151–160 of 230 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They truly don't. They own the best technology but no driver OR customer loyalty. If a cooperative treats their employees better and with higher wages then why should the best, most active drivers stick with Uber?
because that is where the customers are
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They truly don't. They own the best technology but no driver OR customer loyalty. If a cooperative treats their employees better and with higher wages then why should the best, most active drivers stick with Uber?
because that is where the customers are
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am in favor of encouraging plausible, workable economic thinking. Jacobin is better described as leftist fever-dreams with roughly that level of connection to any reality. Could things work differently? Absolutely. Are they going to work differently because some hack gets off fantasizing about how in abstract theory, the services Uber performs could be better performed by a co-op that pays workers more? No. All the…
> * Function, scalable, and does not operate much like a co-op at the level of service delivery. REI falls into this category. No true scot? The definition of a co-op is a group organized to meet economic or social desires through jointly owned business. What does this have to do with any particular approach to service delivery? You appear to be defining cooperatives as some unworkable theoretical concept and then an…
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?
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…
Why should low-paid car drivers be the ones sharing their hours/pay with the othwerwise unemployed, while highly-paid professionals don't? This is exactly the argument for minimum wage: by raising prices and limiting # of employed (which could mean more people at fewer hours for the same total pay, OR fewer people at more hours for the same total pay), there is more funding for the overall labor pool, instead of more…
That's only a relevant question if the policy being proposed is actually likely to achieve a transfer from highly-paid professionals to the unemployed. Which is certainly not obvious, let alone consensual.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> * Function, scalable, and does not operate much like a co-op at the level of service delivery. REI falls into this category. No true scot? The definition of a co-op is a group organized to meet economic or social desires through jointly owned business. What does this have to do with any particular approach to service delivery? You appear to be defining cooperatives as some unworkable theoretical concept and then an…
The definition you just gave for co-op also includes any publicly owned corporation.
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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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
The incentives likely don't matter in the future because the future of Uber is driverless cars.
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…
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.
Those are the two ingredients of capitalism: competition and the profit motive. Once you take away one of them, things start breaking down. And that's why not-for-profits are notorious for being wastefully run and being taken advantage of by their senior management.