This article is 3+ years old
The Uber Bubble
511–520 of 556 posts
Re: The Uber Bubble
#512Earlier 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…
> People always point out big cities, but forget how abysmal taxis were in small towns.
Not just that, but people forget how bad they were in cities prior to the pressure Uber created. The article asks "Why Is a Company That Lost $20 Billion Claimed to Be Successful?" but the answer is obvious. It transformed the industry. It made a big impact on my life. I no longer had to stress about getting a cab home from pretty much anywhere. When traveling, I know I won't get my face ripped off or have an issue with mistranslation. If it were around earlier, I would have likely driven and made some extra cash when I was home from college. No one would hire me for a few weeks or extremely variable schedule so this would have been a great option.
Today's cabs are better behaved but only because people have alternatives.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#513Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Yeah, Uber never got a foothold in Germany, but they brought us apps and card payment. Germany also worked hard to cripple Uber. Even its per-existing rules are hostile towards much of the innovation Uber brought to market. One particularly egregious example is forcing each Uber to "return to garage" between each trip, even if another customer is on its path and requesting a ride. This makes the service considerabl…
> In recent weeks, the policy can even be seen as indirectly subsidizing an invasion. That seems a bit farfetched. They don't run on natural gas.
They run on gasoline.
About 98% of oil consumed by Germany is imported. Which country is the largest source?
Re: The Uber Bubble
#514Earlier quoted context omitted.
"basically the same" yet uber did have a transformative effect, in some countries taxi systems were very hostile and disorganized, and uber has raised the standard significantly... they've created a certain expectation
My point is that if Taxi’s were profitable essentially being a worse Uber, then it makes the argument that Uber is in a bubble industry seem ludicrous, which it is.
ah ok, thanks for clarifying... I guess the bubble might be the pricing model? it has been artificially too cheap to support the labor for a while. Early on I was commuting to work for only a couple dollars more than public transportation.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#515Earlier quoted context omitted.
Almost every useful scalable service ends up shifting economic gains from labor to capital. And consumers benefit from it, because as a very rough economic rule of thumb, the more value that flows to labor the less efficient the service is and the higher price consumers pay. From a customer POV taxis were horrible, full-stop, and Uber/Lyft are fantastic. I can actually get a reliable, safe ride almost anywhere now, a…
> And consumers benefit from it As a consumer, I don't want to pay for unfair work practices. Taxis may have been horrible, taking rides with people who are systematically exploited is even more horrible.
I'm sorry...drivers are making a choice, they are not as naive as you seem to think they are and they have infinite other options for unskilled labor if it's really that "unfair", but most of those options pay less per hour - yes, they don't put as many miles on people's cars, but that's a tradeoff for getting cash now, which is often what people want. I delivered pizzas as a college kid, and made 1/3 of what Uber drivers make while driving the same amount, even accounting for inflation.
"Systematically exploited" is a really paternalistic view.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#516Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 caree…
From a certain POV, most great people in tech engaged in a lot of child labour. However, we should be careful with such an argument.
Yes, high walls (like minimum wage, child labour laws, etc.) prevent the most extremely poor from competing with everyone else. Those are probably worth building though, if social welfare programs exist.
The natural tendency of competitive processes is to throw away all values in pursuit of the win; in the end, someone has to set a floor.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#517Uber as a business is a massive loss, but consumers still _chose_ Uber over taxis because the process of getting and riding in a car is a million times more transparent than a taxi ever was. You can see what car and what driver are picking you up, what route they're going to take, and how much it will cost. Taxis failed because they failed to modernize.
100%. Will never catch cabs in NYC because they never comply with any local regulation (e.g. none of them were wearing masks at the height of the pandemic), they always overcharge, they often discriminate against you as a customer based on what you look like/where you're going/etc, they always expect 20-25% tip, even if they've done a terrible service, etc. And you have nothing you can do to fight any of this, other…
I take yellow cabs in NYC all the time and if the service isn't perfect, I don't tip a cent. If they drive well, are polite, and don't try to scam me (the biggest one), I'll tip a couple dollars.
If they try to tell me the meter's broken I just plainly say "I know you're lying, you can turn it on or I'll get out." Then I'll pay them what it says on the meter, to the cent, and say have a nice day. What are they going to do, assault me for not tipping?
A 25% tip for a bad cab ride is a joke, I don't really care what they "expect". This is NYC, there are literally thousands of available jobs in this city right now. If someone isn't pleased with their wage as a taxi driver, I'd happily point them towards any of the dozens of businesses in my neighbourhood with a Hiring sign in the window.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#518Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are 100% correct. This is the magic There are people who want to make a positive return on their time + vehicle depreciation. But they are on the open market competing against people who are in a cash crunch and happy to have a net negative return on the same, as long as it temporarily allows them to convert depreciation into cash. This is why drivers will always lose in the long term. They are racing against eac…
Perhaps the society just should make it easier for the destitute to find appropriate means to support themselves? People act as if the fact that some people who are bored on a Saturday night are ready to give a cheap ride is a problem. It seems like it an absolute good and totally not a problem and should not be “fixed”.
This line of argument reminds me of the news stories encouraging retirees to come back to work during the "labour shortage". The problem isn't that bored people are helping out, it's that by doing so they negatively affect the people that are reliant on carrying out that labour to keep themselves fed and sheltered.
For perspective, try imagining that some well off retired ex-$your_job walks up to your boss and offers to replace you for free, working the same hours because they're bored.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#519Uber as a business is a massive loss, but consumers still _chose_ Uber over taxis because the process of getting and riding in a car is a million times more transparent than a taxi ever was. You can see what car and what driver are picking you up, what route they're going to take, and how much it will cost. Taxis failed because they failed to modernize.
Taxi services in my city already had apps that showed the price and car location, along with online payment well before Uber was allowed to operate.
Uber bought it's way into the market here by losing more money than any reasonable business would be able to afford. Now it's more expensive than the services it displaced and still losing money hand over fist.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#520Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Taxis died because it's a horrible user experience that was propped up by a government-enforced monopoly. This cannot be understated. Also, as an introvert, negotiating with drivers, especially those that don't drive by the meter was always stressful, I mostly ended up overpaying.
"credit card machine is broken." Things I don't ever have to hear or put up with ever again #623.
The solution to this is Square, not Uber.