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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

Who says they'll bear the cost? I'm not sure forcing all of these services to jack up their prices is bad for Uber if they can increase their overall margin while doing so. They just can't do it today if the competition won't follow suit.

Yes, they lose some volume but Uber/Lyft is probably a pretty strongly engrained habit for many at this point.

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The price would get so high that demand would plummet -- more shared/saver rides or public transit or own drive or flexcar/cargo carshare outside of the densest Urban cores.

I'm not sure about "plummet" at least until you get materially more expensive than taxis. But you're right that decreases in demand mean not only fewer fares but also a less viable service at the margins.

When I've looked, it's appeared as if Uber is only marginally viable around where my house is. Decrease the number of riders and I could imagine the number of drivers dropping further to the point where it's not really a usable service.

> but Uber/Lyft is probably a pretty strongly engrained habit for many at this point.

Might be true in the valley, but I see no reason to believe that this is true in many other markets.

Really? "the valley"? I think you'd be closer to the mark if you said it's true in most major metro areas. That still leaves many other markets, but the ubiquity Uber/Lyft is hardly a Silicon Valley only phenomenon.

Ubiquity of Uber/Lyft is a phenomenon across the world, but not all the markets are as flexible on the price. I question the premise that the markets will respond mildly to a significant price increase in most places. The valley just has a high density of high earners who are willing to pay the sort of price Uber would have to set for competing successfully with drivers making decent pay.

Uber has replaced a good chunk of taxi usage in most of the big cities around the world. Even many medium sized ones in developing countries.

And has done so by running its business at a loss, with waves of protests erupting across the world against their anti-labor policies. A quick google search will tell you all about it.

Do you believe that when Uber stops bleeding money, and pays an ultimately somewhat acceptable wage to its drives, it will still be able to compete at the new prices set by these changes?

I sure don't.

> Might be true in the valley, but I see no reason to believe that this is true in many other markets.

I responded to this statement, in which you implied that uber had little market share in other areas. No where in your comment did you state that it was operating at a loss, you simply stated you didn't believe Uber wasn't as strong in other markets.

From the comment above, to which I was responding:

> pretty strongly engrained habit

An ingrained habit and market share are different things. Market share is dependent on price point among many other conditions. I never said or implied that ride share services, and Uber in particular, don't have strong market share. They do at the moment.

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