Sadly, "two weeks [of no dance parties] to slow the spread" could have helped here, but was deemed politically untenable, especially during pride month. So here we are. Blinded me with science indeed.
It's only untouchable if you're one of these modern special people who can't say anything that might offend someone else but the fact is, it only affects a very small subset of people with particular genetic and psychological traits.
The reason Uber initially blew taxi companies out of the water is because taxis greatly limited their service to what was profitable and we're incredibly difficult to work with should you be outside one of their comfort zones. You could always count on Taxis near an airport or for an intra-downtown route but good luck getting a cab to pick you up at your house to take you to another suburban destination. It's not that they'd ignore your call because they sucked at customer service, it's that your call is only worth it to them if there's literally nothing else going on. Even then they might not show up if your request isn't going to end with them back in a profitable starting point for another ride.
I worked for 3 years as a part time taxi driver in first world mega city while doing my post grad at University. Taxis are heavily regulated. If I had refused a fare, I could be taken to court. Especially if the passenger belonged to a certain category like disabled or children needing a ride home after school.
This was pre GPS days so I had to pass 4 different computerised exams about the city and major roads. I had a through police check and had to display my taxi driver license on the dash.
There was proper commercial driver & vehicle insurance that was automatically taken out the day's earning. There was camera in the car including infrared mode. There was a panic button to start broadcasting location, video and audio.
Uber's advantage was completely ignoring any regulations. No insurance. No driver check. No driver safety infrastructure.
And their best move was the marketing bullshit. Even now people like you spout the same talking points.
I put in my card and boom! Done! I see the number on the screen - I pay that number, not that number plus customary tips.(99% of the time completely unearned, BTW)
In civilized places, it was the other way around. Taxis exchange privileged position for certain requirements city demands them to meet as a part of city transportation infrastructure - requirements which include having proper insurance, servicing unprofitable routes, or adapting their vehicles for passengers with disabilities. One of the ways Uber saved money was by completely ignoring these market segments.
But of course, the major way Uber "blew taxi companies out of the water" is through their ability to offer below-market-rate prices by losing money on each ride, thanks to unending supply of VC money.
Uber definitely increased the availability and coverage of end to end car hire in my region. As far as I’ve seen, the evidence suggests that Uber is more equitable for geographic and demographic access.
Yeah but from Uber's perspective they aren't paying drivers as salaried employees but contractors only for a completed fare. So Uber isn't incurring any overhead expense by having cars in less desirable pick up points, or having a car travel 10-15 minutes for a pick up before they can start a fare.
Also keep in mind that the majority of Uber's revenue is from metropolitan areas, not rural areas. And in the metro areas there was a lot of convenience to be gained from their app and matching supply and demand side of the equation and a lot of those areas were underserved by the TLC and specifically car services because taxis didn't even operate there. So they actually took the pent up demand and created a better system.
Now they are still grossly unprofitable, but not for the reason you cited here.
>And in the metro areas there was a lot of convenience to be gained from their app and matching supply and demand side of the equation
Yes, people forget about the pre-app days when hailing a taxi involved finding a suitable street corner and sticking your hand in the air while often competing with others doing the same. And even in midtown Manhattan, perhaps the best-served area in the country, try hailing a cab during rush hour when it's raining. Taxi services have largely caught up and have apps now, but it was a nightmare for a long time.
Exactly, this hits on an incredibly important point that gets constantly ignored in “disruptive” business models: if a particular market segment is “underserved” then it often means that there are poor cost economics in play. Sure, Uber can reduce those costs through algorithmic central routing and planning, but that only goes so far and some markets are just never going to be profitable to serve (at a given quality of service).
The unfortunate part of modern American medicine is that the pharmacy isn't likely to know all the medications the patient is on either. I'm currently going through a minor situation but have discovered that health insurance has, in some cases, switched to a model of partnering with specialized pharmacies for certain treatments. You're forced to use a specialized pharmacy for one specific condition while your day to day corner chain is completely excluded.
You can even get that without having some prescription that your insurance has made a special deal with. I currently have 3 prescriptions at Walmart and 1 at Safeway, all of them generics that I'm not using insurance for. I'm paying the cash price for the Walmart ones, and using GoodRx for the Safeway one.
It used to be all 4 at Walmart, and then something utterly ridiculous happened. For the non-US readers who won't believe this idiocy, I swear it is true. We really do put up with this nonsense.
One of them was for irbesartan. I'm supposed to take it twice a day, 150 mg each time. The prescription was written for 30 x 300 mg tablets, which I split in two (irbesartan comes in a rod shaped tablet that you can easily split it two by hand).
This is $9 cash at Walmart.
But then there were some irbesartan recalls (although not affecting the manufacturer of any tablets I had). There was a shortage of 300 mg tablets, and Walmart was having trouble refilling my prescription.
So we had my doctor change it to from 30 x 300 mg tablets to 60 x 150 mg tablets. The cash price for 30 x 150 mg is $9 at Walmart, same as 30 x 300 mg. (I'd guess that for this drug, most of the cost is in filler and binder, so that is probably not unreasonable). So I'd expect 60 x 150 mg to be $18.
Walmart filled that, and when I went to pick it up...it was something like $300. WTF!? So they double checked, and found out that it had actually been written as 180 x 150 mg. They redid it as 60 x 150 mg, which dropped the price to about $100. So, still a big WTF.
According to GoodRx it should be $24 cash (still a WTF...why not $18?). Since this is one that GoodRx thinks has a good cash price at Walmart, GoodRx does not offer a coupon for it there. I showed the pharmacist the listing in the GoodRx app, and he agreed to honor that price, so I got my prescription for $24.
GoodRx did have a coupon for Safeway, for 60 x 150 mg for around $13, so when it was time to re-fill that, I move it there. (That changed to about $18 next month).
I ran out of re-fills about 3 months later and so needed a new prescription, and by then 300 mg was readily available again so asked for 90 x 300 mg, which was $21 with a GoodRx coupon at Safeway.
Enough said. Tuition today is a hair below $40,000 for an in-state student* compared to a hair below $5,000 in the mid 90's. They can afford every penny.
Might want to double check your sources. Tuition is $14,000 now compared to $5,000 when I was there. That’s roughly double when you account for inflation.
It’s not nothing, but it’s also not super relevant.
Also in that same period, the UC system has lost more than 1/2 its state funding, hence the increase.
The school doesn’t really have any more to work with now than it used to, but has a lot more students since they are required to accept the top 2% of all California students.
"The obvious problem is that I can’t see customers paying that much for delivery - ie. at those wages Door Dash can’t exist."
I am 100% ok with DoorDash and that entire market not existing. We somehow managed without it just 3-4 years ago and it's not like Americans need another ridiculously unhealthy eating option provided with even greater convenience.
Pizza, Chinese food etc. delivery has existed forever, and the model for drivers was always the same - get paid nothing and rely on customers tipping you. Now there are billion dollar brands and fancy apps, but on the whole nothing has changed.
Food delivery apps have made 80% of restaurants realize that their customers would pay $8-$10 more per order for delivery. Before that customers didn't have the option and most restaurants just figured it wasn't for them. It's a huge new market.
How can you compete on quality when every delivery has been sitting in a box for ~10 minutes prior to pickup and ~15 minutes awaiting delivery? Pizza delivery companies like Dominoes spend $$$$$$$ to develop ingredients and methods that ensure that 25 minutes cold pizza is still palatable. That local hibachi or taco joint can't do the same. A cold, premium taco is just as unpalatable as the janky one from the cheap place.
Isn't that Domino fighting the symptom rather than the cause? Do you need RnD to install heater ovens in the pizza delivery cars?
Concerning your point, isn't local delivery dishes still kind off diffirentiated becouse it's local and you test most restaurangs in your area sooner or later?
Edit: I never do home delivery so I don't know how important fresh dishes are.
There isn't infinite labor on a global scale but there sure is infinite labor willing to work for what first worlders consider a pittance. This basically highlights why I consider open borders immigration to be worse for everyone overall. The first world gets dragged down the societal ladder while the rest of the world is robbed of everyone with initiative plus the lost productivity they'd glean from uncompromised first world economies.
"However, if a worker rejects too many jobs too frequently, they may receive fewer job offers as a result."
They take those jobs because they lose all access to the chance of profitable jobs otherwise. The people working for door dash aren't exactly the sort of person with the ability to fully understand probabilities and statistics either. I'd say it's fair to assume their business model works by bullying the same psychological behaviors as videogame loot crates, lottery tickets, and casinos. That one huge order that pays $30 after tips quiets the anxiety of losing money on the previous ten orders even if the actual math places the driver in the red. Most people have a very poor sense for overhead costs like vehicle maintenance. The link between miles driven and the rate of repairs required just isn't there.
I've worked these gigs before, and so have friends of mine with advanced STEM degrees. Sometimes you are stuck between a rock and a hard place (usually you are, if you're low income) and your current dilemma is between not being able to afford your rent tomorrow or food tonight, and working some exploitative app gig like this. So cool the condescension. Poor folks -- even those with really low numeracy -- are generally extremely aware that these gigs are exploitative and not sustainable income sources in the long run and see the scam a mile away. In my experience it's folks who haven't been poor who don't have a good sense for how expensive it is to be poor, for how difficult it is to make long term decisions, and the intractability of problems you have to solve just to get by sometimes
None of all of what you wrote addresses how those folks between a rock and a hard place will be better off not having the option to work for a given service at all.
These businesses are already unprofitable. So you probably couldn't have another DoorDash that pays its workers more. I suppose you could argue that some restaurants might have their own delivery services, or something. But that'd be tiny in scale compared to what these services are doing.
A tiny delivery service based around a local group of restaurants could easily have a fairer distribution of income and time consumed. Since the delivery service operates from about five or ten shops there's no "drive 10 miles to the pickup". Since the service is basically local there's no "take money from the poor and give it to the richer" - even the profits that go to the capitalists is still going to local members of the community who are making some money, but not too much to know what to do with. "Unprofitable" is relative.
Consider: restaurants often consider delivery to be a 'loss leader'. It's not a terribly profitable industry, maybe not at all profitable. A more limited service (unable to average costs over a large number of restaurants and customers) is going to be even less so?
Right, but as I said, the scale of these local delivery services is much smaller. Even if we accept your premise that each local job would be better (which i'm not sure is true, but i'll grant you it), there would be far fewer of them. It's not obvious to me which is better: A lot of bad jobs, or a few good ones?
Not completely. I remember life before Uber and seamless. I'd just stay home and eat ramen (this is in Dallas and I didn't have a car). These businesses did genuinely create businesses and also changed lives for many by the service. That's not an excuse for such exploitative behavior of course.
I remember life before Uber and I'd never heard of Seamless, until your comment. These businesses genuinely just used VC funding and exploitative contracts to undercut perfectly viable existing services.
Before Uber, I'd take public transport, phone for a minicab or walk to their office to get one. (and I still do)
Before Deliveroo, I'd call the local takeaway and get them to deliver, or walk there and collect it myself. (and I still do).
You can argue that they have improved the lives of people who find it hard to use the phone, However, that was already solved for food delivery before these new delivery services came along and I would be surprised if there weren't minicab firms that accepted SMS or web bookings.
Looks like you haven't lived in a city like Dallas. Public transport is a joke (which I did resort to when I finally run out of food; will take me half a day to do groceries and I need to come back home and shower). Cabs will take thirty minutes to come to your home and will charge outrageous amounts (4x what Uber used to charge initially).
When I say I'd just sit at home I wasn't joking. I and many friends (mostly women) would just not do shit most of the time and just watch TV instead. Hell I'd go years without visiting my cousin in Plano (a suburb) because commuting there is a multi day ordeal (I need to start from their home at 5 pm if I needed to use public transport).
Did I and others just exploit Ubers unreasonably cheap prices? Yes. Did it improbe our lives measurably? Also yes. If you were lucky enough to live in New York or some city like that power to you but not every place was blessed.
That's true. I have only lived in walkable areas. This is because I have not owned a car until recently.
I understand that public transport and minicabs are poor in tiny villages where the only amenities are a pub and a church, but I assume that when something is a city, it is a large built-up area with all the normal amenities that I expect of a city (shops, offices, entertainment, bus routes, possibly a light railway etc.). Is Dallas really not like that? What is it? Just miles and miles of big houses?
Out of curiosity, what caused you to live in a car-dependent area without a car?
In Vietnam Grab drivers actually make a decent amount of money because a lot of their customers are middle class (relative to Vietnam). I don't think they're missing out on that much business by not having lower prices because you still see them everywhere (17 at a red light is the most I've ever seen) and people who can't afford Grab will use public transportation or their own motorbikes (student jobs may pay 20k-50k/hr, a bus ticket is 6k and a 10km GrabBike ride can be 70k, 4-5km is like 35k). A college graduate after some time may make 100k-200k/hr, and yet you'll still find a large class of people buying the latest iPhones (which would cost around 25 million).
I guess the US is a different environment where there's not enough customers who could afford realistic prices for Uber, and there's not enough alternatives for those who can't afford a personal vehicle.
That has a lot more to do with the tech and distribution model they unlocked than financial viability. In Europe Uber drivers are private (company) drivers, not contractors, and it still works. There is a ton of money in transport, Uber is not even cheap if you’re not in tech / top earners.
Just because a service exists doesn't mean the same service can exist and be financially viable for every employee. There are many businesses that are inherently unprofitable. It can be argued that such businesses should be subsidized because their existence is beneficial to society (e.g. Ubers in the neighborhoods that taxis wouldn't serve).
These people often have reasons why they are not already working a more classic job and are unlikely be hired or in some cases want to work under whatever new standards and time commitments required for full time employees of these apps.
I'm not saying that they would be -- correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think that has been a point of discussion.
A job/app gig can both exploit someone and also give them the ability to survive where they might have few options otherwise. See sweatshops and the agricultural industry for example
I could probably have fuel in my car for two weeks, but be hungry and without food today, Maybe I am looking forward to getting another jon in 2 days so this might help me now.
I would also add that people take the jobs because of initial sign-up bonuses (although those have greatly diminished over the years) and because the sales pitch is often compelling. It isn’t until the person signs up that they realize it’s harder to get jobs and that the average pay isn’t worth the hassle. At that point, people quit. It’s why turnover is so high for the food delivery apps (I’m excluding Seamless/Grubhub, who I believe offer a different model. Or at least it did — Seamless used to rely on a restaurants own delivery staff). Turnover is still high for car services, but there are stricter requirements to get approved there and in a busy area, the average pay is going to be better than for DoorDash or Postmates or whatever.
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
"However, if a worker rejects too many jobs too frequently, they may receive fewer job offers as a result."
They take those jobs because they lose all access to the chance of profitable jobs otherwise. The people working for door dash aren't exactly the sort of person with the ability to fully understand probabilities and statistics either. I'd say it's fair to assume their business model works by bullying the same psychological behaviors as videogame loot crates, lottery tickets, and casinos. That one huge order that pays $30 after tips quiets the anxiety of losing money on the previous ten orders even if the actual math places the driver in the red.
>We will see an economic depression, also caused by energy problems. The current quantitative easing is actually the first sign of the problems with energy:
One of the only realistic takes in this thread. The current, generationally low price of oil is built entirely upon the output of North American fracking. Fracking is the most capital intensive business on earth at the moment and most players are actually losing money. They are bouyed by the current, generationally low interest rates which are built upon politicized central banking policy. When interest rates rise, fracking grinds to a halt. When fracking stops, the price of oil shoots to 2008 or greater levels and the global economy grinds to a halt. The century scale economic depression that will result entirely invalidates each and every prediction made by the author of the article we're discussing.
america has an interest in making fracking viable, since it's a technology that not many nations can employ (without the involvement of american firms anyway).
Fracking also allows america to place economic pressure to some countries like Russian (by lowering the price of their primary export).
Given the above, it will be unlikely for interest rates to grow in the next decade - since doing so has no advantages (except inflation, which is kept under control by the dollar's reserve status), and has many dis-advantages (such as causing a shock to businesses borrowing, which can precipitate a depression).
