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We must return to an economy fueled by innovation, rather than disruption

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Re: We must return to an economy fueled by innovation, rather than disruption

#131

Post by iso1631 »

omegalulw wrote: post #36
simonbarker87 wrote: post #15

Fully agree with this. It seems like so many of the apps that come to dominate just make up for shortcomings unique to the US that then, with money, take over the rest of the west for no good reason other than scale to get 25 people at the top of those companies rich. I’ve never seen the need for Uber. Taxis have never been an issue in the UK and the most successful firms in the city I lived when Uber was starting ou…

Your argument is essentially that just because you don't need/like Uber doesn't mean it's useful? The problem Uber is addressing is not just a US problem - with Uber you essentially don't have to deal with all the shit taxi drivers pull, like refusing rides if they have to go to a slightly less profitable area, overcharging for rides for people new to the area/tourists, etc. Not to mention that with Uber you know exa…

> with Uber you essentially don't have to deal with all the shit taxi drivers pull, like refusing rides if they have to go to a slightly less profitable area

That's exactly what happens now

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/uber-upfront-destinations

> Not to mention that with Uber you know exactly when the driver is coming

Not any more, they cancel

Re: We must return to an economy fueled by innovation, rather than disruption

#132

Post by bsenftner »

servytor wrote: post #32

I just find it really weird that there wasn't a thinktank in 2005 or so, that said "Okay, what are the next big phone applications?" and invented Uber and a few others. What is the point of these thinktanks if they can't predict 3 years ahead along our current technological advancement curve?

Sounds like you're unaware what a "thinktank" does: they are political propaganda machines with enough funding to impact the pop culture fringe of whatever industry funds the thinktank. In the US, most visible thinktanks are GOP/conservative marketing operations, such as The Heritage Foundation.

Re: We must return to an economy fueled by innovation, rather than disruption

#133

Post by bsenftner »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #130

I thought I read in a different article that we have seen tremendous gains in productivity but no gains in real wages.

There is no real journalism, only perspectives trying to win mindshare. Those that believe, and may be able to prove in productivity gains are being actively shouted down by those better funded saying otherwise. The truth? There is no truth.

Re: We must return to an economy fueled by innovation, rather than disruption

#134

Post by 300bps »

herunan wrote: post #116

Can we get an open source gig economy app where 75% of the profits go to gig workers? Then 7.5% would go towards employee rights and benefits of gig workers, 7.5% towards contributors improving the software, and 10% towards customer support and legal third parties.

Can we get an open source gig economy app

Sure, start writing it now. The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

Re: We must return to an economy fueled by innovation, rather than disruption

#135

Post by minusf »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #67
whitepaint wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You click a button, someone comes to pick you up in a few minutes. You know exactly how much you are gonna pay. Even if you are just a tourist. Uber (and other applications like it) is so much more superior to taxis that you cannot even compare them (unless you want to frivolously whine). They brought insane amount of innovation and I am so thankful for that.

I already had access to this exact experience with a taxi firm in Newcastle where I used to live pre Uber - so yeh, I don’t see what benefit Uber brought. Also, the firm that had that app had clean cars, with driver in clean clothes and they knew the roads well.

let's all move to newcastle!

Re: We must return to an economy fueled by innovation, rather than disruption

#136

Post by ilikerashers »

HPsquared wrote: post #70
IMSAI8080 wrote: post #8

I heard the problem expressed as a good ideas shortage versus too much investment capital. Interest rates have been incredibly low since the 2008 banking crash, so where does the spare capital go? There's not enough innovative ideas around (that investors like) to absorb the money. So some of the cash is getting thrown at complete nonsense and the remaining good ideas are receiving excessive capital. So there's a lot…

It sounds more like a banking problem than an innovation problem.

I agree with that. Money seems to flow to "safe" products. Some minor iteration of payments, CRM, taxis or fitness.

How do you fix it when the incentives are skewed towards quick bucks? Government pushing certain industries has worked for China. There'll be a lot of opposition to that in the US I'd imagine.

Re: We must return to an economy fueled by innovation, rather than disruption

#138

Post by bsenftner »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #4

My take on the productivity paradox is software is a form of literacy . We have put a pen and paper onto every desktop and every pocket but almost no-one can read or write. Edit: And those that can find that only a tiny fraction of the fold is written down (accessible through the virtual cyber world). Amazon's secret to success was forcing every service to live behind a "public" API.

If we're gonna talk about literacy, we need to talk about how many people receive college educations, yet have across the board weak literacy as operating, functional humans. Not just reading, but in thinking itself, as well as care of their bodies such that they can think at all. Critical analysis is no longer being taught, or its teaching is failing hard. I meet quite a few people that simply are incapable of stringing together logical ideas greater than 2-3 concepts. And the concepts they use everyday, they barely grasp and have no foundational understanding how such processes operate or even continue to be.

This a pure education issue, and that includes eradication of the false education taught by religious backed educational institutes. The magical thinking taught by religious backed schools and universities create mentally constrained individuals who live in a demon haunted world and are dragging down all of civilization.

Re: We must return to an economy fueled by innovation, rather than disruption

#139

Post by akvadrako »

herunan wrote: post #116

Can we get an open source gig economy app where 75% of the profits go to gig workers? Then 7.5% would go towards employee rights and benefits of gig workers, 7.5% towards contributors improving the software, and 10% towards customer support and legal third parties.

It's called a platform co-op and many exist, but it's hard to compete with VC money.

Uber is losing money so I don't know think drivers want a slice of the profits.

Re: We must return to an economy fueled by innovation, rather than disruption

#140

Post by jasode »

Beltalowda wrote: post #113
Jabbles wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely disagree - taxis in the UK used to be awful, none of them had apps before Uber. Black cabs in London were generally good due to the high entry requirements but you could only get them by flagging them down somewhere fairly central. Uber introduced competition which has massively improved all other taxi services. These days there's nothing special about Uber except its ubiquity so I don't care if it fails n…

You could just phone a cab, no? That's what I did anyway; it's less convenient than an app, but back in the day you didn't have mobile phones either so not much option really. I don't really see how an "app" is fundamentally all that different, and it's kind of an obvious thing to add once smartphones become popular. I agree that Uber injected some fresh energy in a somewhat complacent market, but the real "innovatio…

>You could just phone a cab, no? That's what I did anyway; it's less convenient than an app, [...] I don't really see how an "app" is fundamentally all that different,

It's more than just a substitution of tapping an icon vs dialing a phone number.

The Uber business model of non-medallion cars and geographic matching algorithm builds up a "distributed mesh" of drivers to serve passengers -- especially those who are not at typical taxi "hubs" like airports, convention centers, downtown hotels, etc.

Before Uber, getting from one suburb to another suburb using a taxi was unreliable. A traditional taxi dispatcher can broadcast a ride request from a potential passenger in the suburbs but drivers can ignore it and wait for the more lucrative airport-to-downtown ride for $50. Why? Because the taxi meter only runs when that passenger is in the car so it punishes suburb-to-suburb trips and instead, incentives them to wait for the longer airport trips. So hub-to-suburb and suburb-back-to-hub is "dead time" the drivers are not paid for.

A traditional taxi company -- even with an app -- doesn't build that geographically distributed mesh to the same degree. The economic constraint was the taxi meter.

When I was stuck in some distant suburb and had to use taxi companies, the way I "hacked" them to reliably come was to tell dispatch to tell the taxi driver I will tip an extra $20 for the ride. Basically, a form of bribery so the taxi drivers wouldn't ignore the dispatch call.

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