261–270 of 321 posts
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That effectively requires a cartel with high barriers to entry, otherwise not doing that is an immediate competitive advantage to any new challengers. It's pretty hard to build your own last mile telecommunications network, how hard is it to build a ride sharing app?
It's not hard to build a ride sharing app. It is , however, hard to get drivers and customers FOR your ride sharing app.
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And walking everywhere will become the norm?
Not necessarily, cheap rides are the only competitive advantage both of them have. More and more companies without the massive VC support Uber and Lyft have will pop up fragmenting the market.
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If they drive the same way as everyone else (i.e. mostly following the spirit of the law but nobody's perfect) and then get hit with a colossal fine over a minor violation, yeah, that's the sort of thing that causes people to do the math on living somewhere else.
But it's relatively only as colossal to them as it would be to anyone else.
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It's not hard to build a ride sharing app. It is , however, hard to get drivers and customers FOR your ride sharing app.
Not if you can undercut the existing ones on price.
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Finland traffic tickets sounds like a horrible idea.
Why? If I'm a poor speeding Fin, then a non-scaled speeding ticket could cost me a good number of days food. If I'm a rich speeding Fin then a non-scaled ticket is just the cost to travel quickly. When you're wealthy enough fines don't matter there's no point in the police enforcing them aside from as an additional income stream.
That clearly is not the case, because fines are not the only thing rendered as a penalty. Driving privileges and criminal prosecution are quickly added on as behavior changes, even if it's small violations that add up.
Everyone faces the same financial, driving access, and legal risk which equally discourages everyone from driving badly, no matter how wealthy you are.
Unless you think rich people should get sentenced to twice as much time for the same crime, then altering the fine for wealth makes no sense.
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Drivers usually accept new rides while in the middle of driving though. Do you really want an army of distracted drivers on their phones participating in a complicated bidding process?
And, for those relatively unusual occasions where I do take Uber, I probably have zero interest in entering into an online bidding competition. And do you really want a system where you're trying to save a few dollars by getting a bid accepted by the most financially desperate drivers?
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Not if you can undercut the existing ones on price.
A ride sharing app is a dual marketplace. If you're cutting the price for riders past a point, you're cutting the pay for drivers.
But even if they were, the drivers are in a competitive labor market. If you get the customers with lower prices then you can also get the drivers because they'd rather be working for your rate than not at all.
Honestly, it's probably for the best. Over the last decade it has become the expectation that - at the tap of a button - a taxi will appear and take you across the city (or three blocks over) for a few bucks. People need to realize that this isn't reality. The entire industry has been subsidized by VCs and desperate drivers working below minimum wage since day 1. If, after paying drivers fairly, complying with local…
I don't understand why it's a moral imperative that people not take advantage of the VC funding subsidy? The VCs are wealthy interests looking to find a 10-20-100x exit at the end of this. I don't care if the Saudi Royal family places an enormous bet on automation over the next 10 years. Why is it for the best that all the people who use Uber not have that? I just don't understanding cheering that one of the few subs…
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I think almost anyone would prefer a 5 year old car with 100K miles on it than a 10 year old car with 25K (or 10K) miles on it.
Somewhere like California? Not clear to me at all.