fred_durst

): Nothing sadder than profiting off death.

Anyhow, it's not a threshold business. The idea that there will eventually be a "number of drivers" that is too high is without any case study of modern business I can recall. Maybe you can enlighten me on some examples(see I can do that passive aggressive snark too!). I can't remember a single instance of over supply that destroyed the market maker's position. Sure many in the supply side(drivers in this case) lose their shirts, but the market makers typically do very well. The network is drivers and riders. Just like a dating site as a matchmaker. We all know that is lead by female adoption. Same analogue of driver adoption. Once you have enough network on the supply side you end up with a dominant share of the demand side which comes back around and gives you leverage over the supply pricing. That's where the profit happens.

Maybe you should dial down both the snark and idealism and read up on the historical business fundamentals at play.

For example, explain to me the several periods where eBay increased its margins to the determent of sellers and did not lose its dominant market position. Or 1 degree of separation, explain how PayPal continues to dominate.

Ebay is probably a good analogue for ride sharing.

Honestly, I feel like he had a consulting firm. He managed to keep it above water for a couple years working insane hours, partly because he had this initial lead client which probably gave him a decent lead funnel by referral. Then a larger investor saw his client funnel came in and gave him X for 51% and the position of President, but took over running much of the operation. Finally that funnel started drying up like most enterprise services funnels do without lock-in and the free money for games dried up. Hence why he came back not as President but Programmer.

If he had any honor he would have given him 2 months severance and let him go, only to try an make up for the incompetence he showed running the new company into the ground.

Because if you think you are more an important that the greater world around you, you become a liability to the rest of the world. The rest of us now need to protect ourselves from you because you have no regard for our well being. You are a burden. I realize you were not raised properly and much of that is not your fault, so I do not blame you. I only feel sorry for the world that now has to deal with you.

You realize that that is also selfish, right? Why are your family and friends more important than anyone else's? I understand that many people these days don't feel any need to care about the larger world around them, but I do not understand why they need to be so brash and proud of it.

That seems like enough to me.

The reason developing countries still dig ditches by hand is because it is still cheaper. The reason for that is not access to automation but the massive wage differential that makes that labor so cheap. Its the low cost of the labor that actually protects it from automation. So therefore it follows that expensive(high and mid skill labor which is even more scalable due to lower material costs since it can typically be automated without machines) will be the most profitable segment to either automate away or reduce to low skill labor.

The reality is that the more the income gap grows between the servers and those served, the less profitable automation becomes. There is a reason low wages jobs are growing, not shrinking in the US.

We're much more likely to see things like doctors, lawyers and plumbers replaced with low skill workers that simply act out the last physical mile dictated by either fully automated decision making or software provided decision efficiency that allows for example, only one doctor to diagnose every patient at a hospital. The last physical mile is much more expensive than high level decision making to replace at scale.

There is much more incentive to turn an $80K a year programming position into a $30K a year lower skilled position using point and click tools to achieve the same task as the margin differences are much much higher.

EDIT: You must remember that machine automation is not infinitely and immediately scalable the way software automation is. With agriculture, automation providers can only manufacture enough to meet current demand and cannot simply lower prices increase volume and market share because they have real raw material floors to their costs.