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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

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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- hackerlight 4y ago
  Rent seeking is their goal, but that's irrelevant to whether they also create positive surplus value through the mechanisms I outlined. The economy vs. people distinction is a false dichotomy. Consumers (who are also people) can benefit from more efficient service provision and higher quality service. > It's not a "homeowner lobby" pushing for cars. It's the homeowner lobby pushing for sprawl, which indirectly leads to cars because public transport can't be properly provisioned across spawl without huge cost. Once you have sprawl enforced by law, everything else follows as a guaranteed consequence: networks of roads to connect that sprawl, and therefore cars.
  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    >Consumers (who are also people) can benefit from more efficient service provision and higher quality service. Consumers can also benefit from child slavery to buy their clothes ever cheaper, but we've decided as a society that it was kind of uncool to do it. But if you're willing to sacrifice a bunch of workers to drive for your comfort 16 hours a day, being paid like shit, feel free to. But pretending it creates positive surplus value while ignoring every single negative externality is laughable.
    - hackerlight 4y ago
      I am not "pretending" that it creates positive surplus value. It does create surplus value through simple mechanisms. Also, it's unfair to say I am ignoring every single negative externality. All I did was challenge the questionable claim that Uber has much to do with the state of our cities being car-centric and underprovisioned by public transport, because the root cause of that situation is homeowners, not Uber. I didn't give my blessing to all of Uber's practices. > sacrifice a bunch of workers to drive for your comfort 16 hours a day, being paid like shit Putting aside the false analogy to child labor, I don't accept the framing that all low wage labor is uncool. It's a type of mindless compassion that can actually lead to anti-utilitarian outcomes in practice. Although I have no positive or negative judgment of Uber in particular regarding this point, because I haven't looked into it for Uber. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32627174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32627174
AlexandrB 4y ago
> In a decentralized network of taxis, you get waste because riders can't connect with the closest taxi easily I don't get this point. What was decentralized about taxis before Uber? Each city had a few competing taxi services, each with a dispatcher who would connect rides to drivers in a centralized manner. I assume they used some information about location when they did this. But even if they didn't, there's nothing decentralized about it. The only centralization Uber did was creating a huge conglomerate that spans numerous cities. But there's little efficiency to be gained by this. Uber is not going to dispatch a driver from a neighboring city to come pick you up.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  I should have used the word fragmented. Fragmentation reduces the efficiency gains from physical network effects. If the overall network isn't fragmented, you get smaller average distances between driver and rider. Another efficiency gain is from replacing a human dispatcher with a ML model.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    Isn't this just an argument for a monopoly? Several competing taxi services would be fragmented. One monopoly taxi service would be more efficient. But in that case, I'd argue the municipality should just operate it as part of the public transit system.
    - hackerlight 4y ago
      It's a monopoly in the narrow vertical, but that power is diluted given the existence of close substitutes (driving yourself, bus, train, and some remaining old-school taxis). No doubt there is still some monopoly power, though. > I'd argue the municipality should just operate it as part of the public transit system. I'd probably prefer it if you just regulate their monopoly power. I don't like the idea of each municipality or country having to write their own software for an Uber-like platform. Seems like a lot of duplicated effort. And after the Obamacare website cost blowout, I don't trust government to write software well, it'd end up as money being stolen by people like Accenture.
hkt 4y ago
Do you have any sources you can cite on point one? I can see that there could be a reasonable hypothesis that centralised services will reduce costs for drivers heading to pick up customers, or carbon emissions, both due to shorter journeys. What I'd be interested in is whether or not that has been studied, how variable the gains are by locale (eg big city, small city, town, etc) and what the consequences are for driver pay and conditions. Likewise, effects on things like price paid per journey, both average and 95th percentile so as to gather peak pricing (which, in the UK at least, cabs don't charge). It'd also be interesting to understand why this isn't done on a municipal level - eg, a unit of local government could buy one of the many, many off the shelf systems for this and require taxis to use it. Perhaps a few tweaks to make it multi tenant, so as to preserve the existing structures of taxi companies. I suspect this would confer the benefits of more efficient allocation, without the ill effects associated with Uberisation.
smolder 4y ago
Doordash can deliver healthy food, too. It may contribute to bad eating and laziness for some, but it can also help people with limited mobility (or time) get better food than they otherwise could.

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.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hackerlight 4y ago
Rent seeking is their goal, but that's irrelevant to whether they also create positive surplus value through the mechanisms I outlined. The economy vs. people distinction is a false dichotomy. Consumers (who are also people) can benefit from more efficient service provision and higher quality service. > It's not a "homeowner lobby" pushing for cars. It's the homeowner lobby pushing for sprawl, which indirectly leads to cars because public transport can't be properly provisioned across spawl without huge cost. Once you have sprawl enforced by law, everything else follows as a guaranteed consequence: networks of roads to connect that sprawl, and therefore cars.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  >Consumers (who are also people) can benefit from more efficient service provision and higher quality service. Consumers can also benefit from child slavery to buy their clothes ever cheaper, but we've decided as a society that it was kind of uncool to do it. But if you're willing to sacrifice a bunch of workers to drive for your comfort 16 hours a day, being paid like shit, feel free to. But pretending it creates positive surplus value while ignoring every single negative externality is laughable.
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    I am not "pretending" that it creates positive surplus value. It does create surplus value through simple mechanisms. Also, it's unfair to say I am ignoring every single negative externality. All I did was challenge the questionable claim that Uber has much to do with the state of our cities being car-centric and underprovisioned by public transport, because the root cause of that situation is homeowners, not Uber. I didn't give my blessing to all of Uber's practices. > sacrifice a bunch of workers to drive for your comfort 16 hours a day, being paid like shit Putting aside the false analogy to child labor, I don't accept the framing that all low wage labor is uncool. It's a type of mindless compassion that can actually lead to anti-utilitarian outcomes in practice. Although I have no positive or negative judgment of Uber in particular regarding this point, because I haven't looked into it for Uber. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32627174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32627174

AlexandrB 4y ago

> In a decentralized network of taxis, you get waste because riders can't connect with the closest taxi easily I don't get this point. What was decentralized about taxis before Uber? Each city had a few competing taxi services, each with a dispatcher who would connect rides to drivers in a centralized manner. I assume they used some information about location when they did this. But even if they didn't, there's nothing decentralized about it. The only centralization Uber did was creating a huge conglomerate that spans numerous cities. But there's little efficiency to be gained by this. Uber is not going to dispatch a driver from a neighboring city to come pick you up.

hackerlight 4y ago
I should have used the word fragmented. Fragmentation reduces the efficiency gains from physical network effects. If the overall network isn't fragmented, you get smaller average distances between driver and rider. Another efficiency gain is from replacing a human dispatcher with a ML model.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  Isn't this just an argument for a monopoly? Several competing taxi services would be fragmented. One monopoly taxi service would be more efficient. But in that case, I'd argue the municipality should just operate it as part of the public transit system.
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    It's a monopoly in the narrow vertical, but that power is diluted given the existence of close substitutes (driving yourself, bus, train, and some remaining old-school taxis). No doubt there is still some monopoly power, though. > I'd argue the municipality should just operate it as part of the public transit system. I'd probably prefer it if you just regulate their monopoly power. I don't like the idea of each municipality or country having to write their own software for an Uber-like platform. Seems like a lot of duplicated effort. And after the Obamacare website cost blowout, I don't trust government to write software well, it'd end up as money being stolen by people like Accenture.

hkt 4y ago

Do you have any sources you can cite on point one? I can see that there could be a reasonable hypothesis that centralised services will reduce costs for drivers heading to pick up customers, or carbon emissions, both due to shorter journeys. What I'd be interested in is whether or not that has been studied, how variable the gains are by locale (eg big city, small city, town, etc) and what the consequences are for driver pay and conditions. Likewise, effects on things like price paid per journey, both average and 95th percentile so as to gather peak pricing (which, in the UK at least, cabs don't charge). It'd also be interesting to understand why this isn't done on a municipal level - eg, a unit of local government could buy one of the many, many off the shelf systems for this and require taxis to use it. Perhaps a few tweaks to make it multi tenant, so as to preserve the existing structures of taxi companies. I suspect this would confer the benefits of more efficient allocation, without the ill effects associated with Uberisation.

smolder 4y ago

Doordash can deliver healthy food, too. It may contribute to bad eating and laziness for some, but it can also help people with limited mobility (or time) get better food than they otherwise could.