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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

I'm getting Uber fatigue. This company has been in the news mostly in a negative sense. It 's lost on me what innovation, technologically, or socially, they have brought to the table.

Instead, perhaps we can focus on how we can fix this sharing economy, so that we can all benefit; not just the ones who happened to raise the most money from shareholders.

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how we can fix this sharing economy

Start by ditching the term “sharing economy” because there is no “sharing”, person A pays and person B provides some service, so it’s just “economy”.

^^^ What he said. How about "eBay for car rides"

It's not even eBay, since Uber sets the prices.

and tightly controls and rates customers and drivers. Think back to the 2014 downgrading of Uber drivers who worked for competing services.

yea make it dude see if its successful , no one is stopping you

In Baltimore we already do this. In Baltimore it's called hacking. http://afro.com/the-anatomy-of-a-hack/ It could be half the cost of a uber or lyft depending on where you're going. A $23-$30 ride could be $9-$15 via a hack. Most of these people are retired older dudes or drug addicts looking for money for their fix.

I thought of an app to facilitate this based off of a review system of past customers. Take a dollar off of the ride to encourage reviews. Leave a tip option to give the dollar back if the passenger liked the ride. Baltimore could benefit from this. Cheaper transportation that connects people that is.

> ...or drug addicts looking for money for their fix.

What a catastrophically bad idea..

You underestimate the sense of poor people who just need a quick ride up the street or are desperate to get to a job that's on the verge of firing them for their lateness because the public transportation has failed them time and time again.

Not all drug addicts commit crimes. There is certainly a place in society for people who fill their void(s) by using drugs. You do need to be careful though, not all addicts are crimeless.

This is a really important thing - I look at addiction largely as a societal neutral, the societal harm is often more from the legal issues surrounding addiction, than the actual addiction itself. Before the laws changed in the early 20th century, prescribing maintenance doses of opioids for example, was considered normal and accepted practice.

I challenge you to explore addiction more fully - it is simplistic to assume that all addicts are opioid-linked and that maintenance dosages would remove harm (methadone programs are basically performing this function, so it is not as though this doesn’t happen).

Firstly, what is societal neutral? Is it where a person is able to indulge in their vices without affecting others, or causing cost to the community? Because if so, drug addiction (of prescription, or legal drugs - alcohol and tobacco - and illegal drugs) fails the test.

Speaking as someone working on the front lines (emergency departments) of societies care for vulnerable people, addiction is an enormous scourge that causes immense harm - particularly with ice which is highly destructive to the individual, their families and the social fabrics of communities.

I'm the child of an addict.

It really depends on how you measure cost - the current regime of punishing it, or treating it as a character weakness is clearly not working - plus moving sustained addiction outside of a care network to the black market, also clearly isn't working either.

Everything we do has a cost to the community, the question is, since we know we can't eliminate the cost, how can we reduce it?

I agree, services to support are very important and models that reduce harm should be encouraged and adopted

Amen! As a former drug addict, I can tell you that I would have given you amazing service. Reason being, that next $10 would have meant the world to me, and I wouldn't jeopardize it for anything. Stealing is hard and I was terrible at it.

It's pretty common to assume that addicts are just pieces of inferior shit. Hell, I felt that way before I was one. That was a rather rude awakening.

I think its that real world experience with someone who had an addiction in your life that will change your worldview - my father is an opioid addict, and an alcoholic - and frankly, he managed to have both of these habits for 50 years and hold down a job, make a living, and (sort of) raise a child. He wasn't there when I was a kid - but I know he did the best job he knew how - even if it wasn't enough - and I can't fault him for it. Same with my mother, who was left emotionally kinda broken by her own childhood.

I've know many current and former addicts in my life - and I don't look at it as a character failing at all - its just an unfortunate luck of the draw when it comes to biology, genetics, and life experience.

I’m more worried about their ability to drive safely. I am not against drugs (I in fact believe legalizing them would be best) however, one should not drive a car when they are either high or on withdrawal because it prevents them from being able to drive safely. I would not want to be the passenger of someone who does drugs regularly because regular usage can have negative affects even after you are no longer high.

IIRC taxi permits are usually called hacking permits.

The old British term for a cab is a Hackney Carriage

I've often thought it would be cool to build a fairer ride hailing app that gives drivers more autonomy. The driver buys the app as a one time purchase, they get to set their own prices, and there is more transparency between buyer and seller. There could be a simple bidding process where users request a ride, drivers make an offer, and the user accepts one based on price, how far away the driver is, and their reviews. Basically the app would be more light-weight and be more like a marketplace.

So, decentralized and trust based. But then the challenge is to engineer around abuse on either side. Seems a worthy project.

That sounds like a great idea, the only point I'd make is that a one time purchase model wouldn't work because you'd have ongoing costs (transaction fees for payments, records you legally have to keep, etc.).

Good point - a subscription model would probably be better.

I want to make this and include a multi-level marketing network model so drivers are additionally incentivized for recruiting and retaining halfway decent drivers. Herbalife for transport!

Sounds great until you realize 1. riders would only use the app if they could sort by 'price,' 2. drivers would therefore have to constantly change their rates to reflect what those in the area are charging at a given time/supply/demand level, so.. 3. in order to do this effectively without creating massive unexpected price swings for both drivers & riders, you'd end up automating this 'bidding' system and hey whaddya know, you just built Uber again!

Genuinely curious about this - why would the price swings in this case be worse than with uber? With enough drivers, I would expect prices to reach an equilibrium that depends on time of day/day of week, with highly rated drivers charging more. And even if the price swings were larger than uber's, wouldn't the prices be more optimal since they would be set by individual actors with more local info about the cost of providing the service?

While Uber and Lyft raise prices in periods of high demand, they also subsidize rides in periods of low demand to keep a consistent quality of service. You'd have a hard time getting a network as reliable as Uber and Lyft without that subsidy.

It's not uncommon to see Uber retain 75% of the fee collected these days. The subsidies are much lower and less frequent than you are probably expecting. In Los Angeles, you are talking about 1.1-2.0 subsidy on base rates in the same areas with base rates for the driver being .72/mi and .11/min.

Reminds me of a similar project that popped up on HN a while ago.

https://arcade.city/

Something like what Project Wonderful does with web advertising would really have big potential

In Ukraine we have a taxi app where user selects price he's willing to pay and waits for drivers. He can increase the price if no drivers take an offer.

That’s basically what SideCar was, as drivers could set their own rates, and passengers could choose from a number of offers based on total price, quality, driver rating, and time until pickup.

SideCar closed in late 2014 though :-/ (And there was a recurring cut paid to SC.)

Semi-related: there's a startup in Denmark [0] trying to do this for parcel/freight transportation. I'm not sure how well they're doing, though.

[0] https://www.badabring.com/ (link in Danish)

>Instead, perhaps we can focus on how we can fix this sharing economy, so that we can all benefit; not just the ones who happened to raise the most money from shareholders.

I already benefit from it massively. Before my roommate got me into using Uber a few years ago, I was hesitant to travel to new cities or even go somewhere new or unusual in my own city because of being intimidated by having to figure out where and how to hail a taxi or having to figure out the bus routes. Now as long as I have my phone and I'm in a somewhat populated area, I have no fear.

Before my roommate got me into using Uber a few years ago, I was hesitant to travel to new cities or even go somewhere new or unusual in my own city because of being intimidated by having to figure out where and how to hail a taxi or having to figure out the bus routes.

I'm not familiar with he US, but taxis in most European countries have an app these days. Even >20 years ago you could just call their phone number and they would pick you up from (or drop you) anywhere, even in remote villages, even at 4am. Never had a problem. I find it hard to believe the same isn't true for the US.

Sure public transport isn't as flexible route/time wise but I don't see how Uber is different from regular taxi service - apart from the price.

You should listen to all the Americans insisting the taxi experience was nowhere near that easy or good. Because outside NYC, it was utter shit. And good luck even in NYC if you're black, or going to the airport, or the outer Burroughs, or ...

Fixing sharing economy - develop proper distributed system that runs akin to bittorrent/bitcoin model with guaranteed feedback mechanisms that mitigates against systemic abuse. Super hard job. But it would, if solved, truly revolutionize/create the shared economy space.

they have not brought any innovation. They are just a company with a very reliable and robust service. For all the bad news its just social moral crying, its nothing about their tech.

As a service they are great, reliable. Thats all you need to be a successful business you dont need to innovate. Let google and Microsoft think about AI. All Uber needs to do is make sure I get to my destination on time.

When you think about impact, you might say Uber has topped all tech companies. Sure Google AI can be the best chess player, but Uber give mobility to me and many others in an easy to use application which is much more effective in my day to day life.

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