Slashdot Mirror
Leaked Documents Suggests Uber Is 'Losing Millions'
New submitter DaneTerry88 points out an article about the financial state of Uber, poster child for the sharing economy. Documents leaked to Gawker seem to indicate the company is still far from profitable, despite its popularity. "They show operating losses of more than $100m (£65m) in the second quarter of 2014, albeit coupled with steady growth in revenue." Uber did not deny the leak, but pointed out they are still building the business, which requires a lot of investment. The company has been valued as high as $50 billion, and only a few days ago received a $100 million investment from Microsoft.
There are two ways that I can see growth helping Uber:
1) They are expanding their locations; and using the profits of their existing locations to develop the new ones. At some point, they will stop growing, and the profits should increase.
2) If they are losing money in cities where they are well established, then by growing they will destroy the existing taxi industry; then they can raise rates dramatically and increase profits
The thing is, it's hard to see where Uber's costs are. They develop software, but that's a pretty small investment considering the hundreds of thousands of rides a day people take.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
They keep breaking laws and having to pay out the ass in fines. Their model won't be profitable until they buy off enough lawmakers to get the regulations changed.
The big difference is that Amazon has pretty obvious infrastructure investments, what does Uber have? Aerons, hookers & blow?
Uber is already dead. As soon as they automate driving do people really think that governments are going to allow private taxi companies to be run at a profit as they start to automate mining, agriculture and energy production? Of course not.
The guys made an app used by drivers (who get a % of X) and riders (who pay X). Where does the money go? I'd be equally surprised if Paypal is said to 'lose millions'!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The big difference is that Amazon has pretty obvious infrastructure investments, what does Uber have?
They have access to practically free capital. With a market cap of $40B, they would be insane to slow down and cash in. Profits are irrelevant, at least for now. They need to get a lot bigger, and fast, to satisfy their investors, and keep the gravy coming.
Pardon my ire, but Uber's management has clearly demonstrated that they are interested in the exact opposite of sharing. They can go fuck themselves and stop pretending that they're interested in helping anyone other than themselves.
Uber is stealing jobs from real employees that have benefits. It is good that their Republican-style "everyone is a contractor with no rights and no benefits" model is failing. No responsible society should ever allow this sort of thing to happen.
This sort of mad rush for the finish line tends to upset the men in grey suits. But when you are in a gold rush you don't spend time making detailed maps, building beautiful camps for the miners, setting up a day care, and otherwise making everything perfect. You yell "Charge!" and run at the enemy with your sword waving above your head.
Even the business plan should simply read we don't really know and even then the plan will change. Love Uber or hate uber we must all admit that it is shaking things up. I recently took a normal taxi in my city from the airport for the "standard" $55 plus a tip. I took uber back to the airport for $32 and no tip. But also at the airport I asked the first driver what the charge was and he said, "Standard charge $75 same as everyone else." except that he was a "Limo" driver. So the first taxi driver in my new city lied to me and tried pulling a fast one. With Uber this sort of crap is massively curtailed.
So on this issue get back to me when uber has finished growing; if at that point they still don't have profits then it might not actually be an uber good business model.
I will no longer use Uber because of their anti Second Amendment Civil rights policy prohibiting both drivers and passengers that are licensed to carry from doing so.
You don't want "my kind" in your cars, no problem. I'll take a cab.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
"Access to free capital" is severely limited by expectations of an IPO or profits. How is this particular taxi company going to survive competition from other taxi companies, given that municipal governments all over the world are beginning to investigate Uber for unpaid dues? Uber can't pretend forever they are immune from paying taxes, fees, insurance and social security.
... the reliable news source.
Maybe they should stop giving new users 3 free rides...
They've already shown they can grow profits regularly
[citation needed] with real, independently audited financial reports. What we see in TFA is exactly the opposite.
where they are allowed to operate
And where's that? They've been sued, fined and banned in all large markets. I know some detail about Uber pricing in two locations, and in both, the difference between the Uber taxi and all other taxis in both markets is just a little less than the difference between what taxi companies and individual licensed taxi drivers pay in license fees, insurance and taxes. That's it. Once they are required to play on a level field, they're gone.
All the other mumbo-jumbo in your comment is beyond ridiculous. What infrastructure, they have two apps, a few servers and a management interface, that stopped being an infrastructure problem about 2001.
That's why every few years they have a new ridiculously higher valuation, accompanied by another round of funding.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
From Uber being sued to infinity. Cha-ching. Major cash cow for lawyers everywhere.
Who rated this tripe Insightful?
Uber has a ton of infrastructure investment - it's mostly been clearing the way for the company to exist, legally speaking. They've already shown they can grow profits regularly where they are allowed to operate, so that is a way bigger deal than people are allowing for.
Not quite sure how they can be "growing profits" if the company is not yet operating in the black to start with.
User's infrastructure was MUCH HARDER to build out than Amazon's, which is just code and servers... Uber had to deal with real people - and not just people, but government officials.
"Amazon is just code and servers" -- I'll remember that next time the I hear about their sprawling warehouses around the world. And I guess they were able to begin operations in all those places without talking to a single government official, right? Not to mention the ~150,000 people they employ -- directly with W-2's, not as "contractors" as Uber likes to use to skirt many employment regulations. And that drone thing? Nah, FAA just preemptively mailed them their blessing for testing -- no interaction on Amazon's part needed there.
So apparently if you don't post profits immediately, you are a failed company? Isn't it standard to post losses for 2-3 years before you become profitable. Well, 3 years in California. After 3 you cant write off the losses from your company anymore.
They've already shown they can grow profits regularly where they are allowed to operate, so that is a way bigger deal than people are allowing for.
Not quite sure how they can be "growing profits" if the company is not yet operating in the black to start with.
Did you intentionally ignore the part in bold? They can have profitable regions but still make a global loss.
With a market cap of $40B... Profits are irrelevant....
I know, right?!?!
Not only are profits irrelevant, the fact that there is not one share of Uber stock available for trade on any exchange is also irrelevant!
That's the thing about the "market cap" metric...stocks have to actually be traded (high volumes preferred) before the number means anything.
I assume it's just fighting off the lawsuits. Their business model is fundamentally sound. Horribly, horribly vile, but sound. They find folks who recently lost a job and still have a decent car, declare them 'contractors' while forcing them to act as employees in all respects (can't work for anyone else, work when we say or we fire you, use our phone, etc, etc), don't pay benefits or unemployment. They get the benefits of employees without the responsibilities, which for a society like America where we're based our entire quality of life on your job ends fabulously for the employer.
Uber's just like Amazon. They'll keep getting money because if they can clear their hurdles (for Uber it's legal, or Amazon it's just killing brick n mortar) they'll be insanely profitable. If you're a billionaire investor then you can afford to wait it out.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The big difference is that Amazon has pretty obvious infrastructure investments, what does Uber have? Aerons, hookers & blow?
Announcing the new Uber delivery service... The Trifecta Package. Will the limited supply of hookers & blow create surge pricing on Friday nights?
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
I heard they get their hookers and blow from 'friends' of cabbies. Cabbies who respect their privacy... :)
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Amen to that!
Trump 2016
Uber has a ton of infrastructure> investment...
lol wut? Obviously you subscribe to a non-standard definition of "infrastructure".
The rest of us know that Uber's infrastructure investments are no more than a teensy tinsy smithereen of their total balance sheet. Of course, we'll have to wait for them to go public to know for sure.
Nobody is supposed to know that until after the IPO, when most of the shares have been sold to the general public.
If illegal immigration is really what you're worried about then you can 100% fix it by having open borders.
If you don't support open borders, then illegal immigration must not be what you are worried about. It must be immigration.
That's fine and dandy, but don't hide your xenophobia behind the law.
There's only one Uber.
Using profitability in one market to distract the ship taking on water is an excuse for C-levels trying to calm investors. And are those profits growing in markets where everything is locked up and stable legally/politically? Or are these areas where Uber is just sneaking under the radar still?
In case anyone can't see that employment chart, here is a screenshot of it.
Your comment makes no sense. Uber will only really take off when self-driving cars become mandatory.
SDCs would destroy Uber's business model.
Their entire business model is predicated on "not a taxi company, a rideshare Schelling Point company".
If they owned their own SDCs, they would immediately *actually* be a taxi company; it's the fact that they do *NOT* own a fleet of cars that makes their contracted drivers contractors, rather than employees.
It also means that the could afford to drop $1.6M to boot every taxi cab in Paris, making the hated "taxi cab traffic slowdowns" go away for a week, and gaining MUCH love among everyone but the taxis, who already hate their guts anyway.
It means they could spend $12.2M to set up every Uber driver with a Delaware Ride Contracting Corp., and deal with the contracting corps instead of dealing with the drivers, to ensure that they are *NOT* in a legal grey area with regard to employee status. Yes, they are employees... of one of a million Delaware S corps which THEN contract driving services to Uber... which ONLY employs contractors.
It means that they could spend $8.6M, and set up a wholly owned subsidiary that sells franchises to people who want to be drivers for "$1 and other valuable considerations", and then charges per unit plus a percentage for use of their scheduling network. And THEN they still ONLY employ contractors.
There's a lot of ways out of the regulatory mire of being considered a taxi service -- but owning a fleet is NOT one of them.
You're full of shit. Not a single country on the fucking planet has "open borders". ALL countries with functioning governments have an interest in controlling who enters. The U.S. has a legitimate interest in keeping out criminals, low/no skill laborers, people with zero education; that is, people who will become a public charge the moment they cross over the fucking border line.
As a U.S. citizen who wishes to enjoy a high quality of life, I don't give a fuck about shit hole countries like Mexico. They need to solve their own problems; Not my fault, I don't give a fuck. Just keep them all THE FUCK OUT.
They are a privately held company, if you post a profit, you're doing it wrong.
If you like those illegal immigrants so much, then you pay for them.
Pay for their food stamps, their government subsized housing, their medical expenses, their non-English services, the costs for their incarceration, the the cost of the affirmative action that robs American citizens, the taxes they don't pay, and you can live next to them. In return, you're welcome to the low cost labor they provide for washing dishes, doing landscaping work, and whatever else.
I, on the other hand, will gladly pay more for products and services performed by legal residents of the U.S. I will pay more at restaurants that don't use illegal aliens, I will tend to my own lawn or hire an American to do it, and I will pay more for food grown and harvested by Americans.
I will gladly pay more for all of that to get away from the crime, the lowered educational bars that cater to the illegal aliens, and the higher taxes I have to pay to support them. I am not anti-immigrant but the U.S. has to have a sane immigration policy. For the kind of country the U.S. is, it must only allow skilled immigrants without criminal records.
The alternative would be to eliminate social welfare services so that everyone in the country must provide for himself. Without that, this country will be overrun with freeloaders. Listen to Spanish radio and listen to what the illegal aliens say sometime and maybe you'll actually feel some outrage.
What the fuck did I just read.
Look up.
Oh, SuperKendall.
Can't leave the house without a gun.
Oh yes they are immune, because it's all done over the internet.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
>Documents leaked to Gawker
Into the trash it goes
You're full of shit. Not a single country on the fucking planet has "open borders".
HAHAhahahaHAHAhahaha... *catches breath, wipes tear from eye*
Thanks, I really needed that.
BTW, JSYK, I can get on a train right now here in Stockholm, travel through about a *dozen* countries, and *never* show a passport. Cheers.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
And you know why? Because they sell sex toys.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Any idiot can run a company in the red, doubly so when it's already established. The CEO likely has no idea how to even read the books or why a bottom line is actually important because it often makes no difference in how they are paid.
I've got a theory that the people behind Uber are the lawyers. Pickup a fight with every government and Uber has to bring their legal team in a very high billing rates to resolve the issue. Uber will never make money but the lawyers will be billing for ever.
There's no real evidence that that claim is even true without public and audited accounting.
Uber has a ton of infrastructure investment
In what way? Uber doesn't buy their drivers' cars, they don't buy their drviers' commercial insurance or practically anything else. What is all this infrastructure you mention?
I think the biggest difference is that Amazon didn't have to fight a retail mafia/guild on their way to the top.
Can I fly over from asia with no passport check?
Nope.
You don't have open borders.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
All they need now is a theme park and blackjack.
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
I disagree. Amazon's stock price is much too high right now, being driven so by extreme speculation. It's current selling for more than 21 times book value. It's a very poor investment over the long term - the next time the market goes bear the price will drop like a brick unless by some miracle they have increased their assets by about 20 times and profitability by about 1000 times (read: Good Luck With That). Investing in it in the short term is a game of musical chairs - somebody is going to be stuck owning it when the price tanks. Cashing out right before that point requires recognizing that the price is about to tank (before everyone else, who are all trying to do the same thing). Even if you trade as fast as a computer you're faced with a chicken-and-egg problem.
Compare that to oil companies which can be bought at bargain prices right now - if you can pick which ones are financially strong enough to ride out the current drop in oil prices (which will go away when ISIS does). For example with this one you're buying nearly $3 worth of assets and $0.30 in annual earnings for every $1 in stock price. (Before anyone interprets that as investment advice, I'm not convinced this example is strong enough to ride out the price drop.)
Recommended reading (ironically an Amazon link)
I think the biggest difference is that Amazon didn't have to fight a retail mafia/guild on their way to the top.
Yes they did. And still are. The government is still trying to establish some sort of nationwide sales tax, and individual states have made Amazon collect sales tax if they have a presence in the state. But that is all just obeying existing laws. Uber is facing the same thing, having to obey existing laws. It is not the taxi companies trying to keep Uber down. It is the municipalities insisting that Uber's taxi service complies with the same laws and regulations as every other taxi service.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
They build an app to hook up drivers with riders, and then they take a cut of the fare.
The drivers shoulder the large CapEx costs of buying a car and the OpEx costs of maintaining it.
So what is Uber spending their money on? Lawyers and lobbyists?
FWIW, There are plenty of similar companies to Uber in China.
they stop letting you drive. This is well documented. That's because like any business they need reliable employees. I will grant they let you use your own phone now. My other points still stand. You don't make enough off Uber to keep a car running after 200,000 miles. After that you'll need a new car, and the $15/hr or so their best 'black' drivers can make won't get you a car nice enough to do the work. When you're driving for Uber you're on borrowed time.
Uber isn't the sharing economy, it's the desperation economy.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If illegal immigration is really what you're worried about then you can 100% fix it by having open borders.
You could also use your argument for murder. If we made murder legal, then we wouldn't have a murder problem anymore.
If you don't support open borders, then illegal immigration must not be what you are worried about. It must be immigration.
That's fine and dandy, but don't hide your xenophobia behind the law.
Don't put words in people's mouth. If GP says he doesn't like illegal immigration, then he doesn't like illegal immigration. He may not care at all about legal immigration. I know I don't. Legal immigrants contribute to the society. Illegal immigrants are a drain from society. I am married to a legal immigrant, but I am against illegal immigration.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Other than hosting, a few computers, and like 12 people to run the computers?
I'm against all murder. Yes, I'm well and truly against "legal" murder performed on a daily basis by plenty of countries, including our precious USofA.
Ubers real problem is once regulations are in place and it's clear what Uber must dobto be legal than anyone can get in and compete. The barriers to entry sre low and if cab companies can't keep Uber out they'll coopt thier business model.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
>There's only one Uber.
But I used Lyft last night.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Really? You're about 12 years too late. They were profitable back in 2003, and could be profitable every single year if they so choose. Amazon's leadership chooses to spend most, if not all, their profit on infrastructure and new development, but cutting back on that a bit would put them solidly in the black every year.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Great! No need for me to bring my passport, then, when I fly into the EU!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
We spent a lot of money and time to LEGALLY bring my wife (Chinese national) into the US. We're getting ready to get a permanent green card for her, lots more paperwork and money. I have ZERO problem with LEGAL immigration. Illegal immigration? Sorry - that needs to be stopped immediately.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
And where's that? They've been sued, fined and banned in all large markets.
And then continued to operate, and eventually win back approval to operate, in many. Just as I said...
the difference between the Uber taxi and all other taxis in both markets is just a little less
Never really used taxis have you? The price difference may be little, but the quality is huge. That's in terms of drivers, in terms of cars, in terms of where the damn things are, in terms of ACTUALLY SHOWING THE FUCK UP, etc. etc.
I can see from the replies that you are others at Slashdot are as mystified at the success of Uber as you are most other successes in the market...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Who rated this tripe Insightful?
People who understand Uber, Taxi, and the markets. Who rated you up? Why it's the same band of Uber haters that roam the internet everywhere trying to trash them online, never understanding why people like and use Uber and how Uber continues to expand.
I don't even care about the moderation, I'm just sorry for you guys that are so fixated on some small quibble with Uber now you cannot see the long game. Such poor predictive skills will eventually hurt you in other ways.
Not quite sure how they can be "growing profits" if the company is not yet operating in the black to start with.
Of course anyone with half a brain knew I meant "growing revenue", but you Uber haters just latch on to any small flaw and shake!
"Amazon is just code and servers" -- I'll remember that next time the I hear about their sprawling warehouses around the world.
Yes it's a lot of infrastructure, but others can and have replicated it (Apple, Google, Microsoft, and a number of other large corporate entities). It's pretty straightforward at this point to build, it's just a matter of - code and servers. Granted the code part was a little tricky but once you have it figured out you have something you can use across the entire planet; the code scales or AWS would not work.
Uber has to fight for the right to operate differently in EVERY CITY ON THE PLANET. Pretty sad that someone on Slashdot cannot figure out the fundamental problem of scale Uber faces that Amazon does not.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And how long did it take Amazon to become profitable?
"...over a protracted period of good times, capitalist economies tend to move from a financial structure dominated by hedge finance units to a structure in which there is large weight to units engaged in speculative and Ponzi finance. Furthermore, if an economy with a sizeable body of speculative financial units is in an inflationary state, and the authorities attempt to exorcise inflation by monetary constraint, then speculative units will become Ponzi units and the net worth of previously Ponzi units will quickly evaporate. Consequently, units with cash flow shortfalls will be forced to try to make position by selling out position. This is likely to lead to a collapse of asset values.â
-- Hyman Minsky, "The Financial Instability Hypothesis"
I, on the other hand, will gladly pay more for products and services performed by legal residents of the U.S. I will pay more at restaurants that don't use illegal aliens, I will tend to my own lawn or hire an American to do it, and I will pay more for food grown and harvested by Americans.
citation needed.
Cheap storage VM.
Saying that Amazon's infrastructure was just code and servers is so stunningly ignorant that it completely disqualifies you from having any credibility whatsoever.
My point to the AC was that Uber is a single company for all its markets -- It's not possible for an investor to only put their capital in one areas of Uber where they are making profits -- so it doesn't matter how the health of a single area is. They're investing in the whole enchilada so it's the profitability of the whole company that counts..
Uh...no. You're once again demonstrating ignorance.
I was referring investing, and the fact Uber is a single company, not a collection of smaller market-specific Ubers.
Yeah, because when you ignore the law and charge less than you're spending to provide a service, it's kind of easy to undercut your competition. That's not exactly a mystery.
Not so easy to stay in business like that though. Oh, I'm sure if they survive long enough for an IPO that people like you will jump all over it and keep them afloat a while longer while people who know how to check their egos and run a business get in and destroy them. In fact, I suggest you invest all your money in it since you believe in them so much. That will solve two problems...
Isn't their whole business model - we'll build a nice app (done) and take a substantial cut from the driver's revenue? How can you be *losing* money with that?
Anti-uber trolls, you are some of the most pathetic cowards I've ever seen.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"You could also use your argument for murder. If we made murder legal, then we wouldn't have a murder problem anymore."
Yes, exactly. And if you are only against illegal murder* then that would make sense. Only if you are against all murder would you want it to be illegal.
* Note that the definition of murder stipulates that it is illegal, so bend the definition to make this sensible.
"If GP says he doesn't like illegal immigration, then he doesn't like illegal immigration. He may not care at all about legal immigration."
If you (and he) don't mind legal immigration, then I suppose you won't mind if we just have open borders. Let me know if suddenly you have a problem with legal immigration and we can talk about it.
Thank you for responding. Why don't we reduce the burden on your wife and completely end illegal immigration -- both things that you state you don't like -- by opening borders?
Open borders means zero illegal immigration which completely satisfies your rhetoric. Only if you are lying, or haven't really considered what you are saying, would you have a problem with open borders.
and eventually win back approval to operate, in many
[citation needed]. They are still banned, operate illegally or have curtailed services everywhere that matters.
The price difference may be little, but the quality is huge.
LOL, WUT? 'Quality difference'? Maybe you have never used taxis, because I use them all the time in several countries in Europe in Asia, and I see no lack of quality.
ACTUALLY SHOWING THE FUCK UP
You mean, you call a taxi and it doesn't show up? Which bunghole of a country do you live in? In the past year alone I've probably made at least 4-500 rides, as I don't own a car. I only had to wait more than two or three minutes once, because I called a cab from a nearby town to a fucking mountain hut.
as mystified at the success of Uber
Nobody is mystified. Uber is 30-35% cheaper than a taxi service in Europe, because they don't pay VAT, taxi insurance, social security and benefits. Of course, underpaid hipsters like them. Uber and its users are just ordinary free riders and should be treated as such.
The people behind everything are the lawyers. Hell, they were behind the Constitution, the sneaky bastards.
And the point that is being made to you is that isn't as relevant.
If you launch in a new city, you aren't going to be profitable immediately. Even more so when you are breaking into new countries. That more established regions are profitable, demonstrates that the business can become profitable in new territories, given time.
Yes, investors are looking for returns. But they aren't necessarily looking for immediate returns, and dividends are only part of the story. Investments are (generally) for the long haul, and whilst the market cap is growing, then investments can still be cashed out for a profit, even without any income.
Whenever someone posts a logical, impassioned, and reasoned comment in favor of gun ownership, some coward who thinks it's possible to make problems go away by ignoring them moderates them down. And that's why Slashdotters think that all gun owners are idiots. Congratulations, Slashdot, on maintenance of your groupthink!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I am not the other poster, but i live in the bunghole country of the USA. Taxis in my experience suck. I have been left waiting for 40 minutes or just not picked up. I've had drivers who had no idea where major landmarks are. The only competent driver I've had was in NYC and he was a scary driver.
Totally agree. Taxis everywhere are highly regulated... and often for excellent reasons. A company that wasn't to ignore that (and related vested interests) will have HUGE problems. When I looked at Under when I first heard of them it was obvious to me if they had any success at all it would be fleeting due to transport regulators everywhere streamlining Uber out.
Only boring people are ever bored.
What do we gain by completely open borders? Should we allow anyone with a criminal background to come into the US? Personally, I think we should go back to the model of allowing massive legal immigration of the best and brightest.
Too many illegal immigrants take jobs for below-legal wages, fail to obey other laws (illegal immigrants are 10 times more likely to commit a crime as compared to legal immigrants), and tend to depress wages - especially painful for those on the lower end of the economic scale.
If illegal immigration is such a wonderful thing, can you share a country that has totally open borders and welcomes all, with not immigration check or control?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Uber has substantial marketing expenses. For example, there are all those free rides that they give to first time users. The drivers are still getting their normal pay for those rides; it's coming out of Uber's marketing budget. Here in Boston they have also been running radio ads to recruit drivers.
Then there is all the money they are spending on lawyers.
Having difficulty getting a taxi is a frequent problem in many US cities. The root cause of the problem is the artificial scarcity of taxis caused by the medallion system. The number of licenses available does not meet the demand. The problem is that once that system is in place and the market value of medallions has become substantial, the medallion holders have a huge vested interest in the system and it is therefore difficult to change. (The market price of medallions in New York City got close to a MILLION dollars before Uber came along and started to reduce their value. Their value has fallen by over 50% and continues to fall.)
I believe there is some need for government oversight of taxis and competing services like Uber, but that the medallion system is fundamentally broken. It should be replaced by a system that issues an unlimited supply of licenses for a modest annual fee - enough to cover inspection of vehicles, background checks of drivers, tests of taxi meters in vehicles that continue to use them, assuring that all vehicles are covered by adequate insurance, and resources to investigate and act if there are problems with issues like disabled accessibility or racial discrimination. Such licenses should be issued regionally rather than by individual cities and towns. Drivers of existing taxis as well as drivers for new companies like Uber and Lyft should be required to get them.
Uber has fundamentally improved the experience of getting a ride in a few ways. Most importantly, they have removed the handling of money from the in-car environment, removing a substantial risk for both drivers and passengers. Also, knowing the cost of your ride before you enter the vehicle is a plus. Uber pricing is variable because of surge pricing, but you are given a current price when you book and that's what you pay. The cost of a regular taxi ride is unpredictable, because you don't know how long the ride will take (rates are usually based on both time and mileage) or which route the driver will choose to take.
Most likely, the profitable markets are ones where they have been operating for a while; they have an established base of passengers and drivers and aren't spending a lot of money to acquire them. The unprofitable markets are ones where they are spending a lot of marketing money to get started or spending a lot on legal defense. There will probably also turn out to be some markets where there just isn't enough demand or a large enough pool of drivers interested in working for Uber to make the service work, and the company will end up abandoning those markets.
Isn't this how all those Dot Com companies went bust in the 90's?
Bad example. Legal murder would still be called murder, and people would still have a problem with it. Open borders would stop anything called "illegal immigration" from happening, and racists would have to come up with other reasons why people moving freely around the planet is somehow a problem, especially in such a lightly populated area as north america.
It's funny how americans get so pissed about people coming on to the land that they only just stole for themselves.
Approximately anybody not on /. would know that being in favor of legal immigration would refer to immigration legal under existing laws, not just immigration that happens to be legal under any possible set of laws..
We could end the murder problem by making homicide legal, and the only reasonable interpretation of "making murder illegal" is making acts currently covered under murder laws legal.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Making all illegal immigrants legal would have some good effects. As it is, we've got a fairly large underclass that is below the law. They can't benefit from legal protections without being kicked out of the country. If they complain to the police about something, they're risking being deported, so they can't use the legal system, and I'd guess this has a lot to do with committing crimes. If they demand legal levels of pay and benefits, they risk being deported. They'll drive without driver education because they don't dare apply for a driver's license.
The current system porous-border system has some really bad features.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I disagree. Practically nobody knows exactly what American immigration laws are, certainly not the vast majority of people carping about 'illegal immigration'. They say "I just want people to follow the law" and I claim that is a meaningless phrase because those people have no idea what the law even is. Given that, it is reasonable to say that we can address the illegality through legalization.
On the other hand, most people have an approximately accurate understanding of what kind of homicide counts and murder, and what doesn't. Thus to say "I am against illegal homicide (murder)" is basically meaningful.
"What do we gain by completely open borders? "
Hi. What we would gain is 100% satisfaction of the complaint about "illegal immigration". I'm not actually personally in favor of open borders, I prefer a suite of reform measures but not exactly open borders. But I object strongly to the "illegal" rhetoric, which I think is essentially xenophobic, so I use the open-border concept as a way to neuter that rhetoric and force people to actually say what they actually mean.
And what do people actually mean? It's really diverse! A lot of those folks fall back to xenophobia, so that's not a surprise. Still others are just dumbfounded and speechless, which I find amusing. And others have more mature and subtle suggestions -- such as you! You said "Personally, I think we should go back to the model of allowing massive legal immigration of the best and brightest" and that is a reasonable, thoughtful suggestion!