Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O. • Hacker News Board

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#761

Post by danans » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 4:19 PM UTC

danjoc wrote: post #738

davidf18 wrote: post #701

Much of the resistance to Uber (such as laws that were broken, protests) were from entrenched interests. At least where I live in NYC, Uber was dramatically improving customer value while providing innovations that reduced greenhouse gas. It provided completion for the entrenched Yellow Cab monopoly with its very high rates. Sometimes Uber would have higher rates but then you could take a Yellow Cab instead. The Yell…

>Uber/Lyft have lowered greenhouse gasses Citation required.

Citation doubly required because if the net miles driven actually increases due to increased use of cars over public transit (very likely), and increased availability of transportation services overall, the greenhouse gas emissions would go _up_ if anything.

There are situations where ride services would encourage public transit utilization (last mile services), but I'd guess those are far from the dominant use case.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#762

Post by santaclaus » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 4:19 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #741

gregorymichael wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The previous market making mechanism for this industry was for a buyer to stand on a street corner, hold their hand up, and hope that a vendor who sold that service drove by. That's insane.

In a couple urban cores where both customers and providers were extremely dense so that that simple method could work, surez that a mechanism in play; everywhere else (and often also available on those same areas) it was “customer calls dispatch agency on the phone, dispatch agency routes to service provider via radio (or mobile phone)”; Uber replaces the dispatch agency and changes the communication mechanism on bot…

And the third step after dispatch, cab finds another rider on the way and dispatch doesn't call back to tell you your cab isn't coming.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#763

Post by davidf18 » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 4:20 PM UTC

danjoc wrote: post #738

davidf18 wrote: post #701

Much of the resistance to Uber (such as laws that were broken, protests) were from entrenched interests. At least where I live in NYC, Uber was dramatically improving customer value while providing innovations that reduced greenhouse gas. It provided completion for the entrenched Yellow Cab monopoly with its very high rates. Sometimes Uber would have higher rates but then you could take a Yellow Cab instead. The Yell…

>Uber/Lyft have lowered greenhouse gasses Citation required.

Have you ever used Uber pool? Two different customers sharing the same vehicle, lowering greenhouse gas.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#764

Post by soneca » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 4:20 PM UTC

davidf18 wrote: post #701

Much of the resistance to Uber (such as laws that were broken, protests) were from entrenched interests. At least where I live in NYC, Uber was dramatically improving customer value while providing innovations that reduced greenhouse gas. It provided completion for the entrenched Yellow Cab monopoly with its very high rates. Sometimes Uber would have higher rates but then you could take a Yellow Cab instead. The Yell…

So why Lyft get none of the protests? I think you are mixing unrelated subjects.

Uber final product is good for society. And other companies can provide the same product (in my city, São Paulo, there are other 3 good companies in the same space).

Uber practices as a company are toxic for its employees and some of the toxicity leak to society.

If such calculation was possible, I believe it would show a net positive impact in society. But a company with good practices and the same product would have an even larger net positive impact.

As a society, I believe we should not settle for bad companies making good products, that's why I believe all the protests are legit.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#765

Post by ksec » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 4:20 PM UTC

davidf18 wrote: post #701

Much of the resistance to Uber (such as laws that were broken, protests) were from entrenched interests. At least where I live in NYC, Uber was dramatically improving customer value while providing innovations that reduced greenhouse gas. It provided completion for the entrenched Yellow Cab monopoly with its very high rates. Sometimes Uber would have higher rates but then you could take a Yellow Cab instead. The Yell…

Exactly the same scenario in Hong Kong. And Government still dont realize what is wrong with the current Taxi system. It is not fair to the consumers, because they are not getting any decent services out of it. It is not fair to the taxi drivers, because their earning only barely manage to lease the car. And it is only what called the Medallions owner that actually profits.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#766

Post by gregorymichael » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 4:21 PM UTC

stephenr wrote: post #731

gregorymichael wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The previous market making mechanism for this industry was for a buyer to stand on a street corner, hold their hand up, and hope that a vendor who sold that service drove by. That's insane.

Do taxi companies in the US really not have apps or, you know, phones?

They didn't before faced with an existential crisis.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#767

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 4:21 PM UTC

2_listerine_pls wrote: post #558

Retric wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to grow when you sell dollars for 70c each. But, when you suddenly need to sell them for 1.01+$ nobody wants to buy. Uber's problem is taxi companies have lower overhead because among other thing their drivers sometimes get hailed by people at street level. Which means their either taxi prices are lower and people stop using Uber or they pay drivers more and drivers mostly stop working for Uber.

> Uber's problem is taxi companies have lower overhead because among other thing their drivers sometimes get hailed by people at street level. There is always demand for Uber/Lyft just because there isn't a taxi cab nearby 24/7. How is that difficult to understand?

> There is always demand for Uber/Lyft just because there isn't a taxi cab nearby 24/7.

There's certainly a market for app/phone jailable cabs because there isn't one within street hail range at all times, but regular cabs have been phone hailable forever (it's the only way to get one outside of a few major urban cores) and are increasingly app hailable. Aside from regulatory supply restrictions (flouting which may not be sustainable) there's no real basis for a market for alt-taxis as anything but interchangeable competitors supplying the same substitutable commodity as regular taxis.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#768

Post by davidf18 » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 4:22 PM UTC

danans wrote: post #761

danjoc wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Uber/Lyft have lowered greenhouse gasses Citation required.

Citation doubly required because if the net miles driven actually increases due to increased use of cars over public transit (very likely), and increased availability of transportation services overall, the greenhouse gas emissions would go _up_ if anything. There are situations where ride services would encourage public transit utilization (last mile services), but I'd guess those are far from the dominant use case.

Have you ever used Uber pool? Two different customers sharing the same vehicle, lowering greenhouse gas.

There is absolutely no proof whatsoever, that people sharing a vehicle increases greenhouse gas. Citation is required that it would.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#769

Post by stephenr » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 4:22 PM UTC

oaktowner wrote: post #745

stephenr wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do taxi companies in the US really not have apps or, you know, phones?

They do now in San Francisco. But only because they lost so much business to Uber. This was an industry that was effectively a monopoly -- not one company, but one type of provider. And none of the players was improving the experience for the customer. Calling for a cab was extremely unreliable here. You could easily wait for an hour (because any driver coming to pick you up could, without ill effect for him/herself,…

> Some cabs took credit cards, some didn't. Some claimed to take credit cards but then "the machine was broken" so you had to pay cash.

This type of thing sounds like the usual American "let the market sort it out" that other western countries don't have. Taxis are already government controlled (via taxi licensing) so why aren't they required to accept credit cards, as they are in Australia?

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#770

Post by CPLX » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 4:23 PM UTC

davidf18 wrote: post #701

Much of the resistance to Uber (such as laws that were broken, protests) were from entrenched interests. At least where I live in NYC, Uber was dramatically improving customer value while providing innovations that reduced greenhouse gas. It provided completion for the entrenched Yellow Cab monopoly with its very high rates. Sometimes Uber would have higher rates but then you could take a Yellow Cab instead. The Yell…

This is factually incorrect. You're drawing a direct parallel between medallion taxis and Uber/Lyft rides, when they are not in fact the same at all.

The outer boroughs, and every neighborhood in the city, has had car service options for decades, where you call a phone number (or often walk to a local storefront stand) to get a ride.

This is the exact market segment that Uber has entered. Literally. There wasn't and still isn't a restriction on the number of TLC car service cars on the streets.

This idea that there "were no taxis" in the boroughs and now there are is ridiculous. There weren't many yellow cabs before and there still aren't. There used to be thousands of TLC cars before and there still are. Except now people use an app instead of calling Arecibo or Carmel.

Street hailing was and still is prohibited, both for Uber and for phone style car services.

The massive innovation, of course, is the use of a smartphone app for hailing, which made it technically possible to create the market that we see today. Uber, Lyft, and the other companies that built internet enabled hailing solutions certainly do deserve credit for building out that innovation, but that change was just an obvious outgrowth of the technological change to everyone having a handheld always connected small computer. It was inevitable.

The dynamic you're describing for NYC just doesn't really fit the facts. Nor does the idea that a lot more people taking a lot more rides in cars is reducing greenhouse emissions, but that's another matter.