4 ms·

I suspect you're right, but there lies the bitter disappointment with these companies. I'm sure Uber in NYC makes money, and DoorDash in NYC makes money... but

I suspect you're right, but there lies the bitter disappointment with these companies. I'm sure Uber in NYC makes money, and DoorDash in NYC makes money... but those are also the places where those services have existed for many decades profitably. The whole promise was that with [insert handwaviness] technology the business model can be made to work in places where it was never sustainable before (i.e., the suburbs and much smaller cities). This... overwhelmingly hasn't panned out. I'm generally skeptical of the oversimplistic "you've invented [thing]" complaints that are often leveled at new tech, but in this case... the shoe does seem to fit. The only places this business model seems to work are places where the business model has always worked!

permo-w 3y ago
my question is: why do we need taxi companies that make money? why can we not have non-profit or publicly-owned taxi apps? I'm not saying make taxis free, just provide the infrastructure without the need to extract any money from workers, or gouge prices for consumers. why do we just accept feudalism with extra steps? why are the bbc and npr the only publicly-owned entities on the web with any presence at all?
- LightHugger 3y ago
  because public transport is a better investment of public money than taxis, generally?
  - permo-w 3y ago
    the two things are not mutually exclusive
  - xboxnolifes 3y ago
    Publicly funded taxis would be public transport. But, I get your point.
- potatolicious 3y ago
  I do think you're onto something - though I don't think we actually need non-profit or publicly-owned taxi apps. The chief conceit of Uber is that the technology is what provided value. This justified exorbitant margins for Uber the company while squeezing drivers brutally. This conceit turned out to be ludicrously wrong - the vast majority of the value being provided by drivers, not the app itself. And the market is starting to grok that. For example in NYC you can now hail a cab using the Curb app, which adds the two main user experience improvements Uber pioneered: hailing by phone and paying by phone. The app itself isn't non-profit nor publicly-owned but it does take radically less of a cut of a ride than Uber, reserving the bulk of earnings for the actual driver - as it should be, because it turns out the app is not the primary value creator here. So in a way, "nature is healing" - the market is correcting and starting to (correctly) attribute value back to drivers rather than a parasitic central office. FWIW I think this reckoning is coming for all gig economy companies - the vast majority act like (and charge $$ like) they are the main value creators in the chain when they are not. The entire past decade of the gig economy has been a massive wealth transfer from working-class gig workers to investors and office tech workers who have 100% failed to justify their exorbitant cuts.
  - permo-w 3y ago
    what happens in 5 years time when Curb has loss-led to the top? the exact problem again, only possibly worse. maybe this time Curb learns the lesson of Uber and finds a way to anti-compete away the possibility of another "Curb" this idea that we can't have products within a competitive sphere that are publicly-owned is completely stupid. if they're bad, people won't use them, and if they're good, it will force private competition to get better. there's a (Murdoch-pushed) idea that that's unfair competition. but who is it unfair on? it's unfair on the capital holders. it's not unfair on the workers. it's not unfair on the consumers. it's just unfair on the people in society who extract their wealth from the people who do all the actual work

permo-w 3y ago

my question is: why do we need taxi companies that make money? why can we not have non-profit or publicly-owned taxi apps? I'm not saying make taxis free, just provide the infrastructure without the need to extract any money from workers, or gouge prices for consumers. why do we just accept feudalism with extra steps? why are the bbc and npr the only publicly-owned entities on the web with any presence at all?

LightHugger 3y ago
because public transport is a better investment of public money than taxis, generally?
- permo-w 3y ago
  the two things are not mutually exclusive
- xboxnolifes 3y ago
  Publicly funded taxis would be public transport. But, I get your point.
potatolicious 3y ago
I do think you're onto something - though I don't think we actually need non-profit or publicly-owned taxi apps. The chief conceit of Uber is that the technology is what provided value. This justified exorbitant margins for Uber the company while squeezing drivers brutally. This conceit turned out to be ludicrously wrong - the vast majority of the value being provided by drivers, not the app itself. And the market is starting to grok that. For example in NYC you can now hail a cab using the Curb app, which adds the two main user experience improvements Uber pioneered: hailing by phone and paying by phone. The app itself isn't non-profit nor publicly-owned but it does take radically less of a cut of a ride than Uber, reserving the bulk of earnings for the actual driver - as it should be, because it turns out the app is not the primary value creator here. So in a way, "nature is healing" - the market is correcting and starting to (correctly) attribute value back to drivers rather than a parasitic central office. FWIW I think this reckoning is coming for all gig economy companies - the vast majority act like (and charge $$ like) they are the main value creators in the chain when they are not. The entire past decade of the gig economy has been a massive wealth transfer from working-class gig workers to investors and office tech workers who have 100% failed to justify their exorbitant cuts.
- permo-w 3y ago
  what happens in 5 years time when Curb has loss-led to the top? the exact problem again, only possibly worse. maybe this time Curb learns the lesson of Uber and finds a way to anti-compete away the possibility of another "Curb" this idea that we can't have products within a competitive sphere that are publicly-owned is completely stupid. if they're bad, people won't use them, and if they're good, it will force private competition to get better. there's a (Murdoch-pushed) idea that that's unfair competition. but who is it unfair on? it's unfair on the capital holders. it's not unfair on the workers. it's not unfair on the consumers. it's just unfair on the people in society who extract their wealth from the people who do all the actual work