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The Uber Bubble

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Re: The Uber Bubble

#61

Post by sbarre »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40
BobbyJo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This destroys most of the value. Most taxi companies suck for reasons independent of their tech stack. None of which Uber fixes? Uber is a tech company. Arguing that it's better than taxis for non-technical reasons is a bit absurd.

> None of which Uber fixes? Did you hail or call taxis before Uber? The simple ability to see where your car is while en route was game changing. Add to that ratings, embedded payment (“credit card reader broken”) and dynamic pricing and you have a dramatically better experience.

Balance that against the fact that most taxi drivers know the city by heart, including where there is construction, habitual traffic jam, and transit congestion..

I'll take a better drive-to-destination experience over being able to stare at my phone watching a car inch closer to me, or saving a few dollars when I need to get somewhere.

A lot of part-time Uber drivers, especially in big cities, come in from the suburbs to get fares in the city - where they are not familiar with their surroundings - and just blindly follow the directions on their GPS.

In my anecdotal experience over the last 10 years, I've had plenty of experiences with Uber drivers either not knowing the proper way to get somewhere, or naively driving into avoidable traffic jams, or just getting stuck behind a bus or streetcar and not understanding when/how to get past it.

This very rarely happens with taxi drivers - to the point where sometimes they can be a bit scary in traffic, so there is a counterpoint here too.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#62

Post by 1270018080 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #22

The piece is exactly right. Uber is effectively an instrument to shift economic gains from labour to capital by atomizing the workforce. From a macroeconomic perspective this is terrible because turning taxi firms into countless of one man businesses provides no efficiency gains, it's basically reverse economic development. There is a version of Uber that actually makes sense. As a lean SaaS company that sells its so…

Let me preface by saying I hate capitalism.

But how did capital win in this arrangement? They lost billions. They're down 25% since IPO a few years ago.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#63

Post by sbarre »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54
sbarre wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The next financial crisis is gonna show us just how fragile this system is, whenever that is. For now, a lot of the gig economy (but not all of it) is focused on non-essential services (food or other delivery, vacation rentals, private car rentals, etc), so in a time of crisis people can just stop using those services. It will suck for the workers but even in a non-gig model that same problem would occur, although…

> but "private citizens operating unregulated hotels/taxis" seemed impossible/illegal just a decade ago Every city has had gypsy cabs and Craigslist hotels since forever.

Sure but that's not what I'm talking about and you know it. I mean large well-known and easily accessible versions of those.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#64

Post by yywwbbn »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #34
Barrin92 wrote: post #22

The piece is exactly right. Uber is effectively an instrument to shift economic gains from labour to capital by atomizing the workforce. From a macroeconomic perspective this is terrible because turning taxi firms into countless of one man businesses provides no efficiency gains, it's basically reverse economic development. There is a version of Uber that actually makes sense. As a lean SaaS company that sells its so…

> Uber is effectively an instrument to shift economic gains from labour to capital by atomizing the workforce. This is the entire gig economy/sharing economy in a nutshell. The platform puts most of the financial risk on the labor side (drivers owning the cars if you're driving Uber, owning the house if you're Airbnb'ing it, etc.) and simply taking a cut of each transaction. The platform owns nothing, the workers hav…

And with all this power these companies still somehow never manage to become profitable. It seem to that the consumer is benefiting the most in this situation because both the VC and labor keep having to subsidize him

Re: The Uber Bubble

#65

Post by scoopertrooper »

Barrin92 wrote: post #22

The piece is exactly right. Uber is effectively an instrument to shift economic gains from labour to capital by atomizing the workforce. From a macroeconomic perspective this is terrible because turning taxi firms into countless of one man businesses provides no efficiency gains, it's basically reverse economic development. There is a version of Uber that actually makes sense. As a lean SaaS company that sells its so…

Perhaps, another option would be for the government to help establish a drivers-cooperative app. An app where all the profits collected had to distributed back to the drivers or invested in the common infrastructure to maintain, promote, and improve the app.

The drivers could also agree amongst themselves as to matters such as working conditions and minimum pay.

Uber and others could still exist, but they'd be at a disadvantage because they'd be ploughing billions into nonsense like self-driving blimps or whatever.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#66

Post by [deleted] »

sbarre wrote: post #61
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of which Uber fixes? Did you hail or call taxis before Uber? The simple ability to see where your car is while en route was game changing. Add to that ratings, embedded payment (“credit card reader broken”) and dynamic pricing and you have a dramatically better experience.

Balance that against the fact that most taxi drivers know the city by heart, including where there is construction, habitual traffic jam, and transit congestion.. I'll take a better drive-to-destination experience over being able to stare at my phone watching a car inch closer to me, or saving a few dollars when I need to get somewhere. A lot of part-time Uber drivers, especially in big cities, come in from the subur…

[deleted]

Re: The Uber Bubble

#67

Post by inamberclad »

Uber as a business is a massive loss, but consumers still _chose_ Uber over taxis because the process of getting and riding in a car is a million times more transparent than a taxi ever was. You can see what car and what driver are picking you up, what route they're going to take, and how much it will cost. Taxis failed because they failed to modernize.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#68

Post by Sebguer »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54
sbarre wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The next financial crisis is gonna show us just how fragile this system is, whenever that is. For now, a lot of the gig economy (but not all of it) is focused on non-essential services (food or other delivery, vacation rentals, private car rentals, etc), so in a time of crisis people can just stop using those services. It will suck for the workers but even in a non-gig model that same problem would occur, although…

> but "private citizens operating unregulated hotels/taxis" seemed impossible/illegal just a decade ago Every city has had gypsy cabs and Craigslist hotels since forever.

1) Gypsy is a slur

2) Both of those things were / are illegal and operated relatively underground, which is exactly the point of the person you're responding to.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#69

Post by aetherson »

pessimizer wrote: post #33
Supermancho wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery is not a trade you choose to practice. Not sure how this is constructive.

Slavery is not a trade you choose to have practiced on you, it is a trade you choose to practice. And as a slave, you always have a choice. It's not cost effective to monitor and restrain you well enough to keep you from killing yourself indefinitely. Lacking others, plenty of slaves have chosen and do choose this option. Same as if all physical work turns into piece/gig-work. You can choose to do it, or you can choo…

Or, you know, as a gig or piece worker, you can choose to do something else, which as it turns out is not a choice a slave enjoys.

Do you feel kind of dirty suggesting that a slave can just choose to kill himself and comparing that to Barcelona cab drivers? If you don't, why not?

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