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Comment by cloudwalking | Hacker News Reader

If, for example, Uber crushes all competition, then they can raise fares and lower partner payments and make a bigger profit.

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This "raise prices after crushing competition" piece is something that practically never happens unless you manipulate governments to institute rules that preserve Monopoly. Even then as SpaceX & Uber showed, rent seeking gets punished by market.

If they raise prices significantly, someone else will come at a lower price with lower service quality (as already happens in Asia) and take a share of more price sensitive segment of the market.

Or if they become the self-driving service of choice, they can lower fares and capture a larger portion of the broader transportation market and make a profit.

Every time Uber scores a municipal victory, they're lowering the barrier to entry for competitors.

So true

not necessarily true. Uber is developing relationships with the regulators in all of their markets, a highly local endeavor. It's possible, even likely, that they are going to use these relationships to their own advantage when launching self driving cars in different markets.

And why would governments, that haven't allowed even private railroads in the past century, allow that to happen ?

If you put it like that, no government will stand for that. They can even look good on jobs while destroying uber.

And increases the size of their moat.

Raising fares would open more opportunities for competitors to enter the space.

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