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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

#281

Post by georgeecollins »

ummonk wrote: post #29

Is it just me or is 12% growth in adjusted revenue very mediocre for a company taking a loss and trading at Uber’s revenue multiple?

It makes no financial sense. You can't even talk about what the P/E multiple should be for that growth rate because you can't guess what their earnings will be. As many others have posted they are not close to breaking even so it is hard to conclude what changes they would have to make to earn $1 in operations. (I know they have had a profit in a qtr. I am taking operating profit.)

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

#282

Post by chucksmash »

core-questions wrote: post #255
xster wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> more and more of this planet's 'productivity' is concentrating more and more in the hands of those who produce the AI automations. Sometimes I think folks who think like this really need to get outside more. Yes, a lot of things are being automated, but (a) consider the janky quality of automation, because it's really not mature yet even in purely-software environments where everything can be controlled, and (b) co…

> At what point do I simply say "fuck it" and stop working too, because some ridiculous percentage of my income has to be applied towards feeding those who won't/can't/don't do anything productive?

Econ 101 opinion here, so I'm ignoring totally reasonable things like "people work for reasons other than monetary compensation" and assuming you're a rational participant in the economy, but I'd say there is no percentage at which you'd do that.

No matter how high a percentage is taken, you can always increase the topline number to make the bottom line number come out ahead of not working. I'd take a 99% tax on $1 billion/year over $14k/year in social insurance taxed at 0% if it were offered.

Anyway, isn't this similar to what the comp of people implementing something you might call automation is already doing in US tech hubs? We've had relatively low inflation in the US over the past decade (by CPI, anyway) but I can find you an article by Joel Spolsky from the aughts lamenting the fact that some tech companies were paying top new grads nearly $100k a year.

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

#283

Post by malandrew »

chillacy wrote: post #200
CydeWeys wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, in practice, the idle and unpaid transit time for rideshare drivers is still quite high.

And yet... higher than taxis?

The only reason that taxis have been able to achieve any decent utilization at all is the medallion system which greatly restricts supply. Without artificially constraining supply at the expense of consumer demand, taxi utilization would be abysmal.

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

#284

Post by logfromblammo »

core-questions wrote: post #255
xster wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> more and more of this planet's 'productivity' is concentrating more and more in the hands of those who produce the AI automations. Sometimes I think folks who think like this really need to get outside more. Yes, a lot of things are being automated, but (a) consider the janky quality of automation, because it's really not mature yet even in purely-software environments where everything can be controlled, and (b) co…

Okay, Mr. Galt.

You owe a massive amount of your economic output to others because you stand on the shoulders of people who are standing on the shoulders of people who are standing on the shoulders of people... and it's not a simple pyramid, but one giant ball of interdependence that will be thrown into chaos if a critical mass of people try to buck off their riders.

You can't pay the guy specifically holding you up, and not anyone else, because no one can truly identify their keystone supporters. So you pay a bunch of free riders, too, because that's the only way to ensure your supporters stay happy enough to carry you. And they may think that you aren't outputting anything of value to them, and they only carry you because they can't tell who's throwing all the bread down from above.

I pay freeloaders, because I don't want to fall off the ball, onto my fat ass, and fend for myself, using only what I had on hand when I dropped.

If someone engineered a more efficient society, where everyone has a useful and necessary role, for which they each have an individual advantage, and waste is unsupportable--such as for bootstrapping an off-Earth colony--I might join that, but then still accept that I will implicitly be supporting future generations of freeloaders by accumulating capital that will outlast me.

You don't want an accounting on what you are truly worth to society at large. Trust me.

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

#285

Post by Thorentis »

xster wrote: post #229
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…

Yep, this is a fascinating (and scary) thing to think about.

What will happen to a society where every single person has their basic needs met by some form of automation, and nobody needs to work?

I would say most first world countries are already in this scenario if so much money wasn't spent on non essentials. Industrial scale farming, mass produced pharmaceuticals, rapid house construction etc. mean that if a society wanted, you could have 10% of the population providing for the 90% (an inversion of what was the case for most of human history).

There is no precedent or example from history to show us what this will do to society. How will humans cope with not actually needing to do anything? I personally envisage a Matrix like scenario where this societal change will also usher in advances in VR and related tech. People may spend most of their time engrossed in entertainment, until eventually, they see no need to participate in the real world at all.

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

#286

Post by scarejunba »

totalthrowaway wrote: post #116
untog wrote: post #7

I really wonder where Uber, Lyft etc. go in the future. Uber in particular seemed to betting hard on the fact that self-driving cars would make them wildly profitable but it seems like that is a long way away yet. And they're still subsiding rides in a lot of markets to make them look a lot more affordable than they really are. I still think there's a market out there, but Uber in particular feels like it's grown too…

I hear this line of thinking a lot, and I still don't understand why Uber would be the one to rake in all the self-driving cash. What do they have that a new self-driving debt-free startup won't have?

The self-driving tech, presumably, and a ready-made userbase, brand, and presence across the globe. They could then seamlessly have both self-driving and human-driving delivery/transportation.

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

#287

Post by ekr »

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. At least the former makes the problem evident, and ups the pressure to do something about it on a society/policy/economy level -- as opposed to helping perpetuate it.

I strongly disagree with this position. Yeah, sure, supporting people at the brink of poverty is one of the government's responsibilities, but taking away one of the few options they have goes in the opposite direction. Most of these gig-economy jobs differ from a regular job in that they're much easier to get, at least in most parts of Europe. If you meet a few basic requirements you're in. For people at risk, mentally ill people, and plenty of other segments of the population this is a real lifeline that they're not getting from anywhere else. This is keeping a roof over they head and food on the table.

Obviously, they're doing it because they can't get a better situation. Taking this option away is making them a lot more vulnerable, and doing them a lot of harm. It's not like they don't realise they're being exploited.

Sure, they should be supported etc. But that's just "shoulds", policy is difficult. For many, this gig-economy is an actual lifeline, that exists right now.

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

#288

Post by _bxg1 »

watermall wrote: post #152
_bxg1 wrote: post #28

Fully self-driving cars hit a wall (no pun intended), and that was their only story for eventual profitability. Not surprising.

IMO, the idea that fully self-driving cars are anywhere close to being created was always just a combination of hype and wildly irrational underestimation of how hard it is to create them. The challenge of building a road-safe fully self-driving car is not far from the challenge of building artificial general intelligence. I think that road-ready fully self-driving cars are many decades away, and they may never actua…

It happened because the first 95% is tractable. Waymo probably got that far. But there's this infinitely-long tail of edge cases, and 95% isn't good enough when it's literally a matter of life-and-death.

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

#289

Post by avgDev »

i_cant_speel wrote: post #99
avgDev wrote: post #46

The biggest issue with Uber for me is pricing. I like to pay a fair price. Uber uses AI, therefore, you don't pay a fair price. I don't feel like researching options every time I need a ride. Many tech companies hope for lazy consumers, who sign up for food deliveries and don't notice 5c price hike on eggs. Who get used to ride sharing service and fail to ever verify that uber/lyft still offers competitive pricing. I…

I'm assuming by AI you mean adjusting the prices based on supply and demand? What do you suggest as an alternative? If prices don't adjust accordingly, you simply won't be able to get a ride.

No. I have no issues with supply and demand based pricing. The issue for me is that two different people may get different pricing for the same trip only because AI found a certain customer can/will pay more.

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

#290

Post by johnday »

ekr wrote: post #287
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. At least the former makes the problem evident, and ups the pressure to do something about it on a society/policy/economy level -- as opposed to helping perpetuate it. I strongly disagree with this position. Yeah, sure, supporting people at the brink of poverty is one of the government's responsibilities, but taking away one of the few op…

We have seen what happens when someone who should receive Government protection is able to get by without them; those protections are removed.

See the hospitality industry for an example. They have tips, so they don't get minimum wage.

The US government is famously bad at protecting people who need it. Anything which disguised that fact, even a little, should be removed.

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