It's like the same idea of Uber and Lyft. Less human involvement = better world /S.
It's interesting how everyone conveniently forgot about the medallion system Uber and Lyft disrupted.
Pre-Uber, either the driver rented the car to a middleman who rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was selling and financing (most banks won't touch these medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a driver that planned to use it as his retirement savings (an extremely volatile asset and not very liquid).
The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their industry was a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber brought a breeze of fresh air: Someone could simply buy a car, calculate the depreciation and it's value on the market (since unlike medallions cars are relatively liquid assets!) do rideshare and calculate their profits or loss. They can get out of the game at anytime, and they know exactly how much they are going to get for the car they have should they sell it.
And I'm not even touching the usual pain points and often discriminatory practices of medallion drivers (refusing card payments, refusing rides to non-white passengers and to non-white neighborhoods...).
- It is now cheaper for the average person to get a ride to an airport/bar than it was before. It is safer, more predictable with timing, and more predictable with pricing.
- Uber drivers make more money today than taxi drivers used to/or do today. There are also way more job openings in this than there used to be, with less friction to get involved.
The world is not a zero sum game. Technology made this a win-win long-term although there were already some people caught in the middle with old business models. However, that really cant be a reason for us not to move on.
I'm happy the services exist but they are not cheap, at least not here.
I occasionally used to try these services (I have thousands of rides so this used to be relevant). Lyft/Uber are way better.
I am also still extremely skeptical they contribute to higher prices though. If Uber and Lyft did not exist I believe (just a theory) that taxi prices would be much higher.
Perhaps someone who lives in a city where ubers are banned could state if taxi prices have grown over the years.
Can confirm. Arrived at SFO late the other night (1130pm-ish) and Uber wanted $80 to take me from Passenger pickup, to my longterm parking lot which was probably 3 miles away.
I ended up taking a Taxi for $12 + tip.
Now that we're talking about public companies, there are a lot of them. Any concern about price gouging you might have should extend to all these companies.
If not, why not?
So it feels that they'll have to change something big to meet expected returns.
And the fear is that, as they succesfully managed to kill the incumbent, they are free to change the most obvious parameter, the pricing.
I heard the same thing about amazon. That the inevitable huge price increases are coming. Hasn't happened yet.
Is it? Or are venture capitalists just footing the bill?
Whatever model of "price" you use needs to take into account the fact that not only are Uber and Lyft lighting enormous piles of Saudi money on fire to "gain marketshare" but that the actual drivers are being paid peanuts. This isn't pure win, it's more like Nestle handing out free baby formula in Africa to destroy the "domestic market" so to speak.
Same reason they pretended to work on flying taxis and self-driving cars. The multiple for high tech companies is greater than the multiple for taxi companies or even basic Web2.0-style one-trick app companies.
The US should be blessed that Saudi is so bad with its money and so willing to subsidize Americans.
It destroyed the money of people who had bought up medallions. That's it. Having medallions was not a long term solution when the city can now charge rideshare services for miles/minutes/rides on the road without any hard cap for politically connected incumbent players.
The financially-sustainable transportation market. Companies without endless amounts of capital that actually have to break even or make a profit to keep the lights on.
It's not just the medallions, they're literally selling the service itself at below-cost in many places and have been for years.
Since they're public, its any shareholder and the public market. But that also means they're probably not still raising rounds like they were.
Cab drivers have lost job stability, but others have benefitted.
But to the larger point: medallions made NYC yellowcabs more expensive than the market demands, and they’re still cheaper than ridesharing.
Uber was a god-send. You call up the driver, watch him approach on your phone, step out when he's there. Regardless of where you were, you could get a ride from there to wherever you were going. Rides for which auto-rickshaws used to charge upwards of Rs. 300 (~$4), can now be had for Rs 150 or less ( < $2 ).
Just because some countries don't value competition - and prefer to cater to existing entrenched lobbying groups - is not compelling evidence to the average American that Uber is bad.
On average, in certain locations. In others, not so much. And let's not forget surge pricing. Or people living, or wanting to get to a place, along low-profit routes. Or people with disabilities.
> more predictable with pricing
Depends. Regular taxis tended to cost a bit more, but had much lower variance.
> Uber drivers make more money today than taxi drivers used to/or do today.
That seems implausible at best.
> There are also way more job openings in this than there used to be
These aren't jobs, though. They're gigs. And highly unpredictable ones, wrt. your take-home pay.
> The world is not a zero sum game. Technology made this a win-win long-term
Absolutely true.
The problem isn't technology, it's businesses - particularly businesses that purposefully play a negative-sum game, where the losing side is society at large. Externalizing risk, costs, performing regulatory arbitrage. Making owners much better off, customers a bit better off, at the cost of making everyone else slightly worse off. And much like with greenhouse emissions - a bit here, a bit there, barely measurable puff, up until it adds up to a global crisis - these companies are killing civilized society, one VC-subsidized shiny app at a time.
More predictable as in you know the fair before you get in. I did have to take a taxi in Los Angeles from the airport earlier this year and the guy wouldn't tell me how much it would cost. Gave me a ballpark that was $22 less than what it ended up being.
There's a long, long, long list of reasons Uber has screwed over great many people, and continues to. From regulatory arbitrage, duping drivers into unprofitable deals, lack of proper insurance, privacy violations, harassing journalists, harassing employees... This has been covered non-stop on HN for pretty much a decade now. I invite you to do some searching, and you'll quickly see how Uber is one of the most ethically challenged companies of the 21st century.
> More predictable as in you know the fair before you get in.
Yes. And by higher-variance I meant that you never know what fare you'll have to either accept, or abandon the trip. With traditional taxis, the prices are variable, but it's easier to ballpark them (at least traveling in the city you know), and they have much tighter range.
I guess if you prefer being able to ballpark a taxi cost then that's cool! You can still use taxis. But most people prefer to see the price before they get in. Certainly the choice existing is better for the consumer and has helped keep taxi fares lower - even if you choose not to use an uber.
Stop defending Uber. Even if you work for them it is incumbent on you as a citizen to be honest about what they were doing.
Do you have any evidence, for any taxi network in any city on the planet, of that taxi network doing anything even remotely as illegal or antisocial as Uber has been (and still is) doing? Uber's transgressions are well documented, there is great many of them, and quite a few were done at scale.
For the "deserving" part - they were there. Good or bad, I don't think any business deserves being steamrolled by an aggressive foreign multinational corporation, with practically infinite budget to undercut competitors and keep law enforcement at bay. Local businesses don't get to break the law without impunity.
For being better to their employees, I honestly don't know. But in all the rides with traditional networks I took over two decades of my life, I don't remember any driver actually complaining about their job. Ironically, the drivers of Uber-like[0] services keep complaining all the time - mostly about constantly changing terms of contracts, and constantly testing new kinds of customer acquisition schemes, that tend to take away money from the drivers.
> But most people prefer to see the price before they get in.
I never said I didn't want it either. I like this feature - and guess what, I had that, way before Uber was a thing, thanks to a private company that fought for improvement in transport regulations. That's how I know sociopathy wasn't necessary to disrupting the taxi market.
--
[0] - I don't use Uber itself, it's a matter of principle.
According to Uber?
> Additionally, it has enabled millions of people in cities to skip buying a new car/any car which saves tons of emissions.
Citation needed. I believe the last analysis I read showed that most people used Uber etc to replace transit or walking, which means it adds to emissions.
I've used taxis in multiple cities that I booked through an app and got a fare ahead of time. At this point Uber is "a taxi, but with no guarantee of quality* and no cap on how many of them are creating traffic"
*GPS routing does no good when the driver clearly can't read a map and doesn't know where they are or how to follow directions.
- Taxi drivers (outside of NYC) in the US are going to get less rides per hour than uber drivers
- Taxi drivers traditionally have to give a larger share to the taxi company than uber drives give to Uber. If they are independent then they have identical car expenses as an uber driver.
I 100% believe that a lot of Uber drivers barely break even. I guess I'm fine with that - I bet if you try to do that 9-5 and can't do your own car maintenance you are going to be inefficient at it. I had a friend in Los Angeles who would only work nights, was fine working 2am, and could do basic tire/oil/car repair. He made 2x what he had been making as a busboy at a restaurant. I don't see why this is considered a bad option for people, especially since he enjoyed the flexibility.
You can always take a regular cab. Low profit routes were pretty much impossible to get pre-Uber. I am almost certain that Uber is more likely to obey disability laws than "Joe's taxi" with a few cars.
> Depends. Regular taxis tended to cost a bit more, but had much lower variance.
My experience with cabs is calling a dispatcher while in route and getting a price. I was charged $30 for a two mile trip to the train station before. No reasoning. Also they were much less likely to pick up minority passengers, or people in poorer neighborhoods. Also "credit card machine was broken" very often. Also you don't know the route the driver will take. I guess my experience with cabs pre-Uber was different from yours, but it was incredibly high variance.
> That seems implausible at best.
Many places you had a gatekeeper. You can't just ride a taxi, and would have to purchase a medallion or sign on to an existing vendor where there's much less competition. They would also be much less flexible with hours
> When accounting for the ride-sharing company’s commissions and fees, vehicle expenses and a modest health insurance package, Uber drivers end up earning just $9.21 in hourly wages, according to a new study from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-uber-driv...
with that said, this is all supposition, i just find it a reasonable argument.
It maybe made sense though, as your payment was your license to work, and selling the medalion on was your retirement plan. Uber screwed this up - but my feelings are mixed.
The problem with that is that there is a supply of cab drivers and demand for cabs that drives the price. If you put in a medallion system, the price of the medallion will be bid up such that the cab driver's wage is in line with the market wage. You can't just wave a magic wand and set prices without unintended consequences. So what happened was cab drivers had to take out massive debt to finance these medallions or work for some middle man that is essentially a financing arm. And when the price collapsed, they were stuck with this debt and some even got bailed out by taxpayers.
I wish Uber was around when I was younger. I had a car and a lot of spare time. I would have gladly accepted a low wage if I had a few hours to kill. No other job affords that flexibility which is probably why its so popular.
Knowing the lawsuits from people who've been refused rides from a regular Uber because they have a service dog, or their wheelchair 'probably won't fit' (I think I can tell you whether the wheelchair I usually put in the trunk of a car is likely to fit in your trunk, thank you), I am not.
But there are also specific accessible taxis. How do I call an Uber that will take a powered wheelchair?
No idea how it works in practice but it’s a thing in Toronto.
In cities, that's absurd - car services existed for decades serving just this part of the market, and they let you schedule in advance!
In the suburbs and exurbs, probably less so, but this is where everyone has a car as a prerequisite for living in a house with a multi-car garage.
You could schedule in advance. Now having them actually show up? That was debatable. lol
In cities, there were were either no taxis around in certain neighborhoods, or they simply would not come at all even if you called and asked the taxi company and the dispatcher told you they had sent a driver. Both of these I experienced personally.
Sure but that doesn't work very well for when you want to spend the weekends drinking. The cities in the US that have grown the most over the last 10 or 20 years are still very much suburban and lack good public transportation. The lack of low cost and convenient transportation services quite literally resulted in fatal accidents.
Technological progress disrupts markets.
The only thing that changes are the cast of winners and losers.
Society sometimes prefers the greater good (fairness) by reigning in the powerful.
They have also become very unreliable, with no available drivers in some areas or 40+ minute wait times, and then the driver cancels. The majority of drivers switched to food delivery it seems. Pre-pandemic you could get a driver within 5 minutes no problem in some areas, and now may be waiting 30+ minutes.
I took a trip to Asheville and Uber/Lyft service was virtually non-existent, you had to rely on local cab companies to get around.
This is no longer true. In my town, now that the firehose of VC subsidies has dried up, Uber costs more than taking a cab, even without surge pricing.
Hmmm, That must depend on the market as it's not necessarily the case based on discussions I had with both in Ottawa.
(note, when Uber first started, that was the perceived story - almost "free money!" for bored white collar workers with a car and few hours to spare here and there. I've had people in $50k, $60k cars drive me around, to "meet new people and have fun". However, once full-time professionals joined the ranks, and did math on maintenance and insurance and fuel etc, the story RAPIDLY changed).
I'm not surprised its gone down - probably a sign that it used to be very profitable even if not as much so now. I do know plenty of people that can repair cars themselves (one of whom has been uber driving foe years) so perhaps it will only work out for those people. Which seems like a 100% decent outcome.
There's an implicit assumption there that taxi driver gets less rides and I don't see why that is necessarily true.
More broadly, I think both Uber and Taxi drivers have significant distribution, and it appears there are both Uber & Taxi drivers who are better or worse at maximizing their rides and income. I've seen both drivers who just "do what app/dispatch tells them" (and are constantly complaining about their income level or nature of rides), and drivers who actively seek out timing, areas and locations that give good rides. This is not the same as parking in front of hotel and hoping for a long drive - it's a fairly active dynamic work.
Overall though, active engaged Taxi drivers seemed to find it a more predictable, profitable engagement that sufficed as main income for their family; whereas I have not gotten that sense from Uber drivers in the 12-18 months prior to Covid.
Of course, while I took taxi or uber twice a day for several years in Ottawa, this is still anecdata and limited sample - absolutely! But that's largely my point - we discuss Uber and Taxi as if the situation in London and San Francisco and New York and Ottawa and so on is the same - and it absolutely is not.
One thing that seems to often be missed in these discussions as well is edge cases; even if in a place Uber is a great alternative for 80-90% of folks, I find it is far less dependable if you're in a less active area, during less active time, and/or need Uber planned for a specific time.
Due to a decade of massive losses. This isn’t their real long term cost. It is a scam to make people think it’s cheaper and run normal taxis out of business
What we have is slightly higher pay until your car breaks. No retirement plan.
The drivers lose out.
The customer rides in someone's personal car pays a little less sometimes but a lot more (demand pricing) when they really need it.
Uber/Lift lose money on each ride but will rise prices as soon as they can once you have fewer choices.
Zero sum indeed..
The relationship between public mass transit, and private taxis (and private mass transit) was cooperative. The relationship between city transportation systems and Uber is hostile.
Their full impact is not yet decided
No it's no longer cheaper "to get a ride to an airport/bar than it was before." Especially if one considers "before" being before the pandemic. This increased price of Uber/Lyft has actually been quite a common news story of late[1][2][3]. Incidentally "why is uber so expensive right now 2021" on Google search has over 15 million results.
What evidence is there that an Uber is safer than a taxi? Also how can a model with surge pricing be more predictable than a taxi which has regulated rates per mile and per minute?
>"Uber drivers make more money today than taxi drivers used to/or do today. There are also way more job openings in this than there used to be, with less friction to get involved."
Do you have a citation for Uber drivers making more money than taxis drivers? What is the true earning per mile for an Uber/Lyft driver when you factor in auto insurance, maintenance, repairs and vehicle depreciation?
The "friction" to becoming a taxi driver is pretty minimal. One just needs obtain a hack license the requirements of which are pretty nominal.[4] Especially so if you don't already own a car. Uber/Lyft seem to be having great difficulty staffing up right now[5]. I'm not sure that would be the case if it really was such the great(100% win) opportunity you make it out to be.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/article/uber-lyft-surge.html
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/09/uber-ly...
[3] https://www.curbed.com/2021/06/uber-lyft-expensive-new-york-...
[4] https://nycitycab.com/HackLicense.aspx
[5] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/7/22371850/uber-lyft-driver-...
edit: fb marketplace might get the brokers first, most of my friends found their places via landlords posting there
In other cities property managers do the same thing, but they skim off the top of the rent checks and provide more services.
But really all the middlemen in housing are awful.
It's like in Canada where tenants can hire a broker for "free" to find a rental. However the broker just collects 1 month rent from the landlord. Do you think the landlord just absorbs the cost? No, the quoted rent was just 8.4% higher when the broker mentioned he was a broker.
When the burden is paid by the renter, there's no efficient market because renter has no choice in the broker and the owner doesn't care.
It’s no different than the ridiculous notion that “the seller pays broker’s commission”. It’s baked into the price and the buyer is still paying it, otherwise a home would cost X% less.
The National Association of Realtors is a huge political lobby that works to perpetuate the racket.
Compass started as Urban Compass and wanted to distrupt the racket! But eventually decide to join in on it and become a VC backed brokerage with better “technology”.
No one has yet been able to educate consumers on the insane mismatch between value and price among RE brokers.
is it still better to do that? yes. Because i can now compare the cost of rental, fees included on a comparison site, instead of looking at the place i want and finding it out it has a hidden charge.
this is why they changed the law in the uk so the landlord has to pick, becasue it means they will be incentivised to put it into the rent, and this way its STILL better for the renter because now they are able to compare the full costs.
Brokers have done a good job of telling landlords that if they don't use a broker, or use a cheap one, that they'll get bad tenants and that'll cost them a lot in the long term. Good broker = good tenants = worth getting 8.4% less, because you'll lose more than 8.4% when a bad tenant burns the place down....
I'm unconvinced that the above is true, but it's certainly the message brokers (fairly successfully) give landlords.
I still think having this on a platform where a company is making a flat $250 fee (or whatever) is extremely scalable for the company and would benefit both the landlord and tenants.
Because in general, there have been easy-to-find examples in the past couple decades of rents going up 5-10% every year for folks in certain places with aggressive landlords. Were they willing to pay 5-10% more suddenly in year n+1, or were they charged less than the maximum they would've been willing to pay in year n?
Its like when a broker sells a house and says the seller pays the fee. In reality the buyer is the only source of money in the deal so they are effectively paying the fee.
At least in California, the broker’s fee is an expense of the landlord that is not directly passed on to the tenant moving in. If the cost is passed on, it’s hidden in the cost of rent.
Also, the landlord can claw back part of the fee if the tenant moves out before one year. So, it makes more sense as a landlord expense.
Both are parasitic entities that cause more harm to end users than benefits. The problem is that they control the information flow and supported by governments, hence we cannot eliminate them completely but can try to keep them at the bay using technology we can control
It's very easy and edgy to disdain the importance and positive impact of Uber and Lyft, but the truth of the matter is that the ride share revolution already introduced collosal improvements in quality of service in entrenched markets such as the old taxicab services.
I recall a time where unscrupulous taxicab services fraudulently inflated prices and made up twist-and-turn paths to fleece customers, and we're free to act as organized crime.
With rideshare services, you get routes and estimates generated a priori and in a deterministic way, and more importantly through a really auditable service. With rideshare services, a nasty driver is no longer totally shielded from criticism or consequences. With rideshare services, quality of service became something that was important to drivers.
And we have to than the Ubers ad Lyfts of the world for that.
What if the replacement is worse?
1. Don't like tempting fate.
2. Am very aware of the limits of my imagination. 15 years ago, I probably wouldn't have been able to predict Facebook having the sorts of downsides that are now glaring.
Consider what would happen if brokers disappear and your application is rejected by an AI from a company that most landlords use.
Also, not likely to change the landscape in the way Uber did, the scale is so much smaller and no one is getting fooled into some gig economy loophole that exploits workers.
Will probably end up with its own problems, but can't think it's worse than some brokers having to find another job/get creative.
And as for Uber/Lyft, there's no doubt that they provide a much improved experience for the consumer.
Maybe there is value, but not 10-15%.
Maybe Caretaker isn't the perfect solution either ... but brokers definitely are not.
It's definitely an activity that should be disrupted.
The older I get, the more I prefer dealing with flesh-and-blood people rather than self-service solutions. Life is too short for dealing with systems that go out of your way to railroad you into a bad deal.
...why sarcasm?
The entire premise of technological and economic progress is outsourcing repetitive mind-numbing tasks (whether farming or showing apartments) to automation.
You're just describing regular old beneficial economic progress -- the reason why we're not all still farmers.
And if Caretaker becomes a massive success, then competitors will appear, which is the basic economic force that prevents prices from rising too far. All of which would be wonderful.
If they can cut that 15% to 1% and this field ends up being competitive then sure.
But, they're probably going for a monopoly play here.
So of course the percentage will be cut. That's how competition works.
Still, Uber is not sticky. Drivers aren't forced to use it exclusively (fun things would happen if they tried to pull it off, something something employees). Brokerage websites most likely will demand you don't post your apartment on multiple sites. This will encourage concentration.
Kind of like people looking for used textbooks will check eBay, Alibris, and Chegg.
Of course there will be concentration, that doesn't mean it's going to be a monopoly. It's just going to be the usual 2 main competing companies with a 3rd slightly-different company -- your Coke, Pepsi and RC, or your AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. It's the usual market pattern.
Did you really think investors were willing to sustain a 12 billion dollar loss for a shot at a 1% margin?
Citation needed. They've raised prices in order to be sustainable, but you're going to need to show some kind of actual evidence of collusion. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We can't just assume conspiracy theories between publicly traded companies here.
And who's talking about 1% margins? You're making that up. Healthy competition usually results in something like 10% margins. You don't need illegal agreements to get that.
I tend to assume the path of least resistance.
You realize that in publicly traded corporations decisions are made by whole teams of people? And that people talk? Word gets out, company gets fined more than they made, executives go to prison. The US actually prosecutes this stuff, the same way they vigorously prosecute insider trading.
A couple of neighboring grocery stores can realistically collude to raise prices. Multinational public corporations, not so much.
It certainly doesnt require whole teams of people. It requires a few senior managers to be in on it.
The just world hypothesis is a powerful thing.
You should realize that at a purely practical level collusion is far more difficult to achieve than you seem to think.
A few senior managers are going to do something super-risky without the knowledge of general counsel, the board, etc.? Something that can get them sent to prison? So their stock options go up a little bit? While 99% of the benefit goes to remaining investors? At the risk of being caught and the entire company being fined, to the detriment of all remaining investors as well?
Not to mention the senior managers need to justify to C-suite, board, etc. what their strategy is, and why raising prices won't result in the competition eating their lunch. And the C-suite and board aren't dumb.
On top of this, collusion can result in defectors as well -- company A raises prices, company B promised they would but doesn't (or lowers them again later) -- and then what?
It's not so easy. Collusion is unstable, risky in multiple ways, and difficult. I'm not saying that it never happens, but regarding large publicly traded companies, it's by far the exception, not the rule.
None of this has to do with what we wish the world was like. It's just basic incentives and coordination. But sure, have fun with your conspiracy theories.
Sure they can, someone on HN described the algorithm once:
The difference is that cab drivers provide a real and valuable service, whereas real estate agents are a glorified key safe.
Uber and Lyft are great as long as we don’t think about the drivers they’re exploiting.