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> That's because they're buying growth. That is the idea I guess. > Their last quarter revenue was almost $4 billion, you can definitely serve millions of dai

> That's because they're buying growth. That is the idea I guess. > Their last quarter revenue was almost $4 billion, you can definitely serve millions of daily rides for way less than that. How do you calculate this? Sure if you were just you with car, you could - but not sure this is exactly a workable business model without uber - if it was then people would presumably not use uber. > My point is that you could have an open source version of these services that could be managed by local governments or not for profits. You could have open source versions - but the source code is a small part of the operation - and I'm not sure why I would want to government to run it - or why people should not be allowed to profit from it. If the issue is that workers are being exploiter maybe a better option is to see if there is some reasonable regulation to be put in place or why there is such low demand relative to the supply of labour.

m_ke 7y ago
> How do you calculate this? Sure if you were just you with car, you could - but not sure this is exactly a workable business model without uber - if it was then people would presumably not use uber. I'm not a 100% sure if I understand your question. What I meant was that you could run a marketplace web service like uber or airbnb for way less than they're spending now. The variable costs of processing those transactions approach 0 at scale, also would be practically free if someone wanted to host it themselves for their small town. > You could have open source versions - but the source code is a small part of the operation - and I'm not sure why I would want to government to run it - or why people should not be allowed to profit from it. If the issue is that workers are being exploiter maybe a better option is to see if there is some reasonable regulation to be put in place or why there is such low demand relative to the supply of labour. Yeah I agree. The OP asked about a good open source alternative and I think that this could work as an open source project and be deployed per town (or as a decentralized application).

m_ke 7y ago

> How do you calculate this? Sure if you were just you with car, you could - but not sure this is exactly a workable business model without uber - if it was then people would presumably not use uber. I'm not a 100% sure if I understand your question. What I meant was that you could run a marketplace web service like uber or airbnb for way less than they're spending now. The variable costs of processing those transactions approach 0 at scale, also would be practically free if someone wanted to host it themselves for their small town. > You could have open source versions - but the source code is a small part of the operation - and I'm not sure why I would want to government to run it - or why people should not be allowed to profit from it. If the issue is that workers are being exploiter maybe a better option is to see if there is some reasonable regulation to be put in place or why there is such low demand relative to the supply of labour. Yeah I agree. The OP asked about a good open source alternative and I think that this could work as an open source project and be deployed per town (or as a decentralized application).