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Uber Reveals One of Its Big Vulnerabilities (slate.com)
One-quarter of its business happens in just five cities; 15 percent of bookings happen on airport trips. From a report: About 24 percent of Uber's bookings -- all the money that customers pay through the app and in cash, including driver earnings -- occur in just five cities: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, and Sao Paulo. For a company that operates in more than 700 cities, including quite a few giants -- Mexico City, Tokyo, Paris, Lagos, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Mumbai, to name a few -- that concentration gives Uber a surprising vulnerability at the local level. And they know it.
This vulnerability casts a new light on, for example, Uber's 2015 humiliation of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, when the company fought off the City Council's proposed vehicle cap. That was a warning to other politicians, and a show of power, but it was also a vital business move. The company's filing also mentions, as a cautionary tale, what happened afterward: Just three years later, the City Council approved minimum rates for drivers and a cap on the number of new ride-hail vehicles. The company also mentions its regulatory challenges in London and San Francisco.
This vulnerability casts a new light on, for example, Uber's 2015 humiliation of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, when the company fought off the City Council's proposed vehicle cap. That was a warning to other politicians, and a show of power, but it was also a vital business move. The company's filing also mentions, as a cautionary tale, what happened afterward: Just three years later, the City Council approved minimum rates for drivers and a cap on the number of new ride-hail vehicles. The company also mentions its regulatory challenges in London and San Francisco.
IMHO, Uber & Lyft are nothing but illegal taxi services & Airbnb is illegal hotel!!!
IMHO, these companies are employing/enabling a huge amount of criminals & criminal activities (since their beginnings)!!!
Like Uber drivers kidnapping/raping/killing women & Airbnb "hosts" secretly video recording people!!!
& not to mention, lots of shady business methods/activities used by the companies themselves!!!
IMHO, if allowed to continue, these businesses would destroy all legal taxi & hotel businesses, sooner or later, & create a world where most taxi & hotel "businesses" run by criminals or criminally inclined people!!!
So, IMHO, it would be best for common good of general public to shutdown these companies for good!!!
There's nothing illegal about compensating someone else for sharing a ride
What sharing? The people driving aren't going to the same place the people contacting them. The driver is going out of their way to explicitly pick up someone. Further, that driver wasn't going anywhere in the first place. They were waiting somewhere for someone to contact them. You know what that's called? A taxi.
or renting out a spare room in your house
Yes, there is. It is guaranteed the homeowner's insurance does not cover running a business out of their home, especially one involving the housing of other people. Also, people doing the "renting" aren't following the same rules that real landlords have to do when renting.
Don't tell anyone about garage sales those might be illegal to.
Selling your odds and ends one day a year is in no way comparable to running a business out of your car or home.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower