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Comment by djsumdog | Hacker News Reader

It's dangerous to make predictions like that. We've seen worse companies last longer.

In the 2008 financial crisis, people from the bottom to the top committed outright fraud; swallowing up other banks whole (PNC bought National City for $5 billion; then got a $5 billion tax credit .. they bought National City for free .. NC wasn't allowed to apply for TARP).

Ford sold tank treads to Germany. IBM made punch cards for the SS. BP got the UK and US to remove the democratically elected leader of Iran and install a dictator. United Fruit and everything they did in South America

Wal-Mart is still around, and Amazon has turned into the new Wal-Mart. Uber could die tomorrow or last another 50 years. I don't think any of this is make or break.

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I think the difference with those comparisons is that Uber is a massive startup, and startups have a high tendency to fail. Situations like Uber are the exact reason everyone was issuing warnings about "late stage private companies" last year. Uber might have lots cash on hand, but their unit economics makes them a ticking timebomb, meanwhile the constant PR is sending them into a huge tailspin.

Zenefits seems to have cleaned up with the departure of the former CEO. I'm not sure what their bankruptcy prospects were. Departure or not, I think Uber has challenges beyond their need to create self-driving cars (which the CEO claimed was existential for them).

i think the self driving car stuff is existential for uber because the drivers cost them too much money. it's a race against their ability to raise capital.

and yet Google is saying some of that software was stolen and there was that other recent post that showed their cars still needed a pretty large amount of driver intervention .. so that's probably not working out for them at the moment either.

correct. they've fucked themselves. i'm really curious what their financials look like, because i bet google has an approximation, and google may know that this lawsuit's costs will break the camel's back.

You still haven't explained why it's dangerous to make this prediction, you've just disagreed with it.

> You still haven't explained why it's dangerous to make this prediction,

In literally the second sentence of his response: "We've seen worse companies last longer."

Now, Uber's current combination of all its troubles does not paint a pretty picture, but a resignation of a top exec and a PR nightmare simultaneously aren't really things that would definitively sink a multi-billion dollar company.

>In literally the second sentence of his response: "We've seen worse companies last longer."

...And the danger is...?

You might be wrong, and make decisions based on that wrong decision. That's the context of the discussion.

Nobody is suggesting that you'll get bumped off by the Uber PR squad, just that you'll be caught making uninformed definitive statemnts about an uncertain situation.

The difference here is that Uber doesn't have much of value except their brand. Their industry has a low barrier to entry, their work force isn't tied to the company and they don't have much in the way of IP. Their ability to ride out bad press is a lot more limited than companies that can fall back on those things.

(well, they also have a giant pile of cash. But their ability to raise that cash is obviously dependent on what investors think of their brand)

those companies all make/made money. Uber bleeds money at an insane rate.

Let's not forget Bayer... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer#World_War_II

...Who also made and make lots of money. I don't think that anyone is disputing that absolute scumbags can stay in power if they make people money, but Uber... loses... money.

On the contrary, their stock valuation is staggering. If it simply increases to eclipse normal companies they can burn all they like.

It's more than a bit like a tipping point for the moral soul of market capitalism (to the extent that's not already an oxymoron).

Basically Uber will continue to dominate so long as being a complete, total monster is MORE important than any other consideration. That's what's propping them up: their continued existence is an indication that, to global capital as it exists today, the various considerations of business all boil down to one single Darwinian consideration: what will make the most money, all else aside.

Uber is a vote for 'all else aside'. They're a vote for literally capital crushing everything else before it, for the belief that abstracted power (in the form of money) can always do anything it wants. In a sense it's a vote of confidence in the freest of free markets: as long as everybody continues to believe, logically Uber can never fail because they can always out-scumbag everybody else and if you're certain that's the key to success it's illogical to break faith with 'em. That doesn't mean 'liking' it: you can hate it and still believe that's the only way to success.

The one crack in the support beam: this literally requires everyone to agree, because the ONLY thing holding Uber up is the collective confidence in their valuation. They can only burn infinitely if they represent something vitally important to capital as a whole. This is why they're still Uber, and it's pretty revealing.

But it requires just about unanimous agreement that Uber is the way of the future. It doesn't take many defectors before Uber stops making the rules for being a unicorn darling trend-setter: and people do have a sense of what's at stake here. If Uber is NOT the future… then they lose a LOT of money.

Uber is the Enron model. They are incapable of crumbling, or dwindling. They can only be the way of the future and the one model for everyone going forward… or explode, very suddenly and catastrophically.

All of those companies turn a huge profit.

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