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Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

nytimes.com

291–300 of 516 posts

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

#291
post #229
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…

Wealth is accruing to people with power and capital. The people who produce automations are laborers like the rest of society, just with a temporarily elevated standard of living. As writing software is deskilled and supplanted, it'll be increasingly apparent that we were just a midterm necessary evil to the people signing our paychecks.

To me, the central problem is wealth disparity as a proxy for power disparity: our democratic government is more than capable of addressing our ongoing needs and desires if not for the overwhelming, unjust, and unearned influence of the wealthy.

This is why I think Sanders has the correct prescription and Yang is naive: the solution isn't a policy or set of policies to fix specific problems, no matter how farsighted, it's restructuring our political system to be solely answerable to people who it feigns to represent.

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

#293
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…

"Uber uses AI, therefore, you don't pay a fair price." Do you understand how many other industries use AI for pricing? What about buying things on Amazon? Hotels? Airline tickets? Gas? You may as well go back to using taxis if you don't think Uber is giving you a fair price.

Wait you are telling me gas stations use an AI algorithm that sets different pricing for each individual because that is what I dislike.

I'm okay with airlines, amazon or whoever setting pricing at whatever they want as long as all users pay the same amount for the same thing.

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

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point in having a society at all is the recognition that by agreeing on a set of rules, organizing ourselves to cooperate, people are better off. The "what about personal responsibility" can be applied to most things society offers you. Law enforcement? Buy your own gun and defend yourself. Firefighters? Buy your own water hose. Exploitive employers? Grow your own backbone.

>Law enforcement? Buy your own gun and defend yourself. Firefighters? Buy your own water hose. Exploitive employers? Grow your own backbone. Those first two aren't similar because I don't volunteer to have crime committed against me or for my house to burn down. People voluntarily drive for Uber.

People drive for Uber because Uber forces traditional taxi companies out of business by (a) breaking the law and (b) losing 5.2B.

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

#295
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what he is saying is the demand for Lyft / Uber was manufactured by low prices. Now that they are more expensive, people are using public transit more.

Except total rides on both platforms are at all time highs?

Well they are covering more markets internationally. Wonder what happened in mature market (ie: big north american cities)

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

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> but I'd say there is no percentage at which you'd do that.

Huh? If I were getting, I don't know, 200k a year, for free, I'd probably quit.

Of course there is a level where that vast majority of people would simply not work anymore.

Rich people do this literally all the time. It's called "retirement".

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

#297
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…

Not all gig companies are the same. Uber is not a real business. Nothing about hiring a driver or maintaining or running a car is cheaper now than before Uber. Uber will never be profitable unless people are willing to pay the same amount as for regular taxis or for a private driver (i.e. expensive). Airbnb on the other hand is a real and vastly profitable business. Yes there need to be tighter regulations because we…

Not defending uber here -- they're shitty, and need to be replaced by #platformcoop's imho -- but you're perhaps underselling as "just A to B" because uber isn't openning any new "B"s from your "A"s, compared to taxi's.

If you were disabled, or in an urban transit desert or underserved community, then ridesharing is the direct bringer of new B's. That's the reality for a ton of people. This is not fringe. Many people were underserved by taxi's before, and this is huge for them.

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/06/lyft-is-reach...

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

#298
post #268
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"R&D" usually includes all engineering expenses on financial reports, which for a company like Uber is the vast majority of operating expenses.

Can I ask something that will sound incredibly naive? How complicated needs to be an IT infrastructure that lets you book a taxi via an app and pay the driver? Is it really something to throw billions at each year? Sometimes I feel these companies are throwing billions in IT simply because they're expected to be disruptive technology companies, and not for real technical reasons.

Uber as a product is very technologically complex, mainly because of the scale it operates at. You can read about some of their tech at https://eng.uber.com.

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

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all gig companies are the same. Uber is not a real business. Nothing about hiring a driver or maintaining or running a car is cheaper now than before Uber. Uber will never be profitable unless people are willing to pay the same amount as for regular taxis or for a private driver (i.e. expensive). Airbnb on the other hand is a real and vastly profitable business. Yes there need to be tighter regulations because we…

Yes there need to be tighter regulations because we don’t want Airbnb everywhere. How come? It seems like a great company to me.

It's not the company they don't like, it's having an AirBNB as your neighbor. Many people don't like to live next to hotel rooms.

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

#300
post #180
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's not better. An app is a superior interface to a phone call.

Cab companies refusal to acknowledge this means they deserve to die. The economics are there, an app is undeniably cheaper, at some point, than a call center, and fundamentally whatever prices Americans pay to cab companies is clearly enough to sustain them, so it should in theory be enough to sustain an Uber-like company.

And let's not even get into the conversation about servicing more rural areas, where ZERO cab companies exist, but Uber drivers do. That is a net value add to those communities, no denying.

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