Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living' • Hacker News Board

Re: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

#101

Post by zeveb » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 3:47 PM UTC

saas_co_de wrote: post #28

humanrebar wrote: post #4

> By “convenient” they mean anonymous people on minimum wage clean up after you. Hey, let's not stigmatize the upper middle class actually hiring people to do worthwhile work. That's how jobs, small businesses, and economic growth happen. > As was quickly pointed out by numerous people this is basically a “bus”. Just, you know, without the poor people. Likewise, this is a good idea. People sharing rides in smaller bu…

The interesting thing is that public transit systems are extremely inefficient. TriMet (Portland, OR) which has a modern mixed bus/light-rail system gets only 20% of expenses from fairs ( http://trimet.org/budget/pdf/2018-adopted-budget.pdf ) That is with charging $5/day capped at $100/month, so if fares were to cover the entire cost, the cost would be $500/month. So, public transit provides a bare bones, horribly un…

In fairness, private transit (e.g. cars) is also extremely inefficient, with gas taxes only paying for roughly half of the cost of roads, signage, lighting, maintenance &c. And then there's the cost in land value of parking lots, the cost to society of car accidents (until very recently, more people died due to car accidents than to guns), the emotional cost of being stuck in a little vehicle for hours upon hours a week.

I do wish that public transit were nicer & cleaner. Something like PRT sounds just about perfect.

Re: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

#102

Post by thriftwy » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 4:01 PM UTC

camgunz wrote: post #98

SamReidHughes wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We wouldn't want fraudulent bus rides, now, would we.

It's more like unsanitary or unsafe vehicles and dangerous drivers who are either unlicensed or violent.

Having ridden public transit in the USA, dollar vans that I have ridden elsewhere have a long way to go before their sanitary status deteriorate as much. I'm talking about scary sticky floors everywhere. Light rail in Sacramento is ghetto on the wheels, and don't pretend blaming it on poverty since dollar vans were in much much poorer areas than CA.

If anything, driver of private vehicle cares more about their vehicle, it being private. Who cares for public ones?

Re: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

#103

Post by barrkel » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 4:08 PM UTC

thriftwy wrote: post #102

camgunz wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like unsanitary or unsafe vehicles and dangerous drivers who are either unlicensed or violent.

Having ridden public transit in the USA, dollar vans that I have ridden elsewhere have a long way to go before their sanitary status deteriorate as much. I'm talking about scary sticky floors everywhere. Light rail in Sacramento is ghetto on the wheels, and don't pretend blaming it on poverty since dollar vans were in much much poorer areas than CA. If anything, driver of private vehicle cares more about their vehicl…

driver of private vehicle cares more about their vehicle, it being private

That's how it starts. But then one bus driver figures that if he gets together a loan, he's able to buy a bunch of buses and hire a bunch of drivers and scale up his income.

Next thing you know, he's trying to evade liability when one of his dodgy buses has an accident, or he's trying to avoid repaying the loan, or he's cheaping out on driver skill. If the whole house of cards falls down, he sets up another shell company via a relative, transfers the assets across via a sale, and continues on his merry way.

The private bus owner with the well-maintained bus goes out of business because the he's outcompeted by the scale efficiencies of the fly by night operator.

Re: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

#104

Post by humanrebar » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 4:15 PM UTC

yorwba wrote: post #86

humanrebar wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean single family homes? Nuclear families seem to be empirically less poverty-prone than other family arrangements. And there seem to be higher order effects to the success of entire communities when there are relatively fewer nuclear families in the neighborhood.

> And there seem to be higher order effects to the success of entire communities when there are relatively fewer nuclear families in the neighborhood. Do you mean as opposed to singles or to extended families? In either case, I'd be interested in a source.

Well, there are an infinite number of lifestyles to be lived. I doubt there are good numbers on dormitory-style lifestyles, for instance. But current numbers show that married households fare well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#P...

https://www.ssa.gov/retirementpolicy/fact-sheets/marital-sta...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240051/

Re: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

#105

Post by humanrebar » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 4:17 PM UTC

kharms wrote: post #19

humanrebar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So basically this becomes viable with... Well, some startups think they can make it viable. Either they can or can't, but making fun of them for reinventing "buses" isn't going to help. Likely any company in this space is looking to as many users as possible while breaking even, banking on self-driving tech developing in the meantime. When the vans drive themselves, the economics will change drastically.

A datapoint: there was a startup in Boston named Bridj that folded because it turned out to not be a viable model.

...facebook wasn't the first social network. To be clear, I'm not arguing it's a great idea. I'm arguing that it's not worth dismissing the work as ludicrous.

The fact that I'm arguing this on HN of all places makes me wonder what happened to the attitudes of hackers, geeks, and entrepreneurs. Let people do something dumb and fail. It's OK to do that sometimes. If it's dumb, don't invest in it.

Re: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

#106

Post by wruza » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 4:18 PM UTC

archagon wrote: post #72

dtech wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Public bus systems should really be exploring a smaller vehicle model more I asked someone from my local bus service once. Their answer was that it's not economically viable for the public bus service, as the only major saving was fuel cost and the extra services don't provide enough revenue to offset the employee cost (otherwise they could service it with the large normal busses). So basically this becomes viable…

I was just in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the city is chock-full of these tiny taxi-buses called "marshrutki". You can use the regular public transit card and everything — costs the same as a regular bus IIRC. Seems to work great and has since Soviet times.

It has to be resurrection of the idea in [probably] better way. These marshrutki were prohibited/heavily restructured long time ago, because everything was wrong with them: drugged drivers, half-working brakes, non-closing doors, refuelling with passengers inside, overloading, uncontrolled cash. These still appear in smaller cities (in much better state), but it is surprising for me to hear about it in SPB.

Not a St.Petersburg citizen though, maybe they managed it right way from the start, but these minibuses appeared long since SU (assuming we’re talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAZelle ). Transporting system of SU was a thing that I really hated in my partially soviet childhood. “Let’s go to ...” was one of worst things I could hear.

Re: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

#107

Post by thriftwy » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 4:58 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #103

thriftwy wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having ridden public transit in the USA, dollar vans that I have ridden elsewhere have a long way to go before their sanitary status deteriorate as much. I'm talking about scary sticky floors everywhere. Light rail in Sacramento is ghetto on the wheels, and don't pretend blaming it on poverty since dollar vans were in much much poorer areas than CA. If anything, driver of private vehicle cares more about their vehicl…

driver of private vehicle cares more about their vehicle, it being private That's how it starts. But then one bus driver figures that if he gets together a loan, he's able to buy a bunch of buses and hire a bunch of drivers and scale up his income. Next thing you know, he's trying to evade liability when one of his dodgy buses has an accident, or he's trying to avoid repaying the loan, or he's cheaping out on driver…

You can obviously hold a call for bids on dollar van routes, so that the best routes go to most capable companies and upstarts have to choose between less desirable routes.

Other than that, you could write same things about bakeries and not buses. But we still have a lot of inexpensive private bakeries around.

Re: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

#108

Post by saas_co_de » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 5:02 PM UTC

camgunz wrote: post #99

saas_co_de wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing is that public transit systems are extremely inefficient. TriMet (Portland, OR) which has a modern mixed bus/light-rail system gets only 20% of expenses from fairs ( http://trimet.org/budget/pdf/2018-adopted-budget.pdf ) That is with charging $5/day capped at $100/month, so if fares were to cover the entire cost, the cost would be $500/month. So, public transit provides a bare bones, horribly un…

Mass transit is generally funded progressively, i.e. people with higher incomes pay proportionately more (via taxes) than those with lower incomes. Are you really arguing to make it regressive? There are no virtues to a regressive structure unless you have some serious animus against lower income people.

Not arguing anything. Just presenting some facts about the actual system costs and pointing out that there is room for innovation.

Re: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

#109

Post by Veratyr » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 5:17 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #4

> By “convenient” they mean anonymous people on minimum wage clean up after you. Hey, let's not stigmatize the upper middle class actually hiring people to do worthwhile work. That's how jobs, small businesses, and economic growth happen. > As was quickly pointed out by numerous people this is basically a “bus”. Just, you know, without the poor people. Likewise, this is a good idea. People sharing rides in smaller bu…

> Public bus systems should really be exploring a smaller vehicle model more. It gets everyone where they need to go with fewer cars (and therefore pollution and traffic).

I've seen this in Russia and Turkey and it works pretty well. My wife's city (small, distant from Moscow) has a few routes and I don't think we ever waited more than 5 minutes for a bus.

Re: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

#110

Post by JumpCrisscross » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 5:39 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #94

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Public bus systems should really be exploring a smaller vehicle model more Unions. This will have to wait for self-driving buses, though even then deployment is unlikely.

Why don't unions like smaller vehicles? Smaller busses = fewer people per bus = more drivers.

New York City bus drivers earn $21 to $32 per hour [1]. Bus tickets cost $2.75 to $6.50 [2]. That means a bus needs 3 to 12 passengers' fees, every hour, solely to pay for the driver.

[1] https://nypost.com/2016/03/13/nycs-highest-paid-bus-driver-d...

[2] http://web.mta.info/metrocard/mcgtreng.htm