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Uber launches flat fares in San Francisco through subscription

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Re: Uber launches flat fares in San Francisco through subscription

#131

Post by pjlegato »

huac wrote: post #87
throwaway991199 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL. Go look at Europe. The answer to that is a definite hell-no.

Socialists have historically been some of the biggest proponents of democracy. You're probably trolling, but it'd be amusing to know which countries you think have socialist governments in place by force.

Perhaps you have heard of the People's Democratic Republics of East Germany, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, and Albania? Socialism was imposed by a foreign occupying army.

Or take the Soviet Union itself. The democratically elected Provisional Government was overthrown by force. Even the socialists-only Constituent Assembly election was simply voided and ignored by the Bolsheviks when they overwhelmingly lost.

Your claim is empirically false. Socialism has historically been imposed involuntarily at gunpoint in almost all cases where it has achieved any measure of real power. Moreover, once established, its show elections are a farce, with only pre-selected Party approved candidates allowed to win.

You will no doubt reply that none of this was done by "real" socialists, and that are the only "real" socialists. This is the "No True Scotsman fallacy".

Re: Uber launches flat fares in San Francisco through subscription

#132

Post by xkcd-sucks »

the_watcher wrote: post #97
nicwolff wrote: post #66

Uber has taken $12B of capital, broken the regulatory regimes and opened the drive-for-hire markets, marketed the benefits of drive-for-hire and ride-sharing to drivers and consumers, and helped drivers finance vehicles – but now there seems to be no barrier to entry for any competing service except writing an app. I'm happy to let VCs pay for my comfortable daily ride to work but I don't see how this is sustainable.…

> but now there seems to be no barrier to entry for any competing service except writing an app. Except network of drivers, network of riders with the app installed, name recognition, capital to run the backend systems and delve into mapping algorithms, etc.

That's basically the barrier to entry of running a cab company minus the licensing fees.

Re: Uber launches flat fares in San Francisco through subscription

#133

Post by melvinmt »

capkutay wrote: post #116
the_watcher wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but now there seems to be no barrier to entry for any competing service except writing an app. Except network of drivers, network of riders with the app installed, name recognition, capital to run the backend systems and delve into mapping algorithms, etc.

Yeah I think barrier to entry is misunderstood as a technical attribute of a company. Of course it's possible to build some app that tells people nearby to pick them up with metering/billing services built in. From a business standpoint, it would almost be impossible to duplicate what they have today.

Obligatory quote (I should write a blog post on this subject some day):

"The most common cause of failure in leadership is produced by treating adaptive challenges as if they were technical problems" - Ron Heifetz

Re: Uber launches flat fares in San Francisco through subscription

#134

Post by AnimalMuppet »

pjlegato wrote: post #131
huac wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socialists have historically been some of the biggest proponents of democracy. You're probably trolling, but it'd be amusing to know which countries you think have socialist governments in place by force.

Perhaps you have heard of the People's Democratic Republics of East Germany, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, and Albania? Socialism was imposed by a foreign occupying army. Or take the Soviet Union itself. The democratically elected Provisional Government was overthrown by force. Even the socialists-only Constituent Assembly election was simply voided and ignored by t…

History is split. Marxist-style socialism was installed by force in Eastern Europe, Russia, and other places. Democratic socialism was installed by free elections in northern Europe, and continued there in later free elections, with candidates of multiple parties allowed to run.

Re: Uber launches flat fares in San Francisco through subscription

#135

Post by neosat »

rdl wrote: post #125
maerF0x0 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at least not without a 10x improvement in some area. If someone can get the cost down to 1/10th or speed it up 10x etc, then uber may find itself down and out (or racing to catchup).

If you're talking about scale: Just build an app which cherry-picks part of the market -- either specific users or specific locations or specific use cases -- and then fails back to Uber (automatically, or manually) when unavailable. i.e. I could build "the Uber for when you want to go out on a date and impress someone in the car" as an overlay service.

>> i.e. I could build "the Uber for when you want to go out on a date and impress someone in the car" as an overlay service.

There is a service for that. It's called Uber Black.

Re: Uber launches flat fares in San Francisco through subscription

#136

Post by CodeSheikh »

Seeing from the point of view of an investment banker, the money that Uber was going to get at the end of the month ($20-$30) will receive it now a month advance and Uber investors can put it towards whatever investments they want and in this way make extra $$$ and have another revenue stream going.

Or Uber can pay off its drivers more earlier and in this way win more of their loyalty for Uber. Brilliant.

Re: Uber launches flat fares in San Francisco through subscription

#137

Post by refurb »

Nashhhh wrote: post #27
Analemma_ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Margaret Thatcher once said "The problem with socialism is, you eventually run out of other people's money", which makes it ironic and humorous that Uber, the poster child of Valley Objectivism, has basically the same problem with their "price dumping funded by VCs" model.

The key difference being that in the case of Uber, those VCs and investors gave their money voluntarily.

More importantly, it's not my money. I could care less if they lose it all.

Now taxes, that's a different story.

Re: Uber launches flat fares in San Francisco through subscription

#138

Post by freddyc »

alaskamiller wrote: post #50

Back in September of 2009 JetBlue offered an all you can jet pass because September is traditionally the worst slump of the year. Summer's over, people start schools and jobs, travel drops overall. This is the same trick to get you out there more. It's also inevitably the end game for Uber. Deliver value for less than your monthly car payment. Someone is crunching the numbers right now figuring out exactly how much L…

That was the best $500 I ever spent! I had just wrapped up a job and spent the entire month traveling the US and parts of the Caribbean all for the price of one trans-continental flight. I was really hoping they'd repeat the offer the following year, but alas it was a one-time deal.

Re: Uber launches flat fares in San Francisco through subscription

#139

Post by abduhl »

ricardobeat wrote: post #126
vwcx wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "sustainable" in your reply is a joke when you consider the unsustainability of the automobile for single rider transit. Electric or not, it's a tough sell compared to mass transit.

Not if one car serves, let's say, 200 people a day instead of a single owner.

One car serving 200 passengers a day is one passenger every 7.2 minutes. This equates to roughly 4 miles at 35 miles an hour. This assumes perfect routing and perfect loading/unloading (i.e. - the passenger magically appears and disappears in the car and that a new passenger is always ready to magically appear when the last one disappears). This seems rather short, and is a conservative estimate.

These 800 miles would be reimbursed at $460 using the IRS mileage rate which is for gasoline vehicles, but assume that only 1/3 of that is gas and the other 2/3 is depreciation, wear/tear, licensing, etc. then we see that Uber would need to have each rider pay $1.53 just to break even on the cost of owning the vehicle. This ignores the fact that self-driving cars are likely to be much more expensive when it comes to non-gasoline costs. I believe I read somewhere today that the Teslas takes ~3mile/kWh so this cost would need to be added in, this is ~$0.07/mile at 20 cents per kWh. Total cost to break even is then roughly $1.80 per passenger, plus whatever additional costs a new and experimental all electric fleet with undefined insurance statistics costs above a regular vehicle.

Assuming their current model of $8 per uberX ride is an example of what they expect to hit, then Uber is taking in $6.20 per passenger or $1240 per car per day or $452,600 per car per year assuming perfect efficiency.

The question that really matters though is how will Uber's fleet deal with peak passenger demand? These 200 riders are not spaced out evenly at 7 minute intervals - most of them all will want to ride at the same time. People will stop using Uber if the waits become too long and Uber will lose its competitive advantage.

Re: Uber launches flat fares in San Francisco through subscription

#140

Post by argonaut »

tedunangst wrote: post #72
Nashhhh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key difference being that in the case of Uber, those VCs and investors gave their money voluntarily.

Voluntarily, but not without expectation of recompense. At some point the monopoly will start focusing on another source of money...

The entirety of capitalism is voluntary transactions with expectation of recompense. I'm not sure what your point is.
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