keep repeating the claim that, "lol, Verizon mobile actually loses money for every byte of data they transmit to you." I reply that, "No, Verizon loses money in the aggregate. The cost of sending one more byte of data, on average, is less than they charge for it, but not by enough to cover their fixed costs."
        guntars 8y ago
        I understand how "cost to provide one more ride works", I'm just saying that it's a bit of an accounting fiction and has little to do with whether they can or cannot be profitable. It also confuses people into thinking that running a telecom is just pure profit and that they're getting ripped off. That's why I used that example.
- onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
  I cannot understand why Uber needs 22k employees. I get it that WhatsApp and StackOverflow and Instagram have/had a lot less legal, financial, and marketing requirements. But Uber has almost 1000 times the amount of employees WhatsApp, Instagram, and StackOverflow had when they reached similar scale. I get it that there's a lot more analytics and geospatial complexity in Uber. I get it that they have to manage tens (hundreds?) of thousands of drivers. It just seems like there's a LOT of unnecessary fat that could be cut. Facebook only had 4k employees when they IPOed. Google had only 1,900!
  - Robadob 8y ago
    Uber has around 25 offices in the UK alone. Most are required for local regulation afaik. If this is scaled across the US and Europe that could easily run into hundreds of offices, inflating their employee count for relatively minor employees. https://www.uber.com/en-GB/drive/resources/contact-us/ https://www.uber.com/en-GB/drive/resources/contact-us/
  - GCA10 8y ago
    Uber has a huge community operations team that's in charge of making sure that its drivers stay productive and at least semi-at-peace with the way the system works (and evolves!) There's a lot more human-to-human work needed in this business than for a social-media site, or an automated online-ad service. That's where a lot of the 22,000 employees are, and if Uber could thrive without them, it surely would have already done so. Among the tasks I see listed in a current Uber job ad: --Walk driver-partners through the onboarding process and all of the tools they need to be successful on the Uber platform -- Help existing driver-partners troubleshoot any issues they experience (i.e. a delayed payment) -- Help brand the Uber name and get driver-partners excited to be on the road -- Assist with events and promotions as needed (occasionally off-site, during off-hours or weekends)
    - jethro_tell 8y ago
      >and if Uber could thrive without them, it surely would have already done so. That's uber's position, that doesn't make it so.
- ummonk 8y ago
  A lot of the marketing budget goes to driver incentives, so it wouldn’t help the drivers if they cut back on that to reduce the cut they take from the ride (which is only 25% btw, so diver comp can only go up 33%).
- sytelus 8y ago
  This is what gets lost in all the negativity. Lyft/Uber can slash their R&D by 90% and they wouldn't have much trouble running normal operations as minimal app-based cab companies. At 2,000 minimally required head count for running operations, they would probably average $2B in annual expenses. However suddenly they would be gloriously profitable with huge scalable upside and small fixed costs. Here are some calculations: Currently per mile cost of car (fuel, vehicle, insurance) to driver is about $0.50. Uber/Lyft typically charge $2.00 per mile so $1.50 goes to driver. Subtracting cost of car, driver pockets about $1 per mile which translates to $30/hr in urban areas. One issue however is upper limit on the business. There is probably demand for 100,000 cabs each hour in US. That translates to may be 2-3 million miles per hour. if Uber can capture 30% of this, then their US revenue would be at about $4B. The international revenue perhaps adds another 2X so we are looking at total revenue of about $12B @ 30% market share. There is room to grow by almost 100% here in terms of market share so with $24B revenue and $2B of minimally needed fixed cost for operations, this seems fairly sustainable and astoundingly profitable business to me.
  - ivalm 8y ago
    This is a bad estimate for the cost per mile. Average depreciation cost per mile driven is ~ $0.6 [0]. Commercial insurance is ~ $0.2 Cost of gas per mile (in CA at 20 mpg, since most cars are non-hybrid) ~ $0.2 So cost of driving per mile is ~$1 to the driver So really driver makes ~$15/hour when it is busy, less most of the time [0] - https://newsroom.aaa.com/tag/driving-cost-per-mile/ https://newsroom.aaa.com/tag/driving-cost-per-mile/
    - sytelus 8y ago
      The cost of per mile was from AAA.
      - ProfessorLayton 8y ago
        AAA cites 59¢/mile for an average sedan [1], further they cite the costs for average private insurance, which is inappropriate for running a commercial operation with uber/lyft. Additionally the average occupancy for an uber/lyft is much higher than typical privately used cars. Adding hundreds of pounds of passenger weight for a shared ride will yield below average MPG on a typical car, making expenses above average. [1] https://newsroom.aaa.com/tag/driving-cost-per-mile/ https://newsroom.aaa.com/tag/driving-cost-per-mile/
maxxxxx 8y ago
The drivers want to make enough money so working for Lyft makes sense. It’s pretty simple.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- djakjxnanjak 8y ago
  Lyft doesn’t have the money to spare, so it sounds like they need to find a different job.
piker 8y ago
The effect of the strike on profitability must be offset somewhat by an increase in revenues due to surge pricing. [Edit: Is that incorrect? Why would this be down-voted.]
ducktypegoose 8y ago
The CEO is blaming the operational loss on the stock compensation of employees. My assumption is the generous compensation pretains primarily to the corporate Langoliers, but doesn't include people who, you know, work for a living. Your reasoning that compensating drivers fairly would be a significant overhead to the profitablity of the company has been refuted by the company's own statements. My suspicion is the company could likely compensate drivers fairly, cut executive bonuses, and operate in the black. But that isn't what the people who operate the company at the highest level want, they want nothing but to get theirs, screw what anybody else wants. Capitalist incentives, man. And it seems like you've got some kind of animosity towards fair compensation of the drivers because they work, "gigs". Call it what you want, while they're on the clock work is work and they are as entitled to fair compensation as anyone else.
Spooky23 8y ago
Drivers are independent agents who have every right to demand better conditions. It’s especially important to chisel every penny out of a company that will likely vanish in a short number of years. Lyft has bled money from day 1, so justifying stiffing the workers on the basis of accelerating losses isn’t logical at all. Now that the investors have cashed in, perhaps they can double down on patents on robo-cabs and stop bleeding money on tech that will probably arrive too late to save them.
- Invictus0 8y ago
  How can you say that Lyft is "stiffing" the drivers when they lose money on every ride? Where is the extra money for the drivers supposed to come from? Every passenger has the opportunity to tip if they want: would you also say that restauranteurs are stiffing the waitstaff?
  - ummonk 8y ago
    Well restaurants do stiff the waitstaff by paying them less than minimum wage, but that doesn’t really apply here. Only would apply to Instacart.
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      No. If they do that they are breaking the law. Minimum wage is the floor. If tips don’t bring your cash wage up to minimum, the employee has to get paid.
      - ummonk 8y ago
        Yes, but that is the point. The restaurant doesn’t pay minimum wage, instead using tips to make up the difference.
      - michaelmrose 8y ago
        I thought Instacart was purportedly paying minimum wage and taking employee tips for themselves so long as the total paid was at least min wage.
wsc981 8y ago
Makes one wonder how Grab compares, which is popular in Asia. I believe most Grab drivers in Thailand most likely earn an above average wage. For example a short drive from Chiang Mai central bus station to Chiang Mai airport cost me 208 Baht (~7 USD) while the average Thai daily wage is probably around 300 Baht. I also paid a tip (240 Baht total). Of course Grab gets a share of the income, but I’d guess it’s less than or equal to 30%. I few of those trips a day should be decent income to the average Thai.
- notahacker 8y ago
  Presuambly you have to buy and maintain a half decent car to enter that market, which is difficult if you have the financial resources of someone earning 300 baht a day. And with rather less capital outlay you can also earn 200 baht from short tuk tuk rides for tourists...
  - kingkawn 8y ago
    A lot of Grab’s drivers are working as motor bike taxis in Southeast Asia
  - jeromegv 8y ago
    What's common in Philippines is for higher middle class to buy a vehicle, and pay a driver to drive it for Grab. So the capital of buying the car is not done by the driver, and the drivers gets a lot less than what you pay.
- larkost 8y ago
  Unless the airport run is significantly more expensive that normal (possible), this implies that Grab is only for the wealthy portion of the population (including presumably tourists). Lyft and Uber have positioned themselves as a more mainstream service, and that makes the similar economics fly out the window.
dd36 8y ago
Or they can charge more.
hellllllllooo 8y ago
> but this is a gig / 'work only when you want This is not 'a work only when you want' job. People do it full time to feed their families and after doing it for years find it difficult to move to a different role for a variety of factors. I'm sure they would go get a better paying job elsewhere if it was easy. It used to be a 40 hour job when they joined but Uber/Lyft have gradually reduced earnings. Now it's 60-70 hour a week job. That's the problem. The gig work/contractor aspect of Uber/Lyft is a smokescreen to avoid paying minimum wage. The drivers are doing it because they have to but the work conditions are pretty bad. Hence the strike.
- BurningFrog 8y ago
  What you're describing is that people want to work 60-70 hours/week.
  - hellllllllooo 8y ago
    Obviously not. They're striking.
GCA10 8y ago
Right now, Uber keeps 22 cents on each dollar paid by passengers, as its fee for creating the app, keeping it working, etc. That's cheap relative to the iTunes store, which keeps 30%. It's preposterous compared to the 3% that real-estate agents get for buying or selling a home. We really don't know what the "fair" rate is for running a ride-hailing business. We know what's been collected to date in a venture-funded duopoly with limited public disclosure. But my guess is that 22% is not the long-term equilibrium. Lots of outside pressures (regulators; new competitors) could drive Uber's share down. It's hard to see any forces that would cause it to expand.
- jethro_tell 8y ago
  Autonomous cars and owning their fleet or leasing from large fleet companies is probably the end goal for increasing the share. I don't see this going any other way. These have always been a play on getting market share at a loss while the tech is being built and converting to a profitable position when there are no contractors to pay.
  - Barrin92 8y ago
    I don't understand this autonomy angle for several reasons. One is of course that legally (and technically) full autonomy is a long, long time away so we'll still have drivers in cars that want to be paid, but more importantly, Uber doesn't even own autonomous cars. Are they really, in addition to all their other costs, going to stock up on millions of expensive autonomous vehicles? That's unrealistic. And if they don't, what stops for example peer-to-peer solutions to emerge that let's people rent out their cars directly? It's very possible we don't need a middleman here when autonomy is ready. I'm usually sceptical of all the decentralised, smart-contract stuff, but renting your car to some agreed upon destination or for some time through a open-source free application sounds actually doable.
    - jacques_chester 8y ago
      There's also the small problem of car manufacturers saying "Oh yeah, that's a great business model. Yoink." People talk about being "a Ford family". "This is a Chevy household". They cheer on their favourite brand in races. I don't hear much in the way of "we bleed Uber blood".
maxerickson 8y ago
Can you explain why you think gig work is different? Given the dynamic, I'd expect people to charge the company more for their time for gig work than for a stable job.
PretzelFisch 8y ago
What if the company raised rates on rides?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
amelius 8y ago
I suppose one reason Uber is operating at a loss is that they are throwing a lot of money at making the drivers obsolete. No wonder these drivers are angry. How would you feel if your boss took a part of your salary and spent it on new technology intended to eliminate your job?

SilasX 8y ago

That would only be true if their unit profits were low or negative. On each ride they make a lot of money. They lose money because of their huge, ride-count-independent fixed costs, like legal defense and marketing. So it's not necessarily true that giving the riders a larger cut would widen the loss, if it came with a scale-back on all the marketing.

beachwood23 8y ago
I have the understanding that they actually lose ~$1 per ride.
- SilasX 8y ago
  That figure comes from taking total losses and dividing by the number of rides. It's not the same as saying that the costs of providing the ride itself are $1 more than they charge for the ride. (The fixed vs variable distinction I was making above.) Uber's costs of providing a specific ride are: Driver's cut, maps licensing, cloud charges, data transfer. That is rarely more than the cost of the ride. Remember, Lyft took flack for the outrageously high 14 cents a ride in cloud costs.
  - guntars 8y ago
    You’re forgetting the cost to develop the software itself. It’s like saying a gigabyte of data on a wireless carrier cost them pennies in electricity and bandwidth.
    - bmm6o 8y ago
      It's still not a per-ride cost.
    - SilasX 8y ago
      >You’re forgetting the cost to develop the software itself No, I'm (correctly) excluding it from the list of things they have to pay for to provide one more ride. >It’s like saying a gigabyte of data on a wireless carrier cost them pennies in electricity and bandwidth. It's more like: Verizon is unprofitable. People keep repeating the claim that, "lol, Verizon mobile actually loses money for every byte of data they transmit to you." I reply that, "No, Verizon loses money in the aggregate. The cost of sending one more byte of data, on average, is less than they charge for it, but not by enough to cover their fixed costs."
      - guntars 8y ago
        I understand how "cost to provide one more ride works", I'm just saying that it's a bit of an accounting fiction and has little to do with whether they can or cannot be profitable. It also confuses people into thinking that running a telecom is just pure profit and that they're getting ripped off. That's why I used that example.
onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
I cannot understand why Uber needs 22k employees. I get it that WhatsApp and StackOverflow and Instagram have/had a lot less legal, financial, and marketing requirements. But Uber has almost 1000 times the amount of employees WhatsApp, Instagram, and StackOverflow had when they reached similar scale. I get it that there's a lot more analytics and geospatial complexity in Uber. I get it that they have to manage tens (hundreds?) of thousands of drivers. It just seems like there's a LOT of unnecessary fat that could be cut. Facebook only had 4k employees when they IPOed. Google had only 1,900!
- Robadob 8y ago
  Uber has around 25 offices in the UK alone. Most are required for local regulation afaik. If this is scaled across the US and Europe that could easily run into hundreds of offices, inflating their employee count for relatively minor employees. https://www.uber.com/en-GB/drive/resources/contact-us/ https://www.uber.com/en-GB/drive/resources/contact-us/
- GCA10 8y ago
  Uber has a huge community operations team that's in charge of making sure that its drivers stay productive and at least semi-at-peace with the way the system works (and evolves!) There's a lot more human-to-human work needed in this business than for a social-media site, or an automated online-ad service. That's where a lot of the 22,000 employees are, and if Uber could thrive without them, it surely would have already done so. Among the tasks I see listed in a current Uber job ad: --Walk driver-partners through the onboarding process and all of the tools they need to be successful on the Uber platform -- Help existing driver-partners troubleshoot any issues they experience (i.e. a delayed payment) -- Help brand the Uber name and get driver-partners excited to be on the road -- Assist with events and promotions as needed (occasionally off-site, during off-hours or weekends)
  - jethro_tell 8y ago
    >and if Uber could thrive without them, it surely would have already done so. That's uber's position, that doesn't make it so.
ummonk 8y ago
A lot of the marketing budget goes to driver incentives, so it wouldn’t help the drivers if they cut back on that to reduce the cut they take from the ride (which is only 25% btw, so diver comp can only go up 33%).
sytelus 8y ago
This is what gets lost in all the negativity. Lyft/Uber can slash their R&D by 90% and they wouldn't have much trouble running normal operations as minimal app-based cab companies. At 2,000 minimally required head count for running operations, they would probably average $2B in annual expenses. However suddenly they would be gloriously profitable with huge scalable upside and small fixed costs. Here are some calculations: Currently per mile cost of car (fuel, vehicle, insurance) to driver is about $0.50. Uber/Lyft typically charge $2.00 per mile so $1.50 goes to driver. Subtracting cost of car, driver pockets about $1 per mile which translates to $30/hr in urban areas. One issue however is upper limit on the business. There is probably demand for 100,000 cabs each hour in US. That translates to may be 2-3 million miles per hour. if Uber can capture 30% of this, then their US revenue would be at about $4B. The international revenue perhaps adds another 2X so we are looking at total revenue of about $12B @ 30% market share. There is room to grow by almost 100% here in terms of market share so with $24B revenue and $2B of minimally needed fixed cost for operations, this seems fairly sustainable and astoundingly profitable business to me.
- ivalm 8y ago
  This is a bad estimate for the cost per mile. Average depreciation cost per mile driven is ~ $0.6 [0]. Commercial insurance is ~ $0.2 Cost of gas per mile (in CA at 20 mpg, since most cars are non-hybrid) ~ $0.2 So cost of driving per mile is ~$1 to the driver So really driver makes ~$15/hour when it is busy, less most of the time [0] - https://newsroom.aaa.com/tag/driving-cost-per-mile/ https://newsroom.aaa.com/tag/driving-cost-per-mile/
  - sytelus 8y ago
    The cost of per mile was from AAA.
    - ProfessorLayton 8y ago
      AAA cites 59¢/mile for an average sedan [1], further they cite the costs for average private insurance, which is inappropriate for running a commercial operation with uber/lyft. Additionally the average occupancy for an uber/lyft is much higher than typical privately used cars. Adding hundreds of pounds of passenger weight for a shared ride will yield below average MPG on a typical car, making expenses above average. [1] https://newsroom.aaa.com/tag/driving-cost-per-mile/ https://newsroom.aaa.com/tag/driving-cost-per-mile/

maxxxxx 8y ago

The drivers want to make enough money so working for Lyft makes sense. It’s pretty simple.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
djakjxnanjak 8y ago
Lyft doesn’t have the money to spare, so it sounds like they need to find a different job.

piker 8y ago

The effect of the strike on profitability must be offset somewhat by an increase in revenues due to surge pricing. [Edit: Is that incorrect? Why would this be down-voted.]

ducktypegoose 8y ago

The CEO is blaming the operational loss on the stock compensation of employees. My assumption is the generous compensation pretains primarily to the corporate Langoliers, but doesn't include people who, you know, work for a living. Your reasoning that compensating drivers fairly would be a significant overhead to the profitablity of the company has been refuted by the company's own statements. My suspicion is the company could likely compensate drivers fairly, cut executive bonuses, and operate in the black. But that isn't what the people who operate the company at the highest level want, they want nothing but to get theirs, screw what anybody else wants. Capitalist incentives, man. And it seems like you've got some kind of animosity towards fair compensation of the drivers because they work, "gigs". Call it what you want, while they're on the clock work is work and they are as entitled to fair compensation as anyone else.

Spooky23 8y ago

Drivers are independent agents who have every right to demand better conditions. It’s especially important to chisel every penny out of a company that will likely vanish in a short number of years. Lyft has bled money from day 1, so justifying stiffing the workers on the basis of accelerating losses isn’t logical at all. Now that the investors have cashed in, perhaps they can double down on patents on robo-cabs and stop bleeding money on tech that will probably arrive too late to save them.

Invictus0 8y ago
How can you say that Lyft is "stiffing" the drivers when they lose money on every ride? Where is the extra money for the drivers supposed to come from? Every passenger has the opportunity to tip if they want: would you also say that restauranteurs are stiffing the waitstaff?
- ummonk 8y ago
  Well restaurants do stiff the waitstaff by paying them less than minimum wage, but that doesn’t really apply here. Only would apply to Instacart.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    No. If they do that they are breaking the law. Minimum wage is the floor. If tips don’t bring your cash wage up to minimum, the employee has to get paid.
    - ummonk 8y ago
      Yes, but that is the point. The restaurant doesn’t pay minimum wage, instead using tips to make up the difference.
    - michaelmrose 8y ago
      I thought Instacart was purportedly paying minimum wage and taking employee tips for themselves so long as the total paid was at least min wage.

wsc981 8y ago

Makes one wonder how Grab compares, which is popular in Asia. I believe most Grab drivers in Thailand most likely earn an above average wage. For example a short drive from Chiang Mai central bus station to Chiang Mai airport cost me 208 Baht (~7 USD) while the average Thai daily wage is probably around 300 Baht. I also paid a tip (240 Baht total). Of course Grab gets a share of the income, but I’d guess it’s less than or equal to 30%. I few of those trips a day should be decent income to the average Thai.

notahacker 8y ago
Presuambly you have to buy and maintain a half decent car to enter that market, which is difficult if you have the financial resources of someone earning 300 baht a day. And with rather less capital outlay you can also earn 200 baht from short tuk tuk rides for tourists...
- kingkawn 8y ago
  A lot of Grab’s drivers are working as motor bike taxis in Southeast Asia
- jeromegv 8y ago
  What's common in Philippines is for higher middle class to buy a vehicle, and pay a driver to drive it for Grab. So the capital of buying the car is not done by the driver, and the drivers gets a lot less than what you pay.
larkost 8y ago
Unless the airport run is significantly more expensive that normal (possible), this implies that Grab is only for the wealthy portion of the population (including presumably tourists). Lyft and Uber have positioned themselves as a more mainstream service, and that makes the similar economics fly out the window.

dd36 8y ago

Or they can charge more.

hellllllllooo 8y ago

> but this is a gig / 'work only when you want This is not 'a work only when you want' job. People do it full time to feed their families and after doing it for years find it difficult to move to a different role for a variety of factors. I'm sure they would go get a better paying job elsewhere if it was easy. It used to be a 40 hour job when they joined but Uber/Lyft have gradually reduced earnings. Now it's 60-70 hour a week job. That's the problem. The gig work/contractor aspect of Uber/Lyft is a smokescreen to avoid paying minimum wage. The drivers are doing it because they have to but the work conditions are pretty bad. Hence the strike.

BurningFrog 8y ago
What you're describing is that people want to work 60-70 hours/week.
- hellllllllooo 8y ago
  Obviously not. They're striking.

GCA10 8y ago

Right now, Uber keeps 22 cents on each dollar paid by passengers, as its fee for creating the app, keeping it working, etc. That's cheap relative to the iTunes store, which keeps 30%. It's preposterous compared to the 3% that real-estate agents get for buying or selling a home. We really don't know what the "fair" rate is for running a ride-hailing business. We know what's been collected to date in a venture-funded duopoly with limited public disclosure. But my guess is that 22% is not the long-term equilibrium. Lots of outside pressures (regulators; new competitors) could drive Uber's share down. It's hard to see any forces that would cause it to expand.

jethro_tell 8y ago
Autonomous cars and owning their fleet or leasing from large fleet companies is probably the end goal for increasing the share. I don't see this going any other way. These have always been a play on getting market share at a loss while the tech is being built and converting to a profitable position when there are no contractors to pay.
- Barrin92 8y ago
  I don't understand this autonomy angle for several reasons. One is of course that legally (and technically) full autonomy is a long, long time away so we'll still have drivers in cars that want to be paid, but more importantly, Uber doesn't even own autonomous cars. Are they really, in addition to all their other costs, going to stock up on millions of expensive autonomous vehicles? That's unrealistic. And if they don't, what stops for example peer-to-peer solutions to emerge that let's people rent out their cars directly? It's very possible we don't need a middleman here when autonomy is ready. I'm usually sceptical of all the decentralised, smart-contract stuff, but renting your car to some agreed upon destination or for some time through a open-source free application sounds actually doable.
  - jacques_chester 8y ago
    There's also the small problem of car manufacturers saying "Oh yeah, that's a great business model. Yoink." People talk about being "a Ford family". "This is a Chevy household". They cheer on their favourite brand in races. I don't hear much in the way of "we bleed Uber blood".

maxerickson 8y ago

Can you explain why you think gig work is different? Given the dynamic, I'd expect people to charge the company more for their time for gig work than for a stable job.

PretzelFisch 8y ago

What if the company raised rates on rides?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

amelius 8y ago

I suppose one reason Uber is operating at a loss is that they are throwing a lot of money at making the drivers obsolete. No wonder these drivers are angry. How would you feel if your boss took a part of your salary and spent it on new technology intended to eliminate your job?