Comment by x_throwaway80bf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by x_throwaway80bf | Hacker News Reader

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x_throwaway80bf

I agree generic consumer opinion won't really take into account the subsidy and unprofitability situation.

That is in fact my entire point: because generic consumer opinion or anecdotes don't qualify themselves based on the subsidy mechanism, it means generic consumer opinion or anecdotes are largely irrelevant for purposes of comparing with older taxi experiences or assessing a claimed value-add of a newer ride-hailing company.

In other words it doesn't add information to say that consumers like to be given better quality things for free.

> I need to get from one point to another in a safe, economical manner, and NYC's Yellow Taxi fleet is failing at that.

This seems like a red herring tacked on at the end, since Uber is not providing this either (because of the subsidy) and from an analytical perspective, it's irrelevant if average consumers are aware of this yet or not.

An analytical perspective which ignores consumer sentiment in a market economy is academically moot.

Medallion owners could have been more flexible with leasing terms as Uber flooded the zone, but did not.

Taxi drivers could have ceased discriminating against outer boroughs, but did not.

Medallion owners relied upon the monopoly to extract as much money from the market as possible without investing in vehicles or drivers or technology.

Taxi drivers frittered away the minimal public support they receive with strikes against GPS and credit card machines.

> An analytical perspective which ignores consumer sentiment in a market economy is academically moot.

Nobody is saying to ignore it... where are you getting that? I'm saying to analyze it _more carefully_. We definitely should analyze the fact that consumers like the app experience, increased supply, etc.

But you are saying to stop there and declare victory for Uber. But I am saying go further.

Then you see the experience exists only because of an intrinsically unsustainable subsidy, so it's not actually comparable to preexisting taxi services, driver behaviors, etc. Only after this point of carefully analyzing consumer sentiment qualified by the factors actually driving it can we realize that the consumer sentiment on its own really doesn't matter _in this particular case_.

I think you're trying to say that consumer sentiment, if not backed by an actually profitable business model, is like selling a dollar for 90 cents, and the happy consumer sentiment would totally not be indicative of a business model that can sustain the factors that the customers actually like... which is also what I am saying!

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