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bguillet

And more expensive

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That's what happens when you cannot rely on spending other people's money to prop up your business.

It's honestly so destructive for these anti competitive business practices to pour VC money into a market.

Uber and Lyft aren’t unprofitable at the margins in developed markets. They instead spend money expanding.

Back in 2016 Uber says it was profitable in places like California. Why would VC spend billions to permanently give free rides to Californians? It just doesn’t make any sense.

https://fortune.com/2016/06/16/uber-profitable-markets/

That’s not what Forbes has been saying about Uber since 2017. Look up more recent Uber article by them.

One accuses Uber of creative accounting to attempt to make the rideshare business look profitable.

I looked. The articles aren’t actually saying that the rides have a negative profit. Only that margins are low (which is quite plausible)

The article is consistent with both of our beliefs, i.e. it’s vague as to whether losses are intrinsic to rides, or whether margins are low + there are expansion costs.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lensherman/2019/08/22/ubers-dub...

It should be tbh. It’s a car service. It’s a luxury expense.

It may have started that way but not anymore. You can viably replace car ownership with ride-share and spend _less_ money each month than being a car owner. Many people do this, it not just luxury.

I think that is only viable in places where car ownership is prohibitively expensive already. A short trip is easily $10, and then you still have to get back. Do that every day and you’re spending ~$600/month. If you live in an area that isn’t parking constrained (most of America!) owning a car can be much more affordable than that.

Uber and Lyft both have commuter arrangements that cost more on the order of $2.50-3.50 a trip. Mainly focused on the GGP claim that these services are strictly luxury.

I’ve never seen prices that low when browsing for a pool trip.

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