31–40 of 99 posts
This analysis seems pretty shallow. It's interesting that Amazon is losing money in North America. But why? That's clue worth investigating further, not a reason to immediately assume predatory pricing.
This analysis seems pretty shallow. It's interesting that Amazon is losing money in North America. But why? That's clue worth investigating further, not a reason to immediately assume predatory pricing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might be able to classify it as dumping. Loss leading itself could also be regulated more. For example, in France it's illegal to resell something for less than the price you paid for it (except during regulated "sales" periods). This prevents companies coming in and using their funds to subsidize the products. I could see the argument that Uber is a reseller, given they're not part of the actual taxi experience
What are the "sales periods"? I can see what they're trying to address, but commerce is fickle and often times unpredictable. What if I thought I saw an opportunity to do business but it turned out to be a bad judgement and now I have 20,000 count of something that isn't moving and I have better things to do than wait for the sale period and at least get half my money back and reinvest it in something else I think mi…
But, all of that has been struck down by the EU courts since it was found in violation of new EU consumer protection directives.
What Uber is doing here should absolutely not be allowed. Whenever you go to a city where Uber is in it's first year of operations the prices are insanely low. This also happens when Uber launches a new product like Pool. This enables them to crowd out any competition and then raise prices once they've got control of the market. I have a friend in SF who takes Uber to work every day. It's about 3.5 miles. I assumed h…
Do you prefer to be the dumper or the dumpee? Because I prefer to be the latter.
> Unlike with cloud services (the other example) it's much harder for competition to Uber to reappear once it's disappeared.
It's just a car. Its super easy to break into that market. And there are competitors. They do not have a sustainable monopoly.
Regarding Amazon, I seem to recall reading similar accusations leveled at Wal-Mart around the turn of the millennium. Their low prices were going to destroy local small retail businesses, then they'd reap monopoly profits after the competition died. It looks like the first thing happened but the second didn't. Prices might have rebounded a bit at a Wal-Mart after their initial arrival in a community, but they didn't…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not just about saturation. For every additional driver, the density of drivers on a map gets higher. When this happens, statistically the closest driver will take X less time to get to you. Two sided markets are not about having a minimum number of people. Two sided markets are literally a network effect. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-sided_market The "traditional" network effect is describing one sided m…
> When this happens, statistically the closest driver will take X less time to get to you. If everyone is spaced evenly around the place and there's no congestion, you need four times as many drivers to halve response times. For a while you get good gains per additional driver, but as the numbers increase the marginal benefit tails off. This means a new player with some capital can likely compete (and is probably wha…
In most two-sided markets, the ratio of users on both sides plays a more important role than absolute numbers.
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I'd like to know how someone drives 3.5mi daily for $2.50 with Uber, even with pool, in SF. My pool rides start out at around $4 one-way, for .5mi and under. UberX is $7+ at minimum, and quickly tops $10 for 1mi+ trips.
Edit: "Express POOL is a new kind of shared ride that begins and ends at convenient Express spots. Update your app today to start riding for as low as $2.” It's not Uber Pool it's some new product I hadn't heard of before he mentioned it. Shared ride with a fixed pickup point. I see the same pricing you see when I use Uber/Lyft.
"exclusive control of a commodity or trade," 1530s, from Latin monopolium, from Greek monopolion "right of exclusive sale," from monos "single, alone" (from PIE root men- (4) "small, isolated") + polein "to sell," from PIE root * pel- (4) "to sell."*
https://www.etymonline.com/word/monopoly
There's a related term, little used today, that references actively seeking to control a market with an interest in manipulating price:
To purchase either the whole or large quantities of, for the purpose of enhancing the price and making a profit; hence, to take or assume in undue quantity, proportion, or degree; as, to engross commodities in market; to engross power.
(Definition #5.)
http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=*&Query=eng...
Much of modern economics underplays this at best. The Libertarian favourite, Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, fails to mention the matter of monopolies at all.
https://www.mises.org/library/economics-one-lesson
Sometimes it's the censorship and deletions that tell you most of what an organisation or ideology is concerned with.
This reminds me of an old Russian joke. 3 business owners are in a communist jail. That ask each other what they are in for. Person 1: "I set my prices lower than my competitors, and got sent to jail for price dumping!" Person 2 "I set my prices higher than my competitors and got sent to jail for price gouging!" Person 3 "I set my prices to be the same as my competitors and got set to jail for price fixing!" It has b…
"When are those mythical monopoly price increases coming?" They are not. But the "promise" that they are, or could, inflates Amazon's stock price. This is how they bank profit, not by traditional profit on income. This has the advantage that they don't need to pay tax, since they don't make any accounting profit.
If prices forever stay low, then consumers ALWAYS benefit, right?
You are making a different argument than the one that the article makes, FYI.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Edit: "Express POOL is a new kind of shared ride that begins and ends at convenient Express spots. Update your app today to start riding for as low as $2.” It's not Uber Pool it's some new product I hadn't heard of before he mentioned it. Shared ride with a fixed pickup point. I see the same pricing you see when I use Uber/Lyft.
ergh why are we reinventing buses as an app