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> The thing that bugs me about this is how he just dismisses Uber as providing nothing. I think you are misreading him, but it's mostly his fault. He's not ta
by ska 3y ago
> The thing that bugs me about this is how he just dismisses Uber as providing nothing.
I think you are misreading him, but it's mostly his fault. He's not talking about if consumers got value out of things during a bubble, but what is left over after it "pops". His argument is basically that uber did not represent a viable business plan initially/currently (true) and will never find a viable plan (arguable), therefore at some point it will collapse when people get tired of subsidizing the rides in various ways. His claim then is when this happens, what is left afterwards is strictly worse than what existed before uber.
Now I'm not going to opine on the argument or the timeline, but nowhere in there does he claim that people getting subsidized rides didn't benefit from them at the time, just that it nets out negative over time.
- ctoth 3y agoThis idea is just so fundamentally weird that I didn't think it could have been what he meant. Why does surplus only matter if you capture it after the bubble pops? Does the money I saved on Uber not carry forward? Does the cheap trip I took to the doctor's office where they found something important not still benefit me even if the company later shuts down? Edit: You would need a literal Gods-eye perspective of the Universe to know how something like this actually nets out.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dh2424 3y agoI think you're oversimplifying it. Of course it provides something of value to some people - it pays drivers, riders get rides home from the airport, etc. I don't think he's saying that Uber has never provided anything of value at any point, but he's making the case that it's still a scam or a bubble, because the company isn't actually making money, it knows it, and has no plan to become profitable. Therefore, it's a net loss, and essentially scamming investors out of money, plus the other negatives he mentions. I'm sure some people made tons of money when the stock market crashed in 1929, that doesn't mean it wasn't catastrophic - just because some people benefited.
- albedoa 3y agoSo not only is the author wrong about the point that he obviously did not make, but he is wrong about the point that everyone else understands him to have made too, even though you are still unable to understand it. I don't know man, how hard is it to just admit that you were wrong.
- worik 3y ago> Why does surplus only matter if you capture it after the bubble pops? Doctorow's saying the opposite about Uber. * Uber offers cheap ride through a cnvenient app and lets drivers keep a lot (?) of the rewards * Drives taxies out of business * Uber raises prices and lowers drivers' rewards * Now more expensive and less reliable than ever He built a whole economic theory around it, even coined a name for it: Enshitification.
- superposeur 3y agoRelevant quote supporting your point that this is his point: > Like Uber, the massive investor subsidies for AI have produced a sugar high of temporarily satisfied users.
- JambalayaJim 3y agoEven if Uber goes under, taxi apps are still going to be around. That’s not nothing.