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The Uber Bubble

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Re: The Uber Bubble

#431

Post by overthemoon »

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #268

When traveling in India, I foolishly took a cycle rickshaw. It was gross/shameful. A man far less fortunate than I was sweating, working hard, barely getting paid, and breathing horribly polluted New Delhi air while I just sat there. When Uber started to squeeze its drivers, I again felt just like this. I hated hearing drivers complain about their life problems. I hated doing the math and seeing how little these peop…

I hear what you're saying. A few months ago, a guy, clearly homeless, rang my doorbell and offered to shovel my driveway in exchange for some small amount, I can't remember. It couldn't have been more than ten bucks. I do not need that. I can get it done in about 45 minutes. It felt posh and exploitative. What I realized later is that he was just asking for some dignity. To earn something, to not be a charity case. He wanted to feel like he was offering something worthwhile in exchange.

I've thought about that incident a lot. I too am disgusted by how society is organized. When confronted by my own relative wealth and privilege, I felt gross. But in that exact moment, you can't re-engineer the economy. You have to choose whether or not to be generous while respecting that person's dignity. I can only speak for myself here, but too often I'd rather just not encounter hardship in others at all. This is a bad impulse. The world is a terrible broken place, and it's right to be generous in whatever way someone will accept in that moment.

This reasoning is often used to justify poverty wage jobs--people want to work, so let them--and that's definitely not my take. I think work can impart dignity, there's a certain amount of shitty work that can't be avoided, but you can't feed your children with dignity, so let's pay people a lot more.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#432

Post by nicbou »

mjburgess wrote: post #412
kwhitefoot wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That 7 year old Victorian chimney sweep still has to eat. If society doesn't have the infrastructure to take care of them, then the other alternative is to starve, possibly to death. Yet we no longer have 7 year old chimney sweeps. Refusing to hire one now is one part of the process that changes society so that the missing infrastructure that you mentioned gets provided for future potential 7 year old chimney sweep…

I dont think refusing to hire chimney sweep children had anything at all to do with the end of child labour. I can't even really comprehend this world view very well, though it is common. Child labour ended around the time it wasnt needed, as did all phases of economic labour division (slavery, child labour, gendered labour, etc.). In economic conditions which require poor quality labour, all you can do is decide whe…

> Child labour ended around the time it wasnt needed

It ended in England in part because of social pressure and subsequent Parliamentary inquiries [0]

> as did all phases of economic labour division (slavery, ...)

If it ended when it was no longer needed, what do you suppose the second bloodiest war in US history [1] was about?

> A very bizarre thought, which I can only imagine stems from some misperceived impression of one's own importance

Alright then, have a great day.

[0] https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/child-la... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualt...

Re: The Uber Bubble

#433

Post by [deleted] »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #409
meowtimemania wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to live in Latin America and I would avoid hiring shoe-shiner kids in spite of them following me each day. I thought it was sad to see these kids working at such an early age and thought hiring them would be me exploiting them. In hindsight I should’ve just hired them, they need the money. it’s horrible people live in poverty and have to work such jobs, but IMO hiring them helps them more than not hiring them.

No, hiring them to shine your shoes would not have helped, it only perpetuates the system. What is needed is a social change that eliminates the need. Sadly this sometimes only happens when the oppressed party suffers enough to elicit real sympathetic action or in extreme cases an uprising. As you didn't hire them, presumably your shoes didn't need shining so they were not really performing a necessary function anywa…

[deleted]

Re: The Uber Bubble

#434

Post by jokoon »

I wonder if there are similar problems with airbnb.

I've read from people complaining that their airbnb was cancelled.

The problem with new age entrepreneurship and startups is that their interests intersects with either libertarian or conservative politics.

We want to think the silicon valley holds progressive values, but it's not entirely true.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#435

Post by FabHK »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #169

I feel this entire thread has quite missed the point of the question the way a neutrino passes through a solid object and interacts with nothing but empty space. People have talked about microeconomics, gig economies, labour shifting, bad old days, safety, subsidies, licenses.... but we've gotten no closer to understanding; "Why Is a Company That Lost Billions Claimed to Be Successful?" To answer this one must ask "W…

> To answer this one must ask "What is financialisation?" The short answer is; a system in which the success or failure of a company is of no relevance to its "value".

Nonsense. Granted, with meme stocks, the price of a stock has been decoupled from any underlying notion of value, which is disconcerting (but driven by retail investors/gamblers, not by traditional investors).

But with Uber and many others, it seems reasonable to assume that the investors expect to recoup their money by (ultimately) earning dividends from Uber's successful operation, which is good old traditional finance.

There are two problems left:

1. It is conceivable that some early investors see that no sustainable profits might be possible, but still fund and develop the venture in order to sell it (at a higher valuation) to less sophisticated investors later (that don't see the limitations of the business model so clearly).

2. It is plausible that the entire business model is predicated on the idea of a predatory monopoly, ie driving out competition first and raising prices second.

Those are massive problems that need to be addressed with aggressive regulation, but they are not a consequence of "financialisation".

> Under that system, Uber is successful so long as the financial market says it is.

"The financial market" cannot just arbitrarily "say" what a company is worth (and definitely not in the long run) - there are just too many players.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#436

Post by malka »

blackhaz wrote: post #378
cjbgkagh wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely agree. Nowadays I have Uber drivers sit around the corner refusing to show up and calling me to tell me I should cancel so that I have to pay the $5 fine. Sure I can contact support to get that $5 back but it has happened to me so many times there really should be a button for it. It’s hard for me to believe Uber is not aware of this behavior.

That's very common in Prague. Uber in Prague is a disaster. About 5% of my rides are probably ending up with having to pay a cancellation fee for a driver who never showed up. Contacting support to resolve this is pain indeed. Most of the Uber rides in Prague are owned by limited liability companies (s r.o.). I guess there's some kind of an alliance between Uber and those local companies. Another 5-10% or so of my Ub…

Same in Croatia. In Croatia this is due to Ubers being also regular cabs.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#437

Post by kareemsabri »

I don't disagree with many of the points argued in this article (and the subsequent two articles).

An interesting piece of anecdotal evidence, I recently had a conversation with a Yellow Cab (or similar) driver in NYC who switched back to a cab from Uber. He pays, if I recall correctly, $900 per week to the taxi company and after that is able to keep all wages and tips. His $900 is owed regardless of the amount of fares he receives. Despite this, he still felt this was a better deal than Uber after doing both. So it doesn't appear that the cab cartel is some sort of myth, as the author seems to imply.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#438

Post by mikegioia »

thebigman433 wrote: post #313
slfnflctd wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uber charges drivers 25-30 percent You might be a little low there. In my direct experience as a driver pre-covid, it was close to 50%, and many drivers in the relevant subreddits have reported it frequently being more than that since. Imagine hearing a passenger complain about their $15 fare when you only see $6 of it (out of which you still have to cover your gas usage). 25-30 percent seems reasonable in comparis…

I just ordered a Lyft the other day and was talking to the driver on the way to the airport, he said a common route he drives is from Bozeman (MT) to Big Sky (for the ski tourists), the price is over 150$ on Lyft/Uber, and he ends up getting about 60-70$ from it max. This type of cut, plus the massive false advertising that Uber/Lyft does via their apps in smaller towns, like telling you that your ride will be booked…

> like telling you that your ride will be booked soon when there are literally no drivers available

I got burned on this using Lyft to get the airport early in the morning. Scheduled the night before to pick up at 5am the next morning. No one was actually scheduled, and it was just searching endlessly for a driver in the area but there were none! No car services open, I had to call my mother and ask her to take us! I couldn't believe it and I'll never use one again. Only car services for me now, at least for anything that matters.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#439

Post by throw-nocoiner »

golergka wrote: post #413
kwhitefoot wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of that is specific to the US. Taxis work in other countries without it being difficult to get one in the middle of the night. And the medallion system is unique to the US I think. > . Uber made the payment process seamless I've been paying taxi fares with a credit card in an in car payment terminal for twenty years in Scandinavia. If I had a business trip to anywhere in the Nordic countries I never needed to ge…

I have been living in Istanbul for the last month, and it's worse. With any app (Uber or local) actually ordering a cab takes several attempts. Taxi drivers are constantly rude and unhelpful, cancel rides after taking them, and refuse to take you all the way and just drop you off far from your destination if it's uncomfortable to them. And they often try to get you to pay in cash instead of using Uber's payment, and…

That's surely nice, but ultimately inconsequential

What matters in the end is whether Uber can sell the service for more than it costs to provide it. Traditional taxi could do it, Uber cannot

Re: The Uber Bubble

#440

Post by FabHK »

meowtimemania wrote: post #323
arthurofbabylon wrote: post #268

When traveling in India, I foolishly took a cycle rickshaw. It was gross/shameful. A man far less fortunate than I was sweating, working hard, barely getting paid, and breathing horribly polluted New Delhi air while I just sat there. When Uber started to squeeze its drivers, I again felt just like this. I hated hearing drivers complain about their life problems. I hated doing the math and seeing how little these peop…

I used to live in Latin America and I would avoid hiring shoe-shiner kids in spite of them following me each day. I thought it was sad to see these kids working at such an early age and thought hiring them would be me exploiting them. In hindsight I should’ve just hired them, they need the money. it’s horrible people live in poverty and have to work such jobs, but IMO hiring them helps them more than not hiring them.

I think an additional problem with kids in developing countries is that hiring them (for shoe shining, lawn mowing, ...) gives them an incentive to drop out of school. They might make some extra money in the short term, but lose an education and higher earning potential long term. It's not trivial, certainly for an outsider, to judge what the right course of action is.
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