This is not cheap money, this is dumb money.
When powerful people make stupid decisions, most people will, nevertheless, copycat their wrong decision.
One way or another, reality will smack us in the face and a reckoning will come.
The sad part is that those stupid powerful people will be hit much less than the populus they enslave.
When Everything That Counts Can’t Be Counted
11–20 of 53 posts
Re: When Everything That Counts Can’t Be Counted
#12"If Ford Motor were a savvier marketer of their stock, which has changed hands at more or less the same price for twenty years, they’d be calling buyers of their cars a user base and the cars themselves would be rechristened “physical mobility apps." I don't think I would ever buy a car that was described as a "physical mobility app" as it would imply to me that the people running that company had forgotten what it w…
If you want to sell cars, then sell cars. If you want to sell shares at an inflated valuation, sell a "physical mobility app", as the buzzwords will help you land the sort of investors that prefer hearing a story over fundamentals.
Re: When Everything That Counts Can’t Be Counted
#13> This is why Uber is worth more than all of the auto makers and taxi companies that own their own fleets of cars. I think this is bullshit. Uber may be worth more than auto makers, but this is a bubble and will not last (unless uber manages to create an autonomous taxi service in the next few years). They were just lucky and intelligent enough to get around regulations, but regulations are catching them. Uber's tech…
Well it can't be that obvious that Uber is overvalued. Are you of the belief that all the big players/investors betting on Uber are missing what you consider to be obvious? Or do you think everyone's just trying to time the bubble collapse...?
I believe they are making a very risky bet (like VC always do, and when it pays off they get huge reward which cover the other losses).
Their bet is on Uber reaching autonomous taxi service. Without this Uber stands no chance in the long term.
Re: When Everything That Counts Can’t Be Counted
#14> This is why Uber is worth more than all of the auto makers and taxi companies that own their own fleets of cars. I think this is bullshit. Uber may be worth more than auto makers, but this is a bubble and will not last (unless uber manages to create an autonomous taxi service in the next few years). They were just lucky and intelligent enough to get around regulations, but regulations are catching them. Uber's tech…
> Uber's tech is simple and easily replicable.
The same can be said for web shops like Amazon. The tech is nothing special, but the brand and network are. The promise of Uber is in becoming a trusted brand, with capacity everywhere, and convenient enough that you don't bother looking to the competition. That said, whether they can actually become this is another question.
Re: When Everything That Counts Can’t Be Counted
#15> This is why Uber is worth more than all of the auto makers and taxi companies that own their own fleets of cars. I think this is bullshit. Uber may be worth more than auto makers, but this is a bubble and will not last (unless uber manages to create an autonomous taxi service in the next few years). They were just lucky and intelligent enough to get around regulations, but regulations are catching them. Uber's tech…
Well it can't be that obvious that Uber is overvalued. Are you of the belief that all the big players/investors betting on Uber are missing what you consider to be obvious? Or do you think everyone's just trying to time the bubble collapse...?
I think it's not quite that simple. In the end run up to a bubble, there's a lot of money floating on big bets. Some of them are going to pay off. Most won't. Maybe Uber will. Maybe it won't. They say future value is priced into a stock, and this is where margin for error is the highest.
I think smart money in Uber recognizes their position as a gamble.
Regularly you hear about hundreds of millions being poured into companies like Uber and self driving tech companies. At least one of those companies is going to win big, and investors don't want to miss out.
Re: When Everything That Counts Can’t Be Counted
#16This is not cheap money, this is dumb money. When powerful people make stupid decisions, most people will, nevertheless, copycat their wrong decision. One way or another, reality will smack us in the face and a reckoning will come. The sad part is that those stupid powerful people will be hit much less than the populus they enslave.
Yeah. Unfortunately. Imagine what we could accomplish if we just redirected some of this dumb money into "dumb" things...like education, infrastructure, health care, battling climate change. But nope, walls, drones, and tech bubbles.
Re: When Everything That Counts Can’t Be Counted
#17> This is why Uber is worth more than all of the auto makers and taxi companies that own their own fleets of cars. I think this is bullshit. Uber may be worth more than auto makers, but this is a bubble and will not last (unless uber manages to create an autonomous taxi service in the next few years). They were just lucky and intelligent enough to get around regulations, but regulations are catching them. Uber's tech…
Well it can't be that obvious that Uber is overvalued. Are you of the belief that all the big players/investors betting on Uber are missing what you consider to be obvious? Or do you think everyone's just trying to time the bubble collapse...?
Alternatively, perhaps the big players just don't care. They're about making money NOW, not 2 months or 2 years from now.
Re: When Everything That Counts Can’t Be Counted
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Uber's tech is simple and easily replicable. The moment they raise their prices, they loose their market share. There is no network effect in this market. I disagree that there is no network effect. When one travels to another country it is much easier to use Uber rather than to find what local brew of 'carpooling' service is available, create an account, put in credit card info etc. Their tech is easily replicable…
That isn't so much a network effect as it is burning money on 6 continents. If Uber isn't the most cost effective solution at home there isn't much incentive to use it abroad either. I've been in lots of places - pre Uber - where I didn't even speak the local language. Even then finding a taxi was not taxing. If Uber can't make a profit on local traffic it is going to be a mighty feat if they make money off non-local…
I agree that they need to be profitable in order for this to matter. If they were, it would help with local traffic too as people would still prefer to only have one app installed. In my city there is a concurrent company that pays taxes locally and almost all of the drivers work for both Uber and them. I still sometimes order rides through Uber because of habit.
Re: When Everything That Counts Can’t Be Counted
#19People were saying this 20 years ago during he dotcom boom, but they called it 'mind share' and 'the new economy'.
>Capital is Now Free, Have Fun
lol what. Credit card interest is higher than ever. Small business loans are still expensive. Yeah, maybe capital is cheap if you're a multinational or the us govt. but it's still expensive for most. Treasury bonds yields are not a proxy of how much business lending costs. Rather, a better estimate would be junk bond yields.
Re: When Everything That Counts Can’t Be Counted
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Uber's tech is simple and easily replicable. The moment they raise their prices, they loose their market share. There is no network effect in this market. I disagree that there is no network effect. When one travels to another country it is much easier to use Uber rather than to find what local brew of 'carpooling' service is available, create an account, put in credit card info etc. Their tech is easily replicable…
That isn't so much a network effect as it is burning money on 6 continents. If Uber isn't the most cost effective solution at home there isn't much incentive to use it abroad either. I've been in lots of places - pre Uber - where I didn't even speak the local language. Even then finding a taxi was not taxing. If Uber can't make a profit on local traffic it is going to be a mighty feat if they make money off non-local…
Doesn’t really match my experience at all visiting a city without Uber (Barcelona).
Driver took advantage of their complicated fare system to add supplement charges that didn’t apply: charged us the baggage supplement for our backpacks that we carried in the car, and charged us a supplement for going to the train station, which should only apply from the train station.
The local taxi authority requires us to complain by post with an original receipt.
The postage costs of sending that with tracking defeats the purpose.
Most people wouldn’t even realize they were overcharged, after all, we paid what was on the meter. And issuing receipts is only by request.
We don’t have enough data to determine if the driver was excellently skilled or suicidal.
Meanwhile with Uber, you get a fancy receipt emailed to you listing route/charges, a sensible (if unregulated) complaints process, and ratings from other riders.