> It's like the same idea of Uber and Lyft. Less human involvement = better world /S.

It's interesting how everyone conveniently forgot about the medallion system Uber and Lyft disrupted.

Pre-Uber, either the driver rented the car to a middleman who rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was selling and financing (most banks won't touch these medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a driver that planned to use it as his retirement savings (an extremely volatile asset and not very liquid).

The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their industry was a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber brought a breeze of fresh air: Someone could simply buy a car, calculate the depreciation and it's value on the market (since unlike medallions cars are relatively liquid assets!) do rideshare and calculate their profits or loss. They can get out of the game at anytime, and they know exactly how much they are going to get for the car they have should they sell it.

And I'm not even touching the usual pain points and often discriminatory practices of medallion drivers (refusing card payments, refusing rides to non-white passengers and to non-white neighborhoods...).

Uber and Lyft are 100% a win though.

- It is now cheaper for the average person to get a ride to an airport/bar than it was before. It is safer, more predictable with timing, and more predictable with pricing.

- Uber drivers make more money today than taxi drivers used to/or do today. There are also way more job openings in this than there used to be, with less friction to get involved.

The world is not a zero sum game. Technology made this a win-win long-term although there were already some people caught in the middle with old business models. However, that really cant be a reason for us not to move on.

> It is now cheaper for the average person to get a ride to an airport/bar than it was before.

On average, in certain locations. In others, not so much. And let's not forget surge pricing. Or people living, or wanting to get to a place, along low-profit routes. Or people with disabilities.

> more predictable with pricing

Depends. Regular taxis tended to cost a bit more, but had much lower variance.

> Uber drivers make more money today than taxi drivers used to/or do today.

That seems implausible at best.

> There are also way more job openings in this than there used to be

These aren't jobs, though. They're gigs. And highly unpredictable ones, wrt. your take-home pay.

> The world is not a zero sum game. Technology made this a win-win long-term

Absolutely true.

The problem isn't technology, it's businesses - particularly businesses that purposefully play a negative-sum game, where the losing side is society at large. Externalizing risk, costs, performing regulatory arbitrage. Making owners much better off, customers a bit better off, at the cost of making everyone else slightly worse off. And much like with greenhouse emissions - a bit here, a bit there, barely measurable puff, up until it adds up to a global crisis - these companies are killing civilized society, one VC-subsidized shiny app at a time.

> On average, in certain locations. In others, not so much. And let's not forget surge pricing. Or people living, or wanting to get to a place, along low-profit routes. Or people with disabilities.

You can always take a regular cab. Low profit routes were pretty much impossible to get pre-Uber. I am almost certain that Uber is more likely to obey disability laws than "Joe's taxi" with a few cars.

> Depends. Regular taxis tended to cost a bit more, but had much lower variance.

My experience with cabs is calling a dispatcher while in route and getting a price. I was charged $30 for a two mile trip to the train station before. No reasoning. Also they were much less likely to pick up minority passengers, or people in poorer neighborhoods. Also "credit card machine was broken" very often. Also you don't know the route the driver will take. I guess my experience with cabs pre-Uber was different from yours, but it was incredibly high variance.

> That seems implausible at best.

Many places you had a gatekeeper. You can't just ride a taxi, and would have to purchase a medallion or sign on to an existing vendor where there's much less competition. They would also be much less flexible with hours

> I am almost certain that Uber is more likely to obey disability laws than "Joe's taxi" with a few cars.

Knowing the lawsuits from people who've been refused rides from a regular Uber because they have a service dog, or their wheelchair 'probably won't fit' (I think I can tell you whether the wheelchair I usually put in the trunk of a car is likely to fit in your trunk, thank you), I am not.

But there are also specific accessible taxis. How do I call an Uber that will take a powered wheelchair?

UberWAV (wheelchair accessible vehicle) is a thing in “select markets”: https://www.uber.com/us/en/ride/uberwav/

No idea how it works in practice but it’s a thing in Toronto.

Because people can actually sue Uber and they can get a lot of money and publicity. You can't sue Joe's taxi. I mean you could try, but I don't think people aren't suing because they are follow all applicable laws and regulations to a tee

You don’t have to sue Joe’s taxi, you complain to the regulators and they can lose their taxi license. Generally people aren’t suing because it’s expensive and a giant pain to do, which is why having a regulatory body that will handle this stuff is better for consumers than relying on court action.

> Low profit routes were pretty much impossible to get pre-Uber.

In cities, that's absurd - car services existed for decades serving just this part of the market, and they let you schedule in advance!

In the suburbs and exurbs, probably less so, but this is where everyone has a car as a prerequisite for living in a house with a multi-car garage.

Something something rose-tinted glasses.

You could schedule in advance. Now having them actually show up? That was debatable. lol

Hand to heart I’ve had more Ubers not show up (more than 5) than I did car services over several decades of NYC living. Worse they claimed I didn’t show up.

I would posit that New York city is probably the best example you could come up with in the United States. Pretty much everywhere else Uber is supreme

I don't live in New York City, but when I was there Uber was the absolute best option for our use case, because they were the only option that allowed us to ask for a toddler carseat as an extra. It was a game changer and preferred that over taxis and other car services.

The first Uber I ever ordered was after I had scheduled a car with one of these services and it didn't show up.

Since they aren't taxis, car services can charge enough there is no such thing as a low profit route for them.

In cities, there were were either no taxis around in certain neighborhoods, or they simply would not come at all even if you called and asked the taxi company and the dispatcher told you they had sent a driver. Both of these I experienced personally.

> In the suburbs and exurbs, probably less so, but this is where everyone has a car as a prerequisite for living [...]

Sure but that doesn't work very well for when you want to spend the weekends drinking. The cities in the US that have grown the most over the last 10 or 20 years are still very much suburban and lack good public transportation. The lack of low cost and convenient transportation services quite literally resulted in fatal accidents.

The purpose of the medallions, in theory, is to improve the chances that the average cab driver can make a living wage. Can the average Uber driver live a middle class income from this “gig”?

> When accounting for the ride-sharing company’s commissions and fees, vehicle expenses and a modest health insurance package, Uber drivers end up earning just $9.21 in hourly wages, according to a new study from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-uber-driv...

> The purpose of the medallions, in theory, is to improve the chances that the average cab driver can make a living wage

The problem with that is that there is a supply of cab drivers and demand for cabs that drives the price. If you put in a medallion system, the price of the medallion will be bid up such that the cab driver's wage is in line with the market wage. You can't just wave a magic wand and set prices without unintended consequences. So what happened was cab drivers had to take out massive debt to finance these medallions or work for some middle man that is essentially a financing arm. And when the price collapsed, they were stuck with this debt and some even got bailed out by taxpayers.

I wish Uber was around when I was younger. I had a car and a lot of spare time. I would have gladly accepted a low wage if I had a few hours to kill. No other job affords that flexibility which is probably why its so popular.

You can't instantly prevent all unintended consequences, but making it so you can't resell a medallion and you can't subcontract it (or harsh limits on subcontracting) would fix a lot of those issues.

the average cabby can't buy a medalion, he therefore has to pay a fee to someone who owns a car with a medalion to rent the car for a period of time (+ probably paying the owner a percentage of his take). As opposed to using his own car and keeping everything that uber lets him to keep which might be less than what the medalion owner would have taken. hence, increase in money into pocket for the uber/lyft driver.

with that said, this is all supposition, i just find it a reasonable argument.

I believe they could - and they took out quite horrifically large loans to do so.

It maybe made sense though, as your payment was your license to work, and selling the medalion on was your retirement plan. Uber screwed this up - but my feelings are mixed.

The sharecropper / feudal lord model.

The American Dream Model.

The alternative to surge pricing before rideshare was pretty much just not being able to find a taxi, unless you happened to get extremely lucky. Have you ever tried to hail a cab in Manhattan right after it starts to rain?

I would love a carbon tax but if that existed I don't see how you can blame Uber for making society worse. In additions to all the economic gains you talk about it has saved thousands of lives a year due to less drunk driving. Additionally, it has enabled millions of people in cities to skip buying a new car/any car which saves tons of emissions.

More predictable as in you know the fair before you get in. I did have to take a taxi in Los Angeles from the airport earlier this year and the guy wouldn't tell me how much it would cost. Gave me a ballpark that was $22 less than what it ended up being.

> how you can blame Uber for making society worse

There's a long, long, long list of reasons Uber has screwed over great many people, and continues to. From regulatory arbitrage, duping drivers into unprofitable deals, lack of proper insurance, privacy violations, harassing journalists, harassing employees... This has been covered non-stop on HN for pretty much a decade now. I invite you to do some searching, and you'll quickly see how Uber is one of the most ethically challenged companies of the 21st century.

> More predictable as in you know the fair before you get in.

Yes. And by higher-variance I meant that you never know what fare you'll have to either accept, or abandon the trip. With traditional taxis, the prices are variable, but it's easier to ballpark them (at least traveling in the city you know), and they have much tighter range.

As crazy as early Uber was I still have trouble believing that taxi companies are more deserving or were better to their employees or less corrupt. There's no evidence.

I guess if you prefer being able to ballpark a taxi cost then that's cool! You can still use taxis. But most people prefer to see the price before they get in. Certainly the choice existing is better for the consumer and has helped keep taxi fares lower - even if you choose not to use an uber.

> As crazy as early Uber was I still have trouble believing that taxi companies are more deserving or were better to their employees or less corrupt. There's no evidence.

Do you have any evidence, for any taxi network in any city on the planet, of that taxi network doing anything even remotely as illegal or antisocial as Uber has been (and still is) doing? Uber's transgressions are well documented, there is great many of them, and quite a few were done at scale.

For the "deserving" part - they were there. Good or bad, I don't think any business deserves being steamrolled by an aggressive foreign multinational corporation, with practically infinite budget to undercut competitors and keep law enforcement at bay. Local businesses don't get to break the law without impunity.

For being better to their employees, I honestly don't know. But in all the rides with traditional networks I took over two decades of my life, I don't remember any driver actually complaining about their job. Ironically, the drivers of Uber-like[0] services keep complaining all the time - mostly about constantly changing terms of contracts, and constantly testing new kinds of customer acquisition schemes, that tend to take away money from the drivers.

> But most people prefer to see the price before they get in.

I never said I didn't want it either. I like this feature - and guess what, I had that, way before Uber was a thing, thanks to a private company that fought for improvement in transport regulations. That's how I know sociopathy wasn't necessary to disrupting the taxi market.

--

[0] - I don't use Uber itself, it's a matter of principle.

early Uber wasn’t crazy, it was a blatant and malign attempt to use cheap capital to monopolize an existing sector. Uber is and was always about as close to evil as a company can be without selling opioids or nicotine.

I know me and you are not going to see eye-to-eye but I have trouble seeing how Ubers are more monopolistic than taxi companies which wanted a cap on the number of permitted taxi's per city - when they already had all the permits/medallions owned themselves.

Taxi companies (note the plural) were obviously not monopolies and the medallion systems generally required diversity of holders. That is not at all what Uber was up to. Uber was doing what used to be called dumping to destroy the incumbents.

Stop defending Uber. Even if you work for them it is incumbent on you as a citizen to be honest about what they were doing.

> it has saved thousands of lives a year due to less drunk driving

According to Uber?

> Additionally, it has enabled millions of people in cities to skip buying a new car/any car which saves tons of emissions.

Citation needed. I believe the last analysis I read showed that most people used Uber etc to replace transit or walking, which means it adds to emissions.

I've used taxis in multiple cities that I booked through an app and got a fare ahead of time. At this point Uber is "a taxi, but with no guarantee of quality* and no cap on how many of them are creating traffic"

*GPS routing does no good when the driver clearly can't read a map and doesn't know where they are or how to follow directions.

Yeah I don’t understand the parent comment’s gushing take on Uber/Lyft. I consider them a net positive but they are hardly a 100% win. In my area prices shot up from what they were 1-2 years ago, and many drivers barely break even (if they do) once you take into account maintenance costs on the car they drive.

Do you think taxi drivers are making more money than uber drivers considering they:

- Taxi drivers (outside of NYC) in the US are going to get less rides per hour than uber drivers

- Taxi drivers traditionally have to give a larger share to the taxi company than uber drives give to Uber. If they are independent then they have identical car expenses as an uber driver.

I 100% believe that a lot of Uber drivers barely break even. I guess I'm fine with that - I bet if you try to do that 9-5 and can't do your own car maintenance you are going to be inefficient at it. I had a friend in Los Angeles who would only work nights, was fine working 2am, and could do basic tire/oil/car repair. He made 2x what he had been making as a busboy at a restaurant. I don't see why this is considered a bad option for people, especially since he enjoyed the flexibility.

He wore down his car and had to pay higher insurance. He ended up making slightly over 9 dollars an hour. Better than a busboy.. perhaps but at least after bus boying he will have a car that still works.

I can't claim to know all his finances - but his car was a 10 year old ford sedan that must have cost less than 9k when he started. Considering he did Uber for multiple years and the car is still his vehicle I'm pretty sure it is mathematically impossible that depreciation could make it a bad deal - or even close to a bad deal.

Taxis, lower variance? Where? Ever had a smelly driver, or one that smokes in the car? Drives like shit? Dirty seats? With the micro entrepreneur taxi apps, it basically never happens.

It is NOT cheaper in SF. 2 miles costs at least $20 and can be as high as $40. I don't think I've been anywhere in the world where prices are that high for taxis and there are plenty of places in the world where taxis are plentiful.

I'm happy the services exist but they are not cheap, at least not here.

> It is NOT cheaper in SF. 2 miles costs at least $20 and can be as high as $40

Can confirm. Arrived at SFO late the other night (1130pm-ish) and Uber wanted $80 to take me from Passenger pickup, to my longterm parking lot which was probably 3 miles away.

I ended up taking a Taxi for $12 + tip.

I’ve never had a non-surge Uber/Lyft exceed the equivalent Flywheel/street-hail in SF.

I occasionally used to try these services (I have thousands of rides so this used to be relevant). Lyft/Uber are way better.

It isn't the case they are more expensive than taxi's where I am. I take it now that isn't the case everywhere. And even in in the SF area I don't believe that taxi's would be cheaper if you lived slightly out of the core areas and had to call one to drive out to you.

I am also still extremely skeptical they contribute to higher prices though. If Uber and Lyft did not exist I believe (just a theory) that taxi prices would be much higher.

Perhaps someone who lives in a city where ubers are banned could state if taxi prices have grown over the years.

Cab drivers had goals to own a medallion. That medallion value rose allowing someone to retire.

What we have is slightly higher pay until your car breaks. No retirement plan.

The drivers lose out.

The customer rides in someone's personal car pays a little less sometimes but a lot more (demand pricing) when they really need it.

Uber/Lift lose money on each ride but will rise prices as soon as they can once you have fewer choices.

Zero sum indeed..

Basing your retirement plan around the continuing artificial scarcity of taxi medallions is not smart. The city has no obligation to keep the medallions scarce; their value can drop to zero overnight due to changing regulations (or a drop in demand for taxi services, e.g. because a better public transportation system was implemented) and they won't owe you a dime. You'd be far better off working with Uber instead and putting the money you saved by not needing to buy a medallion into a diversified retirement portfolio.

Medallions don't come out of thin air. It's the cities that provide them. The cities want this, because taxis are meant to be a component of the city transportation system. They're not there to compete with public transit, they're there to augment it - to service the needs that a bus or a train can't. A medallion comes with a requirement to fulfill those needs, as the city sees fit.

The relationship between public mass transit, and private taxis (and private mass transit) was cooperative. The relationship between city transportation systems and Uber is hostile.

The cities don't provide medallions, they mandate them and limit the supply. The default state without the city's intervention (i.e. no medallions needed to operate a taxi) is equivalent to having a superabundance of medallions. As you say, they do this in order to bring taxis in line with their plans for city-wide public transportation. Which is not to say that they wouldn't discard the medallion system the moment something better came along to fulfill a similar role. The city has no particular interest in maintaining the market value of the medallions; they remain scarce only because the city prefers to limit the number of taxis on the roads, and as a concession to the taxi industry so that they will acquiesce to the city's rules with less of a fight. If demand for taxis drops below the number the city is willing to tolerate, for whatever reason, you shouldn't expect the city to prop up the value of the medallions just because you're counting on it as your retirement plan.

Few drivers owned a medallion. Mostly owned by large cops.

>>> Uber drivers make more money today than taxi drivers used to/or do today.

Hmmm, That must depend on the market as it's not necessarily the case based on discussions I had with both in Ottawa.

(note, when Uber first started, that was the perceived story - almost "free money!" for bored white collar workers with a car and few hours to spare here and there. I've had people in $50k, $60k cars drive me around, to "meet new people and have fun". However, once full-time professionals joined the ranks, and did math on maintenance and insurance and fuel etc, the story RAPIDLY changed).

I guess I'm skeptical that taxi driver who takes on less rides is making more money after the cut they give to their company. Or, if you were starting an independent taxi service that you'd make more money taking your own calls and doing your own maintenance anyway.

I'm not surprised its gone down - probably a sign that it used to be very profitable even if not as much so now. I do know plenty of people that can repair cars themselves (one of whom has been uber driving foe years) so perhaps it will only work out for those people. Which seems like a 100% decent outcome.

>>I guess I'm skeptical that taxi driver who takes on less rides is making more money after the cut they give to their company.

There's an implicit assumption there that taxi driver gets less rides and I don't see why that is necessarily true.

More broadly, I think both Uber and Taxi drivers have significant distribution, and it appears there are both Uber & Taxi drivers who are better or worse at maximizing their rides and income. I've seen both drivers who just "do what app/dispatch tells them" (and are constantly complaining about their income level or nature of rides), and drivers who actively seek out timing, areas and locations that give good rides. This is not the same as parking in front of hotel and hoping for a long drive - it's a fairly active dynamic work.

Overall though, active engaged Taxi drivers seemed to find it a more predictable, profitable engagement that sufficed as main income for their family; whereas I have not gotten that sense from Uber drivers in the 12-18 months prior to Covid.

Of course, while I took taxi or uber twice a day for several years in Ottawa, this is still anecdata and limited sample - absolutely! But that's largely my point - we discuss Uber and Taxi as if the situation in London and San Francisco and New York and Ottawa and so on is the same - and it absolutely is not.

One thing that seems to often be missed in these discussions as well is edge cases; even if in a place Uber is a great alternative for 80-90% of folks, I find it is far less dependable if you're in a less active area, during less active time, and/or need Uber planned for a specific time.

Your first point was true, pre-pandemic. But is no longer true, at least not universally true. In some areas Uber and Lyft are now prohibitively expensive. What was once a $15 trip is now $40-50. You are better off going back to traditional taxi companies.

They have also become very unreliable, with no available drivers in some areas or 40+ minute wait times, and then the driver cancels. The majority of drivers switched to food delivery it seems. Pre-pandemic you could get a driver within 5 minutes no problem in some areas, and now may be waiting 30+ minutes.

I took a trip to Asheville and Uber/Lyft service was virtually non-existent, you had to rely on local cab companies to get around.

That’ll all fix itself pretty quickly once the federal unemployment benefits stop, other than prices being somewhat higher due to fuel costs.

Will Uber and Lift continue to be a win when the VCs start wanting to see some of their money back? Or will the prices start rising back to the old taxi rates, then past?

I'm confused by this comment. They both went public two years ago so VCs have all cashed out.

People don't understand the difference between VC backed startups and public companies backed by institutional and retail investors

We're talking about public companies. You can safely use the term investors, the term "VC" is irrelevant, except for drama.

Now that we're talking about public companies, there are a lot of them. Any concern about price gouging you might have should extend to all these companies.

If not, why not?

Not sure if it's accurate, but the feeling is that recently, tech companies went public before being profitable or while barely being so. On top of that, their valuation is higher on a PE ratio basis than classical ones.

So it feels that they'll have to change something big to meet expected returns.

And the fear is that, as they succesfully managed to kill the incumbent, they are free to change the most obvious parameter, the pricing.

I've heard these arguments for years, depending on the company. How long do things have to go on, for people to stop believe that prices are going to massively rise?

I heard the same thing about amazon. That the inevitable huge price increases are coming. Hasn't happened yet.

> It is now cheaper for the average person to get a ride

Due to a decade of massive losses. This isn’t their real long term cost. It is a scam to make people think it’s cheaper and run normal taxis out of business

Uber and Lyft haven't yet reached profitability. They either have to raise prices, lower costs or expand cost effectively.

Their full impact is not yet decided

An exercise in offloading car depreciation and maintenance onto unsuspecting low-paid workers.

Getting a ride _from_ the airport is 100% easier and more predictable by just hitting the taxi line. Ordering an Uber in a crowded place is so much less efficent.

Neither of these things is true in NYC: cabs charge a fixed rate to the area airports (Uber is at least twice that rate), and hack drivers have historically made reasonable money. Most of them have lost that stability, as well as (in some instances) their life savings due to the medallion crash.

Yes, the medallion crash.... because medallions were a political "tool" which controlled supply, making them artificially way more valuable than they otherwise should have been.

The medallions were an economic tool, instituted during the Great Depression, to regulate a spiraling industry. Whether or not they “should” be valuable is a nonsense framing: they were introduced to enforce scarcity, which makes them valuable. Neither of us has to like them to recognize their outsized value and function in the welfare of a large number of peoples’ lives.

But to the larger point: medallions made NYC yellowcabs more expensive than the market demands, and they’re still cheaper than ridesharing.

Investing in medallions (as investing in anything) is a risk.

Cab drivers have lost job stability, but others have benefitted.

Sure. But this is a different claim from the OP’s. Nobody is entitled to returns on investments, but the claim that ridershare apps are either affordable or good for cabbies is farcical in NYC, at the minimum.

Drivers are often not medallion owner.

Have you noticed a trend in this thread where everything is way more expensive in cities like NYC and SF. I wonder why that could be? I just used Uber for a 35 minute trip to the Airport in San Diego and it was $30. Pretty damn cheap and the driver was amazing.

In most countries Uber has been a disaster for drivers, to the point of outllawing it.

I travel to India frequently. Before Uber (or their local variant, Ola) came along, getting a taxi was nearly impossible in middle-tier cities. The only option was an auto-rickshaw, whose drivers were notorious for gouging. And they formed a cartel: if you turned down one driver, the others would see that and refuse to give you a ride.

Uber was a god-send. You call up the driver, watch him approach on your phone, step out when he's there. Regardless of where you were, you could get a ride from there to wherever you were going. Rides for which auto-rickshaws used to charge upwards of Rs. 300 (~$4), can now be had for Rs 150 or less ( < $2 ).

I agree it has probably been a disaster for existing taxi companies in every city. But only in the same way the internet has been a disaster for the phone book companies. Or that Netflix was bad for Blockbuster.

Just because some countries don't value competition - and prefer to cater to existing entrenched lobbying groups - is not compelling evidence to the average American that Uber is bad.

Regulations, guns, or both, define markets.

Technological progress disrupts markets.

The only thing that changes are the cast of winners and losers.

Society sometimes prefers the greater good (fairness) by reigning in the powerful.

Maybe ask female employees of Uber if they agree with that

>"It is now cheaper for the average person to get a ride to an airport/bar than it was before. It is safer, more predictable with timing, and more predictable with pricing."

No it's no longer cheaper "to get a ride to an airport/bar than it was before." Especially if one considers "before" being before the pandemic. This increased price of Uber/Lyft has actually been quite a common news story of late[1][2][3]. Incidentally "why is uber so expensive right now 2021" on Google search has over 15 million results.

What evidence is there that an Uber is safer than a taxi? Also how can a model with surge pricing be more predictable than a taxi which has regulated rates per mile and per minute?

>"Uber drivers make more money today than taxi drivers used to/or do today. There are also way more job openings in this than there used to be, with less friction to get involved."

Do you have a citation for Uber drivers making more money than taxis drivers? What is the true earning per mile for an Uber/Lyft driver when you factor in auto insurance, maintenance, repairs and vehicle depreciation?

The "friction" to becoming a taxi driver is pretty minimal. One just needs obtain a hack license the requirements of which are pretty nominal.[4] Especially so if you don't already own a car. Uber/Lyft seem to be having great difficulty staffing up right now[5]. I'm not sure that would be the case if it really was such the great(100% win) opportunity you make it out to be.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/article/uber-lyft-surge.html

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/09/uber-ly...

[3] https://www.curbed.com/2021/06/uber-lyft-expensive-new-york-...

[4] https://nycitycab.com/HackLicense.aspx

[5] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/7/22371850/uber-lyft-driver-...

> - It is now cheaper for the average person to get a ride to an airport/bar than it was before. It is safer, more predictable with timing, and more predictable with pricing.

This is no longer true. In my town, now that the firehose of VC subsidies has dried up, Uber costs more than taking a cab, even without surge pricing.

>- It is now cheaper for the average person to get a ride to an airport/bar than it was before.

Is it? Or are venture capitalists just footing the bill?

Whatever model of "price" you use needs to take into account the fact that not only are Uber and Lyft lighting enormous piles of Saudi money on fire to "gain marketshare" but that the actual drivers are being paid peanuts. This isn't pure win, it's more like Nestle handing out free baby formula in Africa to destroy the "domestic market" so to speak.

What market did they destroy? The money went directly to US engineers and US drivers.

The US should be blessed that Saudi is so bad with its money and so willing to subsidize Americans.

It destroyed the money of people who had bought up medallions. That's it. Having medallions was not a long term solution when the city can now charge rideshare services for miles/minutes/rides on the road without any hard cap for politically connected incumbent players.

> What market did they destroy? The money went directly to US engineers and US drivers.

The financially-sustainable transportation market. Companies without endless amounts of capital that actually have to break even or make a profit to keep the lights on.

It's not just the medallions, they're literally selling the service itself at below-cost in many places and have been for years.

The US may not feel so blessed when the Saudis decide they want some of that money back.

Huh? Uber is a publicly traded company now. If Saudi sells its shares of Uber the company valuation will dip some but otherwise go unchanged.

It’s not a loan.

I never understood why uber needs 2000+ engineers on staff.

Their client seems to work on almost any Android and iphone, including a web client, has possibly hundreds of screens, supports multiple languages, regions, currencies…

In order to pretend to be a tech company.

Same reason they pretended to work on flying taxis and self-driving cars. The multiple for high tech companies is greater than the multiple for taxi companies or even basic Web2.0-style one-trick app companies.

> are venture capitalists just footing the bill?

Since they're public, its any shareholder and the public market. But that also means they're probably not still raising rounds like they were.

as a student in boston where brokers take 1 month rent for doing exactly *nothing*, i welcome the idea of automating away these leaches.

edit: fb marketplace might get the brokers first, most of my friends found their places via landlords posting there

Brokers taking money from renters is ridiculous and should be done away with. Landlords hiring brokers to deal with vetting and showing an apartment and all those logistics seems pretty reasonable and up to the landlord if they feel it’s worth the value.

Spoiler: the landlord is just passing that cost to the tenant.

It's like in Canada where tenants can hire a broker for "free" to find a rental. However the broker just collects 1 month rent from the landlord. Do you think the landlord just absorbs the cost? No, the quoted rent was just 8.4% higher when the broker mentioned he was a broker.

Landlords can't pass costs to tenants. The rental market is completely supply inelastic. Landlords are already charging the maximum renters are willing to pay.

Do you mean at this moment in time because of Covid, or in general?

Because in general, there have been easy-to-find examples in the past couple decades of rents going up 5-10% every year for folks in certain places with aggressive landlords. Were they willing to pay 5-10% more suddenly in year n+1, or were they charged less than the maximum they would've been willing to pay in year n?

Demand has been increasing by 5-10% a year in highly desirable areas. Obviously different people are willing to pay different amounts, but everyone wants to pay as little as possible. As more people want to move in the least wealthy are pushed out and prices increase. After all, rental price is the highest price landlords can take in order to rent out all their units.

Landlords derive their revenue from rent. That’s it. And they aren’t in the business of losing money. So one way or another it comes out of the renters pocket.

Its like when a broker sells a house and says the seller pays the fee. In reality the buyer is the only source of money in the deal so they are effectively paying the fee.

So the market clearing price is $1084 but the landlord rents it out for $1000? Why is he leaving the other $84 on the table when dealing with non-broker applicants?

I think brokers are still in the property game because landlords typically aren't sufficiently informed to know that they can avoid paying a broker, or can shop around for a cheaper one.

Brokers have done a good job of telling landlords that if they don't use a broker, or use a cheap one, that they'll get bad tenants and that'll cost them a lot in the long term. Good broker = good tenants = worth getting 8.4% less, because you'll lose more than 8.4% when a bad tenant burns the place down....

I'm unconvinced that the above is true, but it's certainly the message brokers (fairly successfully) give landlords.

Yes, but the landlord can find cheaper brokers, or do it themselves to save money. There's now an efficient market.

When the burden is paid by the renter, there's no efficient market because renter has no choice in the broker and the owner doesn't care.

Either way the renter is paying the cost and the landlord is losing a chunk of the spread.

It’s no different than the ridiculous notion that “the seller pays broker’s commission”. It’s baked into the price and the buyer is still paying it, otherwise a home would cost X% less.

EXACTLY! How is this lost on so many people? The buyer is the only source of funds, so any cash paid to the broker effectively came from the buyer.

The National Association of Realtors is a huge political lobby that works to perpetuate the racket.

Compass started as Urban Compass and wanted to distrupt the racket! But eventually decide to join in on it and become a VC backed brokerage with better “technology”.

No one has yet been able to educate consumers on the insane mismatch between value and price among RE brokers.

is the cost passed on to the renter? yes.

is it still better to do that? yes. Because i can now compare the cost of rental, fees included on a comparison site, instead of looking at the place i want and finding it out it has a hidden charge.

this is why they changed the law in the uk so the landlord has to pick, becasue it means they will be incentivised to put it into the rent, and this way its STILL better for the renter because now they are able to compare the full costs.

It is interesting. One important difference is if the broker knows they have to pay the broker they are probably more likely to due their best to keep a tenant if they have to deal with it. The landlord also wants to make as much money while having a marketable rent - so its not like they don't care if they have to raise rent to cover expenses.

I still think having this on a platform where a company is making a flat $250 fee (or whatever) is extremely scalable for the company and would benefit both the landlord and tenants.

Brokers are always taking away money from renters, in one way or another.

In other cities property managers do the same thing, but they skim off the top of the rent checks and provide more services.

But really all the middlemen in housing are awful.

Depending on cost, broker might not be bad deal. If the general administrative maters are taken care of, that is showing the property and having good contract template and sorting signatures and so on.

Yeah, as a fellow Boston renter, facebook and craigslist are the way to go. Still no human required, no fees, good response rate.

> as a student in boston where brokers take 1 month rent for doing exactly nothing

At least in California, the broker’s fee is an expense of the landlord that is not directly passed on to the tenant moving in. If the cost is passed on, it’s hidden in the cost of rent.

Also, the landlord can claw back part of the fee if the tenant moves out before one year. So, it makes more sense as a landlord expense.

Advertising platforms love middlemen beause they feed each other.

Both are parasitic entities that cause more harm to end users than benefits. The problem is that they control the information flow and supported by governments, hence we cannot eliminate them completely but can try to keep them at the bay using technology we can control

i don't care if a tech company extracts a fee, as

1) the process will likely be much better then texting a broker: virtual apartment layouts, ability to see profiles for roommates, no bait and switch of "that unit just got taken buuuuuuuuuuuttttt i have this crappy one that is still available just for you!"

2) the fee they charge will be less than brokers. no way would someone handover a month's rent to some company who's only interaction with you is via chatbot

---- edit ----

i have nothing against brokers. but if these companies innovate and force the brokers to actually provide value again in the internet age, then that's a win for everyone.

> the fee they charge will be less than brokers. no way would someone handover a month's rent to some company who's only interaction with you is via chatbot

In Boston, I would've thought there's no way that someone would pay thousands of dollars of a broker fee for merely unlocking the door so you can see the place for literally a few minutes (and who expects you to bring your checkbook and write a deposit within 5 minutes, because they've scheduled another person to show up 5 minutes later)... but that's the setup, and many people have to play along with that.

You wouldn't think you'd pay 30% cut off the top to an app store, for the privilege of being in app search results, and also to be at the mercy of whatever backstabbing it might do to you in the future (e.g., when they decide to compete with your service, or a partner of theirs does), but that's the setup, and many people have to play along with that.

I can 100% imagine tech companies doing all of those things you mention hating brokers for—not having virtual apartment layouts, not having the ability to choose your roommates, using dark patterns to try and bait and switch you into a crappier unit...

The difference isn't between brokers / tech companies, it's between a new market entrant (who is trying to convey a user-friendly atmosphere to attract userss/good press) vs an ossified market where brokers have no incentive to cater to renters, despite the fact that they're ostensibly working for them, since they're chosen exclusively by landlords.

Five years later, there's nothing preventing the tech companies from working in exactly the same way—the reality is that any company that's chosen exclusively by the landlord and not accountable to the tenants is going to face exactly the same set of incentives, since supply-side shortages dominate the urban housing market.

> virtual apartment layouts

I wish to see that. It'll be 10 more years before the implementation won't be total garbage.

> ability to see profiles for roommates

Privacy concerns may prevent that. If not, it's a prime candidate for a paywall.

> no bait and switch of "that unit just got taken buuuuuuuuuuuttttt i have this crappy one that is still available just for you!

You're joking, right?

On-line services literally live by that. They've perfected it, refined it to the level of art. Only the best US used car salesmen can get close to pulling shenanigans the large on-line hotel and vacation booking services pull.

> the fee they charge will be less than brokers.

The fee will be whatever they say it will be. The more centralized the market will get - and this is what happens when things get handled by tech companies - the higher the fees are likely to be.

> no way would someone handover a month's rent to some company who's only interaction with you is via chatbot

People will pay if the service is good enough, for the same reason they pay brokers today. Many have more money than free time in their lives; one month's rent isn't much if it cuts out most of the bullshit that's involved in finding a place to rent.

>> virtual apartment layouts

>I wish to see that. It'll be 10 more years before the implementation won't be total garbage.

It exists today. I used it for all my apartments since 2018. Its great (enough). Mattermost is the biggest one i've seen. They even have a (mediocre) VR app. Its sufficiently good enough for the purpose. You can even (somewhat precisely) measure the apartment (great for furniture/etc).

Not all brokers provide value to the renter. In "hot" markets like New York, a lot of the time they don't.

They render a lot of value to the landlord, however. Taking nice photos, dealing with unqualified applicants, showing the property, etc.

> Your comments are the perfect example of the short term positive news wave they can generate. Thank you for validating.

This kind of lazy snark comment degrades this community.

Absolute free speech, however, empowers this community. I say, let each and everyone speak their mind, even the snark.

Oh sure it does but that same free speech lets users call out speech they find provides little or negative value to the community.

It'd be different if said comment was deleted/removed but users downvoting it for not being conducive to conversation and calling it out as needless and low value isn't impeding the free speech by any means.

Free speech != speech free from criticism.

Indeed, I agree. By no means am I advocating the removal of their ability to post, simply using my own to point out that perhaps they ought to think a bit more about their content.

How does it degrade? It was exactly what I was saying happens and someone exactly said the comment. It's 100% validating.

In fact it is your lazy finger wagging comment that degrades this community.

Your comments all presuppose the existing broker solution is superior and people just haven't found the problems with Caretaker yet (and some vague and unfounded speculation about a future price increase).

Consider that perhaps Caretaker is taking customers from brokers because they actually provide a better and/or cheaper service. Maybe the positive comments aren't a short term buzz but instead good reviews of a good product.

No my comments do not presuppose the broker solution being better.

My comments describe the typical playbook for VC funded companies going into a market place with a well hated incumbent.

The cheaper services that Caretaker currently provide are subsidized by private capital and only will provide a positive return for that private capital once they have a dominant position in the market at which point they have the power dynamic to raise prices.

My comments look to the longer term future and take a quick look at whats getting replaced. There is no supposition that the broker solution is better - more that the Caretaker solution has a predictable playbook in which we will see if the long term solution is indeed better.

The value that was accrued across broker (As hated as they may be) provide some jobs, the value in caretaker accrues across some staff but mostly rolls up to the investors - providing it is a successful outcome.

> It's like the same idea of Uber and Lyft. Less human involvement = better world /S.

It's very easy and edgy to disdain the importance and positive impact of Uber and Lyft, but the truth of the matter is that the ride share revolution already introduced collosal improvements in quality of service in entrenched markets such as the old taxicab services.

I recall a time where unscrupulous taxicab services fraudulently inflated prices and made up twist-and-turn paths to fleece customers, and we're free to act as organized crime.

With rideshare services, you get routes and estimates generated a priori and in a deterministic way, and more importantly through a really auditable service. With rideshare services, a nasty driver is no longer totally shielded from criticism or consequences. With rideshare services, quality of service became something that was important to drivers.

And we have to than the Ubers ad Lyfts of the world for that.

If they bring permanent change to the market and lead to the elimination of rental brokers entirely, I don't care what replaces it.

>I don't care what replaces it

What if the replacement is worse?

Such a system is not possible.

I can't imagine it happening either, but I also:

1. Don't like tempting fate.

2. Am very aware of the limits of my imagination. 15 years ago, I probably wouldn't have been able to predict Facebook having the sorts of downsides that are now glaring.

Things can always get worse.

Consider what would happen if brokers disappear and your application is rejected by an AI from a company that most landlords use.

This is already the system. Brokers have no impact on the application process. It's all credit checks, which is basically the same thing as "AI from a company".

Shouldn't you always care what replaces it?

There are some very different dynamics though - for one, the path to profitability is a little easier and price probably won't ever need to be near where it is with brokers. Uber never actually removed the humans, but seems like they already got there with this.

Also, not likely to change the landscape in the way Uber did, the scale is so much smaller and no one is getting fooled into some gig economy loophole that exploits workers.

Will probably end up with its own problems, but can't think it's worse than some brokers having to find another job/get creative.

Uber forced the taxi game to change where no regulations could due to lobbying.

Stop letting perfect be the enemy of good.

Unrelated as I'm not saying anything is perfect or aspiring to that - I'm just showing the pattern of how the business operates.

Sure, but it seems that in the short term at least this company is improving the rental market. Should we really critize them on hypothetical future behaviour when the current behaviour is a benefit?

And as for Uber/Lyft, there's no doubt that they provide a much improved experience for the consumer.

Brokers don't exist in most cities and it works just fine.

Maybe there is value, but not 10-15%.

Maybe Caretaker isn't the perfect solution either ... but brokers definitely are not.

It's definitely an activity that should be disrupted.

Please, humans are overrated. They lie, they cheat, they conceal and they are certainly biased. In my city an unmarried couple or people of certain religions are not allowed to rent some places

On the other hand, technology is full of bugs and idiotic assumptions, from which it can't recover - it's also strongly biased towards the one controlling it. And it can also lie, cheat and conceal things, and there's exactly shit you can do about it.

The older I get, the more I prefer dealing with flesh-and-blood people rather than self-service solutions. Life is too short for dealing with systems that go out of your way to railroad you into a bad deal.

> Less human involvement = better world /S

...why sarcasm?

The entire premise of technological and economic progress is outsourcing repetitive mind-numbing tasks (whether farming or showing apartments) to automation.

You're just describing regular old beneficial economic progress -- the reason why we're not all still farmers.

And if Caretaker becomes a massive success, then competitors will appear, which is the basic economic force that prevents prices from rising too far. All of which would be wonderful.

If they still end up charging 15% for doing the same thing automated there hasn't been any meaningful economic progress. There's just concentration of wealth.

If they can cut that 15% to 1% and this field ends up being competitive then sure.

But, they're probably going for a monopoly play here.

It doesn't matter if they're trying to go for a monopoly play here. Competitors would arise and there wouldn't be any inherent monopoly dynamics left.

So of course the percentage will be cut. That's how competition works.

Have you seen the fees airbnb charges?

It's a two-sided market, it's gonna be winner-takes-all.

You mean the way Lyft went out of business because Uber took it all, and then Uber raised their prices 5x?

No, the way it will happen when Uber, Lyft and their other rideshare competitors run out of investor money and become forced to actually turn a profit.

Still, Uber is not sticky. Drivers aren't forced to use it exclusively (fun things would happen if they tried to pull it off, something something employees). Brokerage websites most likely will demand you don't post your apartment on multiple sites. This will encourage concentration.

It doesn't matter if a brokerage website is exclusive. Healthy competition between, say, 3 main ones means people looking for apartments will check those 3.

Kind of like people looking for used textbooks will check eBay, Alibris, and Chegg.

Of course there will be concentration, that doesn't mean it's going to be a monopoly. It's just going to be the usual 2 main competing companies with a 3rd slightly-different company -- your Coke, Pepsi and RC, or your AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. It's the usual market pattern.

Lyft and Uber have already dialed down their competition with each other in many locations and raised prices. If theyre smart theyre probably already hammering out an (illegal) agreement of some kind and figuring out ways to disguise the price rise as a natural side effect of something innocuous.

Did you really think investors were willing to sustain a 12 billion dollar loss for a shot at a 1% margin?

> Lyft and Uber have already dialed down their competition with each other

Citation needed. They've raised prices in order to be sustainable, but you're going to need to show some kind of actual evidence of collusion. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We can't just assume conspiracy theories between publicly traded companies here.

And who's talking about 1% margins? You're making that up. Healthy competition usually results in something like 10% margins. You don't need illegal agreements to get that.

shrug they made losses of 15 billion dollars and all that would be required to stem future losses in what has become a stable duopoly is one conversation.

I tend to assume the path of least resistance.

The path of least resistance is not going to prison.

You realize that in publicly traded corporations decisions are made by whole teams of people? And that people talk? Word gets out, company gets fined more than they made, executives go to prison. The US actually prosecutes this stuff, the same way they vigorously prosecute insider trading.

A couple of neighboring grocery stores can realistically collude to raise prices. Multinational public corporations, not so much.

It may be illegal but it's hard to prove collusion.

It certainly doesnt require whole teams of people. It requires a few senior managers to be in on it.

The just world hypothesis is a powerful thing.

You don't need to lecture me about the just world hypothesis, I'm well aware of it thanks. The insult isn't appreciated.

You should realize that at a purely practical level collusion is far more difficult to achieve than you seem to think.

A few senior managers are going to do something super-risky without the knowledge of general counsel, the board, etc.? Something that can get them sent to prison? So their stock options go up a little bit? While 99% of the benefit goes to remaining investors? At the risk of being caught and the entire company being fined, to the detriment of all remaining investors as well?

Not to mention the senior managers need to justify to C-suite, board, etc. what their strategy is, and why raising prices won't result in the competition eating their lunch. And the C-suite and board aren't dumb.

On top of this, collusion can result in defectors as well -- company A raises prices, company B promised they would but doesn't (or lowers them again later) -- and then what?

It's not so easy. Collusion is unstable, risky in multiple ways, and difficult. I'm not saying that it never happens, but regarding large publicly traded companies, it's by far the exception, not the rule.

None of this has to do with what we wish the world was like. It's just basic incentives and coordination. But sure, have fun with your conspiracy theories.

> A couple of neighboring grocery stores can realistically collude to raise prices. Multinational public corporations, not so much.

Sure they can, someone on HN described the algorithm once:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22798808

Good. Freezing out useless middleman occupations is a net positive for humanity.

The difference is that cab drivers provide a real and valuable service, whereas real estate agents are a glorified key safe.

Brokers provide a service that people in most cities happily do themselves for free, and take an extortionate cut. Someone is coming in and doing it better. Why should I be sad?

I can confirm that taking an Uber from NYC to NJ is much cheaper than a yellow cab used to be.

Uber and Lyft are great as long as we don’t think about the drivers they’re exploiting.

Oh, Redfin eliminated brokers?