We don't have Uber or Lyft here because Europeans in general regard their business model as being highly problematic. It is nevertheless easy to hail a taxi in the cities, and you have the reassurance of knowing that the driver will be licensed and insured.

We don't have Uber in Germany either, instead we have labour and transportation safety laws that hinder a service like that. While that might be a trade-off one could certainly argue about I'm not sure why that would present an argument purely for people having Uber leading an objectively better life. I'd certainly prefer having the above in place and enough money to pay for a cab if I need one, even if it's maybe a tad less convenient at the moment.

>stodgy black cabs

Which IMO are better, if pricier, than Uber in London. They're what I take. But that isn't to disagree with your basic point. If cabs in some European cities are better than cabs in many American cities, that certainly isn't the case everywhere.

The only reason Uber/Lyft exist is because transport in the US is mostly terrible.

@wozniacki most likely bases those opinions on second hand knowledge. It's hard to imagine why Uber isn't so in demand in many parts of Europe until you see the quality and price of the competition there.

Before hailing a ride I always check Uber and taxi apps, all of which give me a spot on estimation o price. Most times I have to choose between a Mercedes (C/E class, so large and comfortable) taxi and a Uber (lower class car), the Uber ended up being more expensive. In some countries Uber will still offer better price or price/quality ratio but this is far from a given.

Dublin deregulated taxis so Uber and Lyft would be pointless. You can book a taxi from an app which is basically what uber and Lyft are anyways. We could do that long before Uber and Lyft became the household names they are today too.

It's not like Uber or Lyft are super innovative ideas. They probably got VC money because it's a way of exploiting people's lack of employment and math skills to profit off cheap labour and zero maintenance cost for hardware (taxis). One result for "the math for uber": https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hidden-costs-driving-uber-joh...

Or even: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/02/technology/ub...

As for the other startups in SF, I like this quote:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/17/get-rich-quick-...

> My idea was to pitch a tech startup and get obscenely rich while writing a book about how to pitch a tech startup and get obscenely rich – the Silicon Valley way.

> To save money, I took to cooking my own meals most of the time. This was when I discovered that it was much easier to launch a tech startup if you could afford to always have food delivered and never had to deal with mundane chores such as doing laundry, washing dishes or buying groceries. As one Twitter wag observed, San Francisco’s “tech culture is focused on solving one problem: what is my mother no longer doing for me?”