I live in the Denver metro area and have recently travelled several places. Here in Denver rides are 20-50% more expensive than they were pre-pandemic and it takes noticeably longer to get a ride.
Uber, DoorDash and similar firms can’t defy the laws of capitalism after all
151–158 of 158 posts
Re: Uber, DoorDash and similar firms can’t defy the laws of capitalism after all
#152Ultimately you can NOT "magically" negate "Last Mile Costs" in cities and towns where the Last Mile path distance is enormous. Did my MBA thesis on this subject with the benefit of 20 years of engineering experience. The numbers simply do not work unless you change how cities and residences are built, which would cost far more than you'd ever gain from solving Last Mile costs - the breakeven time is of the order of 1…
>Asian-style urban
Do you include India in Asia?
Re: Uber, DoorDash and similar firms can’t defy the laws of capitalism after all
#153This may be a hot take, but I think the gig economy is one thing which could be a pretty solid use of the blockchain. Uber/DoorDash/Lyft are all pretty simple CRUD apps at their core, and the companies themselves do very little actual work. Unfortunately, due to the Silicon Valley cult of growth, they are still either unprofitable or barely profitable while also taking a pretty massive cut away from actual workers on…
Or a normal database. There are a few worker coops trying to do just this without the waste of everything that comes with the blockchain. Co-op Ride is an example of a driver's coop that's competing with Uber in NYC. https://drivers.coop/
How far is this from Taxi Medallions 2?
Re: Uber, DoorDash and similar firms can’t defy the laws of capitalism after all
#154I don't even mind that there are morons out there who think this kind of business model works. Hell, if you're dumb enough to realize that even hyper-competitive companies like Amazon can't make restaurant delivery work, but still want to invest in Doordash, go ahead.
What REALLY gets my goat is how much mental real estate these wannabe entrepreneurs get.
Personally, I joined the tech industry because I was more inspired by the smaller, incremental innovations that generated value. Something like CRT TVs becoming razor thin, or mobile phone cameras overtaking traditional cameras in resolution, or the Apple M1 chip/ARM, THAT was what I used to think of when I thought "Innovation".
However, smart people around me these days, they have no interest in actually doing hard, innovative things. The definition of "smart" today, is actually to raise a bunch of VC money and get a "net worth". And that makes sense, doesn't it? Why work hard, when you can "generate" "billions" of value with just a Powerpoint slide deck?
The end result of all this is that people actually get discouraged from doing the hard work and actually generating real value! Yeah, why should I spend time understanding Supply Chain basics, or studying Operations Research theory? Why should I actually come up with an improved heuristic for Travelling Salesman? Let me just make a shiny Powerpoint, and head on into my first VC meeting.
Re: Uber, DoorDash and similar firms can’t defy the laws of capitalism after all
#155This may be a hot take, but I think the gig economy is one thing which could be a pretty solid use of the blockchain. Uber/DoorDash/Lyft are all pretty simple CRUD apps at their core, and the companies themselves do very little actual work. Unfortunately, due to the Silicon Valley cult of growth, they are still either unprofitable or barely profitable while also taking a pretty massive cut away from actual workers on…
Customers don't care about the block chain yadda-yadda. The value these companies provide is the uniform and optimized (well, at least for the average) user experience.
Users don't install apps and a lot of startups (or just app developers) don't get it. Yes, users on average they will have quite a few apps on their phones (lets say ~100ish), but there are millions of apps out there. And most users will just have one app per (most) category. Not only because it's inconvenient to go and install that new app and then register and maybe enter your card details (if you don't have google or apple pay), but because it's just easier to think "food => DoorDash" (or Wolt, or FoodPanda, etc.), "taxi => Uber" (or Bolt or maybe your local taxi company), "ride => Lime", "search => google", etc.
And once you have a lot of customers, the rest is simple. (Getting a lot of customers is hard and, of course, can't happen without building the other side of the business, but that's not the point.) If it wasn't for this, there would be competing delivery companies, multiple per cities, not just one, maybe two.
Re: Uber, DoorDash and similar firms can’t defy the laws of capitalism after all
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you think about last mile delivery robots? https://www.kiwibot.com These little bots don't require the same level of human physical presence as Uber or DoorDash.
They faked the bots. They require human physical presence, and a remote controller. > The Kiwibots do not figure out their own routes. Instead, people in Colombia, the home country of Chavez and his two co-founders, plot “waypoints” for the bots to follow, sending them instructions every five to 10 seconds on where to go. > On the ground in Berkeley, people also do a lot of robot support. Traveling at 1 to 1½ mph, th…
Wow, this is space technology then - this is how the earlier Mars rovers used to operate. :)
Re: Uber, DoorDash and similar firms can’t defy the laws of capitalism after all
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or a normal database. There are a few worker coops trying to do just this without the waste of everything that comes with the blockchain. Co-op Ride is an example of a driver's coop that's competing with Uber in NYC. https://drivers.coop/
How far is this from Taxi Medallions 2?
I imagine the entire idea of it being a worker-owned (and thus democratic) cooperative is pretty different...
Re: Uber, DoorDash and similar firms can’t defy the laws of capitalism after all
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
>rent-seeking, Unfortunately "capitalism" is a pretty ill-defined term. I wouldn't include "rent-seeking" as a characteristic of "capitalism" but apparently you do. This makes it very difficult to have coherent discussions. For what it is worth, I think "rent-seeking" is probably a characteristic of all economic systems and therefore isn't something peculiar to "capitalism" and so shouldn't be used as a criticism of…
> I wouldn't include "rent-seeking" as a characteristic of "capitalism" According to what theory? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking fits squarely into capitalism.
Rent-seeking isn't a phenomena that is unique to capitalism. It is something present in many different (all?) economic systems. So while it is completely fair to be critical of rent-seeking that isn't by itself a criticism of capitalism.