The elephant in the room for ride sharing is unit economics (and, closely related to unit economics, the race to self-driving). Hiding $1800m of ride discounts

The elephant in the room for ride sharing is unit economics (and, closely related to unit economics, the race to self-driving). Hiding $1800m of ride discounts under Sales and Marketing feels deceptive. If a store advertises "summer sale, 30% off!" for a month, you can reasonably call that marketing spend. Uber is different. If my flight's leaving in 1h30m, I pull out my phone, open Uber, type in LAX, open Lyft, type in LAX. Say Uber is $17. Lyft is $20. I pick Uber. If there's a "promotion" going on under the hood to produce that $17 number, is that marketing? It's really just price competition in a cutthroat, negative-unit-economic market. Given that, Uber laying off 400 people has a dual effect. It's cutting sales spend. It's also creating news to distract from the fact that >50% of the sales spend is really per-ride losses.