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The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

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Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#111

Post by gfedtbyby »

usrusr wrote: post #84
TylerE wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the vertical. I would not be real comfortable booking lodging on some random portal, especially if we're talking more of an AirBnB thing vs hotels.

Yeah, that's one of the moats some have but booking.com has not: you don't just pop up a hotel from nothing, and the hypothetical failure mode of complete fakes appearing out of thin air is not only solved by payment on site but also by the local hotel owner community having a financial interest in policing their turf. Or not, could be a fun plot for some speculative fiction: on a cooperative post-booking.com platfor…

Booking will likely side with the consumer if something goes wrong. A cooperative controlled by hotel owners? I'm not so sure..

That + trust + customer support at least for me is worth more than at most 5-10% you could save.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#112

Post by healthyusa »

Zach_the_Lizard wrote: post #107
master-lincoln wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber and Lyft seem like a step back: less safety for drivers and passengers as cars are not company owned and inspected and there are no checks on drivers that a taxi company would do. Also the gig economy is overall probably a negative for society as working people do not have the safety of employment along with benefits. What risk or investment does e.g. Uber have that justifies taking a 20% cut? From a consumers p…

> as cars are not company owned and inspected The worst taxi I've been in had a completely broken suspension that bottomed out on every bump and threw the car all over the road. My wife got car sick, and we were both afraid we'd crash due to how out of control it was. The cigarette smell and broken AC were obligatory, of course. Don't forget the check engine light and squeaky brakes. The taxi owners did not care abou…

Gone. It’s all Uber now. A few green cabs. Odds of finding a yellow cab outside of Manhattan are slim.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#113

Post by joncrocks »

nologic01 wrote: post #102
TylerE wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the vertical. I would not be real comfortable booking lodging on some random portal, especially if we're talking more of an AirBnB thing vs hotels.

Not sure where the "random portal" creeps in. A portal underwritten by all the hoteliers in a country / region is abouy as much assurance you can get.

If there were/are lots of small portals for each region/group of hotels, how would you know which portal is the (a?) genuine portal?

People on the other end of genuine transactions want/need some kind of payment from the people booking (to prevent at a minimum people booking lots of rooms with no intention of staying), but that's an attractive target for scammers. Especially as people often book things a significant length of time in advance.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#114

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

nologic01 wrote: post #67

"Digital" cooperatives using (optionally) open source platforms is an idea that should be much more explored imho. The concept applies to so many verticals involving small companies or individual operators (from taxis, to hotels, to restaurants, to real estate agents, local bookstores, cinemas, to game developers etc. etc.) The inability of large numbers of small entities to coordinate and cooperate in the digital er…

I'm surprised streamer or other content creator co-ops aren't a thing, especially after all the Twitch drama.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#115

Post by onetokeoverthe »

TylerE wrote: post #75
usrusr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much "this!". The hotel/booking is the most blatant example, because the bar for "good enough" wouldn't really be that far up. The only moat they have is worldwide discoverability (a regional cooperative just won't reach people who visit once, cooperatives would have to start global, or at least be really, really good at federating) and that the threshold for critical mass in that market is winner takes all: at le…

Depends on the vertical. I would not be real comfortable booking lodging on some random portal, especially if we're talking more of an AirBnB thing vs hotels.

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Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#116

Post by clarkevans »

nologic01 wrote: post #67

"Digital" cooperatives using (optionally) open source platforms is an idea that should be much more explored imho. The concept applies to so many verticals involving small companies or individual operators (from taxis, to hotels, to restaurants, to real estate agents, local bookstores, cinemas, to game developers etc. etc.) The inability of large numbers of small entities to coordinate and cooperate in the digital er…

> "Digital" cooperatives

"Platform cooperative" is the term used in the literature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_cooperative

https://platform.coop/

I particularly like Nathan Schneider's writings:

https://nathanschneider.info/articles-list/

Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#117

Post by hoseja »

nologic01 wrote: post #67

"Digital" cooperatives using (optionally) open source platforms is an idea that should be much more explored imho. The concept applies to so many verticals involving small companies or individual operators (from taxis, to hotels, to restaurants, to real estate agents, local bookstores, cinemas, to game developers etc. etc.) The inability of large numbers of small entities to coordinate and cooperate in the digital er…

This is like chum in the water for various parasites IMO.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#118

Post by onetokeoverthe »

nologic01 wrote: post #101
TotalCrackpot wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The autocracy of a top-down corporate structure is more effective than a democratic collective. If that was the case then Soviet Union's central planning would be more efficient than Liberal democracy's market capitalism. The efficiency of corporations stems from unfair advantages states gives them like intellectual property rights or from socialising their losses and privatising their gains from public budget.

Not sure this a good counterexample. In fact we have plenty of proof that loose collectives dont perform well under rapid change conditions. There is no reason why the ubers and bookings etc should not have been actually platforms developed and owned by the respective sectors using more or less the same technologies. In fact there are some examples. The lag in responding to a risk of opportunity is intrinsic to a con…

[dead]

Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#119

Post by aembleton »

runeks wrote: post #97
cortesoft wrote: post #20

This is an interesting startup filling a need, but I don't think it is really competing with Uber and Lyft, because they are only doing prescheduled rides. The killer feature for Uber/Lyft is being able to get a ride at any time on demand in a matter of minutes. It doesn't seem like this will be able to get there. I have wondered if a pure market making app would work... let drivers and riders place bids... a driver…

> I have wondered if a pure market making app would work... let drivers and riders place bids... a driver can lower their bid to get hired faster and a rider can increase their bid to get picked up faster. The app would just take a fixed cut. This is a good idea. But it's important to note that price is not the only relevant parameter here (as opposed to e.g. buying company shares, where two shares are exactly the sa…

Could just offer it to the user. They might have said only drivers of 4.5 or greater. So the first one would be shown, but have the cheaper $26 one to the left and the $35 4.9 star one to the right. Let the user decide which they want.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#120

Post by hmillison »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #60
tootie wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In NYC the volumes are humongous. They could probably build a successful business just going back and forth from airports.

They could have a successful business that way, but I'm not sure it's one that can handle 9,000+ drivers like the article calls out with any sort of equitable scheduling. For context, that's more drivers than the entire city of San Francisco typically has at peak. Maybe I'm just vastly underestimating the size of the NYC airport market though.

The city of San Francisco is ~10% of NYC's population so it's not a good comparison.
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