5 ms·

This reminds me of a good principle I try to come back to: If the way things are before was better, why did we end in the place we are now? If the answer is 'n

This reminds me of a good principle I try to come back to: If the way things are before was better, why did we end in the place we are now? If the answer is 'no explanation' then it's this explanation, or alternative, which is bad. In other words, if we rewound things back to where things were before Lyft... then we would expect them to end up in the same place they are now, [now-then] years later. It would just be a replay. Now it's different if things changed: if computing power got 100x more expensive, okay, taxi companies might come back in style and win in a replay. But failing that? Evidently people prefer Lyft & Uber to taxi companies: because the world was once [large percentage] taxi companies vs. [tiny percentage] ridesharing, and now it's the other way around, post-competition. Note: to get to the author's preferred outcome, just assume a non-Lyft non-Uber low-cost ridesharing company. That seems like the best way to get to that point, without swimming against the tide of history.

rightbyte 4y ago
> Evidently people prefer Lyft & Uber to taxi companies Americans prefer taking an Lyft to not getting a taxi at all due to taxi number medallion cap. Most place did not have the problem Lyft and Uber solved. I.e. circumvent medallion shortages.
- finnh 4y ago
  Medallions caps were not the only problem with cabs. Not by a long shot.
- TylerE 4y ago
  Medallions are an NYC thing. Not applicable to most Americans. Not that it makes taxi service any less dreadful.
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    I tried to get cabs to my home in Mountain View, CA multiple times but every cab company but one said that was not their area and the designated cab company had hours of wait. Only Uber worked. I could easily get a cab to the home from the city though. There had to be something up there to.
- xeromal 4y ago
  I think the bigger issue was obscure pricing. You had no idea what something would cost in the US. The meter would tell you in the end. You at least had an idea of how much something would cost with lyft/uber as long as you didn't ask for deviations in the preplanned route. I do know that in south america, it was different. You'd negotiate the pay before you got in so at least you knew if you could afford it or not.
jtbayly 4y ago
> If the way things are before was better, why did we end in the place we are now? There's a simple (potential) answer: market distortion through large investments that are gradually being spent down.
burkaman 4y ago
This reminds me of the joke about an economist not picking up a hundred dollar bill on the ground because "if there were really $100 on the ground, somebody would have already taken it". Not every system is in an optimal state, and sometimes things do actually get worse. To pick a random example, everything used to be on Netflix, now everything is split up among 50 different streaming services that all cost $15/month. If we rewound things back to before streaming fragmentation, I would expect a replay of what happened, but you can't use that as evidence that "I guess people just like it better this way". To conclude that requires a base assumption that American capitalism always produces an optimal state, which is just obviously wrong. I don't think you're necessarily wrong about Lyft and Uber, but I don't agree with your principle that if you can't figure out why things have gotten worse, then you must be wrong and they're actually better for most people.
- spullara 4y ago
  But everything was never on Netflix. Most of the streaming services are net new content for streaming.
  - burkaman 4y ago
    Obviously not literally everything was there, but for example Disney stuff was and now it's on Disney+, NBC stuff is now on Peacock, CBS stuff is now on Paramount+, etc. etc. I'm sure it's true in quantitative terms that new streaming services are net new content, but there's a very long list of popular movies and shows that used to be on Netflix and no longer are, and a very long list of publishers that use to make new content available on Netflix and no longer do. A very abridged list of existing content that Netflix lost: Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, Disney movies, The Office, Parks and Rec, The West Wing, Lionsgate movies, Doctor Who, 20th Century Fox movies like X-Men, ABC Shows like Scandal, Naruto, most Star Trek shows, and on and on All of this is regionally dependent I think, some things are probably still available outside the US.
    - spullara 4y ago
      The content you are talking about wasn't on Netflix all the time. They were constantly churning the catalog and still do. There are shows from some of those places right now. Netflix has always had a limited catalog based on how much they wanted to spend on licensing. For example, they have CBS shows like NCIS and NBS shows like Seinfeld right now. If Netflix had all the shows all the time it would likely cost as much as all the streaming services combined to support the licensing costs.
strangattractor 4y ago
Went to bachelor party in North Beach. When it came time to go home we approached a cab driver that had been waiting curb side for around the 10 minutes we had stood there and talked. He said he already had a fare. We offered him more money and off we went. That was the cabby's version of demand pricing. Personally I like that Lyft/Uber can tell me how much it will cost before I get in the car. Cabs can rarely do that and I have taken complete tours of cities at times when a more straight forward route existed.
TeMPOraL 4y ago
> If the way things are before was better, why did we end in the place we are now? Among other possibilities: because someone found some non-monetary value that could be mined, exploited or destroyed to make more money, competitors followed suit, and then there's no going back. The market has strong ratchet effects. This happens quite often, because there is nothing stopping the market from optimizing past global optimum of service price vs. quality vs. availability.
danaris 4y ago
> If the way things are before was better, why did we end in the place we are now? This is a good principle to use, but it's fallacious to use it to argue that this means the place we are now is better in any kind of absolute sense. What it means is that you need to find who it's better for, and figure out what they were able to do to effect their will on the world to make it so. In some cases, the current situation is objectively worse for everyone—sometimes even including the party that was attempting to optimize! People are very often wrong about what will give a better outcome, for them or for others. Even if things are better for one or more parties, that doesn't mean that they're better for the system as a whole. There is no "tide of history" in the vast majority of cases. There's just people trying to optimize for their own priorities. In this case, IMNSHO, the thing that would have made the most difference is better regulations—both on the types of business that were being disrupted (eg, transport services), and on labor (eg, to ensure that Lyft drivers are being treated like employees when they are, for all intents and purposes, employees, and compensated and benefited appropriately).
Jochim 4y ago
There is very simple explanation though: Investors and VC funds burned literally billions of dollars (apparently over $30b according to [0]) to fuck up a functioning market. The result is that existing players were forced out of business by a company that isn't even competing. It's a complete failure of the underlying principles of the free market. When the investors have made out like bandits and the tap runs dry, consumers find themselves with poorer service. At that point the damage has been done and we have to hope that the business can actually be profitable while providing a similar quality of service to that which was available before. On an unrelated note. The majority of Uber's early executive team belongs in jail. Their blatant disregard for the law should have repercussions. I find it repulsive that their actions are ignored while others are imprisoned for far far less. [0] https://uberlosses.com/ https://uberlosses.com/

rightbyte 4y ago

> Evidently people prefer Lyft & Uber to taxi companies Americans prefer taking an Lyft to not getting a taxi at all due to taxi number medallion cap. Most place did not have the problem Lyft and Uber solved. I.e. circumvent medallion shortages.

finnh 4y ago
Medallions caps were not the only problem with cabs. Not by a long shot.
TylerE 4y ago
Medallions are an NYC thing. Not applicable to most Americans. Not that it makes taxi service any less dreadful.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  I tried to get cabs to my home in Mountain View, CA multiple times but every cab company but one said that was not their area and the designated cab company had hours of wait. Only Uber worked. I could easily get a cab to the home from the city though. There had to be something up there to.
xeromal 4y ago
I think the bigger issue was obscure pricing. You had no idea what something would cost in the US. The meter would tell you in the end. You at least had an idea of how much something would cost with lyft/uber as long as you didn't ask for deviations in the preplanned route. I do know that in south america, it was different. You'd negotiate the pay before you got in so at least you knew if you could afford it or not.

jtbayly 4y ago

> If the way things are before was better, why did we end in the place we are now? There's a simple (potential) answer: market distortion through large investments that are gradually being spent down.

burkaman 4y ago

This reminds me of the joke about an economist not picking up a hundred dollar bill on the ground because "if there were really $100 on the ground, somebody would have already taken it". Not every system is in an optimal state, and sometimes things do actually get worse. To pick a random example, everything used to be on Netflix, now everything is split up among 50 different streaming services that all cost $15/month. If we rewound things back to before streaming fragmentation, I would expect a replay of what happened, but you can't use that as evidence that "I guess people just like it better this way". To conclude that requires a base assumption that American capitalism always produces an optimal state, which is just obviously wrong. I don't think you're necessarily wrong about Lyft and Uber, but I don't agree with your principle that if you can't figure out why things have gotten worse, then you must be wrong and they're actually better for most people.

spullara 4y ago
But everything was never on Netflix. Most of the streaming services are net new content for streaming.
- burkaman 4y ago
  Obviously not literally everything was there, but for example Disney stuff was and now it's on Disney+, NBC stuff is now on Peacock, CBS stuff is now on Paramount+, etc. etc. I'm sure it's true in quantitative terms that new streaming services are net new content, but there's a very long list of popular movies and shows that used to be on Netflix and no longer are, and a very long list of publishers that use to make new content available on Netflix and no longer do. A very abridged list of existing content that Netflix lost: Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, Disney movies, The Office, Parks and Rec, The West Wing, Lionsgate movies, Doctor Who, 20th Century Fox movies like X-Men, ABC Shows like Scandal, Naruto, most Star Trek shows, and on and on All of this is regionally dependent I think, some things are probably still available outside the US.
  - spullara 4y ago
    The content you are talking about wasn't on Netflix all the time. They were constantly churning the catalog and still do. There are shows from some of those places right now. Netflix has always had a limited catalog based on how much they wanted to spend on licensing. For example, they have CBS shows like NCIS and NBS shows like Seinfeld right now. If Netflix had all the shows all the time it would likely cost as much as all the streaming services combined to support the licensing costs.

strangattractor 4y ago

Went to bachelor party in North Beach. When it came time to go home we approached a cab driver that had been waiting curb side for around the 10 minutes we had stood there and talked. He said he already had a fare. We offered him more money and off we went. That was the cabby's version of demand pricing. Personally I like that Lyft/Uber can tell me how much it will cost before I get in the car. Cabs can rarely do that and I have taken complete tours of cities at times when a more straight forward route existed.

TeMPOraL 4y ago

> If the way things are before was better, why did we end in the place we are now? Among other possibilities: because someone found some non-monetary value that could be mined, exploited or destroyed to make more money, competitors followed suit, and then there's no going back. The market has strong ratchet effects. This happens quite often, because there is nothing stopping the market from optimizing past global optimum of service price vs. quality vs. availability.

danaris 4y ago

> If the way things are before was better, why did we end in the place we are now? This is a good principle to use, but it's fallacious to use it to argue that this means the place we are now is better in any kind of absolute sense. What it means is that you need to find who it's better for, and figure out what they were able to do to effect their will on the world to make it so. In some cases, the current situation is objectively worse for everyone—sometimes even including the party that was attempting to optimize! People are very often wrong about what will give a better outcome, for them or for others. Even if things are better for one or more parties, that doesn't mean that they're better for the system as a whole. There is no "tide of history" in the vast majority of cases. There's just people trying to optimize for their own priorities. In this case, IMNSHO, the thing that would have made the most difference is better regulations—both on the types of business that were being disrupted (eg, transport services), and on labor (eg, to ensure that Lyft drivers are being treated like employees when they are, for all intents and purposes, employees, and compensated and benefited appropriately).

Jochim 4y ago

There is very simple explanation though: Investors and VC funds burned literally billions of dollars (apparently over $30b according to [0]) to fuck up a functioning market. The result is that existing players were forced out of business by a company that isn't even competing. It's a complete failure of the underlying principles of the free market. When the investors have made out like bandits and the tap runs dry, consumers find themselves with poorer service. At that point the damage has been done and we have to hope that the business can actually be profitable while providing a similar quality of service to that which was available before. On an unrelated note. The majority of Uber's early executive team belongs in jail. Their blatant disregard for the law should have repercussions. I find it repulsive that their actions are ignored while others are imprisoned for far far less. [0] https://uberlosses.com/ https://uberlosses.com/