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The Uber Bubble

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Re: The Uber Bubble

#241

Post by lcw »

gruez wrote: post #208
nonrandomstring wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What makes you think that shareholders in Twitter or Uber don't care that they'll never make a penny? Who are "they"? Be specific. The shareholders can make a pretty penny while the companies never do. Because they're shareholders, not workers, or customers, or execs, or owners. > what someone is willing to pay for it", not its actual utility Pay for what? Please be specific. The service of the company or the value…

>Who are "they"? Be specific. The company. >The shareholders can make a pretty penny while the companies never do. Because they're shareholders, not workers, or customers, or execs, or owners. What are you arguing for here? In the first comment the problem seems to be that the company isn't profitable, but in this comment you the problem seems to be the fact that shareholders are making money but the "workers, or cus…

The way you phrased your opposition made it sound like you think that shareholders care if a company has positive net income. However, the whole point of this discussion is that shareholders have no vested interest in the financials of the company in cases like Uber. There is really no correlation in these companies being more profitable and shareholder wealth. Generally the only money that goes to shareholders from a companies financial performance is dividends anyways, which obviously Uber would never do yet it made people rich.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#242

Post by AussieWog93 »

Sebguer wrote: post #68
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>Gypsy is a slur

Wow. Someone should probably let the creators of "Big Fat Gypsy Weddings" know this! And all the people that participated in the show. And all of the Travellers that watched it.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#243

Post by janejeon »

inamberclad wrote: post #67

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.

100%. Will never catch cabs in NYC because they never comply with any local regulation (e.g. none of them were wearing masks at the height of the pandemic), they always overcharge, they often discriminate against you as a customer based on what you look like/where you're going/etc, they always expect 20-25% tip, even if they've done a terrible service, etc.

And you have nothing you can do to fight any of this, other than to just... not use them.

So that's what I do, and instead use an Uber.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#244

Post by scarface74 »

amelius wrote: post #143
cornel_io wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As if taxi drivers weren’t exploited when they had to rent medallions.

But if you don’t want to support “exploited workers”, are you willing to give up all electronics?

Re: The Uber Bubble

#245

Post by lawrenceyan »

Anecdotally, the only time I ever tried taking a taxi, the driver immediately tried to scam me by charging $40 for a trip that really should have been $20 at max. At least with Uber/Lyft, you know the exact price going in.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#246

Post by scarface74 »

scoopertrooper wrote: post #65
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 d…

“The government” is what caused the taxi system to be such a mess.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#247

Post by podviaznikov »

jmyeet wrote: post #211
westcort wrote: post #35

My key takeaways: 1. Uber is actually a higher cost/less efficient producer of urban car services than the taxi companies it has driven out of business 2. Individual Uber drivers with limited capital cannot acquire, finance, maintain and insure vehicles more economically than Yellow Cab 3. Expenses other than drivers, vehicles, and fuel account for 15 percent of traditional taxi costs but Uber charges drivers 25-30 p…

I don't disagree with your points but let me give you some counterpoints: 1. Taxi services are balkanized; 2. Many tax services don't allow you to order a taxi ahead of time. You have to flag one down (eg NYC). For ordering a car, you need to otherwise deal with an (expensive) car service; 3. Uber made the payment process seamless and I cannot overstate how important this is as a user. I hate dealing with NYC yellow…

5. I don’t think you address issue with cherry picking the price with part timers. Which is I know is the real one, because I realized I did it myself and it’s not very fair. Your answer is more like “what about taxi services, they also have edge cases” 2. But there are also taxi services that allow you too book ahead of time. Many cities in Europe had phone booking of the taxi for specific times at least 20 years ago(not sure about before). The question is why NYC didn’t have it?

But good points! Even if many are specific to New York

Re: The Uber Bubble

#248

Post by scythe »

tootie wrote: post #45
yesenadam wrote: post #28

(2019) - This is the first in a series of three articles from the end of 2019

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they did actually have a small operating profit Q421.

Indeed, their burn rate seems to be improving:

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/UBER/uber-technolo...

We'll see if it keeps up, I guess.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#249

Post by kortilla »

amelius wrote: post #144

Why 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.

> Why isn't it illegal to disrupt a market by undercutting the competition in a long-term structural way?

Because you can actually do what the competitor does for cheaper. It sounds like you’re arguing against companies being more efficient than others, which is strange.

If you’re saying companies shouldn’t be able to operate at a loss while competitors don’t, you’re arguing against companies that invest in improvements as well, which is also strange.

How would you structure the law in a way that allows better companies who invest in more efficient systems to win?

Re: The Uber Bubble

#250

Post by this_steve_j »

justinpowers wrote: post #70
emteycz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk with the driver few times? I never had a Uber driver who said they would rather have a normal job. 500+ rides.

Selection bias…

Survivorship bias, which is a subtype of selection bias, is what I was contemplating along those lines.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

Now if I could somehow know whether I have any biases I should be aware of, I’d greatly appreciate that information, Steve.

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