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Re:End of the line for Uber? by dragontamer on Tuesday August 10, 2021 @05:43PM (#28135029)
> I'm asking the first question. I agree with you that even if the answer to the first question is, "yes, Uber can be profitable", the answer to the second question (can it generate a positive return for its investors) is in doubt. It's possible for a company to be a losing investment and yet still end up as a profitable business operationally.

But then if we're admitting that Uber's unlikely to be profitable over its lifetime, why would anyone buy their stock?

That's really what people care about in these discussions. Its not "Will Uber be profitable this quarter?", its... "should I buy Uber stock?".

The last guy lost money on Uber stock and is trying to offload these shares / certificates onto someone else now. Will buying those shares at this current price (aka: very expensive: $81 Billion market cap) be worthwhile?

You can buy many other companies at much cheaper prices than that.

Re:End of the line for Uber? by neonate on Tuesday August 10, 2021 @05:50PM (#28135119)
> That's really what people care about in these discussions. Its not "Will Uber be profitable this quarter?", its... "should I buy Uber stock?".

It's definitely not what I care about. I'm just a user, not an investor. What I care about is whether I'll still be able to use the service in the long run, albeit at higher prices.

Also, if that's what people making these arguments really care about, then I think it's misleading for them to be arguing that Uber can never be profitable and is destined to go out of business. That is not the same thing as being a poor stock market buy at current valuations, whether the latest round of investors will lose money, and so on.

Re:End of the line for Uber? by dragontamer on Tuesday August 10, 2021 @05:54PM (#28135165)
Maybe you're not the target audience of the blogpost then?

The blogpost is pretty clear to be coming in from an angle of "stockholders" perspective.

> Uber didn't need self-driving cars – it needed us to think it would have self-driving cars. That way the company's Saudi owners could raise investment capital from subsequent "investors" (AKA "suckers") all the way up to the IPO, cash out, and walk away, whistling innocently.

> That's the bezzle at work – a dazzle op that keeps new money flowing in, convincing people that a pile of shit this big must have a pony beneath it. But as the years went by, the stories that Uber told us about its path to profitability got more and more fanciful.

The big gist of this entire blog post is "Hey Stockholders, I think you've been swindled by Uber's CEO". That's the thesis in a nutshell.

If you don't care about the stockholder perspective, that's fine and dandy. I'm not saying you should care. (I'm not a shareholder, so I certainly don't care very much). But... as someone who does participate in the stock market, I still find these stories fascinating. I probably will be buying stocks in the near future, so I do want to know about all of this drama going on in different companies.

Re:End of the line for Uber? by ghaff on Tuesday August 10, 2021 @06:04PM (#28135277)
There was a whole lot of some combination of self-delusion and grift going on around self-driving and not just with respect to Uber. Even if you made some very optimistic assumptions around the tech, I'm not sure it ever moved the cost needle as much as people assuming it made taxi rides almost too cheap to meter thought it would.