The Anti-Uber Way of Disrupting Transportation, Politely
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I can't wait for a purely p2p service that allows drivers to pick up people for bitcoin and get paid directly without any intermediary that is forced to "comply" with whatever arbitrary "regulations". To make sure both drivers and riders and not morons, they could use 2-of-2 multisig insurance deposit (both parties deposit $50 each with a single $100 output and can unlock it only together upon arrival, with respect for the fee). Upfront deposit would put people in nash equilibrium and force them to be nice towards each other. Instead of centralized ratings we could use an implicit web-of-trust formed by personal recommendation tokens that are passed from friend to a friend when one recommends a driver to another.
It seems to me, westerners became so helpless and dependent on third parties (and government), it amazes me. Especially in the US. It used to the land of self sufficient entrepreneurial people. Now it's just a nanny state.
Hey! There were lots of honest and hard working Mafiosi.
Or, perhaps better yet, a 2-of-3 contract with an agreed-upon arbitrator who has a reputation for being fair. That way, the implicit web-of-trust can be abstracted to the arbitrators rather than directly between drivers and passengers.
I'd try something else. If you dislike the driver (or rider), rate him and your app propagates to your friends your vote. They may re-relay that info further (with downgrading coefficient, like *0.66). This way there will be implicit web-of-trust for reputations. If this person has upset only one guy, his mistake may cost him this guy's friends at most (next tier circle may have rating below threshold). If he has upset several people, it will lower his rating for many more people.
There might be a legitimate argument if it was just mom and grandma. However uber does provide income for regular people and it has no doubt reduced the amount of drunk driving causalities and deaths. If you're young and can get around ask any one of your friends if they have considered uber an option when they never would have a taxi. It's becoming more and more commonplace.
Give this angle a rest already.
Plus, Zimride actually does not take a cut ; you simply connect with people on the site ( and you decide to pay however you want,I have done paypal ,cash , venmo and thru zimride in itself). I m not sure how they make money ..
Like Uber, BlaBlaCar takes a cut of the fare, but crucially, prevents its drivers from trying to turn this into a job. In each of the countries it operates in, BlaBlaCar uses government guidelines on driving costs to set a cap on the fare. These calculations account for fuel costs, insurance and tax. The rule helps to avoid giving the impression that the app poses a challenge to cab drivers' livelihood.
"Because they don't make a profit, BlaBlaCar drivers aren't classed as professionals," says Nicolas Brusson, the co-founder and chief operating officer at BlaBlaCar. "They don't require special insurance or a special license."
[1] This part has caused some problems with legally overpriced taxis ripping off tourists. The fact that Sweden uses SEK rather than EUR helps that scam, because some tourists initially arriving don't yet have any intuitive feel for what 100 or 1000 or 10,000 SEK is worth, and naively assume whatever the taxi is charging must be "the going rate", since they assume taxi fares are probably regulated (like in most places).
That's the take away. You can't compare the two and say one is simply being "polite". They take different approaches. Uber and Lyft are doing a whole lot of good and making big and beneficial waves. BlaBlaCar simply offers a competitive service where it's allowed to do so. The article smells of a "holier-than-thou" attitude which is completely unfounded.
1. How do you define harm? My experience is that every one of my friends who use Uber really like it and the drivers I've spoken to along my rides have all said they like working with Uber too. Is the "harm" done to the other taxi companies? Would you say that Apple did "harm" when they released the iPhone because people who would have bought other company's products bought an iPhone instead? Because that's essentially what is happening here. Uber's product is perceived by my friends as vastly superior to the taxis in Atlanta. In fact, before Uber, they mostly didn't even use taxis. But now that Uber exists, they will often take Uber to and from their destinations so they don't have to worry about a designated driver.
2. I guess you define "shady" as a company that doesn't want agree to current regulations from the government. So whoever the govt. deems "not shady" is basically your definition of not shady.
3. The core differentiator of Uber and a regular taxi is the app. Obviously they are a blend of tech and transportation but just because they have some "non tech" elements, I don't believe that precludes them being considered a tech company. But, this is all subjective, there's no actual meaning to the word "tech" in tech company.
4. Do you have anything to back up these claims of Uber manufacturing fake PR? They have been outlawed a bunch of times in a bunch of cities of which none of those cases were made up by Uber. It is very very hard for me to believe that they would go to the trouble of making up fake stories in the cities where things were going well.
Now you could argue even the relatively few regulations Sweden has left should be scrapped. But that's what the democratic system is for. I don't support just ignoring them when you think they should be different. I mean, maybe in extreme cases, where people are actually being oppressed, direct action and civil-disobedience are justified. But Uber's dispute with Stockholm over how to give fair notice of prices, and what constitutes a "meter", seem like a pretty small hook to hang a civil-rights crusade on.
That said, I think it's really amusing and interesting that the only thing it's going to take in order to beat Uber, in the long term, is: not be Uber. Just having a more likable CEO and full transparency when dynamic ("surge") pricing is used would go a long way.
I don't know why people act as if Uber is twisting their arm when it comes to surge pricing.
It's absolute nonsense to categorically state that variable pricing interferes with planning more than variable availability does. In particular when the variable availability, fixed-price option is still an alternative.
That seems like it would be more stressful and a worse solution than either of the other options (taxis' fully fixed-price or Uber's fully-floating price), since you don't even know what part of the spectrum you'll end up on at any given point!
Any savvy individual (who needs to be able to schedule their Uber rides in advance for whatever reason, instead of just using a Taxi to schedule rides like others have been doing for the last 50 years) will quickly learn when surge pricing is effect namely, Weekday mornings when people are going to work, Weekday evenings when people are leaving work, Weekend nights (sometimes), and any event where you can expect alot of people going home at the same time (concerts, sports games).
In any case, and back to my original point, Uber doesn't force you to use their service and they are not the only game in town. If availability is more important predictability get an Uber, otherwise just get a Taxi. It doesn't make sense for Uber to become more like Taxis because people are unaware they have choices.
This is way way way off. Looking just at my experience in San Francisco: weather patterns (in detail, across different parts of the city), public transit issues, tourism, events, fluctuations in the city's population and travel across various holidays/festivals/three-day weekends, changes in price of Uber, changes in price of alternatives (i.e. Lyft drops prices)...and the interplay of all these variables (e.g. public transit happens to have diminished capacity along a critical line for a given event vs having diminished capacity on an unrelated line).
It's not market fundamentalism to acknowledge that what the market is good at is this sort of massively decentralized, million-variable price optimization[1]. This is precisely the reason why direct price controls on consumer products tend not to work: because it's damn near impossible for any entity (even the freaking US gov't) to accurately gauge the million variables that go into setting supply and demand. The idea that Uber could do this without being way, way, way off almost all the time is a hilariously bad idea.
As someone alluded to below (and I alluded to above multiple times): The product Uber is selling is predictable-availability rides. The product taxis are selling is predictable-price rides. It's nonsense to say that reducing the predictability of Uber's availability would be "less stressful" or easier on its passengers.
[1] Note that it optimizes for allocative efficiency. Much of what market fundamentalism gets wrong is ignoring that allocative efficiency is not always what our goal is. That's not relevant in this case though, since we're explicitly talking about how a centralized, top-down rate schedule is a laughably terrible idea.
Note that Uber isn't a free market because the drivers aren't setting prices.
Most people just get used to paying whatever the checkout bill is at the grocery. Or if money is tight, then yes, it does cause increased stress, but middle-class American society seemingly doesn't care about the routine stresses of being poor. UberX is not targeting a market that will be stressed to pay for a ride, though.
As for groceries usually sales are advertised, in force for pre-defined period of time and, as you say, discounted from the price that is in force most of the time so that if you are surprised by a price it is in your favor.
Not to say I'm against transparency - it would most likely be incredibly rich data and give more power to drivers, but it seems Uber's trip up from a public point of view is that users feel cheated due to surge pricing. I'm having trouble understanding how one can feel cheated when the prices are laid before you - maybe Uber should replace "4x" with the estimated amount (of course then you'd have the complaining if the estimate is a little bit off).
Or, alternatively, £459 rtn in first class ($767).
However, an off peak return (dept after 9am, basically), and it drops to under £80 rtn.
The cheapest tickets I can see for today are £39.85 and for next Tuesday are £35.50. Presumably there are some £12.50 tickets available, but they're not easy to find (my understanding from folks who do more train travel to me is that tickets are released some number of months in advance and the cheapest price bins usually disappear pretty quickly).
If you want to travel at peak times, the prices are much higher.
Europeans on the other hand, can drive to a different developed nation in 5 hours. Seeing your relative across the country isn't that big of a deal. Being aware of cultural differences is inevitable.
GoLoco (from Robin Chase, ZipCar's founder) was an American take that never really caught on in the States.
Like Uber, BlaBlaCar takes a cut of the fare, but crucially, prevents its drivers from trying to turn this into a job. In each of the countries it operates in, BlaBlaCar uses government guidelines on driving costs to set a cap on the fare. These calculations account for fuel costs, insurance and tax. The rule helps to avoid giving the impression that the app poses a challenge to cab drivers' livelihood.
"Because they don't make a profit, BlaBlaCar drivers aren't classed as professionals," says Nicolas Brusson, the co-founder and chief operating officer at BlaBlaCar. "They don't require special insurance or a special license."
For example, car pooling is part of the sharing economy - the car was already going in that direction anyways, but now you've saved a bunch of gas by putting multiple people in the same car. Without your carpool, that driver would still be going that way - like BlaBlaCar.
Ditto if you and your neighbors got together and shared a lawnmower. You were all going to buy one anyways, but in this scheme you get to save money, and the lawn mower is sitting idle a lot less. Good of the environment, good for you, and maybe you can afford a better mower as a group. Score.
Uber isn't part of the sharing economy, since the drivers are only on the road because of you. It's a pretty typical merchant-client relationship that doesn't fit any common notion of the word "sharing", unless you consider your coffee shop to be "sharing" their coffee with you.
In Uber/Lyft's case, the supply (rides) wouldn't exist without you. The key tenet of the sharing economy is that you're piggy-backing on activity that would be happening regardless. I think it's a pretty tough case to argue that all these Ubers and Lyfts would be on the road anyways if it weren't for the people hailing them.
This is true for (most of) AirBnb as well. If you're renting out your apartment while you're away, that's a part of the sharing economy, since you'd own the space even if AirBnb didn't exist - it would just be sitting empty. If you're maintaining a room or apartment strictly for the purpose of renting out, it really isn't, and now you're looking at a much more traditional merchant-client relationship.
But most are using their personal cars (at least for Lyft and Sidecar, which are the ones I use), which they would own either way. It's not the driver's time and gas being "shared" under your definition, it's the car itself, which would otherwise be sitting in a garage and replaced with another taxi or rental car.
Also, I don't see how the person not making a profit somehow makes the service qualify under your definition of "sharing economy."