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As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

nytimes.com

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Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#51

Post by temp1928384 »

jeswin wrote: post #13

Uber has among the worst customer support policies I have seen - but alas they are a monopoly and there's no end in sight. I think they should be regulated. Recently, I raised an issue when I got billed twice for the same ride. In India, they have no phone support, just email. Instead of checking transactions on their end, they wrote back to me asking me to submit my bank statement so that they can verify. I was quit…

In what market are they remotely close to being a "monopoly"??

If there's a ridesharing co that is actually a monopoly it's probably Grab in SEA.

Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#52

Post by fosk »

tyingq wrote: post #40
fosk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing this argument, but well guess what? Nobody is forcing anybody to become an Uber driver. If Uber treats their contractors so poorly, they are always free to go around and explore other options. We live in a capitalistic society, after all.

One argument is that it may not be actually legal to treat them as contractors. See https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/understanding-employee-vs-contr...

The point I am making is that no driver would ever want to work for Uber if Uber really was that bad. Turns out, drivers evaluated the pros and cons, and decided that regardless of their current treatment it is still better to be an Uber driver rather than going to work for somebody else.

I will leave the matter of discussing the legality of how they treat their contractors to our courts. But it's a fact that thousands of drivers still think it's worth driving for Uber regardless of any legal controversy that may (or may not) exist.

Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#53

Post by pdonis »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #50
mruts wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that “evil”? Isn’t that the crystallization of the teleological purpose of a company? The ideal company works to maximize shareholder value. And not just short-term value, but the amortized value of the company in perpuitity. This in turn maximizes employee value and customer value. Let’s take a company that has great products and gives away everything for free. In the short-term, this might look like maximizi…

> And not just short-term value, but the amortized value of the company in perpuitity. But this is what they characteristically fail at, or are given strong incentives not to do. For example, one of the best things a stable, mature company can do is to just keep operating its business, making profits and returning the profits to the shareholders. Then the shareholders can use the money for whatever is most efficient,…

> But the tax laws in the US punish that

In other words, as mruts said, the government steps in to mess everything up.

> You also have all kinds of problems with time frames.

> And in general there are just information problems.

Yes, but those problems can't be fixed by making the market less free. They can only be fixed by shareholders having a long time horizon and being willing to be involved in corporate governance. The biggest issue with that nowadays is that most "shareholders" are not individuals but mutual funds, which shortens the effective time horizon for everybody (even though funds are holding the retirement accounts of people who will be working for the next 30 years, they still compete on short-term returns) and means no effective shareholder governance (mutual funds don't care how individual companies compensate their management, they'll just trade to another stock if one company has problems).

Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#54

Post by maxxxxx »

digitaltrees wrote: post #44
mruts wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that “evil”? Isn’t that the crystallization of the teleological purpose of a company? The ideal company works to maximize shareholder value. And not just short-term value, but the amortized value of the company in perpuitity. This in turn maximizes employee value and customer value. Let’s take a company that has great products and gives away everything for free. In the short-term, this might look like maximizi…

The concept of a corporation existing solely to maximize profit is a new development coming out of the Chicago school of economics. For most of our legal history, any company that received limited liability was required to consider a broader set of constituents; including shareholders, debt holders, employees and society. Often they were given an explicit charter from the king or the sovereign and were engaged in hig…

"We don’t have to live in a society where a fundamental structure organizing human activity ignores the well being of many of the core constituencies it interacts with; we write the rules. We could decide that corporations and their officers have to balance their effort maximize value for shareholders, employees, debt holders, their local community and the country. The social contract can be negotiated. "

That's the thing. Economic rules are not natural laws but they are human created and have always been adjusted and will always be adjusted.

Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#55

Post by wanone »

jeswin wrote: post #13

Uber has among the worst customer support policies I have seen - but alas they are a monopoly and there's no end in sight. I think they should be regulated. Recently, I raised an issue when I got billed twice for the same ride. In India, they have no phone support, just email. Instead of checking transactions on their end, they wrote back to me asking me to submit my bank statement so that they can verify. I was quit…

I had the opposite experience. Uber has customer support built into the App. I was also billed twice and just followed the instructions in App that created a ticket. Got my money back in 2 days.

Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#56

Post by feynmanistheman »

pdonis wrote: post #53
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And not just short-term value, but the amortized value of the company in perpuitity. But this is what they characteristically fail at, or are given strong incentives not to do. For example, one of the best things a stable, mature company can do is to just keep operating its business, making profits and returning the profits to the shareholders. Then the shareholders can use the money for whatever is most efficient,…

> But the tax laws in the US punish that In other words, as mruts said, the government steps in to mess everything up. > You also have all kinds of problems with time frames. > And in general there are just information problems. Yes, but those problems can't be fixed by making the market less free. They can only be fixed by shareholders having a long time horizon and being willing to be involved in corporate governan…

Isn't the rise of index funds an example of rational choices in a free market leading to suboptimal outcomes?

You contend that the success of corporations maximizing shareholder value relies on active shareholder governance. Yet the rational choice for an individual in an efficient market is to simply diversify their portfolio and minimize fees through passive investments. How would a freer market fix the time frames issue that both of you agree is a problem and you suggest active long-term shareholder pressure is necessary to solve?

Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#57

Post by radmuzom »

plinkplonk wrote: post #38
saagarjha wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are a monopoly In India, don't you have Ola?

yes, but the Ola app (last I checked) required access to all your emails and SMS messages and didn't function if these are not granted. When one of my friends contacted customer support he was told " but all your data is safe with us, why are you worried?" (this was some time ago, I don't know what the status is today)

This is definitely not true in iOS for the last 2 years at least.

Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#58

Post by AnthonyMouse »

pdonis wrote: post #53
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And not just short-term value, but the amortized value of the company in perpuitity. But this is what they characteristically fail at, or are given strong incentives not to do. For example, one of the best things a stable, mature company can do is to just keep operating its business, making profits and returning the profits to the shareholders. Then the shareholders can use the money for whatever is most efficient,…

> But the tax laws in the US punish that In other words, as mruts said, the government steps in to mess everything up. > You also have all kinds of problems with time frames. > And in general there are just information problems. Yes, but those problems can't be fixed by making the market less free. They can only be fixed by shareholders having a long time horizon and being willing to be involved in corporate governan…

> In other words, as mruts said, the government steps in to mess everything up.

Certainly. But it still actually happens under existing law to existing public companies, and happens less to companies that aren't public corporations (C corps.) and correspondingly don't have the same tax treatment. And having companies owned by smaller numbers of people also addresses the issue of ownership being so diluted that nobody has sufficient incentive to pay attention to corporate governance.

> Yes, but those problems can't be fixed by making the market less free.

The "[some regulation] vs. lack thereof" debate is uninteresting in the abstract. Most regulations make things worse as a general rule, but if we don't evaluate them each individually then we wouldn't even have laws against theft or murder etc.

Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#59

Post by FriedPickles »

jimmaswell wrote: post #39
FriedPickles wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US we have Lyft, so not quite a monopoly. Possibly an oligopoly though. I'm building an app that pits them against each other on price to promote a competitive transportation market. In some countries Uber does have a monopoly, or has been kicked out in favor of a different monopoly...

Google Maps already does that.

Not well. It gives price ranges like "$6-$10", and with many short rides having price differences of $1-$2 its not actually useful for comparing Uber and Lyft. Plus their fare prices are often flat out wrong (as they cannot factor in account specific factors), and they link you into the native app to actually call the ride.

Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#60

Post by BurningFrog »

FriedPickles wrote: post #30
jeswin wrote: post #13

Uber has among the worst customer support policies I have seen - but alas they are a monopoly and there's no end in sight. I think they should be regulated. Recently, I raised an issue when I got billed twice for the same ride. In India, they have no phone support, just email. Instead of checking transactions on their end, they wrote back to me asking me to submit my bank statement so that they can verify. I was quit…

In the US we have Lyft, so not quite a monopoly. Possibly an oligopoly though. I'm building an app that pits them against each other on price to promote a competitive transportation market. In some countries Uber does have a monopoly, or has been kicked out in favor of a different monopoly...

There are also Taxis in most places.
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