The Uber Bubble • Hacker News Board

Re: The Uber Bubble

#411

Post by kwhitefoot » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 11:35 AM UTC

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #372

acchow wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are 100% correct. This is the magic There are people who want to make a positive return on their time + vehicle depreciation. But they are on the open market competing against people who are in a cash crunch and happy to have a net negative return on the same, as long as it temporarily allows them to convert depreciation into cash. This is why drivers will always lose in the long term. They are racing against eac…

Perhaps the society just should make it easier for the destitute to find appropriate means to support themselves? People act as if the fact that some people who are bored on a Saturday night are ready to give a cheap ride is a problem. It seems like it an absolute good and totally not a problem and should not be “fixed”.

But while there are poorer people driving for Uber, etc., the existence of dilettante drivers is very much a problem for those poorer drivers.

It's like special offers in shops; for someone like me who has spare money and plenty of storage space they are great, but for someone genuinely poor they are often unusable either because they don't have the cash at that moment or because they have nowhere to store it.

It's expensive to be poor. See https://wiki.lspace.org/Vimes_Boots_Index

You are right of course that fixing the poverty is the right thing to do.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#412

Post by mjburgess » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 11:39 AM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #408

funklute wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine making the same argument for 7 year old chimney sweeps in Victorian England, and the flaw in your argument becomes more obvious. It doesn't make it any more obvious to me. That 7 year old Victorian chimney sweep still has to eat. If society doesn't have the infrastructure to take care of them, then the other alternative is to starve, possibly to death. Refusing to hire these workers only makes things better…

> That 7 year old Victorian chimney sweep still has to eat. If society doesn't have the infrastructure to take care of them, then the other alternative is to starve, possibly to death. Yet we no longer have 7 year old chimney sweeps. Refusing to hire one now is one part of the process that changes society so that the missing infrastructure that you mentioned gets provided for future potential 7 year old chimney sweep…

I dont think refusing to hire chimney sweep children had anything at all to do with the end of child labour. I can't even really comprehend this world view very well, though it is common.

Child labour ended around the time it wasnt needed, as did all phases of economic labour division (slavery, child labour, gendered labour, etc.).

In economic conditions which require poor quality labour, all you can do is decide whether you punish the poor or not. By refusing their labour, you're punishing them -- as much as refusing an oppressed minority work, on the grounds that their oppression exists.

A very bizarre thought, which I can only imagine stems from some misperceived impression of one's own importance, and confusing the emotional instinct to recoil from poverty with the moral impulse to do something about it.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#413

Post by golergka » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 11:40 AM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #403

jmyeet wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most of that is specific to the US. Taxis work in other countries without it being difficult to get one in the middle of the night. And the medallion system is unique to the US I think. > . Uber made the payment process seamless I've been paying taxi fares with a credit card in an in car payment terminal for twenty years in Scandinavia. If I had a business trip to anywhere in the Nordic countries I never needed to ge…

I have been living in Istanbul for the last month, and it's worse. With any app (Uber or local) actually ordering a cab takes several attempts. Taxi drivers are constantly rude and unhelpful, cancel rides after taking them, and refuse to take you all the way and just drop you off far from your destination if it's uncomfortable to them. And they often try to get you to pay in cash instead of using Uber's payment, and just plainly scam you, when your bill in Uber is 30% higher than what you saw on taxometer when you got out of the car.

All of that — you guessed it, because of medallion-like system. There's a limited amount of taxis for 25 million city, they cannot meet demand, so they don't have to compete for orders and therefore don't care about their rating (and therefore customer service) in the slightest.

I've seen other regional taxi markets disrupted by Uber and similar local apps — and it always made taxi experience so much better and smoother.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#414

Post by prepend » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 11:42 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #396

randyrand wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you saying the drivers are too stupid to calculate they are making net money? that’s quite the (insulting) claim!

Not insulting at all. I don’t expect someone hard up enough to drive Uber for minimum wage to understand how to calculate depreciation, etc. They are focused on cash flow.

This might apply the first year, but many drivers have driven for many years. Uber isn’t new any more.

Drivers that aren’t able to calculate net depreciation (actually pretty easy and expected if you can afford to buy a car) would not be able to stick around and drive for 5 years.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#415

Post by projektfu » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 11:42 AM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #367

chrischen wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, shared rides were pretty popular pre-pandemic. Cabs never really did shared rides (at least not legitimately). I pretty much always opted for the shared option whenever I Uber’d or Lyfted.

So how did these work? How did the driver tell where they were coming from and where they were going? And was it worth their time? I can't think sharing your own ride is easy to solve. And no if you add more people when you are professionally driving it is still not ride sharing, it's just bus service at that time.

I think GP is talking about services like Lyft Line where the driver would pick up a second passenger on the way, the route calculated for efficiency.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#416

Post by rnd420_69 » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 11:42 AM UTC

sytelus wrote: post #410

Has anyone actually verified the numbers? Per my calculation, per hour cost of running a car in US is about $17. Minimum wage is $15/hr. In my experience, Uber/Lyft charges comfortably so the drivers earn above minimum wage. I have in fact met few drivers who owns multiple cars “Ubering” around because it is profitable to them. This has also been previously verified by Forbes when they compared full time Uber drivers…

I know someone who does bike delivery in a densely populated city.

I don't know how uber works really or how they distribute money, but according to him you're not paid an hourly wage every hour.

For example because there is so much competition among drivers, you can go hours without an order assigned to you. even in big/densely populated urban centers. and I think the guaranteed hourly rate thing only applies in specific circumstances. there is no way he is putting in even an 80% work day unless he waited for orders literally all his waking hours.

and then from the money you are actually paid, you have to deduct all the costs for maintenance and so on. from back of the envelope calculations my buddy actually makes much less than minimum wage.

I try to convince him from time to time to just get regular other jobs and point out he will quickly make a lot more money. but frankly he is in a hole and cant see outside perspectives. as you can imagine he's big into crypto as well, trying to day trade that shit with his measly capital not realizing he would make 4 times the money flipping burgers in mcdonalds a couple hours a week.

but we're not that close so it's not my place to give him a kick in the ass. however he's probably a good example of the kind of ignorance and lack of education / perspective that uber can easily exploit.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#417

Post by AniseAbyss » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 11:44 AM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #403

jmyeet wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most of that is specific to the US. Taxis work in other countries without it being difficult to get one in the middle of the night. And the medallion system is unique to the US I think. > . Uber made the payment process seamless I've been paying taxi fares with a credit card in an in car payment terminal for twenty years in Scandinavia. If I had a business trip to anywhere in the Nordic countries I never needed to ge…

No post body was provided.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#418

Post by TheaomBen » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 11:44 AM UTC

greiskul wrote: post #171

imtringued wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone whose virtual in-game company has grown so much that I lost track how much things cost and how much money I am actually making. I would argue it is very common. This is in a game where there are already turn key spreadsheets that tell you how much profit you are theoretically getting per day. The problem is that your "pipelines" are long and you may end up stock piling stuff for two weeks buying at one pri…

What game are you talking about? Is it eve online?

Sounds like it could. The logistical pipeline for advanced industries used to be... Intricate. And usually depended on exploiting "gig economy" miners at the bottom, come to think of it.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#419

Post by prepend » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 11:45 AM UTC

jjav wrote: post #335

jmharvey wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First this is just inherently wrong. You’ve been able to call and schedule a cab, even in the burbs, since before the internet was a thing. And maybe the driver would show up on time, or maybe they'd see a street hail en route to picking you up and decide to make you wait an extra 40 minutes. Uber drivers cancel, too, of course, but "automatically fall back to a different driver after a cancellation" is a meaningfu…

> Uber drivers cancel, too, of course, Or never show up. Twice with uber (I'm not a frequent user, so this is a high percentage) the driver never showed up. The app didn't let me request someone else until a very long timeout (don't remember how long). Good thing I wasn't going to a flight or other time-sensitive trip on those times, but waiting around in the dark in an industrial park, not so fun. Pre-uber I'd reser…

> Pre-uber I'd reserve cab rides to a relative remote area and not once was there a delay or missed pickup.

I wish I had your experience. Pre-Uber, I had a 75% cancellation rate with car services to the airport. I live in a suburb about 45 minutes away from the airport. Car services would frequently just not show up. I would call, they’d say to wait and I would get the runaround.

I think it was due to manual scheduling.

Uber is much better in that I don’t think I’ve ever had a cancel when going to the airport. But I’ve had many cancels when using it around town. It’s very frustrating and I wish Uber would do something about it. Lyft seems the same to me.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#420

Post by projektfu » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 11:46 AM UTC

prmoustache wrote: post #358

xapata wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some countries, taxis are so often criminal that tourists are warned to avoid them. In some less extreme places, drivers simply never use the meter and the passengers must negotiate every ride. Uber and its competitors have been wonderful for hailing rides in these places.

Apparently in Mexico it used to be the case 5years ago but nowadays you can't rely on Uber either anymore if you are a woman and you don't want to just be a dead raped corpse the next morning. Source: mexican gf and her family still living there. Not sure if the issue comes from Uber not giving out drivers info, drivers blaming someone borrowed their car but not disclosing identity of supposed borrower or police not…

"In Mexico" is really too broad to say what to expect. Cancun, Tijuana, CDMX, and Queretaro, as examples, are going to be vastly different experiences.