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.