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Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

nytimes.com

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Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#221

Post by cal5k »

xyzzyz wrote: post #180
lacker wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the part where Uber let you get a cab through an app rather than hoping a taxi was driving by and waving your hands at them. It really is a far, far better product when you can get a cab wherever you want, instead of just in a few areas.

Did you know that in most places where cab are operating, you could order a cab to pick you up at your house by calling a cab company and talking to the operator? Flagging down a cab as it drives by is a New York City thing.

Sure, and it might arrive in 10 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, or never. It's an awful experience.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#222

Post by dhruvrrp »

xyzzyz wrote: post #180
lacker wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the part where Uber let you get a cab through an app rather than hoping a taxi was driving by and waving your hands at them. It really is a far, far better product when you can get a cab wherever you want, instead of just in a few areas.

Did you know that in most places where cab are operating, you could order a cab to pick you up at your house by calling a cab company and talking to the operator? Flagging down a cab as it drives by is a New York City thing.

That absolutely did not work. I recall having to calling cab companies at night and the operator would estimate 30-40 minutes for a 20 minute ride. Spoilers: they would never show up

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#223

Post by IanCal »

everythingswan wrote: post #191
eanzenberg wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to personal responsibility? Is that out the window as well? Or do we need intervention, similar to how parents point their kids in the proper direction to go?

I think the challenge is that the tech is moving so fast that there is no line where the judicial system has said: "Hey Uber, that's over the line." Credit Card and loan rates are two examples where some people would be so desperate that they would sign _anything_ to get an advance of cash or credit. But we have protection for them and rates cannot exceed a certain amount, depending on the type of loan.

The judicial system in many places has said that Uber have crossed the line. It's been a big part of their business model.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#224

Post by yalogin »

I strongly believe Uber is going to shut down their self driving car unit at some point. May be in a year or two. There is no reason to keep that running when the end is not in sight for SDCs. That is not going to happen at the level Uber wants any time soon. If not today, very soon, Uber is going to accept it and dump their unit.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#225

Post by adamsea »

jngreenlee wrote: post #127
coldtea wrote: post #95

Glad they're down, and hope the whole "gig economy" burns down too. Where gig economy = padding the loss of decent jobs by replacing the bottom end with desperate deals where "non employed" employees, without regular salary, benefits, company provided work tools, etc., make a pittance, while the organizing company gets a cut from millions of transactions. In some cases, no jobs is better than subsistence/dead-end/exp…

"In some cases, no jobs is better than subsistence/dead-end/exploitative jobs" Sure, but neither you or I get to decide that qualification. Only the person doing the job does. We don't really know what fits their lives or what options they have. I don't like gig stuff/sharing economy (or the big 'unicorns' associated with it) either...but it is "another option" for many people that wouldn't have one, esp. lower skill…

Of course we get to decide. As citizens we get to vote and have our say in what we think is right.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#226

Post by criddell »

eanzenberg wrote: post #168
rjkennedy98 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this misses something crucial to how most of these arrangements work: the worker is unable to put value on the gig. That is the real asymmetry. The gig worker's car wears down, requires gas, oil changes, and gets beat up by the road, but from his perspective he sees $25. Do you think Uber would even try to estimate that number?! (which they almost certainly could). Its essentially capitalization on a huge…

What happened to personal responsibility? Is that out the window as well? Or do we need intervention, similar to how parents point their kids in the proper direction to go?

Personal responsibility is still a thing in our society. And the fact that it's a society means we need to look out and care for each other.

It would be nice if we could cultivate a similar expectation of corporate responsibility towards workers and customers.

Uber's tactic of attracting drivers with decent pay rates that they knew were unsustainable then slowly chipping away at that over time is sleazy.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#227

Post by semi-extrinsic »

cybersol wrote: post #67
izzydata wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems more expensive than owning a car. Assuming 5 workdays a week and 2 rides per day then that is 40 rides a month on average which could be anywhere from $360 to $480 a month.

Parking spaces at both at home and work can easily be more than that in a major city. That is more limiting than even the car costs.

I dare say, if you live and work in a major city, close enough to the centre that you don't have a parking space, you ought to have great access to public transport. Unless you're in the US, I suppose.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#228

Post by carbocation »

xyzzyz wrote: post #180
lacker wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the part where Uber let you get a cab through an app rather than hoping a taxi was driving by and waving your hands at them. It really is a far, far better product when you can get a cab wherever you want, instead of just in a few areas.

Did you know that in most places where cab are operating, you could order a cab to pick you up at your house by calling a cab company and talking to the operator? Flagging down a cab as it drives by is a New York City thing.

In 3 cities where I have lived, calling cabs only works stochastically. Nothing to be relied upon. Uber/Lyft were a huge upgrade over that.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#229

Post by xster »

coldtea wrote: post #95

Glad they're down, and hope the whole "gig economy" burns down too. Where gig economy = padding the loss of decent jobs by replacing the bottom end with desperate deals where "non employed" employees, without regular salary, benefits, company provided work tools, etc., make a pittance, while the organizing company gets a cut from millions of transactions. In some cases, no jobs is better than subsistence/dead-end/exp…

I think this is what worries me about the "mainstream" debate that might be incorrectly framing the whole problem altogether.

Here, the rise of the gig economy came from automation. Not in the caricature sense that there are robot automatons that serve your plates in a restaurant, but in a sense that scalable automated processes replaced human dispatchers that answers your phone calls at the taxi companies and radios drivers to pick you up, and automated processes that replaced taxi drivers wandering around aimlessly on the street trying to pick people up.

Here we get higher productivity but it's also a powerful hegemonizing, monopolizing, wealth concentrating force where the controllers of these automated processes, which scales globally at low cost, can skim value-add (that used to be done by more people with jobs) from the transportation and other needs everywhere.

But the solution isn't to break them up and for society to become unproductive and un-automated again by forcing minimum wage, health insurance, guaranteed menial jobs etc. Whether we like it or not, taxi radio dispatchers is never coming back as a mainstream job that can be the bedrock of local communities again.

Instead, we need to start having discussions now about the fundamental way how we structure human society in a world where more and more of this planet's 'productivity' is concentrating more and more in the hands of those who produce the AI automations. This is nothing short of answering the question of why we're alive. Right now, our sense of purpose comes from trading our muscular and mental power during life on this planet for GDP. If that's the metric, our muscular and mental powers' productivity vs AI will lose (maybe in 5 years, maybe in 10 years), and by implication, we lose our purpose for living. We need to stop pretending there is an artificial scarcity of productivity and change the purpose of life.

This is a Sanders vs Yang timeline of solving the problems we need to solve in the next 5 years vs solving the problems we need to solve in the next 20 years.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#230

Post by edmundsauto »

untog wrote: post #12
dannykwells wrote: post #6

Biased headline, biased article. 1. 3.9 Bil was a one time cost 2. 1.3 Bil is not almost double 880 Mil. I mean that's just egregious.

> 3.9 Bil was a one time cost That doesn't mean it isn't a loss?

It means it's less relevant for the future. People aren't worried about their current expenses, so much as what that means for the future.
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