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The Drivers Cooperative

drivers.coop

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191–200 of 333 posts

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#191

Post by sandworm101 »

njoubert wrote: post #180
kbos87 wrote: post #176

It'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.

>> You can get off an airplane just about anywhere in the world and get an Uber. That’s huge value.

I wonder what percentage of people driving on roads are actually the old "jet set", people who travel internationally more than once a year. I'd bet that is actually less than 1% of western populations. I think the real market is locals, people who need rides home when drunk, rather than 1%ers going to and from airports.

(I love the irony of people who use uber because "owning a car is evil" and then hop on 1st class airline seats to fly to remote islands. I wonder how often people take ubers to get them to their private jets;)

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#192

Post by beckingz »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #163
jwr wrote: post #79

This 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.

> 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 We shall see if that ends up being the case. It's an open question to me. I could see this being as effective as Uber. But I could also see an industry association implementing some anti-consumer policies that…

Just give it back to the taxi drivers to operate, but hold them to a higher standard of quality.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#194

Post by chrisseaton »

sandworm101 wrote: post #191
njoubert wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>> You can get off an airplane just about anywhere in the world and get an Uber. That’s huge value. I wonder what percentage of people driving on roads are actually the old "jet set", people who travel internationally more than once a year. I'd bet that is actually less than 1% of western populations. I think the real market is locals, people who need rides home when drunk, rather than 1%ers going to and from airport…

The vast majority of people travelling aren’t jet-set or 1% flying in first - they’re just normal hard-working people flying in economy who happen to have a job that requires them to travel and don't have any choice in that matter if they want to put food on their tables and feed buying their children new shoes.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#195

Post by sukruh »

Cool. One trap worker-owned companies often fall into is to neglect investing into risky/long-term projects and as a result fall behind the industry. When the choice is 2x salary for 3 years or some R&D investment one does not fully grasp, many individual members choose the former.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#196

Post by runeks »

yawnxyz wrote: post #171

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

I never understood why Uber doesn’t allow drivers to set their own price.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#197

Post by m_ke »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #146
m_ke wrote: post #128

Earlier 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…

Yeah, a lot of the constraints around software services are a function of market size and legal changes. It's intensely profitable to have a large market with the same regulation, and one would imagine that software professionals would be paid a lot in such a place. And interestingly enough, in both China and the US, software professionals make a lot of money.

Yeah.

US also benefitted from being isolated from any threats by huge bodies of water, having a ton of cheap land, speaking english and being welcoming to immigrants. Thanks to this the whole global economy is tied to the dollar and runs through wall street.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#198

Post by elcortez »

I really admire these kind of experiments, and hopefully it'll work out for them.

However it seems that people vastly underestimate how hard it is to run a business like Uber. You have to take care of handling a complex demand/supply ratio, geolocation, fraud management, a seamless payment system, tax rates, etc. etc.

Hopefully these initiatives will produce meaningful value locally all around the world, contributing to a more decentralized Internet.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#199

Post by vivekmgeorge »

sandworm101 wrote: post #166
jwr wrote: post #79

This 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.

I applaud the effort, but the problem with a collective is that they are, legally speaking, a soft target. Uber can afford to break laws, run at a local loss, and generally throw its weight around a new market. Cooperatives don't have such deep pockets. They will leave town as soon as a some local interest resists. They aren't going to survive multi-year fights with cities or organizations like the London cabs.

Only for so long. Their stock price will suffer at a certain point. Not to mention the bad PR that come with it. The more of these that we see globally the harder it would be for them to run at a loss. As a CO-OP they can take growth slowly. They don't have the same investor pressure

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#200

Post by pjmorris »

gmadsen wrote: post #167
pjmorris wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read that grocery stores operate on a ~2% profit margin. Is a high-margin business a sign of market inefficiency that will eventually be stamped out?

Not necessarily. An extremely low profit margin is a sign of a commodities market, where there isn't really a space for innovation. For example a grocery store, so you are competing on very fine details and logistics. High margin, COULD be inefficiency, but it could just be a technological or innovation advantage. It seems ride hailing is transitioning into a commodity since innovation has dried up. The one obvious d…

Well, at one time, cash registers, packaged food, and stores were all technological innovations. I'm asking whether 'technological or innovation advantage' can be interpreted as a sign of temporary inefficiency that will eventually get ironed out of the system (unless maintained by force, as another commenter mentions.)
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