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The Uber Bubble

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Re: The Uber Bubble

#131

Post by lhorie »

Barrin92 wrote: post #22

The piece is exactly right. Uber is effectively an instrument to shift economic gains from labour to capital by atomizing the workforce. From a macroeconomic perspective this is terrible because turning taxi firms into countless of one man businesses provides no efficiency gains, it's basically reverse economic development. There is a version of Uber that actually makes sense. As a lean SaaS company that sells its so…

But it's not like people are necessarily worse off by choosing to drive for Uber. The thing is that for a lot of drivers, Uber is complementary income on top of a primary, inflexible income source. AFAIK, there's nothing else other than gig economy that lets someone supplement income piecemeal.

If you think in terms of socio-economic mobility, isn't the ability to squeeze extra earning opportunities in between other responsibilities a good thing?

Also, Uber has shown that it isn't 100% effective at "exploiting" its market. Last year, a lot of drivers were taking home 6 digit gross income due to driver shortages and the ability to opt into stupidly long work weeks. That's pretty significant for what is effectively a unskilled job.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#132

Post by bombcar »

sbarre wrote: post #76
ttcbj wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are all interesting points. However, I recently used Uber Premier twice in Miami, after not using any car service for two years, and the experience was excellent. It was fast, friendly, the car was nice, and I was happy with the price. For my use case, I am happy to pay more to get a better service, but it didn’t really seem that expensive. Both drivers had been doing Uber for a long time, which would be surpri…

> Both drivers had been doing Uber for a long time, which would be surprising if they were getting ripped off Did you happen to ask if this was their full-time gig, or if they were doing it as supplementary income?

The best Uber I ever got picked up in was a high end Mercedes driven by a bored retiree wanting something to do on weekends.

Clearly that ride was subsidized by a number of things and wasn’t sustainable.

But I don’t expect limo service at taxi rates - and I’ve started noticing that some Ubers have been literal taxis with an Uber and Lyft sticker on them.

Lately I’ve been using shuttle service or just car service.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#133

Post by amelius »

lhorie wrote: post #131
Barrin92 wrote: post #22

The piece is exactly right. Uber is effectively an instrument to shift economic gains from labour to capital by atomizing the workforce. From a macroeconomic perspective this is terrible because turning taxi firms into countless of one man businesses provides no efficiency gains, it's basically reverse economic development. There is a version of Uber that actually makes sense. As a lean SaaS company that sells its so…

But it's not like people are necessarily worse off by choosing to drive for Uber. The thing is that for a lot of drivers, Uber is complementary income on top of a primary, inflexible income source. AFAIK, there's nothing else other than gig economy that lets someone supplement income piecemeal. If you think in terms of socio-economic mobility, isn't the ability to squeeze extra earning opportunities in between other…

> Last year, a lot of drivers were taking home 6 digit gross income due to driver shortages. That's pretty significant for what is effectively a unskilled job.

Source needed. Might just as well be a publicity stunt by Uber.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#134

Post by wutbrodo »

systemvoltage wrote: post #91
rzz3 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite all of the negatives, many of which I agree with, the legacy taxi industry really sucked for riders. Riding in a taxi feels dirty to me, to be honest. Old, ugly cars that never seem well maintained, having to actually call someone on a phone and tell them where to pick you up, often not accepting Apple Pay, Android Pay, credit cards. Rude drivers with no rating system to disincentivize it… It’s sad that Uber…

You forgot safety. I can’t recall how many times I’ve come close to an accident by Taxi drivers. Fuck them. These people are the most unsafe drivers on the road.

I live in lower Manhattan now, and my unconscious mental model for navigating the streets as a ped/biker includes a pretty large coefficient on is_yellowcab. They're complete menaces.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#135

Post by lr4444lr »

rzz3 wrote: post #43
Barrin92 wrote: post #22

The piece is exactly right. Uber is effectively an instrument to shift economic gains from labour to capital by atomizing the workforce. From a macroeconomic perspective this is terrible because turning taxi firms into countless of one man businesses provides no efficiency gains, it's basically reverse economic development. There is a version of Uber that actually makes sense. As a lean SaaS company that sells its so…

Despite all of the negatives, many of which I agree with, the legacy taxi industry really sucked for riders. Riding in a taxi feels dirty to me, to be honest. Old, ugly cars that never seem well maintained, having to actually call someone on a phone and tell them where to pick you up, often not accepting Apple Pay, Android Pay, credit cards. Rude drivers with no rating system to disincentivize it… It’s sad that Uber…

Not to mention the rent seeking behavior of the industry.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#136

Post by skippyboxedhero »

scarface74 wrote: post #116
Animats wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google was a money-loser for quite some time No. Google was incorporated in 1998, profitable in 2001, and the IPO was in 2004. Total investment pre-IPO was about $25 million.

Out of all five of the largest tech companies - Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Only Amazon ran at a loss for any significant amount of time before IPOing.

It was very obvious that Amazon wasn't unprofitable in any real sense. They only raised $100m, and they kept growing.

The difference with Amazon is that they have a very capital-intensive business, and when these grow very quickly then the accounting is basically useless (you see this with some ecomm companies, in some countries the market literally does not understand operating leverage in these businesses...so the business will build a new warehouse, the stock will drop 75%, top-line is growing 50%/year, and then the stock 10x when operating leverage comes through).

I think profitability is a sign that your business works. The "first-mover" advantage is way, way, way overstated. Investing is growth is great, but some businesses are clearly investing in growth that is unprofitable (one interesting example here is NFLX, they generate a profit in accounting terms but it is pretty clear that their business is either not profitable or taking on massive risk for marginal profit).

Re: The Uber Bubble

#137

Post by thr0wawayf00 »

lhorie wrote: post #131
Barrin92 wrote: post #22

The piece is exactly right. Uber is effectively an instrument to shift economic gains from labour to capital by atomizing the workforce. From a macroeconomic perspective this is terrible because turning taxi firms into countless of one man businesses provides no efficiency gains, it's basically reverse economic development. There is a version of Uber that actually makes sense. As a lean SaaS company that sells its so…

But it's not like people are necessarily worse off by choosing to drive for Uber. The thing is that for a lot of drivers, Uber is complementary income on top of a primary, inflexible income source. AFAIK, there's nothing else other than gig economy that lets someone supplement income piecemeal. If you think in terms of socio-economic mobility, isn't the ability to squeeze extra earning opportunities in between other…

> But it's not like people are necessarily worse off by choosing to drive for Uber.

I'm reminded of the video of the Uber driver confronting Kalanick during a ride because the driver had been encouraged to buy a high end car by Uber in order to participate in Uber Black[0]. After he bought the car, Uber started lowering the rates on Uber Black, which resulted in less income for the drivers.

That guy sounded like he was worse off by choosing to drive for Uber and taking their own advice.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW50dnWVfGU

Re: The Uber Bubble

#138

Post by bombcar »

acchow wrote: post #48
thematrixturtle wrote: post #9

The real magic of Uber is that it allows drivers to convert the depreciation of their car into cash at a time and schedule of their own choosing. For the reasons discussed in the story, this may still technically be a net negative in the long term compared to driving a regular cab fulltime, but a) drivers find it far preferable to/cheaper than alternatives like payday loans, and b) many Uber drivers have multiple job…

You are 100% correct. This is the magic There are people who want to make a positive return on their time + vehicle depreciation. But they are on the open market competing against people who are in a cash crunch and happy to have a net negative return on the same, as long as it temporarily allows them to convert depreciation into cash. This is why drivers will always lose in the long term. They are racing against eac…

I suspect that few Uber drivers have the time or ability to fully plot out depreciation costs, and instead do a simple “tank of gas + X hours = cash”. After all you end up with the same car afterwards, right?

Taking advantage of people who don’t work it out for themselves is despicable at best, highly immoral at worst.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#139

Post by hackernewds »

acchow wrote: post #48
thematrixturtle wrote: post #9

The real magic of Uber is that it allows drivers to convert the depreciation of their car into cash at a time and schedule of their own choosing. For the reasons discussed in the story, this may still technically be a net negative in the long term compared to driving a regular cab fulltime, but a) drivers find it far preferable to/cheaper than alternatives like payday loans, and b) many Uber drivers have multiple job…

You are 100% correct. This is the magic There are people who want to make a positive return on their time + vehicle depreciation. But they are on the open market competing against people who are in a cash crunch and happy to have a net negative return on the same, as long as it temporarily allows them to convert depreciation into cash. This is why drivers will always lose in the long term. They are racing against eac…

The missing part of this jigsaw is that not everyone is _simultaneously_ seeking to _temporarily_ convert depreciation into cash. with enough market players, such a microsystem can sustain itself

Re: The Uber Bubble

#140

Post by axg11 »

cameronh90 wrote: post #118

Do people actually claim Uber is a successful business? In the UK, none of the original companies that built the railroads still exist. Many of the railway companies were never particularly profitable and the railway boom was a stock market bubble. Lots of them were fraudulent or poorly run. Eventually they all either went out of business, or amalgamated and ultimately got nationalised. Nevertheless, they proved the…

An interesting perspective, but I think the key difference is that Uber has built no lasting infrastructure. I do agree that Uber has improved the taxi/private vehicle transport industry in essentially every market it entered. In London (UK) for example, taxis were previously mainly used by tourists, the rich, or the very drunk. Uber changed this completely, making it accessible for many more people.

If Uber disappears I’m not sure what a follow-up company can build on top of? The only lasting impact I can see is that Uber popularised “gig work” so that future companies and even Lyft, DoorDash, etc. had an easier time to roll out the same model.

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