Disrupting Uber • Hacker News Board

Re: Disrupting Uber

#91

Post by davidf18 » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 5:28 PM UTC

pfarnsworth wrote: post #59

hiou wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber is a investment fueled churn machine right now. Supply and demand(even as overly simplistic that model is) has yet to come into the equation. We will not have any idea the validity of the business model until the never before seen massive expenditures in driver acquisition subsides. Which probably won't be for several years or more.

The CEO already said that the top 30 cities produced over $1B in profits. I don't think your information is correct anymore.

Well, if this information is correct, then there is room for disruption starting with the cities with the highest taxi prices. Therefore instead of writing an article, build the app. Let it fly in NYC and offer 30% lower rates.

Re: Disrupting Uber

#92

Post by Kalium » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

nickparker wrote: post #74

svanderbleek wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the article more carefully, "they might be willing to switch to a co-op model that offers a cheaper price and solid service". A co-op can have lower prices and pay it's members more because they don't have to funnel profits to support the bloat of a central corporation like Uber.

Can they, though? The corporation isn't some money-sucking black box. It's dispute resolution, software development to match rides efficiently (Uber Pool is tricky), and advertising. Yes, it also skims money off the top to pay for things like driverless car R&D, but is a small, likely disorganized co-op going to be efficient enough at all the above to take advantage of that margin?

It's highly unlikely that a small, disorganized co-op is going to be efficient enough to take advantage of the situation and be able to out-compete Uber.

That said, the reality is irrelevant here. Jacobin is the kind of magazine where economic reality is treated as a suggestion, to be discarded as is convenient.

Re: Disrupting Uber

#93

Post by valhalla » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 5:33 PM UTC

davidf18 wrote: post #32

skybrian wrote: post #16

What they're missing is that higher wages depend on some barrier to entry (there are many kinds) that protects the people who have jobs at the expense of anyone who is looking for a job. As someone who works for a company with high hiring standards and correspondingly high pay, I have mixed feelings about this. It seems like there should be some jobs that are easy to get without much training, and taxi driver is a go…

These "barriers to entry" is called "economic rent". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent Economic rents are harmful to the economy and keep new labor entrants out as you have pointed out making it harder for young people or others to get a job. A way to complete with Uber and existing taxi services is to provide greener vehicles such as electric or hybrid (the new yellow taxi medallion cabs in NYC are all hyb…

I disagree completely. Uber's inception/success was partly because of existing taxi services' "barriers to entry". Medallions were worth about $1 million each when Uber started in NYC (http://bloom.bg/2aCEeQA). That's a textbook case of an economic rent.

Taxi service was often discriminatory in NYC and other cities: taxi drivers often refuse to pick up black passengers assuming they won't pay once they reach their destination and I've had gay friends openly complain about how SF cab drivers used to throw them out on Pride or after a PDA with their significant other. This was the status quo for decades because of the barriers to entry of municipal taxi services' monopoly. They never had to anything about it since their was no competition and if you didn't like it, you probably shouldn't take a cab.

Besides Uber's barriers to entry are it's scale (low prices and reliable service) and brand than de facto monopoly status (which I assume is what you're talking about since you mostly talk about competition beside summing up your link). The fact that a co-op could potentially "disrupt Uber" is evidence of that.

Re: Disrupting Uber

#94

Post by Kalium » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 5:36 PM UTC

tanderson92 wrote: post #34

davidf18 wrote: post #28

These "disruptors" need to work on wealth creation and not installing "economic rents." Economic rents, a term in Microeconomics, is trying to achieve profits beyond those in an efficient market (for example, creating artificial scarcity). The appear to be complaining because Uber is lowering the cost of overly expensive taxi fares when they should be working on a system that provides rides for less money while still…

> The[y] appear to be complaining because Uber is lowering the cost of overly expensive taxi fares when they should be working on a system that provides rides for less money while still helping drivers get more pay (if that is important to them). This is a magazine for American Leftists, so they're really quite clear what they want: they want valuable services rendered to people with profits shared among the workers,…

Jacobin makes the core mistake of many economic radical leftists - they ignore that it's not just the good or service itself that's valuable. Quality assurance is valuable. Service discovery is valuable and so is rapid provisioning.

In Jacobin's world, the only person providing value here is the driver. In the world the rest of us inhabit, things like the star-rating system and the dispatch system are valuable too.

Re: Disrupting Uber

#95

Post by rgbrgb » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 5:37 PM UTC

The app in the article looks like vaporware (hope to be proven wrong). Anyone else trying to build P2P apps where the worker sees the full value of their work? I get the theory, it seems possible, but it been a few years since we started talking about building stuff like this on the blockchain and I've seen 0 activity. Every developer (including myself) who I've discussed this type of thing with has basically said the same thing: if I had a bunch of money in the bank and wasn't already working on a project that seemed interesting/important, I'd be down to try building it for some labor vertical (delivery, taxis, farming). From my vantage, it's public service in the same sense that doing a sabbatical with 18F is public service. Maybe 18F should try?

Re: Disrupting Uber

#96

Post by svanderbleek » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 5:37 PM UTC

srtjstjsj wrote: post #77

svanderbleek wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the article more carefully, "they might be willing to switch to a co-op model that offers a cheaper price and solid service". A co-op can have lower prices and pay it's members more because they don't have to funnel profits to support the bloat of a central corporation like Uber.

You can't just call it "bloat", you have to prove that it is bloat.

True, I do know people who work at Uber who I have worked with before. Just kidding but I would like to show that worker owned business can be more efficient because of locality of information transfer and decision making. It's not my professional area so I have to rely on my beliefs. I am working toward creating software companies to embody these ideas.

Re: Disrupting Uber

#97

Post by stale2002 » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 5:42 PM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #25

corin_ wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That view doesn't look at the big picture - it's very possible that they are allowing for, and happy with, losing money to grow market share for many more years, maybe even until they can offer driverless rides to turn market share into profit.

Waiting for driverless cars to make them profitable seems like one of the worst bets you could make. Even if they were content to wait, say, 20 years, when driverless cars hit the market, what's to stop anyone from buying a small fleet of them and tossing their own uber-like app up on the store? Heck, I can even see it in the distant future, turnkey Uber-like businesses, you get your choice of franchise to buy into.…

Its not playing the long game. Its playing the short game. Self driving cars are going to be here for consumers by 2020.

What protects Uber is the network effect. Even if I had a million self driving cars right now, nobody has my app installed, and I don't have an optimized pricing and logistics set up yet.

And if you have your own fleet of self driving cars, why would you build the whole setup yourself? Why not just rent them to Uber?

Re: Disrupting Uber

#98

Post by svanderbleek » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 5:42 PM UTC

Kalium wrote: post #92

nickparker wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can they, though? The corporation isn't some money-sucking black box. It's dispute resolution, software development to match rides efficiently (Uber Pool is tricky), and advertising. Yes, it also skims money off the top to pay for things like driverless car R&D, but is a small, likely disorganized co-op going to be efficient enough at all the above to take advantage of that margin?

It's highly unlikely that a small, disorganized co-op is going to be efficient enough to take advantage of the situation and be able to out-compete Uber. That said, the reality is irrelevant here. Jacobin is the kind of magazine where economic reality is treated as a suggestion, to be discarded as is convenient.

That's how economic reality should be treated. Our own reality is primary. We will take back our lives. What Jacobin is working towards is admirable. We believe in progress, that a better way is possible, and that the current state of affairs is suboptimal. We should encourage alternative economic thinking.

Re: Disrupting Uber

#99

Post by Spooky23 » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 5:46 PM UTC

pfarnsworth wrote: post #63

Good luck with the co-op idea. The problem is that drivers feel like their services are worth a lot, and passengers simply don't believe it. The reason why Uber is a success is that they created new demand by dropping prices. Everyone I know, including myself, would never have taken an Uber as frequently as we do if the prices were as high as taxis. You can't replicate this unless you keep pushing prices down, and th…

How much of Uber is the ability to burn down the massive investments made into the company?

As they transition to a more normal company that needs to make money, can they afford those incentives?

Re: Disrupting Uber

#100

Post by _delirium » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 5:50 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #97

Frondo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waiting for driverless cars to make them profitable seems like one of the worst bets you could make. Even if they were content to wait, say, 20 years, when driverless cars hit the market, what's to stop anyone from buying a small fleet of them and tossing their own uber-like app up on the store? Heck, I can even see it in the distant future, turnkey Uber-like businesses, you get your choice of franchise to buy into.…

Its not playing the long game. Its playing the short game. Self driving cars are going to be here for consumers by 2020. What protects Uber is the network effect. Even if I had a million self driving cars right now, nobody has my app installed, and I don't have an optimized pricing and logistics set up yet. And if you have your own fleet of self driving cars, why would you build the whole setup yourself? Why not just…

> Self driving cars are going to be here for consumers by 2020.

I doubt this is true, at least if you're talking about all-weather driving. Not even the optimistic researchers I've chatted with are that optimistic; this timeframe would require all-weather driving to be basically solid at the research level by 2018 or so, which is not totally impossible but unlikely. Maybe if it's limited to Uber Phoenix, though.