Forget the economics for a minute . Uber Lyft changed the way we pay for rides and rate drivers. Uber used online payment and GPS to create a simple app that works. I no longer have to worry about payment since I prepay. Cars are owned by the individual so they are cleaner inside. I can summon one from a distance and I can pinpoint the exact pickup Spot. I once called a taxi dispatcher and I felt berated. It's the user experience, probably something mr. Oracle should look into.
The Uber Bubble
451–460 of 556 posts
Re: The Uber Bubble
#452Forget the economics for a minute . Uber Lyft changed the way we pay for rides and rate drivers. Uber used online payment and GPS to create a simple app that works. I no longer have to worry about payment since I prepay. Cars are owned by the individual so they are cleaner inside. I can summon one from a distance and I can pinpoint the exact pickup Spot. I once called a taxi dispatcher and I felt berated. It's the us…
All of which have been replicated by my local taxi app
Re: The Uber Bubble
#453Forget the economics for a minute . Uber Lyft changed the way we pay for rides and rate drivers. Uber used online payment and GPS to create a simple app that works. I no longer have to worry about payment since I prepay. Cars are owned by the individual so they are cleaner inside. I can summon one from a distance and I can pinpoint the exact pickup Spot. I once called a taxi dispatcher and I felt berated. It's the us…
All of which have been replicated by my local taxi app
I highly doubt it. And even if it’s true, there is no reason for city mandated taxis anymore.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't disagree with your points but let me give you some counterpoints: 1. Taxi services are balkanized; 2. Many tax services don't allow you to order a taxi ahead of time. You have to flag one down (eg NYC). For ordering a car, you need to otherwise deal with an (expensive) car service; 3. Uber made the payment process seamless and I cannot overstate how important this is as a user. I hate dealing with NYC yellow…
> Taxis died because it's a horrible user experience And in small cities/towns, getting a taxi was nearly impossible a lot of the times. And if you did get one, you had to have cash. In my 20s I had the personal phone numbers of a couple who ran a car service. I would only ride with them after another taxi home (probably unlicensed) where the driver was drinking smh. I wonder how many DUIs have been avoided since Ube…
Was in a small town recently with a few Uber/ lyft drivers. During peak times there was never a driver available when i tried to get one through the app. I talked to one driver and she said to give her a call next time -- during peak times she turns off the Uber app and drives for whoever calls her.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not following this logic -- do you think it would've been better not to take the rickshaw? You do realise that this man is providing for himself, and perhaps others, by this job? It seems like your issue was being confronted with the "realities of life" which distressed your sensibilities; and your solution appears to be to hide from these. I dont see this as a moral impulse, but a disgust response. If you wished…
Imagine making the same argument for 7 year old chimney sweeps in Victorian England, and the flaw in your argument becomes more obvious. OP choses not to hire underpaid and overworked labour because it's wrong, even if doing so would provide temporary relief.
> Imagine making the same argument for 7 year old chimney sweeps in Victorian England
That's quite an extreme example you got there, but as a former child worker myself I feel qualified to push back. I did hard physical labor at a warehouse at the age of 13. [1] This was a key opportunity in my life. With the money I earned from this hard labor I bought my first computer that helped solidify my computer science career. I could then spend a lot more time [2] on computer contract work, which meant I moved up the class system significantly with my finances.
So whenever I hear of these think of the children arguments, I think back to my own origins and how these protections are also mechanisms for preserving class hierarchy and making sure that children of less well off parents don't make any progress during their earlier years. To force the children to accept the lifestyle and means of their parents as a reality of their own lives.
That said, normalizing full time working instead of school isn't great either. I personally only worked summers (3 months of school break where I'm from) and so working didn't impede my school education. Thus I think better child labor laws would allow working when it doesn't interrupt school work. Unfortunately the child labor laws that I encounter are always blanket statements based on age.
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[1] The local child working laws didn't allow this back then already. I was lucky enough to be matched with a warehouse manager who didn't care too much about child working laws.
[2] I had already started my computer contracting work before I ever got my first computer. I used public computers to do this work, e.g. a public free internet point at the local hospital. Not ideal and very limited usage time, but when there aren't other options it's great.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
The history of AirBnB is very different in term of the market it entered. 1. Taxies had government enforced monopolies. Vacation rentals had practically 0 regulation. 2. The vacation rental market that already undergone a VC backed "freemarket" consolidation into a single global provider. HomeAway owned effectively everything with VRBO/VacationRentals.com/bedandbreakfast.com/abritel/stayz, etc. With "kept opposition"…
> So Taxi services have gone through these stages ... Defacto de-regulation (via effective non-enforcement) Could you talk a bit more about that part? I'm glad that Uber exists, but I don't understand how they got around the "government enforced monopoly" you mentioned. Why didn't the local taxi companies go to their city government and get Uber shut down as soon as Uber starting operating in their city? Wouldn't the…
That's a whole long post and what approach was taken varied from place to place, google "uber greyball" to see how uber prevented enforcement attempts... but really it came down to mass civil disobedience by drivers and riders to not comply with local taxi laws that brought about political change.
For example, in some cities like Austin, TX when Lyft first came to town (at effectively the same time as Uber) their interface showed the fare as technically an optional donation and Lyft guaranteed the driver reimbursement.
Austin was one of the few places in the US that for a short period successfully stopped use of lyft and uber but the city was over ruled by the state.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#457The 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…
I think people drastically overestimate the depreciation from mileage. When you go to sell your car in 15 years the difference between 150k and 300k miles is maybe a couple grand. You're taking about a few cents per hour.
I think uber has a rule in my country where the vehicle has to b seven years or newer.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of which have been replicated by my local taxi app
I highly doubt it. And even if it’s true, there is no reason for city mandated taxis anymore.
There are multiple reasons, from regulation in terms of insurance, safety requirements, etc. to control of congestion and pollution by limiting the number of drivers.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#459My take: Uber is a libertarian economic crowbar.
All of its backers, all of its investors, imagine an Uber world where no individual matters except themselves.
They wilfully break laws expecting to be able to overturn them before they are punished; they destroy markets knowing that the regulation will have to adapt to allow them to continue.
The Uberisation of everything is the tech sector's most disgraceful product.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#460Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's no longer the case. It was the situation at the beginning, but multiple cab folks have told me that incentives have really reduced in the last four years.
To be fair the last two years were not kind to ride sharing.
True, but the comments were from pre-pandemic times.