Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate • Hacker News Board

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

#311

Post by danharaj » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 10:27 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #302

logfromblammo wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> 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. Ok, fine, but if taxes get high enough, along with the benefits, you can expect some people to stop caring and start becoming freeloaders themselves. Don't be surprised when people just say "screw it, this isn't worth it anymore, I am going to become a freeloader myself".

In my experience there are a lot of people working who would make industry more efficient if they could just freeload instead of faking it.

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

#312

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 10:29 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #302

logfromblammo wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> 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. Ok, fine, but if taxes get high enough, along with the benefits, you can expect some people to stop caring and start becoming freeloaders themselves. Don't be surprised when people just say "screw it, this isn't worth it anymore, I am going to become a freeloader myself".

That's self-limiting, because if that happens, it drives inflation, which drives the real benefit levels down at the same nominal benefit level, which makes fewer people feel like they can afford to opt out. As long as benefits are tied to revenues rather than inflation-indexed, negative feedback market forces limit opt-outs.

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

#313

Post by coldtea » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 10:29 PM UTC

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…

>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) consider the raw cost of doing it vs. the productivity savings and side effects.

That just pushes the problem some decades into the future.

Besides, it doesn't have to be perfect. It's enough that it renders a good chunk (say 20-60%) of the population useless job wise to have adverse effects.

In fact, if it wasn't for tons of paper-pushing and busywork serving as a sort of job program and UBI scheme, we'd be in deep shit already, just from the job migration to China and co, never mind AI.

>But even if so: as someone who implements something you might call automation, like most here, I have to ask: why is it exactly that I should owe a massive amount of my economic output to those who aren't outputting anything? 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?

For one, because they can get guns and come and blow your brains out and steal your food. So now you need to pay for cops, and government, or your private militia and so on.

Second, because your quality of life, even if ultra rich will drop quickly in a failed country, when people are unemployed and not "outputting anything". In fact the whole country might go down the drain...

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

#314

Post by icedchai » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 10:30 PM UTC

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #259

jacquesm wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They spent $457m last year on autonomous and flying cars with $0 in revenue from those projects. I sincerely hope they weren't expecting any revenue from those for the next decade or two. Anything else would be delusional.

I think both Uber, Lyft and (to some extent) Tesla have been working on autonomous cars because it's not an immediately implausible way for them to turn profitable. I personally agree it's a multi-decade (if ever) thing, but if Uber et al. claim they'll have it in 2 years, without facts on the table it boils down to who the investors believe in.

Even if autonomous cars were 99.99% reliable tomorrow, it would take a decade to get through regulators. Maybe longer.

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

#315

Post by rgejman » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

Is uber just an elaborate vehicle designed to redistribute wealth from investors to cab drivers and computers engineers?

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

#316

Post by Shivetya » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 10:34 PM UTC

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 know of no one who drives for Uber/Lyft who doesn't think they are doing well. Seriously, where did this meme come about where they are all slaves to Uber? Between what two bring in each week and their mileage deductions they are tempting me at times.

the real tripe in the gig economy is all the pontificating coming down from top how they all care about rights of people, except it only is Western people they care about while those in China and other countries get run over by their governments.

The simple fact is, no employer has to make the job solve all your financial needs. It is up to you to find the job that fulfills your requirements and you can perform safely and well. if that takes more than one job then so be it, many of us have been there before and did it. you don't get anywhere waiting for someone else to fix your life

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

#317

Post by effingwewt » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 10:34 PM UTC

cryptozeus wrote: post #303

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…

“Uber, which aspires to become an Amazon-like store for all forms of transportation, is also investing in the development of autonomous cars, public transit deals, the expansion of its bicycle and scooter business, and in its freight delivery platform.” Remember how amazon was never profitable for years and everyone missed the boat on crazy upside. Remember Tesla ? Remember facebook and twitter before they started ma…

Except Uber is not just 'not profitable' they are upside down after having been floated on nothing but VC money. Paying someone $2 for every $1 they give you is never going to be a sustainable business model.

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

#318

Post by toasterlovin » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 10:38 PM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #277

toasterlovin wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to realize how small the group of people is who can regularly afford to hire other people to perform services for them (which is what a taxi is). You're in that group, so the problem for you is convenience of hailing. But most people just can't afford to hire others to perform services for them on a regular basis. And that will never change, since it's inherent to the distribution of incomes in the populatio…

I think what the poster is saying is that there are places and times when you used to hire a limo or rent a car, because Taxi service is unpredictable. A lot of those cases can be replaced with Lyft / Uber. I know there are business trips where I used to rent a car and now use Lyft / Uber. I think Uber is replacing a lot of car rental for business travelers.

Fair enough. I'll add to that that it seems like taxi utilization for drunk people has probably gone way up as a result of ride sharing services. But the case that all the bulls were putting forward was that Uber was going to transform personal transportation. But now it's merely a taxi company which can encroach on some adjacent industries. And one that doesn't seem like it will end up with a monopoly the way AirBnB did.

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

#319

Post by coldtea » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 10:40 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #302

logfromblammo wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> 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. Ok, fine, but if taxes get high enough, along with the benefits, you can expect some people to stop caring and start becoming freeloaders themselves. Don't be surprised when people just say "screw it, this isn't worth it anymore, I am going to become a freeloader myself".

>Ok, fine, but if taxes get high enough, along with the benefits, you can expect some people to stop caring and start becoming freeloaders themselves.

Some people yes. Good riddance from productivity to them.

The people with actual internal motivation would do inventions, great work, art, programming, etc, even if they're not getting mega-rich from it.

It might slow the speed of mega-corps and new gadgets every month, but perhaps that's just what the doctor ordered. More quality, less greedy obsolescence, longer term products, more personal vision (as opposed quick-buck-schemes).

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

#320

Post by apta » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 10:43 PM UTC

dcchambers wrote: post #123

standardUser wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between taxi fares and Uber/Lyft fares has all but vanished. People were willing to pay taxi rates all along, now they are doing so and getting what is arguably a much better service.

I can't speak for everyone, but for me it was never about the cost. It was about the ability to easily/instantly schedule a ride without having to call a phone number and wait for a ride which was notoriously unreliable, and not having to deal with cash or the classic line "my credit card machine doesn't work." Virtually all of the cab companies still around now have mobile apps and many of them have all the features…

Question is, which cab app are you going to download, especially when you're traveling? If you use Uber/Lyft (especially the former), you're practically guaranteed that you'll be able to use it at your destination.