The Anti-Uber Way of Disrupting Transportation, Politely
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Re: The Anti-Uber Way of Disrupting Transportation, Politely
#2First of all, it doesn't cost $267 to get from Manchester to London. That's an order of magnitude high. Even Amtrak isn't that bad ($0.65 per person per hour) and Europe has cheaper, faster, and better rail service than the US by far.
That said, I think it's really amusing and interesting that the only thing it's going to take in order to beat Uber, in the long term, is: not be Uber. Just having a more likable CEO and full transparency when dynamic ("surge") pricing is used would go a long way.
Re: The Anti-Uber Way of Disrupting Transportation, Politely
#3My God. A sharing economy company that actually shares things!
Re: The Anti-Uber Way of Disrupting Transportation, Politely
#4First of all, it doesn't cost $267 to get from Manchester to London. That's an order of magnitude high. Even Amtrak isn't that bad ($0.65 per person per hour) and Europe has cheaper, faster, and better rail service than the US by far . That said, I think it's really amusing and interesting that the only thing it's going to take in order to beat Uber, in the long term, is: not be Uber . Just having a more likable CEO…
It does, if you want to buy a peak time ticket (eg 730am) tomorrow morning, I just looked it up. Europe may have a cheaper, faster and better rail service, but the UK is not party to the cheaper bit. You can buy cheap tickets, if you book in advance.
Re: The Anti-Uber Way of Disrupting Transportation, Politely
#5These are entirely different businesses. BlaBlaCar is restricted by unnecessary and economically damaging laws, but puts up with them. Uber and Lyft fight them and offer great jobs. The only people being "rude" are the governments that allow taxi services legal monopolies when it's obvious that doing so creates poor service.
Re: The Anti-Uber Way of Disrupting Transportation, Politely
#6These are entirely different businesses. BlaBlaCar is restricted by unnecessary and economically damaging laws, but puts up with them. Uber and Lyft fight them and offer great jobs. The only people being "rude" are the governments that allow taxi services legal monopolies when it's obvious that doing so creates poor service.
Uber is fighting governments in plenty of places where there aren't legal monopolies, so I'm not sure that's the explanation, or at least not all of it. They've had run-ins with Stockholm, for example, even though Sweden has deregulated taxi pricing and no medallions. Anyone who's properly licensed and insured can start up a taxi service, charging anything they want, even $1000/km if they want [1]. However, while you can charge anything you want, you have to post what that's going to be, publicly and conspicuously on the outside of the cab, which Uber doesn't want to do. Maybe that shouldn't be required either, but it's definitely not a taxi-monopoly question.
[1] This part has caused some problems with legally overpriced taxis ripping off tourists. The fact that Sweden uses SEK rather than EUR helps that scam, because some tourists initially arriving don't yet have any intuitive feel for what 100 or 1000 or 10,000 SEK is worth, and naively assume whatever the taxi is charging must be "the going rate", since they assume taxi fares are probably regulated (like in most places).
Re: The Anti-Uber Way of Disrupting Transportation, Politely
#7"Disrupting politely" apparently means "drivers don't make a profit therefore aren't classed as professionals". In other words, "if you would like to compete with our monopolized transportation mafia you can't make any money out of it". Which simply means that you are not allowed to compete. You can only run charity and we'll call it "disruption" and continue taking profits.
I can't wait for a purely p2p service that allows drivers to pick up people for bitcoin and get paid directly without any intermediary that is forced to "comply" with whatever arbitrary "regulations". To make sure both drivers and riders and not morons, they could use 2-of-2 multisig insurance deposit (both parties deposit $50 each with a single $100 output and can unlock it only together upon arrival, with respect for the fee). Upfront deposit would put people in nash equilibrium and force them to be nice towards each other. Instead of centralized ratings we could use an implicit web-of-trust formed by personal recommendation tokens that are passed from friend to a friend when one recommends a driver to another.
Re: The Anti-Uber Way of Disrupting Transportation, Politely
#8These are entirely different businesses. BlaBlaCar is restricted by unnecessary and economically damaging laws, but puts up with them. Uber and Lyft fight them and offer great jobs. The only people being "rude" are the governments that allow taxi services legal monopolies when it's obvious that doing so creates poor service.
Uber is fighting governments in plenty of places where there aren't legal monopolies, so I'm not sure that's the explanation, or at least not all of it. They've had run-ins with Stockholm, for example, even though Sweden has deregulated taxi pricing and no medallions. Anyone who's properly licensed and insured can start up a taxi service, charging anything they want, even $1000/km if they want [1]. However, while you…
"BlaBlaCar is restricted by unnecessary and economically damaging laws, but puts up with them. Uber and Lyft fight them"
That's the take away. You can't compare the two and say one is simply being "polite". They take different approaches. Uber and Lyft are doing a whole lot of good and making big and beneficial waves. BlaBlaCar simply offers a competitive service where it's allowed to do so. The article smells of a "holier-than-thou" attitude which is completely unfounded.
Re: The Anti-Uber Way of Disrupting Transportation, Politely
#9"Disrupting politely" apparently means "drivers don't make a profit therefore aren't classed as professionals". In other words, "if you would like to compete with our monopolized transportation mafia you can't make any money out of it". Which simply means that you are not allowed to compete. You can only run charity and we'll call it "disruption" and continue taking profits. I can't wait for a purely p2p service that…
Did you just compare honest hard working taxi drivers to mafia? If government didn't require licences for taxi drivers, you'd have some crazy place like Russia where anyone can be a private driver without any licence and customers actually get cheaper prices and can get cars any time of day in seconds by just raising a hand and negotiate the price beforehand. Oh wait...
Re: The Anti-Uber Way of Disrupting Transportation, Politely
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uber is fighting governments in plenty of places where there aren't legal monopolies, so I'm not sure that's the explanation, or at least not all of it. They've had run-ins with Stockholm, for example, even though Sweden has deregulated taxi pricing and no medallions. Anyone who's properly licensed and insured can start up a taxi service, charging anything they want, even $1000/km if they want [1]. However, while you…
"BlaBlaCar is restricted by unnecessary and economically damaging laws, but puts up with them. Uber and Lyft fight them" That's the take away. You can't compare the two and say one is simply being "polite". They take different approaches. Uber and Lyft are doing a whole lot of good and making big and beneficial waves. BlaBlaCar simply offers a competitive service where it's allowed to do so. The article smells of a "…
I guess that's the part I disagree with. I think Uber and Lyft are mostly doing harm, and not even an interesting new kind of harm: shady taxi companies skirting laws to up their profits is as old as the taxi business. (And doing it "with an app" doesn't make it tech, either, any more than Domino's Pizza is a tech company.) And in some cases (like Sweden) I suspect the conflict is even manufactured for PR purposes: Uber relies on "disruption" PR for its marketing, so has to manufacture disruption even where there isn't anything actually standing in the way of just running a legit taxi company.