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The Drivers Cooperative

drivers.coop

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Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#61

Post by pydry »

yholio wrote: post #51

What keeps Uber competitive is access to a relatively cheap reservoir of labor force. They mediate this process where drivers compete against each other and extract a good rent in the process. The focus should be getting rid of the rent, not the competition. While I wish these guys all the best and think it's a good paradigm shift, I don't think they will be successful for the same reasons most cooperatives aren't su…

Also gargantuan amounts of capital subsidizing cheap rides.

They can engage in a game of chicken with the cooperatives where they see who is willing to lose money the longest.

This was how the UK "bus wars" we're fought that consolidated control of the market under a few players.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#63

Post by VBprogrammer »

beefield wrote: post #54
btown wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really good question with a frustratingly simple answer: OTAs like Booking.com have "rate parity" contracts guaranteeing them equal rates to the hotels' direct booking sites and any other channels they use: https://businessblog.trivago.com/rate-parity-hotel-industry-... - and these have de facto been upheld in the US court system. So if you're a hotel deciding whether to invest resources into your own brand…

Well, in my opinion rate parity agreements should be illegal in the first place, as they foster rent seeking behaviour as opposed to fair competition. And if a few large chains drop out of these household names and welcome all small hotels to their coop with fair terms, I fail to see how that would be NPV negative move even if it took a couple of months to readjust for SEO. Price fixing? Just found a couple of compet…

Having worked for a company with a similar model, the problem with not having rate parity is that companies will then use your site for lead generation but encourage people to book directly. Also, the industry I was in had more transparent pricing than is typical in hotels so the client would often realise they had been made to pay extra for using the intermediary and leave bad reviews about the price discrepancy.

So long as there is sufficient competition in the industry then I don't think it's in the consumer interest to ban rate parity.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#64

Post by ajmadesc »

changoplatanero wrote: post #27
fblp wrote: post #12

I would probably pay 20% more and wait twice as long to contribute to a worker owned coop with each ride. Come to sf asap!

Why not skip the wait, take an Uber, and donate 20% to the coop?

I want to disagree but this actually makes perfect sense...

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#67

Post by DocTomoe »

We have a ride hailing app for traditional cabs in Germany. The reason why I still preferred Uber is that once you travel around (remember when we still did that?), you don't want an app per location and memorize which app is valid for which geographic region - Uber is virtually global.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#68

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway2a02 wrote: post #50

> While Uber and Lyft make their money for Wall Street and Silicon Valley investors, we will be a co-operative. So any profits will go back to the drivers. Can't they set it up as a non-profit? What almost always happens in these cases is that most of shares are owned by the first few workers, and ultimately a small group will control the whole business (at which point they will obviously won't drive for the app anym…

[deleted]

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#69

Post by zouhair »

throwaway2a02 wrote: post #50

> While Uber and Lyft make their money for Wall Street and Silicon Valley investors, we will be a co-operative. So any profits will go back to the drivers. Can't they set it up as a non-profit? What almost always happens in these cases is that most of shares are owned by the first few workers, and ultimately a small group will control the whole business (at which point they will obviously won't drive for the app anym…

Aren't COOP supposed to grow to accommodate newcomers? You have to pay to get in so you end up with same shares as others. At least that's how I thought it works. Am I wrong?
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