21–30 of 99 posts
Ironically, if they charged more, the odds are there would be scores of articles about how they are making TOO MUCH profit and should give the money away to worthy causes instead of being "greedy" and keeping the money for themselves. In truth, people will always complain about something when you are successful. This probably means Amazon is doing something right.
This reminds me of an old Russian joke. 3 business owners are in a communist jail. That ask each other what they are in for. Person 1: "I set my prices lower than my competitors, and got sent to jail for price dumping!" Person 2 "I set my prices higher than my competitors and got sent to jail for price gouging!" Person 3 "I set my prices to be the same as my competitors and got set to jail for price fixing!" It has b…
They are not.
But the "promise" that they are, or could, inflates Amazon's stock price.
This is how they bank profit, not by traditional profit on income. This has the advantage that they don't need to pay tax, since they don't make any accounting profit.
What Uber is doing here should absolutely not be allowed. Whenever you go to a city where Uber is in it's first year of operations the prices are insanely low. This also happens when Uber launches a new product like Pool. This enables them to crowd out any competition and then raise prices once they've got control of the market. I have a friend in SF who takes Uber to work every day. It's about 3.5 miles. I assumed h…
This analysis seems pretty shallow. It's interesting that Amazon is losing money in North America. But why? That's clue worth investigating further, not a reason to immediately assume predatory pricing.
Not even losing money, just lower profits than last year. But apparently it's now evil for companies to invest for the long term rather than boosting their quarterly numbers.
What Uber is doing here should absolutely not be allowed. Whenever you go to a city where Uber is in it's first year of operations the prices are insanely low. This also happens when Uber launches a new product like Pool. This enables them to crowd out any competition and then raise prices once they've got control of the market. I have a friend in SF who takes Uber to work every day. It's about 3.5 miles. I assumed h…
I'd like to know how someone drives 3.5mi daily for $2.50 with Uber, even with pool, in SF. My pool rides start out at around $4 one-way, for .5mi and under. UberX is $7+ at minimum, and quickly tops $10 for 1mi+ trips.
It's not Uber Pool it's some new product I hadn't heard of before he mentioned it. Shared ride with a fixed pickup point.
I see the same pricing you see when I use Uber/Lyft.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What Uber is doing here should absolutely not be allowed. What Uber is doing is called loss leading. It would be very hard to outlaw or regulate in any sort of "fair" way. The result you fear--a monopoly with price control--is illegal and is tightly regulated.
You might be able to classify it as dumping. Loss leading itself could also be regulated more. For example, in France it's illegal to resell something for less than the price you paid for it (except during regulated "sales" periods). This prevents companies coming in and using their funds to subsidize the products. I could see the argument that Uber is a reseller, given they're not part of the actual taxi experience
I can see what they're trying to address, but commerce is fickle and often times unpredictable.
What if I thought I saw an opportunity to do business but it turned out to be a bad judgement and now I have 20,000 count of something that isn't moving and I have better things to do than wait for the sale period and at least get half my money back and reinvest it in something else I think might turn a profit?
Maybe there is more to the law than the simple scenario you've laid out. Otherwise that seems stifling.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's called a two-sided-marketplace. It quickly saturates (i.e. you need some minimum number of drivers and riders to bootstrap the marketplace). Network effect is when each user brings additional users (or each user prevents other users from leaving).
It is not just about saturation. For every additional driver, the density of drivers on a map gets higher. When this happens, statistically the closest driver will take X less time to get to you. Two sided markets are not about having a minimum number of people. Two sided markets are literally a network effect. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-sided_market The "traditional" network effect is describing one sided m…
If everyone is spaced evenly around the place and there's no congestion, you need four times as many drivers to halve response times. For a while you get good gains per additional driver, but as the numbers increase the marginal benefit tails off. This means a new player with some capital can likely compete (and is probably what the grandparent meant by "saturation".)
Ironically, if they charged more, the odds are there would be scores of articles about how they are making TOO MUCH profit and should give the money away to worthy causes instead of being "greedy" and keeping the money for themselves. In truth, people will always complain about something when you are successful. This probably means Amazon is doing something right.
Alternatively people are complaining because Amazon is doing something bad. Imagine if you're trying to sell lemonade on the street at a reasonable price, and the rich kid down the block sells at 50% the cost of goods. And all that just being funded by their dad. At one point they're going to be the only lemonade salesperson on the block, and those subsidies are probably going to end. Meanwhile a market was up-ended…
If the loss-leading is unsustainable then it hardly needs to be discouraged, and if it's sustainable it's not really loss-leading. (If it's funded by some other venture with higher margins, like AWS, other players can compete in that market without the albatross of having to maintain the cross-subsidies.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You need enough drivers to get a ride on demand at any time/location and enough riders to keep them busy. Too few drivers you get long waits or surge prices. Too few riders and the drivers start to disappear...
That's called a two-sided-marketplace. It quickly saturates (i.e. you need some minimum number of drivers and riders to bootstrap the marketplace). Network effect is when each user brings additional users (or each user prevents other users from leaving).
What Uber is doing here should absolutely not be allowed. Whenever you go to a city where Uber is in it's first year of operations the prices are insanely low. This also happens when Uber launches a new product like Pool. This enables them to crowd out any competition and then raise prices once they've got control of the market. I have a friend in SF who takes Uber to work every day. It's about 3.5 miles. I assumed h…
What Uber is doing here should absolutely not be allowed. What Uber is doing is called loss leading. It would be very hard to outlaw or regulate in any sort of "fair" way. The result you fear--a monopoly with price control--is illegal and is tightly regulated.
While I agree it's hard to outlaw or regulate loss leading, since it seems to be a common go-to-market strategy, it prevents the smaller guys from competing. It allows those with the upper hand (more capital) to remain dominant and starve out the competition. And the feared result, could very well occur. I wouldn't trust the United States to regulate as heavily as it used to, especially under the purview of Donald Trump.