Yesterday, Uber co-founder Garrett Camp wrote "Uber has become a global service providing roughly 15 million rides per day across 500 cities" at https://medium.com/@gc/ubers-path-forward-b59ec9bd4ef6
The most recent estimate I could find on Didi Chuxing is 20 million rides per day as of October, 2016 as stated at https://www.techinasia.com/china-didi-chuxing-20-million-dai...
It's reasonable to assume that Didi has noticeably grown since October 2016, but none of these numbers are easily verifiable externally to these companies.
(Lyft's market share is unclear to me, but perhaps 2 million rides per day, more or less?)
It was apparent that Didi had achieved the network effects necessary to overcome Uber in volume. Both companies wanted to focus on revenue so it was savvy of Didi to purchase UberChina so they could reduce ride subsidies.
I think that the success of UberChina, along with Yum! and Wal-Mart, demonstrate that it is possible to prevail in the difficult Chinese market.
What were the differences?
It was used as an example to illustrate that Didi did the little things that remove friction for its customers. Didi also recruited drivers in smaller cities; its coverage was superior to UberChina's.
It seems to me that to be successful in certain countries requires skills that don't translate internationally - for example, understanding the quirks of one big country, or negotiating the political situation.
And this is again a failure of government, not capitalism. As an analogue, you cannot say that socialism is a flawed system purely because of what happened in russia-you must not mix up economic and political philosophies.
And on the contrary, I absolutely do hold the failure of the Soviet system against central planning and command economies, even socialist ones. Given that, I find democratically-executed socialism using markets for prices (some consider this market socialism) much preferable.
Telecom monopolies are not by government intent by rather by regulatory capture.
As a capitalist, I hella want to exclude others from the market. If I can get the government to do this for me, then I'm willing to pay the lobbyist fees to make that happen. In the IP space the only reason I'm willing to slave away at invention is the possibility of a patent, a right to exclude, a limited monopoly.
As a capitalist, the absolute last thing I want is a free market. Thiel puts it this way: competition is for losers.
On the other hand, software patents.
We have generally forbidden dumping barrels of spent oil in rivers, for example.
Likewise, a non-capitalistic system can forbid or not pollution.
http://www.sandman.com/images/oldpolewires1sm.jpg
They were government regulated until that didn't work, then broken up. After the subsequent deregulation, the monopoly is in the process of re-creating itself now.
So you are saying that the investors, i.e. the capital, pressured Kalanick out for reasons of profit rather than due to pressure by the state in the form of multiple lawsuits. You are mistaken.
In particular, there is no evidence that Uber's naughty bro culture is any less profitable than a mature egalitarian culture. Lack of profit wasn't why Kalanick was shown the door.
The Waymo lawsuit is still very much up in the air. Kalanick's involvement is already public: he collaborated with Levandowski to acquire a team of self-driving-car engineers and their work over 8 months. The key demands of the Waymo legal team were rejected in their injunction. Judge Alsop did not see a clear nexus between the Waymo designs and the Uber lidar, referring the matter to trial.
Based on what? Uber isn't public, they aren't forced to release any information on their ride sharing, and what info they do release isn't subjected to any real verification.
The only article I see is based on "number of app downloads" - that has literally no relevance in the number of rides they're servicing. I've got Uber on my phone and I haven't used it in 3 months and I don't see that changing anytime soon. They didn't lose me outright as a user, but they, for all intents and purposes, lost my business.
Did the courts say that Kalanick is barred from being the CEO of Uber? Or, is it the case that Kalanick's actions have put Uber at risk fines and further litagation?
My (admittedly uninformed) take on the situation is that Uber's investors weighed the costs and benefits and determined that Kalanick needed to go. While the regulatory environment probably influenced the decision, it wasn't the government calling the shots.
Capitalism by itself looks at profit. In the United States capitalism is held in check by a legal+political+free speech system. A company (Uber) is not held in check by more capitalism; it is not held in check by competition. As an aside, this breaks down with regulatory capture.
When VW cheated on its emissions testing it was not checked by a more efficient and competitive Tesla. It was held to account by a legal system external of capitalism.
And Travis was not held accountable by a legal system - his investors (i.e. capital) asked him to step down.
I think we're all saying the same thing, it's just your conclusion is incorrect.
Capitalism is about future profits, by definition. I can't invest money in Apple in 1997. I have to invest it today, and my only concern is what happens after that investment. The Uber boarding kicking him out is entirely a capitalist reason. They've invested money, and his presence will (they believe at least) negatively affect the return on that investment going forward.
Your only concern may be what happens after an investment but you'd be foolhardy not to take past performance into account. Undervalued (Apple in 1997, return of Steve) is one thing. Throwing good money after bad is another.
$2.8B is just a ton of money to lose and for a startup it's insane (thinking of Amazon but Uber's losses dwarf Amazon's early losses). Frankly, I think the board is using this as an excuse to do now what they should have done a couple of years back. Boards are human. They aren't homo economicus incarnate. Ascribing rationality to the outcome of a board meeting because capitalism makes no sense. Really, they lost $2.8B last year.
No one is suggesting that. When people say "this is capitalist of the board to do" they're talking about the individual board member profiting from a successful exit. Put more simply - investor puts $1 in Uber on day 0 and expects to make $100 on day 1,000 and makes a $99 profit. They're axing TK because they want to make their $99 return on investment.
Which reason would that be? Which reason is there for a investor to ask a CEO to step other than to protect his/her investment?
By allowing it to willfully break laws in dozens of countries, contributing to lowering standards of living and high stress at work, tracking users at all times, having a hostile workplace, then becoming the most important provider of such services in the world?
Yeah, that's totally capitalism doing its work, and not the painfully obvious "throw VC money at it until it works" scheme, right
As a previous comment pointed out, Uber created a consumer surplus of almost $7 billion in 2015 alone.