Uber has mostly been a disaster for me personally. Of the 6 times I've attempted to use the service for either travel or food delivery, 4 times I failed to get a driver on time even though I live in the DFW metro area. I've never EVER had that happen with Doordash. They've screwed up my order or missed picking up product but they never straight up just made me wait for 2.5 hours before giving up.
The Uber Bubble
141–150 of 556 posts
Re: The Uber Bubble
#142The 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
But if the company is losing money, there are no economic gains; there are economic losses. Who is taking the losses?
Re: The Uber Bubble
#143The 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…
Almost every useful scalable service ends up shifting economic gains from labor to capital. And consumers benefit from it, because as a very rough economic rule of thumb, the more value that flows to labor the less efficient the service is and the higher price consumers pay. From a customer POV taxis were horrible, full-stop, and Uber/Lyft are fantastic. I can actually get a reliable, safe ride almost anywhere now, a…
> And consumers benefit from it
As a consumer, I don't want to pay for unfair work practices.
Taxis may have been horrible, taking rides with people who are systematically exploited is even more horrible.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#144Why isn't it illegal to disrupt a market by undercutting the competition in a long-term structural way?
What makes it worse is that money is pumped into it like a ponzi scheme (first investors cash, last investors are left with the bubble), which should be illegal in itself.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
> employs thousands of people You made me wonder how many people are actually employed by Uber. I thought thousands sounded like a lot for what they do. First Google result - 29,000 employees. That blows me away. It sounds like Uber itself is ready for disruption.
Uber is being disrupted by for example Bolt, which is their frugal Estonian competitor. An example close to me is that Uber essentially already lost the Swedish taxi market. They had a couple of years as the the top dog making everyone install an app but due to the huge overhead got undercut. This is a market with a completely unregulated taxi sector as long as you follow the base regulations. Maybe sometimes a bit a…
Yeah if you do the math you end up realizing you need to run the cars like airlines run planes - damn near continuously. Idle time is non paid time, and you need to keep everything moving.
The real advantage of self driving taxis isn’t going to be the self driving, it’s going to be the 24 hour/day shifts they can pull.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> employs thousands of people You made me wonder how many people are actually employed by Uber. I thought thousands sounded like a lot for what they do. First Google result - 29,000 employees. That blows me away. It sounds like Uber itself is ready for disruption.
Uber is being disrupted by for example Bolt, which is their frugal Estonian competitor. An example close to me is that Uber essentially already lost the Swedish taxi market. They had a couple of years as the the top dog making everyone install an app but due to the huge overhead got undercut. This is a market with a completely unregulated taxi sector as long as you follow the base regulations. Maybe sometimes a bit a…
When Uber and Lyft left Austin briefly to protest the driver background check requirement, it took no time at all for a bunch of alternatives to pop up.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#147All the complains in this thread seem like they can be solved by Uber easily, mainly by allowing drivers to set their price by themselves. Taxies in my country are so bad, it feels like you are asking them for a favor by using their service, not to mention they pick and choose if they wanna take you or no based on how profitable for them it is.
That defeats the selling point of Uber, you don’t just get a ride in one tap knowing how much you’ll end up paying anymore, unless you’re cool paying whatever the driver feels like they should be paid. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the idea though.
I think the idea is you’d put up your trip and what you’re willing to pay, and drivers would “bid” on it (the app may do a bunch of this automatically for you, the driver could set rates etc) and then match you with the “best” offer.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#148Uber’s margin gains have not come from efficiency improvements but from its ability to unilaterally cut driver compensation by 40 percent since 2016. So much more cost-effective than slavery.
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Re: The Uber Bubble
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
You forgot safety. I can’t recall how many times I’ve come close to an accident by Taxi drivers. Fuck them. These people are the most unsafe drivers on the road.
I live in lower Manhattan now, and my unconscious mental model for navigating the streets as a ped/biker includes a pretty large coefficient on is_yellowcab. They're complete menaces.
Yep, I think this is universal. I was in China a few years ago and the dude was playing tetris with one hand on his cell phone and driving in the emergency lane at the same time.
Uber/Lyft/Didi/Ola is amazing. I really don't give a shit about these asshole taxi drivers and their union/monopoly grip. Glad it is wiped out.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
The big taxi company I drove for was at the top of the food chain in the Phoenix, Arizona area because the cars were clean, cabs usually showed up promptly, and if there was a problem you could deal with the company and they'd look into your complaint. The company started switching out to the Prius a few years before I started driving for them in 2012. My first few leases were for old Crown Victorias, because I could…
The ease of the Uber app is and was key above everything else - which might be enough to keep them operating when they finally have to raise prices to where they should be.
Or they just switch to a SaaS model. Much leaner operations and solves at least some of the friction issues that traditional taxi service has.
Then there's one aspect of their business model that the article missed (Maybe it will be covered in part 2 or 3) which is self-driving. Apart from monopoly power, this seemed like the other exit to profitability. I'm just not sure if those efforts were little more than lip service to placate investors or an honest attempt (probably a bit of both) it seems like the rapid progress of a few years ago has plateaued and that exit has mostly closed.