Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Disrupting Uber

jacobinmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 230 posts

Re: Disrupting Uber

#81

Post by SilasX »

brownbat wrote: post #46
tnecniv wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Restrictive policy responses hurt one group of people in an attempt to protect others. That's the definition of Pareto optimality

Ok, pareto optimal describes a state, and I was abusing the term to apply it to a change of states. Definitely could be ambiguous: Are you moving towards pareto optimality, or starting at PO? When I've heard others commit similar abuses, they use "pareto optimal [change]" or "pareto efficient [change]" as synonyms for "pareto improvement." ie, moving towards pareto optimality. ie, a change that makes someone better a…

I think the parent was referring to how "you're at a Pareto optimum when any change has to make someone worse off", and was applying that (incorrectly IMHO) to the situation you described where a regulation makes someone worse off.

I say "incorrectly" because "some regulation R makes some group worse off" (as you were saying) does not imply "all reg changes would make someone worse off" (Pareto optimality).

Re: Disrupting Uber

#83

Post by [deleted] »

davidf18 wrote: post #66
bradyo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is so hard to understand about this? These drivers could create an app that results in the exact same price for consumers, except that any profits go to the drivers instead of Travis Kalanick's pocket.

If they create their own app, they would have to offer lower prices than Uber which they'll be able to do from the money Uber was taking from them. Otherwise, people will use the incumbent service (Uber/Lyft). Is that easy to understand?

[deleted]

Re: Disrupting Uber

#84

Post by srtjstjsj »

rdiddly wrote: post #31
dotBen wrote: post #24

> "competing with Uber might seem intimidating, but in many respects the company is a paper tiger. Its massive valuation, which stood at $62.5 billion in January, comes from intellectual property — its brand and data — rather than from tangible assets." Right... except that the brand is what creates the demand side of the market, the data is what makes the platform efficient and the IP provides strong defense against…

Uber's brand did not and does not create the demand for catching a ride. The 400-year continuous existence of some form of ride service, starting with horse-drawn hackneys, tends to indicate a pre-existing demand, as does the fact that "taxi" is the same word in different languages all over the world.

Uber's brand created supply: before Uber, most customers would not choose to satisfy their demand by paying $10 to an unlicensed stranger.

Re: Disrupting Uber

#85

Post by SilasX »

svanderbleek wrote: post #68
pfarnsworth wrote: post #63

Good luck with the co-op idea. The problem is that drivers feel like their services are worth a lot, and passengers simply don't believe it. The reason why Uber is a success is that they created new demand by dropping prices. Everyone I know, including myself, would never have taken an Uber as frequently as we do if the prices were as high as taxis. You can't replicate this unless you keep pushing prices down, and th…

Read the article more carefully, "they might be willing to switch to a co-op model that offers a cheaper price and solid service". A co-op can have lower prices and pay it's members more because they don't have to funnel profits to support the bloat of a central corporation like Uber.

Right, but they still have to find the funds to pay someone to set up the system and get it bootstrapped, or find enough volunteer or discounted labor to make it happen. Considering the risks and difficulty of doing so, the money funneled away as profits may not rightly be called "pointless gatekeeper bloat".

Re: Disrupting Uber

#86

Post by valhalla »

svanderbleek wrote: post #68
pfarnsworth wrote: post #63

Good luck with the co-op idea. The problem is that drivers feel like their services are worth a lot, and passengers simply don't believe it. The reason why Uber is a success is that they created new demand by dropping prices. Everyone I know, including myself, would never have taken an Uber as frequently as we do if the prices were as high as taxis. You can't replicate this unless you keep pushing prices down, and th…

Read the article more carefully, "they might be willing to switch to a co-op model that offers a cheaper price and solid service". A co-op can have lower prices and pay it's members more because they don't have to funnel profits to support the bloat of a central corporation like Uber.

That may be true. I'd imagine that a cheap median price and solid service will depend on the scale of Swift's supply side. Assuming there's plenty of demand (lots of Uber, Lyft customers switching over) then Uber's drivers would be more than willing to switch over to Swift. The co-op model would be a great incentive.

The issue is though how does one get drivers to switch from a reliable (though possibly imperfect, inefficient) source of regular income with a well-known brand to an upstart at a large enough scale to pose a direct threat to Uber, thereby forcing them to change their model or go out of business?

I'm living in LA right now and I typically wait 4 min for a car (longest has been 10 min). My last ride cost $4.44. That's less than a Big Mac! ($5.04 average price in the US). I can't imagine a new service being able to beat that from it's inception.

The other issue is that if drivers are allowed drive for Uber and Swift there could be a free rider dynamic: drivers get the benefit of belonging to Swifts' co-op but still get to be part of Uber's network. Sure Uber's service would suffer, but it would be a huge drain on Swift's resources and undercut their model (and reason of existing) from the driver's perspective.

Re: Disrupting Uber

#87

Post by cbHXBY1D »

zer0gravity wrote: post #49

Uber has all the cards here. They came with a system that enables the drivers to use their time more efficiently, which dropped the price for the end user. Also lowered the entry barrier. Almost anyone with a car, smartphone and a driving licence can do it, which is why they afford the high turn over. Is it worth it trying to compete with them? Definitely . Will this lead to increased drivers profit ? Not really. Bec…

They truly don't. They own the best technology but no driver OR customer loyalty.

If a cooperative treats their employees better and with higher wages then why should the best, most active drivers stick with Uber?

Re: Disrupting Uber

#88

Post by jessaustin »

skybrian wrote: post #54
jessaustin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree, but why would Uber have lower fences than Swift? At least some of the part-timers must be surge-seeking: do their higher pay requirements reflect that they have higher skills than the 13-hour-day drivers?

If you have some other obligations so you can't work full time, that already rules out most jobs, so it could be a barrier to entry all by itself. I don't know how many people that is. It would be interesting to find out.

That is an interesting question, but does Jacobin expect Swift to exclude part-timers? That would be a tricky philosophical position...

Re: Disrupting Uber

#89

Post by aianus »

bradyo wrote: post #51
davidf18 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid I don't understand this, nor why I was downvoted. Just as in buying computers, buying food, education, airplane fares, consumers want lower prices which is a good thing. In the case of taxis, that means the elderly who often need them because they can no longer drive and are on a fixed income can more readily afford them (surely a leftist notion). There is no disagreement that "economic rents" are harmful…

What is so hard to understand about this? These drivers could create an app that results in the exact same price for consumers, except that any profits go to the drivers instead of Travis Kalanick's pocket.

Uber doesn't make any profit though. The question is what percentage of driver revenue is actually required to pay for the engineers/servers/background checks/insurance/driver incentives and is it really any less than Uber's percentage?

Re: Disrupting Uber

#90

Post by glup »

dotBen wrote: post #24

> "competing with Uber might seem intimidating, but in many respects the company is a paper tiger. Its massive valuation, which stood at $62.5 billion in January, comes from intellectual property — its brand and data — rather than from tangible assets." Right... except that the brand is what creates the demand side of the market, the data is what makes the platform efficient and the IP provides strong defense against…

If by 'not really grounded in business or technical fact' you mean not how things are typically done now, that's sort of the point. But there are some important precedents: Publix supermarkets for example, a Fortune 100 company with 170k workers, is wholly employee-owned.
Post reply on HN