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The Drivers Cooperative

drivers.coop

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Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#201

Post by tzs »

jasode wrote: post #118
tzs wrote: post #100

Earlier 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…

>For most US cities you could cover the payment needs of most riders with something from Square installed in the car. That's a good example of driver-centric thinking instead of holistic thinking that considers the paying passengers . Consider: what if the customers/passengers actually prefer the convenience of not having to mess with an extra payment transaction step before exiting the car?!? With service like Uber,…

I think you are overestimating the inconvenience of paying at or near the destination. Most passengers will have smart phones with them, most of which support NFC payments. Double tap the side button on your iPhone (or whatever is equivalent on non-Apple phones), hold it near the reader for two seconds, and you are done.

Heck, a large fraction of the passengers won't even have to reach into their pocket to get their phone because they'll have been doing stuff on it during the ride.

Even for those who have to use an actual physical credit card I don't think it would be enough of a barrier to make a noticeable difference because they are also using that card for nearly everything else. It's so routine that they don't think about it or notice it. I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain about the complexity of paying by credit card at a non-waited restaurant, a grocery store, a hardware store, or any other retail place.

Also, note that with this approach the co-op would not have to make riders create accounts and associate payment information with them. That removes some complexity for the user, and is one less thing to deal with when the user gets a new credit card.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#202

Post by patentatt »

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.

But can’t they just ride the coattails of the big players? Once they’ve lobbied their way in, shouldn’t it be pretty easy for the coop to just say they should be treated the same?

For that matter, I always wonder why Airbnb still exists. Now that they’ve bulldozed all sorts of local regulations with their VC money, why wouldn’t a coop model work better for the actual landlords? Something akin to the MLS for real estate, for local operators of short term rentals.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#203

Post by tnzm »

sokoloff wrote: post #114
tnzm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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_…

> less-than-seamless experience if that lets them avoid dealing with a less-than-ethical business. True; this is why I started using Uber: to avoid the “oh the credit card machine is broken, you need to pay cash” only to find out it did work AND I’d paid cash.

Yeah, it works both ways. Otherwise we wouldn't have competing alternatives to discuss (Uber, cooperatives, taxi companies, solo cabbies... I hear that in Russia it's customary to hail any car on the street and pay for a ride, with obvious safety drawbacks of course)

What you're describing can happen anywhere there is a PoS terminal. I guess a sketchy cabbie has the benefit of being able to drive away before you realize what happened (and it could be harder to see the card machine when sitting in a car as opposed to e.g. paying at a desk in a shop?)

Nevertheless, "we let users order and pay for rides with an app" is a part of the business model which is totally distinct from "we'll make sure users never get screwed by fucking with the workers". Which does have an obvious advantage in terms of customer retention though - especially if your customers are petty bourgeois knowledge workers who want to benefit from an "on-demand" lifestyle and to distance themselves from the people doing the actual gig.

Not to mention, Uber probably has more data on your ass than what a single fraudulent transaction entails (for which you can at least issue request chargeback). It's up to them to handle it responsibly, and they have failed to do so at least once (the 2017 hack). Just like every SV company that keeps screwing up but people still love them because all those beautiful apps make their expensive smartphones a little less pointless.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#204

Post by dwater »

clarkevans wrote: post #187
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.

Cooperatives can expand by cooperating with other cooperatives -- a bunch of local cooperatives might nest to form a regional one, etc. Those regional ones could form a federation with a single identity for global operations. So, this problem can be addressed by cooperatives, it's just a different kind of structure that distributes power locally -- with centralized power deriving from the bottom up, by the membership…

I've noticed credit unions in the US are like this. They are generally locally operated, but they have formed networks so that you can e.g. go into a branch in Maryland and perform transactions on your account held in Georgia. They have also banded together to develop credit union apps, since banking apps are essentially universal in function. Reaching critical mass for these ride hailing apps would be a challenge, but it is possible.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#205

Post by agloeregrets »

ta988 wrote: post #134
agloeregrets wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I never got how Uber was still unprofitable for so long. Sure you have a bunch of Silicon Valley salaries to pay but realistically speaking, one could build an Uber/Lyft for under $1M and basically can operate with two or so devs fixing issues. Yet, they are blowing hundreds of millions of dollars yearly all over the place while shorting drivers who can’t make a living wage and are basically trading vehicle exp…

I'm not sure you realize that a product at that scale can't run with two people. You need lawyers, service support, testers, advertisers... People that hacl the other company to sabotage their launch (if you are not aware, uber did that).

I was referring to Silicon valley salaries, obviously you would need ~ 50-100 people or such. At current scale of Uber, if they charged just a penny (instead of the 20-30% they currently do) They would make 16 million dollars which could pay 100 people an average of 100K per year, they could spend $4M on infrastructure and still make $2M in profit despite being not much more than a payment processor and app provider (like square or shopify) They bill more than 200X that on average.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#206

Post by fractionalhare »

bayindirh wrote: post #184
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.

A local coop doesn't have to go worldwide to be meaningful. Not all businesses shall grow indefinitely. If they can get a core customer base and hold it steady, it'd be much more valuable and impressive over time. They try to make a living, not to dominate the world for money.

If you're competing in a winner-take-all market, it is very difficult to compete without shooting for domination. I don't know if digital ride hailing is a winner-take-all market, but there's pretty compelling evidence it could be.

But I also don't think that commenter is disagreeing with you - when they say huge value, they're probably gesturing towards the fact that consumers will generally use whatever the most convenient and recognizable brand is. It will be hard for the coop to achieve a core customer base which allows them to survive if everyone gets off the plane and uses Uber instead of looking for the local coop.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#207

Post by TeeWEE »

People are paying for a service to go from A to B, whether that's a driver bringing them or a robocar, it doesn't really matter. As long as the service is good.

Money being made on the service should go back in making the service better. These cooperatives often miss that point. They are not product centric.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#208

Post by m_ke »

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.

There's no reason why we can't have a coop based version of a WeChat like super app with all of these services on a single shared platform.

Most people don't get on planes that often so the value of global scale is not something that would prevent them from getting disrupted in a place like NYC. I'd be willing to pay a large premium for gig work if I knew that 95% of it went to the worker and they weren't being exploited by a bunch of clowns in SV.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#209

Post by tootie »

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.

That's a plus for sure, but I'm betting 99% of rides are local.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#210

Post by jefb »

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…

Juno[1] tried something like this in NYC back in the mid-2010's. They ended up getting acquired by Gett and discontinued their equity share ethos.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(company)

Edit: Typo

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