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Comment by brianwawok | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think you can charge Monopoly prices when the barrier to entry is so low. Without robot cars anyone can compete locally with Uber. With robot cars they win, but again not sure they can raise prices much.

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The barrier of entry appears to be billions of dollars worth of VC cash, so I’m a bit less optimistic.

But regardless of whether they can pull it off, I’ve always viewed Uber as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Sure, they’re pro-consumer now, but they absolutely intend to go anti-consumer the moment they’re given a chance.

> The barrier of entry appears to be billions of dollars worth of VC cash, so I’m a bit less optimistic.

The barrier of entry to what? Sure, the barrier of entry to autonomous cars without drivers is extremely high, but even if Uber is the only one in the market that possessed the technology, they wouldn't be able to drive market prices for taxis higher than the cost of a drive in a manned car. I don't know about you, but I have no real preference for driving in an unmanned car if the manned option is significantly cheaper.

The barrier to entry into the market, not the barrier of entry to self driving cars. Uber raised $24B, and Lyft raised $5B (and they’re not even making a self driving car). To my eye these are the only two that’ve ever gained any significant success, as I couldn’t name any other options, and googling produced a small smattering of apps that don’t even work where I live.

I entered into the discussion with the context that Uber slashed local taxi market prices to a fraction of what they were previously so that might be where we had different assumptions. I'm saying that even if Uber turns anti-consumer, the situation can hardly get worse than it was so it is probably a consumer win.

[I can speak only from a UK perspective] surely it's convenience, not price? It's a generally good, convenient service built around an extremely slick and extremely usable app. Maybe it's slightly cheaper than local, but saying it's slashed local taxi prices? The only time Uber seems drastically cheaper is when it's entering an area and is operating at a much-higher-than-normal loss in an attempt to drive out competition. Once that period is over, it seems to use surge pricing very heavily, so often ends up more expensive (to their credit, they're normally quite good about refunding overcharges if they happen)

It is a consumer win, I'd agree with that, but I'd argue that's not to do with cost. Same as Amazon.

Taxis were super expensive before Uber.

This seems an incredibly general statement. Where? As I say, maybe this is just UK? Maybe taxis are more expensive or Uber is much cheaper outside the UK? But in the UK Uber isn't drastically cheaper except when they're attempting to crush competition in an area by burning cash. Which is great for consumers! But that doesn't go on for very long, the prices creep back up because it's not sustainable.

In my European country, taxi prices were exorbitant and taxi usage was very low. You only used taxis on very special occasions, like getting to your destination from an airport or train station. Once Uber came, taxi prices dropped drastically and several new local companies formed to try to compete, many of them with their own (less slick, but still very usable) apps.

Overall, Uber seems to have introduced healthy competition and taxi usage has changed from rare to commonplace.

"In my European country, taxi prices were exorbitant and taxi usage was very low." <-- this is so true. in France (to give another example), this is even worse: in Paris you don't pick the taxi, the taxi picks you (and if where you're going doesn't fancy them, they will refuse you... which they legally cannot do, but they still do it). Taxis were an entrenched rent-seeker, they were in need of disruption, for the public good. I'm not necessarily a big fan of Uber, but the taxis as a corporation deserve the competition.

And that's not even taking about the phone app and its capabilities, which were just out of reach of regular taxis (even the taxi companies that own a large fleet, these are still very small and have no tech capability). IMHO that's another front where the competition was healthy.

Isn't that only the barrier to entry worldwide? If they started charging monopoly prices with our robots then local taxi services would start coming back

I don’t know what it would cost to enter local markets only, but I suspect that has less utility than being national or international. I don’t want a taxi app per city, I want the same app to get me to/from LAX to get me to/from JFK, and I doubt that’s my particular quirk.

On the latter, I don’t know what would happen if they charged monopoly prices. I suspect you’re right, cabs might come back.

But _most_ of the time you'd be using the one in your city.

If you are from Manchester, UK and you live there, how often do you need a taxi app that works in Bangkok, or NY, or Oslo?

Maybe I’m unusual, but use of Uber is overwhelmingly travel related. The only time I use it in my own city is transit to/from my airport, because I can’t easily use public transit.

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