As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by pdonis » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

feynmanistheman wrote: post #56

pdonis wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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

To the extent that it creates problems with time horizon and corporate governance, yes.

However, that does not mean that making the market less free will improve outcomes.

> How would a freer market fix the time frames issue

Who said anything about a "freer market"? You just said (and I agreed) that the rise of index funds is an example of rational choices in a free market. So there is no "freer" market that can fix it.

What I said was that government interference does not fix anything; it makes things worse. (US tax laws being an example.)

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

#72

Post by pdonis » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 5:27 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #58

pdonis wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I agree that having companies owned by smaller numbers of people (and having more of them be privately owned) would help, yes. However, that's also subject to the free market. Right now the free market appears to be producing lots of IPOs driven by the needs of venture capital. I hope that's a temporary phenomenon that will correct eventually.

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

#73

Post by gotocake » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 5:32 PM UTC

asafira wrote: post #22

marcrosoft wrote: post #7

The brand is already tarnished. I know many people that use lyft over Uber for this reason alone.

This might be the silicon valley bubble here though.

I live quite a few states away, and in fact Uber has a terrible reputation here too.

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

#74

Post by imustbeevil » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 2:59 AM UTC

xiphias2 wrote: post #70

imustbeevil wrote: post #69

Hey I just got a crazy Idea. Give me 18 billion dollars, and I'll pay people to drive other people around. "How will we make money?" What? This is Silicon Valley, nobody makes money, we just burn capital ($18B) from people who invested in one good thing 20 years ago until we can sell the remaining capital ($7B) to braindead retail investors for 10x it's value. The company only has a year and a half of runway left, so…

Try it. I don't think you will be successful. I think you underestimate the amount of money it took Uber to get the network effect in each city to have enough drivers. At this point it's easy to keep it up.

> At this point it's easy to keep it up.

Define "easy"; they lost $1.8 billion last year. My investors made more money and my company doesn't exist.

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

#75

Post by darawk » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 8:26 AM UTC

whatislovecraft wrote: post #35

darawk wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are many places where we know that a free market doesn’t properly function. Specifically, there are certain types of goods that end up priced wrong: those with externalities (positive or negative). So if all a company cares about is maximizing shareholder value over time they are drawn away from products with positive externalities (like a public park) towards those with negative externalities (like cars that…

> Problem solved. That would imply that there is no climate change happening, as we would have priced in that externality and resolved the issue by now. Right? As it turns out, that isn't right, because nobody who has incentive to price the externality right is allowed to be part of the process, and the ones who are part of the process are incentivized to cheat and not price externalities at all, or to price them poo…

> That would imply that there is no climate change happening, as we would have priced in that externality and resolved the issue by now. Right?

Erm, what? I didn't say that the system would price it...if it would...we wouldn't need to price it. I said that we needed to price it. You seem to be arguing against some sort of made up straw man here.

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

#76

Post by biesnecker » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 3:51 PM UTC

lettergram wrote: post #28

biesnecker wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally. I use Lyft wherever I can but I can virtually always use Uber whereas Lyft is spotty.

Where do you go that doesn't have Lyft, but has Uber? I travel regularly and it is very rare not to have Lyft available. Virtually any city with >250k has both from my experience, although that could just be where I travel, I don't know.

Late response, but yeah, mostly Europe. Asia for a while, but now Uber is mostly gone there too.

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

#77

Post by rhizome » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 5:35 PM UTC

escapecharacter wrote: post #8

rhizome wrote: post #4

They still hire bad drivers.

I do wonder in the new age of increasingly automated employer-contractor relations, if “hire” is the right word.

Whatever the proper word is, Lyft and Uber (and the others) are affirmative action for bad drivers.

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

#78

Post by jimmaswell » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

rchaud wrote: post #68

jimmaswell wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps already does that.

Doesn't Uber pay Google for that privilege? I'm in Toronto and I've only ever seen Uber fare estimates on Google Maps.

I don't know, but I've seen it list both Uber and Lyft for me.