7 ms·

Really? As a bottom dweller, rather than a master of the universe, I don't see any great harm. Take Uber. A great service, cheaper rides, what's not to like. I

by beachy 4y ago

Really? As a bottom dweller, rather than a master of the universe, I don't see any great harm. Take Uber. A great service, cheaper rides, what's not to like. If investors stop subsidizing then and Uber was wiped from the board, who cares? I'll find some other way to get a ride. In fact their impact has only been positive, in shaking up the moribund taxi industry. I certainly don't see how it increases consumer costs in the long term, and quality has clearly benefited. Some of those benefits will stick even if Uber tanks. As to "entices investors to eschew fundamentals and gamble on hype", frankly who the hell cares? Investors are big boys and girls, they don't need hand holding.

zaphirplane 4y ago
True in the short term, imagine if a company becomes so dominant that little competition exists and little interest exists to create competition ( search engine ? ) that they can set the price they want. Then you are stuck paying whatever they demand obviously within reason . at 100 for a 5 min ride will entice some competition
- Thervicarl 4y ago
  > imagine if a company becomes so dominant that little competition exists and little interest exists to create competition This is the core of Softbank / Vision Fund investing thesis. The current events seem to show that this is not so easy to achieve even with tens (hundreds ?) of billions to burn in the process. If they run out of steam, a lot of companies will have been over-bloated and then run to the ground in the process, but this will not have caused any new monopoly.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
hackerlight 4y ago
It's called dumping. You have artificially low costs temporarily in order to put competitors out of business. Once that's achieved, you then increase prices. I'm actually not sure how dumping would work when done by Uber, though. Individual taxi drivers will go out of business, but there's little barriers to entry to new taxi drivers starting out again once Uber starts to flex its pricing power. Of course the picture changes if Uber starts to lobby for regulatory protection. You have to look at the micro details of the market to see whether there's a problem there.
- temp-dude-87844 4y ago
  Bigger cities typically regulate taxis and sell licenses to operate to taxi companies, who then employ or contract the drivers. Uber was always an unlicensed taxi scheme. Their planned business model was to ignore the law to reduce costs, then sell rides below cost until everyone else is out of business.
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    That law is classic regulatory capture and anti-consumer, though. I have no problem that bad laws which are hostile to people are being broken.
    - mschuster91 4y ago
      > That law is classic regulatory capture and anti-consumer, though. Taxis are usually regulated by law to provide mandatory service to an entire area at the same tariff - no discrimination based on the time of the day, the source or destination (e.g. "surge pricing" for events or effectively no service in poor neighborhoods), or if the passengers have any sort of disability. When the regulated option goes out, a lot of people suddenly live at the whims of capitalist overlords and AI algorithms, but not under the rule of law any more.
- milsorgen 4y ago
  Unless it's changed over recent years my understanding is that in many cities there was a high barrier to entry for taxis in the form of licensure. In some cases only a finite amount, causing sky rocketing prices. From what I've read it's similar to how some areas in the US have limited alcohol licenses (usually a per capita system in that case iirc), often they are then auctioned off for higher and higher prices where permissible.
ohgodplsno 4y ago
When Uber has wiped out half of the taxi industry and has made public transit infrastructure and development non existent, what you are left with is a damaged society. When WeWork buys hundreds of properties and prevents companies from establishing their offices in the city center, making you even more dependant on cars and leaving a dead city center, what you are left with is a damaged society. When DoorDash forces thousands to live a precarious life, surviving only by delivering orders 16 hours a day to barely make minimum wage when taking into account gas and depreciation of your car, forcing small restaurants to lower their prices or close (because they cannot ever match the economies of scale of McDonald's), what you are left with is a damaged society. It is a form of social dumping, of selling at a loss, and only benefits you for a very brief moment, before leaving with with a damaged society. Then, the options are, the company succeeds and inevitably raises their prices threefold to make up all of that lost money, fucking you over, or the company fails, and all your infrastructure is gone. They don't need hand holding. I don't give a shit about their well being. They need hand cuffing, to protect our society from their destructive practices.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  With Uber, there's creation of positive economic surplus by (1) optimizing how well drivers are able to connect with riders based on distance, and (2) allowing drivers to create individual brand value through ratings which incentivizes better service. In a decentralized network of taxis, you get waste because riders can't connect with the closest taxi easily, and worse service because there's no brand equity to protect. So on this point, I actually put the causal blame onto the homeowner lobby for causing our cities to facilitate cars over public transport. Uber is just downstream from planning decisions made a long time ago. I have little sympathy for the other marketplace companies like DoorDash, though, because I don't view the end service (delivering unhealthy food) as particularly valuable to anyone except themselves, so all we're left with is rent seeking.
  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    If you don't believe Uber's goal is rent seeking, I have a bridge to sell you. Your points about how Uber creates brand value and optimization is nice and all, but maybe have a look at the consequences of it not on the economy, but on people: same problem as Doordash, paid like crap, having to work 16 hours a day while paying for gas and your vehicle. I will not praise such a predatory model because I can rate a dude 5 stars for giving me a bottle of water. You know why ? Because if I don't rate him 5 stars, at some point Uber will just decide "fuck off, your average score is below 4.5, you don't deserve to work" and kick them out. In every country they've come, Uber has abused every kind of gray area (or straight up black area and just decided to pay the fines) to destroy any existing or potential competition. Forcing employees to register themselves as individual contractors when they work all the time for Uber, while not getting any of the benefits that Uber should be paying for ? Yeah, that's their standard. It's not a "homeowner lobby" pushing for cars. It's a first and foremost car lobby (reminder that jaywalking is a crime invented by the car lobbies), as well as a lack of foresight (and corruption) from the competent authorities. I don't know about the case in the US, but no homeowner lobby in Europe will say "oh no, don't build a tramway line" or "oh no, a bus stop". Public transit nearby makes a home's value skyrocket.
adriancr 4y ago
Imagine having a competitor receiving billions to take over the market, no oversight. They can afford to operate at a loss long after all competitors are bankrupt. Competing against them would be foolish. To get an idea of long term damage, imagine Uber and Lyft went bankrupt as they're running at a loss, what would you then use for transportation?, or imagine they 5-10 the price, not like you have alternatives. Sure, the taxis were crappy as alternative, but that was mostly due to limited number coming from regulation, they had no need to compete either.
- ivan_gammel 4y ago
  > Competing against them would be foolish. In default country maybe. Companies like InDriver, Didi, Yandex, Gett, Taxi Maxim clearly show that you can launch a competitor and grow for many years, eventually outcompeting American startups which then abandon the markets they don’t consider of high importance (see Uber-Yandex deal). Somehow SoftBank managed to invest in companies that work on highly competitive markets and do not have any innovative breakthroughs to defend their position. Creating an app is certainly not a breakthrough nowadays, you need to optimize the core of the business, which remains labor- or resource intensive. Uber tried to invest in self-driving vehicles, but that happened too early. In the end the winners in transportation will be the fleet management branches of automotive giants like VW, when they will start rolling out their solutions on the streets. Similar thing will happen to delivery. Companies like WeWork will grow organically (even if they begin like startups — last investor will loose the money).
- panick21_ 4y ago
  > To get an idea of long term damage, imagine Uber and Lyft went bankrupt as they're running at a loss, what would you then use for transportation? Some other competitor that would gladly replace them. The still existing local car services? Public transportation? I worked for a European competitor before Uber and there were tons of taxi and car services that were already in operation. It was just not centralized in one app. And for most people that mostly stay in 1 city its totally fine. Uber really is mostly useful if you travel a whole lot. Sure the price might be higher because is no longer subsidized by Soft Bank but that's not bad, that's simply paying a fair price.
plantain 4y ago
Have you tried Uber lately? It used to be way cheaper than taxi's, and you'd reliably get one much faster than calling a cab or trying to hail one. Now they've approached monopoly and need to actually start becoming profitable, it's become as expensive if not more expensive than taxi's. Plus for anything other than very long rides at surge prices you will get repeatedly cancelled, over and over. I have just gone back to calling or hailing cabs.
- tedivm 4y ago
  In Chicago Uber and Lyft are regularly twice as expensive as a taxi, with less money going to the drivers.
- hef19898 4y ago
  It's almost as if taxi rates are prized the way they are for a reason. If you actually want to turn a profit that is.
  - treis 4y ago
    Taxi rates are almost exclusively set by local regulation
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Yes, but by and large that local regulation isn't divorced from actual costs--except perhaps to some degree in the case of fleecing visitors going from the airport to downtown.
      - treis 4y ago
        That's not really true. Uber/Lyft have almost always been marginally profitable. Meaning they charge more for a ride than they pay the driver to perform it. Their massive losses mostly come from ridiculous overhead plus marketing to grow the business. On the other hand, the taxi market never really worked because there's no price fluctuation to mediate supply and demand. On one side you have places like Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix, and others where taxis basically didn't exist for locals. On the other you had places like NYC where demand often outstripped supply. You wouldn't be able to find a cab or they wouldn't take you where you wanted to go. You can also see it in medallion prices. They were so profitable in places like NYC people were paying a million plus simply for the opportunity to operate a cab. An obviously broken market.

by beachy 4y ago

zaphirplane 4y ago

True in the short term, imagine if a company becomes so dominant that little competition exists and little interest exists to create competition ( search engine ? ) that they can set the price they want. Then you are stuck paying whatever they demand obviously within reason . at 100 for a 5 min ride will entice some competition

Thervicarl 4y ago
> imagine if a company becomes so dominant that little competition exists and little interest exists to create competition This is the core of Softbank / Vision Fund investing thesis. The current events seem to show that this is not so easy to achieve even with tens (hundreds ?) of billions to burn in the process. If they run out of steam, a lot of companies will have been over-bloated and then run to the ground in the process, but this will not have caused any new monopoly.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

hackerlight 4y ago

It's called dumping. You have artificially low costs temporarily in order to put competitors out of business. Once that's achieved, you then increase prices. I'm actually not sure how dumping would work when done by Uber, though. Individual taxi drivers will go out of business, but there's little barriers to entry to new taxi drivers starting out again once Uber starts to flex its pricing power. Of course the picture changes if Uber starts to lobby for regulatory protection. You have to look at the micro details of the market to see whether there's a problem there.

temp-dude-87844 4y ago
Bigger cities typically regulate taxis and sell licenses to operate to taxi companies, who then employ or contract the drivers. Uber was always an unlicensed taxi scheme. Their planned business model was to ignore the law to reduce costs, then sell rides below cost until everyone else is out of business.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  That law is classic regulatory capture and anti-consumer, though. I have no problem that bad laws which are hostile to people are being broken.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > That law is classic regulatory capture and anti-consumer, though. Taxis are usually regulated by law to provide mandatory service to an entire area at the same tariff - no discrimination based on the time of the day, the source or destination (e.g. "surge pricing" for events or effectively no service in poor neighborhoods), or if the passengers have any sort of disability. When the regulated option goes out, a lot of people suddenly live at the whims of capitalist overlords and AI algorithms, but not under the rule of law any more.
milsorgen 4y ago
Unless it's changed over recent years my understanding is that in many cities there was a high barrier to entry for taxis in the form of licensure. In some cases only a finite amount, causing sky rocketing prices. From what I've read it's similar to how some areas in the US have limited alcohol licenses (usually a per capita system in that case iirc), often they are then auctioned off for higher and higher prices where permissible.

ohgodplsno 4y ago

When Uber has wiped out half of the taxi industry and has made public transit infrastructure and development non existent, what you are left with is a damaged society. When WeWork buys hundreds of properties and prevents companies from establishing their offices in the city center, making you even more dependant on cars and leaving a dead city center, what you are left with is a damaged society. When DoorDash forces thousands to live a precarious life, surviving only by delivering orders 16 hours a day to barely make minimum wage when taking into account gas and depreciation of your car, forcing small restaurants to lower their prices or close (because they cannot ever match the economies of scale of McDonald's), what you are left with is a damaged society. It is a form of social dumping, of selling at a loss, and only benefits you for a very brief moment, before leaving with with a damaged society. Then, the options are, the company succeeds and inevitably raises their prices threefold to make up all of that lost money, fucking you over, or the company fails, and all your infrastructure is gone. They don't need hand holding. I don't give a shit about their well being. They need hand cuffing, to protect our society from their destructive practices.

hackerlight 4y ago
With Uber, there's creation of positive economic surplus by (1) optimizing how well drivers are able to connect with riders based on distance, and (2) allowing drivers to create individual brand value through ratings which incentivizes better service. In a decentralized network of taxis, you get waste because riders can't connect with the closest taxi easily, and worse service because there's no brand equity to protect. So on this point, I actually put the causal blame onto the homeowner lobby for causing our cities to facilitate cars over public transport. Uber is just downstream from planning decisions made a long time ago. I have little sympathy for the other marketplace companies like DoorDash, though, because I don't view the end service (delivering unhealthy food) as particularly valuable to anyone except themselves, so all we're left with is rent seeking.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  If you don't believe Uber's goal is rent seeking, I have a bridge to sell you. Your points about how Uber creates brand value and optimization is nice and all, but maybe have a look at the consequences of it not on the economy, but on people: same problem as Doordash, paid like crap, having to work 16 hours a day while paying for gas and your vehicle. I will not praise such a predatory model because I can rate a dude 5 stars for giving me a bottle of water. You know why ? Because if I don't rate him 5 stars, at some point Uber will just decide "fuck off, your average score is below 4.5, you don't deserve to work" and kick them out. In every country they've come, Uber has abused every kind of gray area (or straight up black area and just decided to pay the fines) to destroy any existing or potential competition. Forcing employees to register themselves as individual contractors when they work all the time for Uber, while not getting any of the benefits that Uber should be paying for ? Yeah, that's their standard. It's not a "homeowner lobby" pushing for cars. It's a first and foremost car lobby (reminder that jaywalking is a crime invented by the car lobbies), as well as a lack of foresight (and corruption) from the competent authorities. I don't know about the case in the US, but no homeowner lobby in Europe will say "oh no, don't build a tramway line" or "oh no, a bus stop". Public transit nearby makes a home's value skyrocket.

adriancr 4y ago

Imagine having a competitor receiving billions to take over the market, no oversight. They can afford to operate at a loss long after all competitors are bankrupt. Competing against them would be foolish. To get an idea of long term damage, imagine Uber and Lyft went bankrupt as they're running at a loss, what would you then use for transportation?, or imagine they 5-10 the price, not like you have alternatives. Sure, the taxis were crappy as alternative, but that was mostly due to limited number coming from regulation, they had no need to compete either.

ivan_gammel 4y ago
> Competing against them would be foolish. In default country maybe. Companies like InDriver, Didi, Yandex, Gett, Taxi Maxim clearly show that you can launch a competitor and grow for many years, eventually outcompeting American startups which then abandon the markets they don’t consider of high importance (see Uber-Yandex deal). Somehow SoftBank managed to invest in companies that work on highly competitive markets and do not have any innovative breakthroughs to defend their position. Creating an app is certainly not a breakthrough nowadays, you need to optimize the core of the business, which remains labor- or resource intensive. Uber tried to invest in self-driving vehicles, but that happened too early. In the end the winners in transportation will be the fleet management branches of automotive giants like VW, when they will start rolling out their solutions on the streets. Similar thing will happen to delivery. Companies like WeWork will grow organically (even if they begin like startups — last investor will loose the money).
panick21_ 4y ago
> To get an idea of long term damage, imagine Uber and Lyft went bankrupt as they're running at a loss, what would you then use for transportation? Some other competitor that would gladly replace them. The still existing local car services? Public transportation? I worked for a European competitor before Uber and there were tons of taxi and car services that were already in operation. It was just not centralized in one app. And for most people that mostly stay in 1 city its totally fine. Uber really is mostly useful if you travel a whole lot. Sure the price might be higher because is no longer subsidized by Soft Bank but that's not bad, that's simply paying a fair price.

plantain 4y ago

Have you tried Uber lately? It used to be way cheaper than taxi's, and you'd reliably get one much faster than calling a cab or trying to hail one. Now they've approached monopoly and need to actually start becoming profitable, it's become as expensive if not more expensive than taxi's. Plus for anything other than very long rides at surge prices you will get repeatedly cancelled, over and over. I have just gone back to calling or hailing cabs.

tedivm 4y ago
In Chicago Uber and Lyft are regularly twice as expensive as a taxi, with less money going to the drivers.
hef19898 4y ago
It's almost as if taxi rates are prized the way they are for a reason. If you actually want to turn a profit that is.
- treis 4y ago
  Taxi rates are almost exclusively set by local regulation
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Yes, but by and large that local regulation isn't divorced from actual costs--except perhaps to some degree in the case of fleecing visitors going from the airport to downtown.
    - treis 4y ago
      That's not really true. Uber/Lyft have almost always been marginally profitable. Meaning they charge more for a ride than they pay the driver to perform it. Their massive losses mostly come from ridiculous overhead plus marketing to grow the business. On the other hand, the taxi market never really worked because there's no price fluctuation to mediate supply and demand. On one side you have places like Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix, and others where taxis basically didn't exist for locals. On the other you had places like NYC where demand often outstripped supply. You wouldn't be able to find a cab or they wouldn't take you where you wanted to go. You can also see it in medallion prices. They were so profitable in places like NYC people were paying a million plus simply for the opportunity to operate a cab. An obviously broken market.