Uber is a bezzle ("the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it"). Every bezzle ends.Uber's time is up.1/ pic.twitter.com/UkqGXvC744— Cory Doctorow (@doctorow) August 10, 2021
im always really interested in reading articles about how screwed up the economy is, from before 2020. if things were that bad before the worst pandemic in a century, we're definitely fucked now
This is what happens when there's too much capital in the economy - it has to go somewhere. Traditionally, market failures would wipe out the dumber or smaller investors but now that everybody is too big to fail you end up with horseshit like this.
Yeah, I still can't wrap my head around the concept fully but this concentrated idle wealth willing to bankroll players until they submit entire industries seems like a consequence of tendency of the rate of profit to fall. There's gotta be some precedent of this kind of behavior before, perhaps the gilded age?
Previously, you could have major war suck up dead capital and destroy useless firms and capital stocks. You could also just conquer some other country as a market for goods and a way to extract cheap labor and resources - now everything is hooked into the global capitalist market other than a few scattered tribes in the Amazon or on the Sentinal islands. They also never had to contend with a worsening climate crisis that threatens the entire world at the same time.
The goal is to annihilate the market by flooding it at a loss (because you're the player with the deepest pockets), then raise prices and get exclusive contracts when you're the only player left.
Essentially they aren't charging enough in order to intentionally undercut cabs and public transit. A huge portion of the cost of a ride does go to the driver's pay, and the margin isn't enough to cover their overhead. AND a lot of the drivers still make almost nothing after factoring in vehicle maintenance, gas, etc.
They still undercharge so much investors pay part of the layout to drivers, even when paying drivers less than they spend to work. They do this because they would have to charge so much people wouldn't use Uber to cover the cost of providing the service.
I still don't really understand why this is the case. Cabs are an existing, profitable business model. Why is it impossible for uber to price rides such that they're just "cabs with a convenient app"?
They would lose the majority of their customers. Cabs are so expensive people only use them if they absolutely have to.
If they lose the majority of their customers, they lose the majority of their drivers because drivers won't be as willing to wait on standby when they rarely get rides. Which means they won't be able to provide rides reliably, which makes just calling a cab company, who has a depot of cabs and drivers waiting for customers a more appealing option. In theory Uber would still be cheaper, but not that much cheaper, and a cab would be much more reliable. So nobody would use Uber anymore.
Taken together with all that has been written, what Uber's investors expect is that Uber will eventually overtake every existing cab alternative other than Uber and become a monopoly over transport. They can't do so by just offering a more convenient alternative. They need to squeeze out the competition, as aggressively as they can.
Yeah, I do understand that what I described isn't uber's business model, I just don't understand why it's not something they can fall back on. But I think @furryanarchy 's answer is good.
Yeah. The logic here is very thin. Uber is a glorified dispatcher. It needs drivers, so it spends substantially on promotion and recruiting. And it needs a reputation, so it spends to vet the drivers it recruits. And it needs a system, so it spends on web hosting and app dev/support.
But after that? They're just taking a vig off your labor for the service of routing you customers.
They aren't any less profitable than any traditional black car service.
I don't understand why it wouldn't be profitable....they just need the app and other people's cars right?
Every ride is essentially partly subsidized by Uber's VC money because the entire economy is moviepass.
im always really interested in reading articles about how screwed up the economy is, from before 2020. if things were that bad before the worst pandemic in a century, we're definitely fucked now
deleted by creator
Yeah I also disagree with that sentiment
Can't access the article, can you rip it from the site or summarize it?
https://archive.is/UcVLi
(found this by searching the URL on archive.is)
Updated my post
This is what happens when there's too much capital in the economy - it has to go somewhere. Traditionally, market failures would wipe out the dumber or smaller investors but now that everybody is too big to fail you end up with horseshit like this.
Yeah, I still can't wrap my head around the concept fully but this concentrated idle wealth willing to bankroll players until they submit entire industries seems like a consequence of tendency of the rate of profit to fall. There's gotta be some precedent of this kind of behavior before, perhaps the gilded age?
Previously, you could have major war suck up dead capital and destroy useless firms and capital stocks. You could also just conquer some other country as a market for goods and a way to extract cheap labor and resources - now everything is hooked into the global capitalist market other than a few scattered tribes in the Amazon or on the Sentinal islands. They also never had to contend with a worsening climate crisis that threatens the entire world at the same time.
The goal is to annihilate the market by flooding it at a loss (because you're the player with the deepest pockets), then raise prices and get exclusive contracts when you're the only player left.
Essentially they aren't charging enough in order to intentionally undercut cabs and public transit. A huge portion of the cost of a ride does go to the driver's pay, and the margin isn't enough to cover their overhead. AND a lot of the drivers still make almost nothing after factoring in vehicle maintenance, gas, etc.
They still undercharge so much investors pay part of the layout to drivers, even when paying drivers less than they spend to work. They do this because they would have to charge so much people wouldn't use Uber to cover the cost of providing the service.
I still don't really understand why this is the case. Cabs are an existing, profitable business model. Why is it impossible for uber to price rides such that they're just "cabs with a convenient app"?
They would lose the majority of their customers. Cabs are so expensive people only use them if they absolutely have to.
If they lose the majority of their customers, they lose the majority of their drivers because drivers won't be as willing to wait on standby when they rarely get rides. Which means they won't be able to provide rides reliably, which makes just calling a cab company, who has a depot of cabs and drivers waiting for customers a more appealing option. In theory Uber would still be cheaper, but not that much cheaper, and a cab would be much more reliable. So nobody would use Uber anymore.
Part of the appeal of Uber is that it is cheaper than local cab companies (outside of “surge pricing” hours)
Taken together with all that has been written, what Uber's investors expect is that Uber will eventually overtake every existing cab alternative other than Uber and become a monopoly over transport. They can't do so by just offering a more convenient alternative. They need to squeeze out the competition, as aggressively as they can.
deleted by creator
Yeah, I do understand that what I described isn't uber's business model, I just don't understand why it's not something they can fall back on. But I think @furryanarchy 's answer is good.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Yeah. The logic here is very thin. Uber is a glorified dispatcher. It needs drivers, so it spends substantially on promotion and recruiting. And it needs a reputation, so it spends to vet the drivers it recruits. And it needs a system, so it spends on web hosting and app dev/support.
But after that? They're just taking a vig off your labor for the service of routing you customers.
They aren't any less profitable than any traditional black car service.
HexBear Socialist Ridesharing App when?
There’s a driver co-op in ny