Looking at it from my consumer perspective Uber is net positive - even if it ends up being unsustainable and goes bust eventually. The prices in the local taxi market didn't go down a few % it got fractionally cheaper - it went from being barely affordable and only used in exceptional cases to a substitute for car ownership and not having to think about using it (depending on your daily commute). The market expanded incredibly around here.

Also traveling around with Uber is a great experience (in countries that didn't ban it) - the service has been consistent across Europe and it's another thing I don't have to worry about when travelling - not having to navigate public transport or roads in a foreign country while also being relatively sure you're not getting ripped off by the local taxi service is amazing.

Of course it's a net positive to consumers. It's a business being run at a loss, and propped up with constant capital inflow - i.e. a massive transfer of wealth from investors to consumers.

My point is that it's not just about operating on a loss - other companies locally are competing with Uber and amongst each other and the market that was once protected by shady licensing monopoly is now open wide - even a price increase of 20-30% will not change the way I use taxis right now - and that would be very sustainable (I don't see local uber as a loss generator with their pricing as the other taxi companies are able to compete - the marketing money Uber is sinking is probably what's generating the losses)

A price increase of 20-30% may not effect how you use taxis, but it will effect how lots of other people use taxis, and because loads less people will use taxis at 20% more they won't need to charge 20% more, they'll need to charge 20% + their decrease in utilization. Suddenly you're in a death spiral where they can't charge enough to make a living at any price.

I doubt this. Initially when Uber arrived there was no regulation around here - the prices were ~30% lower and people driving Uber were actual part time drivers with clunky old cars - this was the ideal Uber time for me because in my smaller hometown I could get a ride almost instantly in any part of the city and I didn't care about ride quality if I didn't get dirty or smelt bad after I left the car. After taxi protests the government stepped in to basically enforce rules where part time driving became really hard - you have to have a car newer than 5 years, need to have some sort of work contract - not necessarily with Uber but a lot of forms of started small companies that then partner with Uber - but you no longer had limited taxi licenses - anyone can get a car and setup Uber. This resulted in prices eventually rising by 30-50% depending on the city, more importantly it resulted in lower availability in smaller places because it blocked small part time drivers. At this point local taxi companies are still complaining but there are now taxi services cheaper than uber depending on mileage. So in a way this Uber market transformation already happened.

Like even at current prices an average taxi ride is 2-3x cheaper than it would be 10 years ago when it was basically a government granted cartel. And you were at the mercy of the driver randomly quoting you whatever he though you would pay in a lot of situations. Uber brought a lot of consistency and availability to the market.

I'm an consumer, not an investor, so I'm more-or-less fine with this. How many examples do we have of staggeringly astronomical transfers of wealth to investors from consumers? I'm not going to cry over billionaires and millionaires becoming slightly less so.

I mean, if you thought the transfers were going to last forever, I have a bridge to sell you. Their plan the entire time was either to bankrupt everyone else and charge monopoly prices, which would be worse for the consumer, or to develop A.I. cars and fire the humans, which has other consequences.

I don’t think you can charge Monopoly prices when the barrier to entry is so low. Without robot cars anyone can compete locally with Uber. With robot cars they win, but again not sure they can raise prices much.

The barrier of entry appears to be billions of dollars worth of VC cash, so I’m a bit less optimistic.

But regardless of whether they can pull it off, I’ve always viewed Uber as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Sure, they’re pro-consumer now, but they absolutely intend to go anti-consumer the moment they’re given a chance.

> The barrier of entry appears to be billions of dollars worth of VC cash, so I’m a bit less optimistic.

The barrier of entry to what? Sure, the barrier of entry to autonomous cars without drivers is extremely high, but even if Uber is the only one in the market that possessed the technology, they wouldn't be able to drive market prices for taxis higher than the cost of a drive in a manned car. I don't know about you, but I have no real preference for driving in an unmanned car if the manned option is significantly cheaper.

The barrier to entry into the market, not the barrier of entry to self driving cars. Uber raised $24B, and Lyft raised $5B (and they’re not even making a self driving car). To my eye these are the only two that’ve ever gained any significant success, as I couldn’t name any other options, and googling produced a small smattering of apps that don’t even work where I live.

I entered into the discussion with the context that Uber slashed local taxi market prices to a fraction of what they were previously so that might be where we had different assumptions. I'm saying that even if Uber turns anti-consumer, the situation can hardly get worse than it was so it is probably a consumer win.

[I can speak only from a UK perspective] surely it's convenience, not price? It's a generally good, convenient service built around an extremely slick and extremely usable app. Maybe it's slightly cheaper than local, but saying it's slashed local taxi prices? The only time Uber seems drastically cheaper is when it's entering an area and is operating at a much-higher-than-normal loss in an attempt to drive out competition. Once that period is over, it seems to use surge pricing very heavily, so often ends up more expensive (to their credit, they're normally quite good about refunding overcharges if they happen)

It is a consumer win, I'd agree with that, but I'd argue that's not to do with cost. Same as Amazon.

In my European country, taxi prices were exorbitant and taxi usage was very low. You only used taxis on very special occasions, like getting to your destination from an airport or train station. Once Uber came, taxi prices dropped drastically and several new local companies formed to try to compete, many of them with their own (less slick, but still very usable) apps.

Overall, Uber seems to have introduced healthy competition and taxi usage has changed from rare to commonplace.

"In my European country, taxi prices were exorbitant and taxi usage was very low." <-- this is so true. in France (to give another example), this is even worse: in Paris you don't pick the taxi, the taxi picks you (and if where you're going doesn't fancy them, they will refuse you... which they legally cannot do, but they still do it). Taxis were an entrenched rent-seeker, they were in need of disruption, for the public good. I'm not necessarily a big fan of Uber, but the taxis as a corporation deserve the competition.

And that's not even taking about the phone app and its capabilities, which were just out of reach of regular taxis (even the taxi companies that own a large fleet, these are still very small and have no tech capability). IMHO that's another front where the competition was healthy.

Taxis were super expensive before Uber.

This seems an incredibly general statement. Where? As I say, maybe this is just UK? Maybe taxis are more expensive or Uber is much cheaper outside the UK? But in the UK Uber isn't drastically cheaper except when they're attempting to crush competition in an area by burning cash. Which is great for consumers! But that doesn't go on for very long, the prices creep back up because it's not sustainable.

Isn't that only the barrier to entry worldwide? If they started charging monopoly prices with our robots then local taxi services would start coming back

I don’t know what it would cost to enter local markets only, but I suspect that has less utility than being national or international. I don’t want a taxi app per city, I want the same app to get me to/from LAX to get me to/from JFK, and I doubt that’s my particular quirk.

On the latter, I don’t know what would happen if they charged monopoly prices. I suspect you’re right, cabs might come back.

But _most_ of the time you'd be using the one in your city.

If you are from Manchester, UK and you live there, how often do you need a taxi app that works in Bangkok, or NY, or Oslo?

Maybe I’m unusual, but use of Uber is overwhelmingly travel related. The only time I use it in my own city is transit to/from my airport, because I can’t easily use public transit.

Car AIs are coming. Whether Uber, Waymo or someone else, they're coming. Nothing will stop that train.

Maybe in a few decades. The imminent arrival of autonomous vehicles has been BS from the beginning. Our machine learning capabilities aren't anywhere close to making the idea viable.

Plenty of things could slow or derail that train for many years.

We could, for example, discover that getting the required accuracy outside of areas with specific characteristics is infeasibly hard to solve in general, let alone with the onboard computer.

We could have one or two horrific accidents fuel legal crackdowns that forbid driving AIs for a generation or more.

I was very bullish on self driving cars back in 2016, but nearly half a decade later and it doesn’t seem like we’ve made any progress at all, and it seems like a decent number of experts and industry insiders agree with me.

Self driving cars are coming, sure. But when?

Its coming, there is no doubt there. The question is: when? There are a lot of technical issues to solve, and Uber's capital burn isn't going to last forever. Are they (and their investors) willing to hold their breath for decades for truly safe, truly autonomous vehicles?

That may be the plan, but SoftBank and the Saudis are not exactly smart money.

I mean, same - my main point was that it's not sustainable. Sooner or later SoftBank and the Saudis are going to run out of patience, so just enjoy it while you can.

Maybe not astronomical but I really enjoyed Moviepass while they existed.

Uber reported profitability in their last earnings statement with high confidence of being fully profitable this year, before the pandemic happened.

Various regions have been profitable for years and the company has spent a lot on growth and marketing. It seems they're finding an optimal price that is sustainable but still much better than anything that we had before.

> "Looking at it from my consumer perspective Uber is net positive - even if it ends up being unsustainable and goes bust eventually."

Leaving behind what options for short-range travel? If Uber goes bust and in the process, they've killed off both their competition and traditional taxis, what options does that leave for short-range individual commuting where bikes and scooters aren't sensible?

The Uber model is pretty easy to duplicate. See e.g., http://www.rideaustin.com/

Sure. But why would anyone pursue it if they've demonstrated that long-term it's financially insolvent?

Presumably prices will increase to a sustainable level if the big VC-money-burning firms go out of business. I can see ride sharing becoming more expensive -- I just don't see any future in which it goes away.

Even mass transit is experimenting with Flex semi-fixed routing.

> The prices in the local taxi market didn't go down a few % it got fractionally cheaper - it went from being barely affordable and only used in exceptional cases to a substitute for car ownership and not having to think about using it (depending on your daily commute).

That's because they loose money with every ride? I mean it really can't be cheap to have your have your personal driver for your daily commute.

The thing is there are other taxi services locally that are competing with Uber at similar prices. Even if prices went up 30% it would still be in the "I don't have to think about it" territory.

I'm not sure how this is possible as afaik taxi fares are heavy regulated. Just because Uber subsedises rides no city council will change the taxi fares.

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/tlc/passengers/taxi-fare.page

"Taxi" taxis are not the only types of services like this. Depending on where in the world we're talking there have been other companies - often locally run or covering a few neighboring countries that use the same model Uber is using. Or offering similar ridesharing options via a phone since 1980s or 1990s.

In my area (Eastern Europe) Uber matched the prices of other unofficial "taxi" services that existed for 40+ years. However, the convenience of having an app, not dealing with cash, ability to see your driver getting to meet you, etc. boosted the number of taxi riders tenfold.

Many other ridesharing companies are offering apps these days, too. So even when Uber goes bust, the industry won't revert back to cash payments and phone numbers. So like the grandparent said it's a net positive for consumers.

A lot of places there is a sharp licensing distinction between requirements for those who want to be able to pick up unscheduled passengers on the street or taxi ranks, vs. those who only pick up on request or from their own locations. Overall the latter category tends to face far fewer limitations and be a lot more competitive.

Oh I should mention I'm in Europe and have no idea about how Uber works in the US.

Do you know NYC and SF are not the only places where people live?

Yeah, i'm from germany but most people here would have trouble reading german taxi regulation.

They do not lose money with every ride, at least according to their most recent investor presentation [1]. Their rides segment is already profitable - albeit on an EBITDA basis, but with decent and growing margins.

[1] https://s23.q4cdn.com/407969754/files/doc_financials/2019/sr... (slide 15)

A net positive from a consumer is not equivalent to a net positive for society.

That's why you can't look at it just from your consumer perspective. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is to hide it from good men behind a layer of indirection.

Another thing is: taxi innovation isn't either Uber or nothing. All these improvements Uber boasts about could have been achieved (many were achieved in some places) without tolerating illegal business practices by a thoroughly sociopathic international corporation. Maybe the progress would've been a bit slower, maybe there would be more competition on the market (which is usually considered a good thing). But it would be there, and done the way civilized people do things.

And before someone replies, "but MLK was also doing illegal things!" - which is a response I see surprisingly often in Uber threads - let me remind everyone, that MLK was engaging in civil disobedience to fight for the common people and a just cause. Uber is a for-profit company with long and documented history of antisocial behavior, and one which only cares about dominating their market by dumping any and all externalities onto the society at large.

It is fine for consumers to look at things from a consumer's perspective. And it isn't controversial that Uber is offering the consumers a fantastic deal.

The real question to me is do Uber's stockholders understand that they own the stock, or ar they indirectly holding them through some sort of pension -> managed fund -> ??? style chain where they are exposed to the madness without realising it.

As long as Uber's owners know who they are, it is on their heads if burning money turns out to be a bad idea. Not a problem for the rest of us, if we can be confident we don't own the company.

Assuming the government doesn't helpfully bail them out at some point.

>> It is fine for consumers to look at things from a consumer's perspective.

This, in combination with 'small government' and deregulation, is a recipe for a race-to-the-bottom disaster where everyone gets shafted (including the customer themselves) except the big corporations that run the whole show.

I think it has been sufficiently shown by now that making everything as cheap and abundant as possible, everything else be damned, is a net negative in the long term.

> making everything as cheap and abundant as possible, everything else be damned, is a net negative in the long term

The supply chain flavor of that is playing right in front of us now.

>> they indirectly holding them through some sort of pension -> managed fund -> ??? style chain where they are exposed to the madness without realising it.

This is the main reason why big companies are never allowed to fail. Why banks and all the traditional giant establishments continue to live. It's also why publicly listed companies that have been dividend paying for some time would rather layoff employees when growth prospects are scarce than to rather maintain them on payroll.

So if your company's stock is ever owned by government/pension funds, you'll have a pretty good argument for getting bailed out until you find your next trick.

> It is fine for consumers to look at things from a consumer's perspective.

That's just refusing to exercise personal responsibility. I'd hope an average consumer is capable of more than that.

People shouldn't assume the free market will somehow optimize for fair play, because it doesn't. The market quite directly optimizes for the things people (in aggregate) use to discriminate between purchase options; unless people vote with their wallets on the conduct of companies, you cannot expect the market to provide your conscience for you.

[Obsolete]

Fair enough. I'm sorry. I'll edit it out. To my defense, I assumed the phrase was overused in popular culture to the point that it doesn't evoke the Holocaust anymore, but I may have been wrong about it.

The sharing economy overall is a rotten model. Offloading externalities. It did give a kick to the taxi business because they had become overly complacent though so that’s a positive. But I won’t be sad either to see Airbnb and Uber die.

Calling it "sharing economy" is doublespeak. Most AirBnB hosts and Uber drivers are not just occasionally letting spare space in their homes or picking up strangers who happen to be going the same direction.

AirBnB hosts are short-let landlords, same as any other operator of holiday lets.

Uber drivers are minicab drivers, same as any other minicab driver.

They like to pretend otherwise in an attempt to bypass laws designed for consumer and worker protection.

> Most AirBnB hosts and Uber drivers are not just occasionally letting spare space in their homes

I don't believe this is true for Airbnb, both anecdotally and from Airbnb's own statement about NYC:

> "87 percent of Airbnb hosts in New York share only the home in which they live.”

https://skift.com/2014/02/13/airbnb-in-nyc-the-real-numbers-...

That's misdirection. 87% of hosts, sure, but what percentage of rentals? Does it matter if there are a lot of accounts that only list a few days a year?

Notice that 2/3 of rentals are for entire apartments, the hosts that share their own home clearly can't do that very often.

I agree. I'm curious why you chose to reply to my comment with this complaint when I was directly responding to the claim, which you quite reasonably view to be "misdirection," in the parent comment.

frobozz wrote:

> Most AirBnB hosts and Uber drivers are not just occasionally letting spare space in their homes

you replied:

> I don't believe this is true for Airbnb, both anecdotally and from Airbnb's own statement about NYC

and provided as evidence:

> "87 percent of Airbnb hosts in New York share only the home in which they live."

ric2b replied:

> That's misdirection. 87% of hosts, sure, but what percentage of rentals?

My reading is that ric2b's was implying that whilst 87% of _hosts_ might be sharing their own home, if you were to look at rentals then there would be a different picture, presumably on the basis that the other 13% are "sharing" multiple properties.

ric2b's accusation of misdirection was aimed at your 87% claim, because, whilst it was technically accurate (unlike what frobozz said), it "misdirects" from the more important picture, which is that, to quote frobozz opening sentiment:

> Calling it "sharing economy" is doublespeak.

That being the case for aforementioned reasons.

That article is from 2014. This one from 2017 says otherwise.

https://skift.com/2017/03/10/airbnbs-growth-is-being-driven-...

In the US as a whole, 64% were renting out an entire home unit. Obviously, some of those could be owner-occupiers letting their own home whilst on holiday themselves.

I have no trouble believing that Uber and AirBnB may have started out as facilitators of sharing. However, that is not what they have become.

I may be wrong in saying "most hosts". There is a potential long tail of thousands of not-very-active spare-room hosts. However, do such operators count much terms of numbers of stays and money spent?

A) That’s from 2014. The market has changed

B) I do not trust AirBnB to not lie or twist the numbers; they have an enormous incentive to do so

C) This does not align with my experience, having both rented and lived near units that were clearly taken off the market for purely short term rental.

B - They have done so.

Their 2015 NYC stats had several commercial hosts excluded, making it look as though they were still just a way to make a bit of pocket money from your spare room.

And the other 13% make up what percent of new York Airbnb stays (for, say, 2019)?

Yes, and NYC is among the most expensive real estate markets in the world. I'm not surprised most people renting out an Airbnb can't afford a second property. I'm positive that outside of NYC the numbers look different.

Yeah, Airbnb is an interesting case. I've used some nicely built apartments in peoples backyards and i've stayed in apartment buildings where there are full-time resident neighbors, but the apartment itself is purely Airbnb.

The latter I find odd because I can only imagine the impact on local renters, I also assume the ones that draw up the leases are the ones renting this our via airbnb. I bet everyone else has a no sublet clause.

It's not just sharing, but it's platforms. One gatekeeper regulating an entire market of poorly paid workers. Everything from food delivery services to App Stores.

So the encompassing term would be, I think, gig economy.

I can't think of a single gig economy company that wasn't an ethical disaster.

At the risk of sounding argumentative, I will suggest Textbroker does a pretty good job.

http://writepay.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-textbroker-solution...

I don't think the gig economy has to be an ethical disaster. I'm aware a lot of gig platforms are awful in that regard, but I don't think it simply can't be done well just because it mostly hasn't been done well.

"Ninety percent of everything is crap."

The problem is that for most gig economy companies, the entire point was to shift a large percentage of the risk onto their quasi-employees, so that they could undercut companies that actually paid benefits and right-sized their staff to meet long term demands. The entire premise, for at least most gig-economy companies, was rotten.

That doesn’t mean that a company that’s genuinely based around providing consumers access to rarely distributed skills and products is necessarily bad. But it’s got to be the kind of service/product that the company couldn’t offer via traditional staffing methods.

I wasn't saying gig economy couldn't be done ethically, just that I've never heard of a case where it was. I'll take a look at Textbroker.

> "Ninety percent of everything is crap."

I never seen that applied to ethics before. I so hope it's wrong...

I was thinking more in terms of "companies in a new economic model getting some parts of it very wrong."

We try a thing, it goes horribly sideways, people freak out over "ethics," which often means large scale, social consequences that weren't necessarily readily apparent before you did the thing.

If you're talking about journalists and bloggers buying into the hype and only noticing problems once things "go horribly sideways", then I agree; it's also fair to point out that second-order consequences are very often not obvious, and only apparent in hindsight. Hell, in my more naive days, I was also bullish on some of those companies, before I started reading about and contemplating the issues that were brought up later on.

But the cynical me wants to point out that any particular company doing gig economy/"share" economy/locust economy[0] business has to design and understand their own business model. Many of the ethical issues are already apparent at this stage; when you look at Cost Structure and Revenue Streams segments of your Business Model Canvas, take a stock of regulatory requirements affecting you, you can already what corners you cut and who's going to get a short end of your value proposition stick.

So e.g. I do not believe AirBnB was initially aware of the impact their business will have on the housing market, but I'm rather certain all the evil shenanigans Uber pulled were intentional.

EDIT: also: I know that I'm being an armchair ethicist here, that it's easy to see the larger picture from a high horse, especially when one doesn't need to use said businesses. But to my defense: doing that is a valid market signal on its own; to the extent I don't deal with businesses I consider ethically challenged, and discourage others from dealing with them, this sends a (however small) signal to the free market that those issues are something that matters to some customers, and are worth competing on.

--

[0] - I only now remembered this article, https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2013/04/03/the-locust-economy/. Worth pointing out that it was written in 2013, about when the "share economy" hype was at its peak, and everyone wanted to do a startup with this model.

AirBnB pivoted. Their initial model was more like paid couch surfing and that's not what took, basically. So, no, I don't think they really knew what they were getting into and I don't think they intended it to go where it went.

I think the efficiency gains of the gig economy are real and can potentially benefit all parties. The fact that they often don't is something that I tend to "attribute to stupidity rather than malice" as the saying goes.

I'm really short of sleep and maybe that's the problem here, or part of it. I'm happy to discuss this with you, but I wasn't accusing you of anything at all.

I have thought a great deal about this and I run r/GigWorks because I feel strongly that gig work can be "the next industrial revolution."

When I was homeless and began doing gig work, I sometimes made like $1.25/hour, which is terrible. But it was more than I would have otherwise had and it allowed me to build towards something better and it made sense for me.

When I'm having a good a day, I can make more like $20/hour these days. The flexibility mattered to me and I continue to struggle to articulate the very real value of details like that.

We keep raising the bar and raising the bar until you have to have a PhD and be making a mint to have any hope of moving out of your parents basement, so to speak. And that's a problem.

Thanks for your detailed reply. I'm open to being wrong in my views about the gig economy, and will happily continue this conversation in an e-mail.

I know you weren't accusing me of anything; it just occurred to me, while writing n-th comment in this thread, that what I write may be perceived as arrogant or pretentious, so I wanted to add a caveat about it. I know you actually depended on gig work, which is a perspective I lack.

You are more than welcome to email me. I'm very short of sleep, so nothing is occurring to me as something more I want to say, but I'm happy to reply to you about your thoughts on the topic and engage in further discussion.

Cheers.

I'm curious, what makes you certain Uber has been malicious?

There are certainly positive aspects, but I think they are mostly for short-term money problems.

The main problem with the gig/platform economy is that in a sense it's the worst of both worlds: those in favor of a laissez-faire economy will see that markets are regulated anyway (not by governments but by corporations); and those in favor of government regulation also lose.

I'm still hoping for those platforms to eventually get displaced by ones run by foundations or coops. Sure, those have a hard time initially competing against platforms powered by infinite greed, but in the end being trustable by the vendor side of platform users should be an unbeatable advantage.

As a consumer, Uber and similar businesses are an enormous net positive. It is a much better experience than taxis.

It enabled me and my family to get around. Even if taxis had a consistent app across cities, the quality of the vehicle tends to be much lower and the drivers are not as kind. That may be just because Uber drivers can be reported much more easily than a taxi driver.

For smaller cities with a low taxi density, many Uber drivers treat it as an additional source of income to a primary job and I've had a lot of "stay-at-home" moms pick me up in Rochester NY. In NYC, I've noticed the opposite, with most Uber drivers treating it as a full-time job.

Lastly, without Uber, my wife and I would have had to purchase another vehicle. Thanks to Uber, sharing a single vehicle works great when we can't sync up start/end times for work (pre-quarantine).

In most larger cities the Uber drivers are either now taxi drivers using personal cars, or are beginning to behave exactly like taxi drivers do.

I would bet Uber has created wealth, a lot of it. Uber didn't just sway rides from Medallions, i would imagine it increased rides by manifold. Note: Not considering environmental impact. (E) I'm not saying it's a flawless model, but you can't discount how it led to more people taking ride shares in contrast to car ownership. I think this is obvious in urban areas.

Genuinely curious about this cycle of opinion on Hacker news. It's trendy to shit on these companies until it's not.

could you explain more about "created wealth" especially related to your point about "it led to more people taking ride shares in contrast to car ownership" .

rides are cheap because Uber is doing actual dumping of taxi industry by operating on a loss. Uber drivers are earning very little + spending money on car maintenance etc. so basically only one benefit is cheap rides but even this is damaging overall system and is not sustainable.

so again.. where is that wealth creation (apart uber itself maybe)?

> import money to America from the world.

While I wish this were true, Uber is yet another tax dodging corporation like so many others: https://fortune.com/2015/10/22/uber-tax-shell/

That's the funny thing: all these tech companies are basically bleeding the rest of the world dry (Facebook is basically killing local newspapers across the world) and then they're hoarding money.

But it's disingenuous to pretend there aren't any benefits for the US as the hundreds of thousands if not millions of people working in tech companies in the US for very high salaries can attest. Very high salaries both for the US and definitely for the rest of the world.

hundreds of thousands if not millions of people working in tech companies in the US for very high salaries can attest

I think you are off by one or two orders of magnitude.

Nope, not really.

According to various sources the number of software developers in the US is around 3.3 million (https://dqydj.com/number-of-developers-in-america-and-per-st...). Even by a pessimistic estimate, let's say that 25% of these have very high salaries compared to the average or median wage in the US. Either because their seniority or because they work for big companies.

So that would mean something like 0.8 million.

Now, on top of that, add associated engineers working for tech companies, add middle managers (which are generally paid more than individual contributors), etc., and it's easily 1 million highly paid individuals.

Just think about it: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, Cisco, Netflix, Oracle, IBM, Adobe, Uber, HP, Verizon, AT&T, Intuit, ServiceNow, VMWare, Salesforce, Workday, Dell, Intel, Qualcomm, Ebay, Paypal, Activision, and probably another 1000 companies with at least 1000 employees in the US, that I don't know. Plus non-tech companies that have huge tech departments, such as Walmart, and that pay salaries that are competitive with the ones paid by purely tech companies.

On top of that, American software devs have no idea how good they have it. In Europe getting 100k as a fresh grad is impossible even in Switzerland (Switzerland having much higher salaries than the rest of Europe), unless you work for... a US giant (FAANG). And those spots are a minuscule part of the tech world in Europe. And now imagine that Europe is better off than 95% of the rest of the world.

The idea of a regular Joe Developer having a decent shot of having made (made, not saved!) a million by the time they're 35 is frankly ludicrous for most of the rest of the world.

The drivers and engineers are filing plenty of 1040s and W2s regardless of whatever Uber files.

How many drivers are making enough money to pay any kind of substantial taxes? They work for next to nothing.

You’re asking me? Who bloody knows? They still have to file, contribute to Social Security (the employer and employee side) and pay whatever income tax they owe. For some, it isn’t their only job, and for others, they make their own choices about how many hours it is worth driving.

They’re neither slaves nor indentured servants nor necessarily any worse off or better off than your average Café worker. They make the choices they make in exchange for a paycheck, no different than you and I in that regard. The income they receive goes somewhere, and some of that goes to the government in the form of taxes, no different than your or I. Feel free to dig into the numbers yourself to figure out how much, but figure in that some of that is likely going into the car, which means auto shops and car dealers, some of that is going to coffee or tea, some of that is going to their rent, and some of that is going to the food they eat. All of which is eventually ending up in someone else’s paycheck as taxable income for which some will file a W2 and others will file a 1040 whether that’s tomorrow or 20 years from now.

As Uber will happily insist to you, "drivers aren't employees of Uber".

So they file a 1040 instead of a W2.

>A plague on uber and Airbnb. May they both rot.

Don't agree with that. It is a new model which have advantages and disadvantages. You would know if you are a foreigner in a remote town and want to get a Taxi. If the model is bad the market will correct it eventually. I think what's bad is the VC's funding or persuading founders to continue to run with loss making business models for cornering the market. These companies then pump huge marketing money without a profitability in near future. That destroys the local competition if any and skew the market towards them for a while. Sometimes it will work out but many times it would fail. Again time will correct the practice if it's not sustainable, we have to wait.

Also Airbnb and Uber have enabled lot of people earn livelihood without having to wait for trade union approvals for sharing taxi stands or getting hotel licences. If the model is sustainable it will go back to old models, but i feel it's gonna stay whether through Uber or other service(s).

>import money to America from the world

What about CocaCola, Pepsi, Amazon (and AWS) Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Nike and hundreds of other brands ?

> If the model is bad the market will correct it eventually.

The "model" of selling leaded gasoline took 90 years to correct. I'd venture to say that the market correcting itself after a lifetime is not what most people want.

Not that I care in this case, just pointing out a flaw in this logic.

It took that many years to collect enough research and attention on the topic, and then force the industry's hand by regulatory measures, and it only worked because when the lead phaseout started, there already were alternatives developed. Without all that, the market wouldn't self-correct at all.

I mean, it's such a common failure mode of free markets, it should IMO be taught to kids in schools. If a product/service has damaging side effects that aren't immediately apparent, or the damage is diffuse, or takes a long time to manifest, then the market is blind to those costs. A product that mitigates these side effects is usually more expensive. Such a safer alternative isn't competitive on the market and won't succeed until it becomes as cheap as the less safe one (or cheaper than it).

Conclusion being: don't expect the market to correct against profits on its own. In fact, it will resist correction, so for the change to happen, you need strong regulatory pressure and/or innovation aimed at making the correction more profitable. In reality, you need both.

Not quite, it was known to be a bad idea at the time, and there were alternatives available. So...why? Because market control, patents, and the usual cast of idiots having nothing to do with "doing the right thing":

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/leaded-gas-poison-...

> Lead's toxicity was recognized and recorded as early as 2000 BC

> Also Airbnb and Uber have enabled lot of people earn livelihood without having to wait for trade union approvals for sharing taxi stands or getting hotel licences.

There were reasons those approvals and licenses existed in the first place, as a lot of cities are learning right now. That said, shortcomings were also revealed.

> but i feel it's gonna stay whether through Uber or other service(s).

I don't mind the other services, in particular ones that can take what works and what doesn't, and do it like civilized people do - by working together with the cities to provide said benefits in a legally above-board framework, and without disastrous externalities.

As for Uber, may it rot in hell.

> What about CocaCola, Pepsi, Amazon (and AWS) Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Nike and hundreds of other brands ?

I don't think any of these brands ever claimed they're a poor upstart fighting the good fight against the Evil Taxi Mafia (whereas in reality, they were VC-backed international corporation, leveraging their deep purse to conquer market after market, extinguishing local competitors).

Well it is a two-sided platform market that may very well be sustainable.

However it is set up to extract rents from both consumers and drivers, which is a problem for the latter. In effect, it captures profits from transportation markets and sends them to a company in the US.

And that may be both sustainable, since its a platform market, and it may create suffering and poverty for many drivers.

Handily, the existence and further political support for traditional taxis implies that a regulatory approach on competitive misconduct is unlikely. So these companies may not only be economically stable, but even in terms of competition policy.

In any case, I hope you see the difference between companies selling a product, and those selling a platform, for a local economy.

Except AirBNB has been shown to radically distort local housing markets.

We'll die waiting for market correction on climate.

I live not in USA, and before Uber taxi services were a total mess.

one could argue with Uber having almost never made money it's redistributing VC money to ordinary people. just about the only upside

I agree 100% on airbnb. I disagree completely on uber. Uber is safer, better and fairer than taxis. The strategy of growing it quickly is aggressive and clearly short term but the value of having uber in a community where driving is the only option makes drinking out so much safer. Girls getting rides alone are protected by verifying drivers, having so much more data for the entire trip and transaction. They clearly were able to gain market share with vc backing, but I will 100% take an uber over a taxi every day.

Uber pulled off a massive bait-and-switch in India. Offered drivers incredible bonuses, baited them with "rumors" that the bonuses were permanent, encouraged them to apply for loans to buy cars and even has a financing program of its own.

And then they pulled out the bonuses, practically forcing drivers to work 12+ hours/day (some even sleep in their cars) just to make minimum loan payments. No driver I've ever spoken to has been happy driving for Uber, but they do it because they have a car to pay off

To be fair, they sound like any new car dealer here (get the sale and often the auto-loan sale as well).

Except these people would never get loans without Uber's backing. Indian lenders are notoriously risk averse and make it very hard for self-employed people to get loans.

Moreover, without Uber's (formerly) juicy carrot, they would never be in the market for a car in the first place

Agree the business model is questionable, but it's a great example of using technology for an essential service.

I mainly agree, but quality of taxi services varies from location to location.

If these drivers are unhappy they can choose not be drivers ? Both these companies eroded existing shitty models. I'm a happy consumer.

> If these drivers are unhappy they can choose not be drivers

This is oversimplified to a painful degree.

How so? Coming from the service industry, I have noticed many including myself work hard to escape and progress. If people want more they need to earn it.