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The sharing economy was always a scam

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Re: The sharing economy was always a scam

#21

Post by PostOnce »

anovikov wrote: post #20
PostOnce wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Participation will become non-optional. When one company, or tycoon, or whatever, owns everything, renting will no longer be optional. It's not hard to imagine a world in which most software is SaaS. It's also not hard to imagine a world in which the car company decides to stop selling and start renting. Arcade game manufacturers realized early on that it's stupid to sell a machine that makes $30K for $2.5K, so they…

Well it must be represented by one simple thing: rental yields. What is the rental yield for a typical property in your place? If it's going way up, you can easily afford buying instead of renting so you don't have that problem (at a rental yield of about 6% or so, a mortgage becomes smaller than the rent). If it's going way low, it's a stupid idea to buy and owning will probably never pay for itself and lose money l…

Well, that assumes someone wants to sell a house, or that you're allowed to build a new one. Neither of those may be the case.

Re: The sharing economy was always a scam

#22

Post by nimbius »

Speaking as a professional engine mechanic for a chain of Midwest shops, you have no idea how big a ripoff uber and lyft are until you're in the shop.

The rates you make do not cover fleet style usage of your personal vehicle. Cabbies love the crown Vic because its intercooler let's it idle for hours on end with no worries. And they love the Prius because the idle uses no fuel. But your car? Get ready for more oil changes and brake jobs, and a lot more air filter and steering fluid changes as you go around the blocks. The worst I'd charged shop rate was for a Toyota Camry that had $2500 in service because the uber guy was trying to make it last between paychecks that weren't being paid by uber. A month later in august he lost the transmission at 65000 miles because he never idled in neutral.

Re: The sharing economy was always a scam

#23

Post by PostOnce »

jeffbax wrote: post #12

Articles like this ignore the impact on individuals. For every group that is trying to full time Uber/Lyft or turn an AirBNB into a hotel, there's also tons of people who are doing in the spare time to make some extra or work the better allocation of resources into something beneficial for them. See threads like: https://twitter.com/RantyAmyCurtis/status/110272136190510694... That's what sharing is about, more optima…

Well, it's not hard to imagine a future in which a majority of labor is "just in time" and people all have 6 different part-time gigs going concurrently, taking whichever job notification pops up next on their phone.

Optimal for profit margins for a single company, but at what cost to society as a whole?

Re: The sharing economy was always a scam

#25

Post by neokantian »

PostOnce wrote: post #16
neokantian wrote: post #11

If you do not like the sharing economy, then do not participate in it. "Other people should not be doing this, and should not be doing that, ..." is one bridge too far. For heaven's sake, who the hell are you, to tell other people what to do?

Participation will become non-optional. When one company, or tycoon, or whatever, owns everything, renting will no longer be optional. It's not hard to imagine a world in which most software is SaaS. It's also not hard to imagine a world in which the car company decides to stop selling and start renting. Arcade game manufacturers realized early on that it's stupid to sell a machine that makes $30K for $2.5K, so they…

Well, no, the sky is not falling.

Some people need a world in which they have exactly one employer, as well as a fixed bi-weekly salary, dropped into their bank account, because that is how they want to live. Good for them!

I like to scavenge my surroundings for opportunities, and make money from stuff that occasionally happens to drop from a tree. Once in a while, I meet people who like to do a deal with me. I sell. I buy. I trade. I just love it. I am simply NOT interested in a boring world of bi-weekly wages paid into a bank account.

I do not consider tycoons to be a threat. It is the little, petty SJW bureaucrats that take too much of an interest in other people's business who are the problem.

Re: The sharing economy was always a scam

#26

Post by cwyers »

neokantian wrote: post #11

If you do not like the sharing economy, then do not participate in it. "Other people should not be doing this, and should not be doing that, ..." is one bridge too far. For heaven's sake, who the hell are you, to tell other people what to do?

Here's the thing. Economic transactions can have externalities -- costs to someone not a party to the transaction that are not reflected in the cost of the good or service in the transaction. The "sharing economy" has loads of externalities. It's like saying, if you don't like the bonfire, don't participate to it, when you've set the fire downwind of someone and there's smoke blowing in their tent.

Re: The sharing economy was always a scam

#27

Post by gmmeyer »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #19
jeffbax wrote: post #12

Articles like this ignore the impact on individuals. For every group that is trying to full time Uber/Lyft or turn an AirBNB into a hotel, there's also tons of people who are doing in the spare time to make some extra or work the better allocation of resources into something beneficial for them. See threads like: https://twitter.com/RantyAmyCurtis/status/110272136190510694... That's what sharing is about, more optima…

There's a lot that I agree with in your post and in that thread, but this in particular I take issue with: > One poinI have no idea what orifice @AOC pulled the$3.37 number from, but it’s wrong at best or intentionally deceptive at worst. I never made less than $10/hour and usually made $15-$45 an hour. And this was BEFORE Uber allowed tipping via the app. This woman is clearly not taking her expenses into account wh…

It was a study that was retracted: https://qz.com/1222744/mits-uber-study-couldnt-possibly-have...

She probably never heard about the retraction, it got a lot less press than the original study

Re: The sharing economy was always a scam

#28

Post by anovikov »

PostOnce wrote: post #21
anovikov wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it must be represented by one simple thing: rental yields. What is the rental yield for a typical property in your place? If it's going way up, you can easily afford buying instead of renting so you don't have that problem (at a rental yield of about 6% or so, a mortgage becomes smaller than the rent). If it's going way low, it's a stupid idea to buy and owning will probably never pay for itself and lose money l…

Well, that assumes someone wants to sell a house, or that you're allowed to build a new one. Neither of those may be the case.

Well there's always someone wanting. There is always a real estate market, always. In absolutely all places you can buy or rent. If people find ways to make living in a particular place less important (say by enabling remote work), things will become easier.

Also well, the very small fraction of homeowners who have a privilege of owning these places have effectively won a lottery. They naturally have to protect their winnings. Basically for every one of them there is a 1000 or more of people who own place out of a highly sought-after area like the Valley where his real estate does not appreciate and brings no rent. If you take the averages, all-accounted yields from real estate are laughable and way under the yields from a stock market.

Can we say that someone who bought stock that skyrocketed 1000x, 20 years ago, has to be penalized for it, or be forced to sell? It is either a very smart insight (or inside, but in case of stock it's way way way more probable than in case of real estate), or just blind luck. It doesn't mean same trick is reproducible at any given moment if you have money to buy, the mathematical expectation of profit you will make buying anywhere you could pick at all, is quite low and you better go to a stock market.

Re: The sharing economy was always a scam

#29

Post by trimbo »

jeffbax wrote: post #12

Articles like this ignore the impact on individuals. For every group that is trying to full time Uber/Lyft or turn an AirBNB into a hotel, there's also tons of people who are doing in the spare time to make some extra or work the better allocation of resources into something beneficial for them. See threads like: https://twitter.com/RantyAmyCurtis/status/110272136190510694... That's what sharing is about, more optima…

> That's what sharing is about, more optimal allocation/usage. It's not an end-all solution to everything, it's a supplement.

Do you think that drives down the wages of the people who need to do it as their main source of income?

Re: The sharing economy was always a scam

#30

Post by neokantian »

cwyers wrote: post #26
neokantian wrote: post #11

If you do not like the sharing economy, then do not participate in it. "Other people should not be doing this, and should not be doing that, ..." is one bridge too far. For heaven's sake, who the hell are you, to tell other people what to do?

Here's the thing. Economic transactions can have externalities -- costs to someone not a party to the transaction that are not reflected in the cost of the good or service in the transaction. The "sharing economy" has loads of externalities. It's like saying, if you don't like the bonfire, don't participate to it, when you've set the fire downwind of someone and there's smoke blowing in their tent.

Yeah, it is always possible to discover new externalities, if you want to. If you sleep with that girl, I cannot do that at the same time. So, that is also an externality. Since it affects what I can do, I have the right to stick my nose into that business, no?
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