Re:Uber Turns to Saudi Arabia for $3.5B Cash Infusion
by eru on Wednesday June 01, 2016 @11:37PM
(#11820192)
That's an interesting development. Of course, that's how the Certificate of Entitlement system in Singapore is supposed to work: the island's infrastructure can support only so many cars on the road, and they have decided that this shared resources be rationed out by willingness to pay---so that the most economically efficient users get to drive the cars.
Of course, if they are more economically efficient per-car because they drive these cars more, the separate congestion charging might have to go up. Still a net win for the economy of Singapore---since they will be using the national share of capital sunken into the cost of cars more efficiently.
(I am talking about the cost the economy of Singapore has to pay as a whole to import a car. That's net of taxes and CoE which are just transfers within Singapore.)
I hope the government can stay non-populist, and not give in to shortsighted special interests.
In Singapore, Uber owns and operates a car rental subsidiary that has singlehandedly driven up the total cost of owning a car. [1] I suspect that this has been the case in some other cities that Uber operates in as well.
[1] http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/uber-bids-co...