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Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

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Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#281

Post by Joakal »

manigandham wrote: post #265
nannal wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? If I'm a poor speeding Fin, then a non-scaled speeding ticket could cost me a good number of days food. If I'm a rich speeding Fin then a non-scaled ticket is just the cost to travel quickly. When you're wealthy enough fines don't matter there's no point in the police enforcing them aside from as an additional income stream.

If this were the case, then rich people everywhere else would be speeding like crazy and just paying the small fines. That clearly is not the case, because fines are not the only thing rendered as a penalty. Driving privileges and criminal prosecution are quickly added on as behavior changes, even if it's small violations that add up. Everyone faces the same financial, driving access, and legal risk which equally dis…

By your logic, why is there a monetary cost? Rich people are not deterred by cost but by driving privilege penalties, right?

Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#282

Post by wilde »

Barrin92 wrote: post #120
wilde wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s an oversimplification. Uber’s primary innovations were social. They convinced riders that it was safe to jump into a stranger’s car, and drivers that it was safe to run an illegal taxi business. They managed to do both of these things effectively in large enough volumes to change how people think about taxis. Both of these things seem boring and normal now, but they were radical a decade ago.

that's not an innovation that captures any unique value for Uber and more of a positive externality if anything, because strangers still want to be paid and if anything customers aren't willing to pay them more than a regular taxi company. On an economic level, if anything Uber suffers from inefficiencies because every driver being their own insurer, repairman and so on is a disdavantage compared to employment by a t…

That’s the billion dollar question. Uber chose to commoditize their drivers from a very early stage. This made sense when most of the drivers were actual ride shares and amateurs. As the driver population professionalized, I do wonder if Uber missed a bet to move from being an aggregator to being a platform. In the Azores, taxi drivers will hand you their card and build a relationship with you. Is there room in US cities for more specialization than UberX vs Uber Black? I don’t know, but I think it might have accrued more durable value to the Uber ecosystem if they had let the drivers build differentiated personal brands.

Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#283

Post by wutbrodo »

stereolambda wrote: post #188
wutbrodo wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there was a discussion about how in the future it makes no sense to buy insurance if someone is willing to sell it to you, you are always better off saving and you won't get insured if you actually need it[0]. This is a misunderstanding of how insurance works. It makes sense to self-insured in expected $ value, but not necessarily in expected utility. There's nonzero value to lowering volatility[1], and the insuran…

Yeah, I wanted to give an example and disclaim redoing that specific discussion if possible. But just to provide a different view, what you're saying is fine theoretically, but in practice often people see the insurance situation as "some bad costly thing X can happen to me, I want to pay reasonable money to not have to eat the whole cost if it happens". Now if insurance companies had some super-accurate data and mod…

It would require more than imperfect information, but imperfect information _about_ the imperfect information. Ie, if people knew the insurance company had perfect information, they wouldn't buy the policy. At that point, the insurance company could just directly sell the information and still create surplus by reducing uncertainty.

This meta-imperfect information wouldn't last very long: People are generally skeptical of things like insurance as a baseline anyway, since they're unintuitive ("why am I paying for nothing every month?"). In this hypothetical world of perfect insurers, people would just sum up the anecdota of X insurance literally never paying out (and everyone rejected having X happen), and it wouldn't take very long for conventional wisdom to switch to "insurance is never worth buying".

Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#284

Post by Spooky23 »

denimnerd42 wrote: post #279
Spooky23 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. I gave them a bill of materials for apples to apples offers!

that's pretty crazy. thats like a high end metal roof with all the extras on the high end you were quoted for.

Totally. Some of these guys just throw out crazy stuff if they’re booked up. I’ve done a lot of procurement at work and I’ve seen it all.

My dad got a siding company that quoted $120k to do the job in the middle of winter for $30k.

Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#285

Post by manigandham »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #275
manigandham wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this were the case, then rich people everywhere else would be speeding like crazy and just paying the small fines. That clearly is not the case, because fines are not the only thing rendered as a penalty. Driving privileges and criminal prosecution are quickly added on as behavior changes, even if it's small violations that add up. Everyone faces the same financial, driving access, and legal risk which equally dis…

It is objectively not the same financial risk for a wealthy person, if everyone pays the same fee.

No, the same way living in general is not the same for a poor or wealthy person. As I just said, finance is not the only part of the calculation nor has flat pricing led to crazy rich drivers everywhere.

Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#286

Post by manigandham »

Joakal wrote: post #281
manigandham wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this were the case, then rich people everywhere else would be speeding like crazy and just paying the small fines. That clearly is not the case, because fines are not the only thing rendered as a penalty. Driving privileges and criminal prosecution are quickly added on as behavior changes, even if it's small violations that add up. Everyone faces the same financial, driving access, and legal risk which equally dis…

By your logic, why is there a monetary cost? Rich people are not deterred by cost but by driving privilege penalties, right?

For administrative reasons to fund the system and as a first line of penalty.

Cost is a cost, regardless of how much you may care about it, but yes the larger non-financial penalties is what keeps rich people from driving however they want and shows that the system works fine as is.

Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#287

Post by umvi »

leetcrew wrote: post #176
Baltasaur wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a colossally bad take. Tickets have the distinct purpose of disincentivizing dangerous driving. They don't do that if it's a flat fare and the person breaking the speed limit is sufficiently wealthy. Thus, if you want speeding tickets to affect everyone equally, you make them proportional.

income is distributed exponentially. it's a very small slice of society that can get a $500 ticket and not care. I'm sure it makes the constituents happy to jack up the fines for rich people, but there are too few of them for it to meaningfully impact road safety.

Speeding tickets do not cost $500. Most are <$100.

Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#288

Post by bsder »

trimbo wrote: post #247
lotsofpulp wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Auto dealers are selling a product that can easily be found exactly the same and compared elsewhere. For custom work such as construction, you’re not going to be able to do that.

Exactly. Also, hourly quotes for even the most basic things around the house are a poor idea. Someone recently told me she had to move to fixed bids for everything with her handyman because he would just move really slow when it was hourly.

> Someone recently told me she had to move to fixed bids for everything with her handyman because he would just move really slow when it was hourly.

Erm, isn't the proper solution find another handyman?

If I think someone is ripping me off, "extra supervision" isn't the correct long term solution. I already distrust them, so I'm not likely to give them the benefit of the doubt. Complicated things have to run on at least some trust between parties--you can't write everything into a contract. If that trust is dead, you really can't continue the relationship.

Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#289

Post by trimbo »

bsder wrote: post #288
trimbo wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Also, hourly quotes for even the most basic things around the house are a poor idea. Someone recently told me she had to move to fixed bids for everything with her handyman because he would just move really slow when it was hourly.

> Someone recently told me she had to move to fixed bids for everything with her handyman because he would just move really slow when it was hourly. Erm, isn't the proper solution find another handyman ? If I think someone is ripping me off, "extra supervision" isn't the correct long term solution. I already distrust them, so I'm not likely to give them the benefit of the doubt. Complicated things have to run on at l…

FWIW, she didn't say it was _deliberately_ slow. Just that paying him hourly ended up costing more than his fixed bids because he worked slowly.

Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#290

Post by mpweiher »

ikeboy wrote: post #229
mpweiher wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't vary based on how wealthy the speeder is...Pigovian taxes should be constant. Speeding is not a market activity and a speeding ticket is not a tax. Speeding is either a misdemeanour or crime, that means it is simply prohibited. Period. The state of affairs you refer to, where the speeding ticket is considered just a cost of doing said activity is exactly what we want to avoid, and income-based speeding t…

>Speeding is either a misdemeanour or crime, that means it is simply prohibited. Period. Why not set the fine to a million dollars for everyone, then, or at least significantly boost the fine? Under my framework it's easy to answer, since it's inefficient to disincentivize speeding that much. >The state of affairs you refer to, where the speeding ticket is considered just a cost of doing said activity is exactly what…

> Why not set the fine to a million dollars for everyone

Because that is a disproportionate punishment for speeding for most people. We don't do disproportionate punishment.

It's also why we don't hang people for stealing. Any more.

> [it's not a tax] Why?

Because allowing speeding and taxing it is not the goal. We don't want people to speed. Even rich people.

> same amount of deterrence for everyone

Exactly.

> which requires a constant fine.

Er, no. Exactly the other way around. To make the deterrence effect the same for everyone absolutely requires the monetary amount to be different. The deterrence effect of an economic fine is hugely dependent on how much money you have/make.

If I make a €10000 an hour, a €1000 fine is nothing, it takes me 6 minutes to work that off, so who cares? If I make €1000 a month, that's an entire month's worth of work, and so the fine will have a huge impact on me.

In Germany, this is encoded by the concept of a "Tagessatz", which is essentially how much you make per day (minus what you absolutely need to live):

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagessatz

They don't generally do this for traffic violations or other misdemeanours, but for felonies for which the sentence includes a monetary punishment. So you are convicted to pay, let's say 45 "Tagessätze". How much that is depends on how much you make. If you don't pay, you go to jail for that amount of time.

Time is the equalizer, being roughly the same for everyone, unlike money.

(Yes there are differences in how long people live, or have left to live, but it's not clear whether those should be accounted for and they are nothing comparable to the differences in income/wealth. See Taleb on "Extremistan" https://wou.edu/~shawd/mediocristan--extremistan.html )

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