The Sharing Economy Was Dead on Arrival • Hacker News Board

Re: The Sharing Economy Was Dead on Arrival

#51

Post by dbt00 » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 9:38 PM UTC

shittyadmin wrote: post #33

kevin_b_er wrote: post #10

The "Sharing Economy" was always a lie. It was always about illegal acts rebranded. Illegal rebranded taxis. Illegal rebranded hotels. etc

I mean, you get more than that, no one looked at Uber and went "ooh, illegal taxis". They looked at it and went "ooh I can use it from my phone with the push of a button and it's cheaper". The whole point of the "sharing economy" is to compete on efficiency, ease of use and price. Ridiculous, anti-competitive laws were in place in these systems, I applaud their death.

I mean, Uber Black was allowing existing private car services to float their services on an on-demand market and soak up excess capacity.

Sidecar/UberX/Lyft etc have always just been wildcat taxis, except at least a real wildcat taxicab probably has some experience. In my experience, most uberx/lyft drivers have been doing it less than a year, the good ones all leave as soon as they see how bad the pay is, and nobody knows what the fuck they're doing.

It's amazing they haven't killed more people, tbh.

Re: The Sharing Economy Was Dead on Arrival

#52

Post by dbt00 » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 9:40 PM UTC

mkirklions wrote: post #12

kevin_b_er wrote: post #10

The "Sharing Economy" was always a lie. It was always about illegal acts rebranded. Illegal rebranded taxis. Illegal rebranded hotels. etc

The only reason these were illegal was cronyism. And before you get excited about the safety we get with regulation. Capitalism has proven with billion dollar companies, we don't want regulated taxis.

Taxi licensing was not cronyism, it was simple economics. Taxicabs can either have x drivers all at a subsistence level, or 0.5x drivers with a reasonable standard of living. Licensing with a cap and fixed rates becomes a policy decision driven by the public interest.

Re: The Sharing Economy Was Dead on Arrival

#53

Post by RHSeeger » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 9:42 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #6

pesmhey wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found myself drinking someone's branding kool-aid before, and this is how it happened. You think to yourself what you've just laid out, that this is so obvious a seven year old should know better. So obvious, in fact, that it can't be real. "This is just an unmarked taxi." "No, we're way different." You think to yourself how no one could be that blatant, and you notice other people are buying into it, so you sta…

Or: "This is just an unmarked taxi." "Except hailing/billing isn't stuck in the past so you don't have to get lucky to find an empty one on the street or call a surly dispatcher and wait 45 minutes. You also get the bill up front so you know how much it will cost before you even say yes. You can always pay by credit card too, you'll never arrive at the destination and then only be informed that the credit card reader…

Your experience is almost exactly the opposite of mine.

1. Without fail, taking Uber costs me more than taking a taxi, same trip, same time of day.

2. The bill up front point is fair

3. As far as paying by credit card, know the rules of your city. In many cities, they must take credit cards or are not allowed to drive. As such, if they tell you at the end of the trip that you must pay cash, just tell them you can't. If they won't let you pay by credit then, just walk away. Even if it's not a city where they have to accept credit, just tell them you don't have cash and stick to it. If their credit machine really wasn't working, they should/would have told you at the beginning of the trip.

4. I never have a problem getting a cab (though, to be fair, I only do it in NYC... they're everywhere)

Re: The Sharing Economy Was Dead on Arrival

#54

Post by onething » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 9:43 PM UTC

forapurpose wrote: post #47

onething wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> the seeming disappearance of the anti-war demonstrations once Obama took office. What changed, other than the POTUS? "Other than the POTUS" seems to brazenly ignore the significance. For example, it would be absurd to ask, 'When Trump took office, what changed from Obama other than the POTUS'? When Obama took office, the new POTUS' policies aligned to a significant degree with the anti-war protestors. Obama had opp…

>...When Obama took office, the new POTUS' policies aligned to a significant degree with the anti-war protestors.

What actually changed? We left Iraq at the timetable Bush proposed and I think Obama wanted to extend it past that but couldn't come to terms with the Iraq government. There was a troop surge in Afghanistan - the thing that was criticized when Bush did it. People have a right to their opinion and the right to protest, but it does appear the anti-war democrats weren't quite as active once the POTUS had a D by the name.

I don't have space to go over the foreign military adventures done by Obama, here is an overview:

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/03/ob...

>...This is true "political correctness"

Not really. The OP asked for politics that didn't work and got consistent support. I listed a few ones that came to mind. I also think these bad polices are also endorsed by conservatives. Rather than attack the idea that people could ever be wrong, why don't you address the policies I brought up and explain why either they are great polices or that democrats don't support them.

Re: The Sharing Economy Was Dead on Arrival

#55

Post by chrisco255 » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

forapurpose wrote: post #47

onething wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> the seeming disappearance of the anti-war demonstrations once Obama took office. What changed, other than the POTUS? "Other than the POTUS" seems to brazenly ignore the significance. For example, it would be absurd to ask, 'When Trump took office, what changed from Obama other than the POTUS'? When Obama took office, the new POTUS' policies aligned to a significant degree with the anti-war protestors. Obama had opp…

I wish national politics were as simple and predictable as a computer program, but trying to paint an analogy there is quite troublesome, for the simple reason that there are hundreds, if not thousands of issues that government has to tangle with...and it often is the case that one party has a better approach to certain issues while the other party is better suited to deal with a completely different set of issues.

Re: The Sharing Economy Was Dead on Arrival

#56

Post by chrisco255 » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 9:54 PM UTC

momentmaker wrote: post #23

chrisco255 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The job market might have been terrible 5 years ago, but this is not the case today. 3.7% unemployment in the U.S. Lowest since 1969.

Benjamin Disraeli: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

I'm well aware of the ability to twist statistics, but the unemployment rate is a decent yard stick for measuring changes in the labor force. And barring some underlying change in methodology for finding the statistic, it shows a trend over time in a positive direction: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000

Wage growth is also ticking up: https://www.frbatlanta.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker.aspx?pan...

Which aligns well with the low unemployment rate.

Re: The Sharing Economy Was Dead on Arrival

#57

Post by chrisco255 » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 10:00 PM UTC

dbt00 wrote: post #52

mkirklions wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason these were illegal was cronyism. And before you get excited about the safety we get with regulation. Capitalism has proven with billion dollar companies, we don't want regulated taxis.

Taxi licensing was not cronyism, it was simple economics. Taxicabs can either have x drivers all at a subsistence level, or 0.5x drivers with a reasonable standard of living. Licensing with a cap and fixed rates becomes a policy decision driven by the public interest.

That's ridiculous. $140K taxi medallions are simple economics? Each $140K a company had to pay for some stupid medallion could have employed two people for a year. Medallions and protectionism just created localized monopolies that had few incentives to improve service, innovate on tech, and even provide clean vehicles. There's no other industry that needs this artificial cap, as if demand and supply can be accurately controlled for by government policy officials. What a joke.

Re: The Sharing Economy Was Dead on Arrival

#58

Post by AnimalMuppet » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 10:01 PM UTC

moosey wrote: post #43

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have to go back to Truman? You seem to have forgotten Vietnam...

For most intents and purposes, that's who started it. anti-communistic fervor was, and is, a massive boondoggle.

Truman started Vietnam because of anti-communist fervor? Seriously? That was his fault and not Johnson's (who was actually president at the time of the Gulf of Tonkin)? That's... a pretty strange interpretation of history.

Re: The Sharing Economy Was Dead on Arrival

#59

Post by ticmasta » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 10:10 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #8

jandrese wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or: "This is just an unmarked taxi." "Except hailing/billing isn't stuck in the past so you don't have to get lucky to find an empty one on the street or call a surly dispatcher and wait 45 minutes. You also get the bill up front so you know how much it will cost before you even say yes. You can always pay by credit card too, you'll never arrive at the destination and then only be informed that the credit card reader…

Which is another way of saying that, yes, it is just an unmarked taxi but with a different way of doing business. Look, I'm totally cool with businesses essentially protesting stifling regulation by loudly ignoring them and providing better service. But once you get the regulators' attention you need to be willing to sit down with them and hash out the details of what needs to change.

Well, that may be true if you're building a better transportation company, but why should a lowly mobile app company have to get embroiled in all that regulation when all they do is facilitate a 3rd party transaction?

Re: The Sharing Economy Was Dead on Arrival

#60

Post by api » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 10:10 PM UTC

onething wrote: post #44

digitaltrees wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they don't. You are just presenting false equivalence while ignoring the magnitude of the reality distortion field that republicans push with no close equivalent from democrats. - Name a 10 year war democrats have championed... - Name a democrat that questions the legitimacy of employment numbers or the objectivity of the data being provided... - Name an rejection of scientific consensus like Global Warming (and b…

[flagged]

Yes, that's the sort of stuff I was thinking of. Obama ran on "change" and little changed. We also continued our relentless march toward total surveillance panopticon under Obama, and he did little to nothing to reign in the financial industry.

I do not believe there's a perfect equivalence. Lately the Republicans have been more enthusiastic about denying reality. But there's certainly a sense in which people view politics like a football game and just mindlessly root for their side.

We won't be rid of Trump and his ilk until we stop caring about parties and start caring about ideas.