i'm surprised Blablacar (in Europe) hasn't made it over to the US yet — the most "disruptive" part about it is that people can set their own prices. Also, it's for "long haul" drives, like from the airport into the city, or between cities
The Drivers Cooperative
171–180 of 333 posts
Re: The Drivers Cooperative
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
The overwhelming vast majority of reasons I've heard people give for preferring Uber/Lyft over regular taxis are (1) regular taxis could not be summoned via an app or web page, instead requiring a phone call or curbside hailing, and (2) their credit card terminals were often broken so that you had to pay cash. Both of those specific problem are solvable for most rides without going anywhere near the level of complexi…
There was one more reason: Uber debuted in NYC. NYC has a limited number of taxi medallions and therefore a limited number of taxis which is a problem because demand outpaced supply. Uber provided additional drivers/vehicles. Also initially it paid better while taxi medallions were no longer owned by the drivers but rather by what amounted to wage-slave owners. As a result some people felt it was better to support th…
Uber debuted in SF.
Re: The Drivers Cooperative
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's the financial constraint that causes co-ops to more easily organize in lower complexity businesses such as local grocery co-op or a farming coop. But a high-tech complexity business that's expensive to build is inherently too costly for a pool of drivers' savings to fund. Farming cooperatives can be very capital intensive. In contrast, technology platforms are relatively inexpensive to build these days. The…
>Farming cooperatives can be very capital intensive. The farms are capital intensive but the separate entity that forms the cooperative is less capital intensive. E.g. building the local co-op grain storage bin that farmers contribute to will cost less than the millions it takes to build a polished app like Uber/Lyft. Or did you have something else in mind when you meant farm co-ops are capital intensive? >There's no…
> Or did you have something else in mind when you meant farm co-ops are capital intensive?
I disagree with your characterization: it's the potential sharing of capital expenditures (for storage, processing, distribution and advertising) that drives cooperation. In many cases these costs are far more than software-based services. Cooperatives of this nature often have significant capital contributions required for membership.
> True but bonds don't exist in a vacuum and must compete with other alternative investments including other bonds by other businesses/governments.
Agreed. I would note our current legal environment makes it challenging for cooperatives to raise capital since most of their potential contributors, who see the community "main street" value, are effectively prevented from becoming investors, even if they are willing to do so. Retail investors have their arms twisted (401k) to put their savings into the stock market... rather than into main street. Moreover, since they are not often SEC qualified investors, they are prevented from investing even if they wish to do so. There are some limited exceptions for local organizations, but these rules are hard to navigate. These barriers to capital should be addressed.
Re: The Drivers Cooperative
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I meant by well paid was that most engineers who spent a few years at FAANGs have 6 figures in savings and can use some of that capital to kickstart a cooperative without needing venture funding. A coop could absolutely become a monopoly in a market. The reason developers in the US make so much is because they live in a large wealthy English speaking country that’s the launching point for most ventures before gl…
perhaps California developers talk a big game but don't put their money where their mouth is? I would expect the same bootstrapping of cooperatives but it doesn't really happen. I think cooperatives would struggle to gain a monopoly holding because they're not as ruthless as investor-driven companies. They tend to treat their workers fairly and focus on quality of life, over relentlessly pursuing high quarterly growt…
> perhaps California developers talk a big game but don't put their money where their mouth is? I would expect the same bootstrapping of cooperatives but it doesn't really happen.
I suspect a big factor in that is a lack of a safety net in the US. FAANG engineers with enough mileage to have some savings have families and mortgages that make it hard to give up their employee provided healthcare and risk their own savings on a new venture.
I was foolish enough to go into startups as a new grad with huge student loans and though I have enjoyed it, it has not been good for my physical nor financial health.
> I think cooperatives would struggle to gain a monopoly holding because they're not as ruthless as investor-driven companies. They tend to treat their workers fairly and focus on quality of life, over relentlessly pursuing high quarterly growth targets. That's a very good thing for the employees and probably the customers too, but makes the company less competitive.
Biggest obstacle is not being able to burn billions of dollars on growth and expansion with no clear path to profitability like the Ubers and WeWorks of the world.
A coop could probably get to monopoly scale through mergers with other coops in adjacent industries. In the case of gig work, there's no reason why a NYC based drivers coop couldn't slowly expand to food delivery, logistics, car rentals and etc, then jump to other major cities in through mergers with smaller coops in those markets. There would be a lot of benefits to having a single middleman platform with some sort of a social credit system (reviews) baked in and a large user base to launch new offerings to.
> If that were the case then developers all over the US would make bank. They don't; only in startup-focused areas like the Bay Area and NYC. It's the same here in the UK, you can make a ton of money if you work in London for hyper-capitalist companies, but outside of London most developers are making 40-60k max. Which is still good for the UK, but not the 6 figure incomes that even shit-tier developers can make in California.
I'm an immigrant who grew up in NYC and up until this year I would have never considered moving to a small town in middle america due to a lack of jobs and a shitty walmart and car centric lifestyle. In New York I can quit my job on Monday and have a choice of 4-5 job offers by Friday. Now that companies have been forced to be more open to remote work I can imagine people in the middle of nowhere having the same options and I anticipate that it will lead to a major repeat of the white flight, sending a ton of white collar workers out of the cities and into suburbia.
Starting a tech company used to be a very expensive venture that required knocking on doors of VCs and racking servers. Now that we're starting to have the infrastructure in place to work remotely and can spin up machines on the fly for under $100/month things will probably change. The pandemic will accelerate this trend.
Re: The Drivers Cooperative
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
This mirrors the clauses VISA/MasterCard have that say that shops can't charge different prices for credit cards and cash which also solidifies rent seeking behavior. I wonder if you could create a similar law for both.
Funniest is that nowadays card payments are likely cheaper to process for merchants than cash - if you account properly for all costs. So credit card companies should start lobbying to allow different pricing based on payment methods.
If you're a large retailer and have been able to negotiate good rates with a payment processor and are in a country where interchange fees are capped (e.g., EU countries), then I can see it. But I doubt that it's the case in the US where those fees have to fund 2% cashback programmes etc.
Re: The Drivers Cooperative
#176It's always surprised me that we haven't seem more attempts at co-op like models in spaces like this, and I'm happy to see it.
Uber/Lyft strike me as thin businesses in the value that they actually provide both to riders and drivers. Yes, they were responsible for some initial innovation, but now the cat is out of the bag, and the concept could absolutely be applied in a business structure that is more profitable and friendly to the people actually delivering the services.
Getting initial traction with riders, and adequately investing in trust & safety strike me as the two hardest parts up front. On the flip-side, they should benefit from less regulatory scrutiny, and less pressure from investors vs. the heavily funded players like Uber & Lyft.
I'm rooting for them and hope to see this go somewhere.
Re: The Drivers Cooperative
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Ride-hailing apps always seemed like a model that was extremely conducive to a cooperative, worker-owned model. It's only the surface-level of an ride-hailing app that seems easy for worker-owned cooperatives to create. In reality, the extra expensive programming dollars required to tame the hidden complexity so that the app can present a seamless experience to the customers/passengers is a huge factor that works ag…
Your comment is a perfect illustration of problems with the capitalist model of private ownership of capital. Notice what you're saying: one person starting a for-profit enterprise can get access to the capital they need to start their business, but a group of thousands of people starting a co-operative enterprise are unable to get a similar credit even in a collective name! This highlights the deep injustices people…
I'd say it's not the capitalist model per se but particular preferences of the investors. The same way as investors preferred young white male founders (maybe until recently) to all the other combinations of the three parameters. Similarly they prefer entrepreneur-owned companies to collectively owned ones for whatever reasons they have in mind.
In fact it's perfectly possible to raise money for a coop, or a steward company [1], i.e. not owned by anyone, or owned by the employees but via non-economical shares. You issue special class of shares for the investors - could be redeemable for example - and make a commitment as an elected executive of the company.
[1] https://medium.com/bettersharing/steward-ownership-is-capita...
Re: The Drivers Cooperative
#178This is doubly ironic and amusing if you think about how Uber/Lyft were "disrupting" the existing markets. Well, market forces are at work: if Uber/Lyft provide no additional value over drivers' work (and treat drivers as disposable assets), they themselves will get "disrupted" and the drivers will get rid of them :-) Happy to see this happening, and I wonder how this will develop.
App provides value, global brand has some value. There is absolutely no reason for ride hailing app to get 10-20% markup per ride. I suspect that after the competition really kicks in, Uber/Lyft must settle for 1-3% per ride or less.
I think this is what was (pre-pandemic) happening in London. Bolt came in, cheaper than Uber and paying the drivers (slightly) more.
Uber burned a lot of cash creating the market, and to some degree on all the self-driving cab nonsense.
Re: The Drivers Cooperative
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Ride-hailing apps always seemed like a model that was extremely conducive to a cooperative, worker-owned model. It's only the surface-level of an ride-hailing app that seems easy for worker-owned cooperatives to create. In reality, the extra expensive programming dollars required to tame the hidden complexity so that the app can present a seamless experience to the customers/passengers is a huge factor that works ag…
>present a seamless experience to the customers/passengers There does exist a segment of users who are willing to navigate a less-than-seamless experience if that lets them avoid dealing with a less-than-ethical business. (And probably there's at least some PR effort involved in making their voices not count.) Besides, the Uber/Lyft experience is far from "seamless", and developing a ride-sharing app that does _not_…
> That's how a cooperative can compete with a megacorpo
Hum... I guess you forgot about the main competitive force of cooperatives. On service based industries, they let the service providers capture most of the value, what should attract better service. (But some times it doesn't, those things are complex.)
It's not about the IT people at all.
Re: The Drivers Cooperative
#180It's always surprised me that we haven't seem more attempts at co-op like models in spaces like this, and I'm happy to see it. Uber/Lyft strike me as thin businesses in the value that they actually provide both to riders and drivers. Yes, they were responsible for some initial innovation, but now the cat is out of the bag, and the concept could absolutely be applied in a business structure that is more profitable and…
The single benefit of Uber having a global presence likely already outweighs the value of these local coops.
You can get off an airplane just about anywhere in the world and get an Uber. That’s huge value.