Shops and factories can be temporarily shut down if they don't comply with regulations. Businesses that require licenses like law practices may similarly have to stop operations. That is half of going to jail.
Unfortunately, the growth potential that software industry generally provides has generally prevented governments for creating and enforcing similar laws for software products and such.
In the current system, political parties who do things that stop the economy growing are usually voted out, more than political parties that refuse to take action against nebulous criminal activity. That's why, for example, my city refuses to do anything to stop the factories in the city from dumping waste into the river.
Unless you throw the investors and senior executives in jail how do you intend to do anything more than performative dance with these measures.
I personally think countries should start sanctioning and international warrants for all large investors and senior executives in a company if something like this happens.
But it won't happen unless US changes their stance on companies being liability shiled.
Sure it should require very exceptional cases but I know companies whose negligence has cost lives of hundreds of people, the reason they and all their investors weren't jailed is the real scam of the democraciez we have gifted ourselves.
Bolt lost their license in Thailand due to poor safety tech after a Bolt driver (that borrowed another account, didn't have a license) attempted to kidnap a school girl [0].
Bolt creates 'good' jobs for criminals, but I don't think that is what we want.
What a nightmare, the kind of thing most founders fear, that their tech be used for evil and that they are responsible for aiding in that crime. (a nightmare for the actual victim too, no doubt)
Is Bolt a "new player" in Thailand? I know that in Indonesia both Maxim and inDrive is not that well-regarded because usually drivers that ride for both are drivers that are banned from Gojek and Grab for various reasons.
Even in countries where taxis are regulated, sometimes Uber is more expensive but safer. Like in Romania. When I used to go there a lot the official taxis were mandated to offer such low standardized rates that there was a lot of scamming going on. One of my colleagues was basically abducted by a taxi driver (taken to a dangerous gypsy area and told they would kick him out of the car unless he paid them hundreds of euro). Uber was a lot safer because you have tracability on the driver, but more expensive too. And there weren't a lot of them.
There were ways to get safe drivers in some cases by booking them through the yellow machines. But in the end the company hired private drivers for us. Though personally I would just use the metro and tram a lot too :P If you know where you're going it's not a dangerous place.
Not sure if the taxi situation is still as bad there by the way. I would hope not.
taxis “weren’t competitive” when Uber rides were heavily subsidized and Uber was burning billions. I ride taxi now exclusively because it is almost always cheaper than Uber
In Brazil, it wasn't a matter of regulation, but honest because multiple taxi drivers normally drive to where you want really slow to increase the cost of your travel. Although, when they don't have any passengers they drive like crazy and really unsafe!
> Does no one have any memory of what taxis were like and how much they cost? The taxis are gone because they weren't competitive.
And now in places like Seattle, Uber and Lyft are far more expensive than traditional taxis. Taking uber or lyft from the seatac airport to anywhere within a 30 minute driving distance is ridiculously costly now.
It is precisely in unregulated markets I would want to use a ride shape app else they'd try to scam you on the price. Multiple times I've had drivers attempt to triple the agreed to price, or I'd have to haggle them down before the ride etc. This was over 20 years ago and Uber and the like did away with all that.
Also, these are generally cash economies. Drivers use Uber to get leads but will then negotiate the actual ride off-platform stripping Uber of their cut.
Insurance goes up. Who knows how much liability they need to cover transportation. They likely deal with claims of being kidnapped or held hostage by driver on a regular basis.
Man in some of the shitty countries I've had the misfortune of living in, taxi drivers were outright predatory and sometimes downright hostile. Uber was a godsend in such environments.
People like the knowledge that they are not being ripped off by the person they are interacting with. On Uber you are essentially guaranteed that you are paying the absolute max that you would accept algorithmically, and the driver is getting the absolute least they would accept to drive for. If the balance shifts in any way, someone is ripping off the person they will interact with.
Since the customer knows less about how much things should cost, they are more likely to be ripped off. People pay a 30% premium to ensure that they dont feel ripped off alone.
That means Uber is screwing the driver and customer the algorithmically maximum amount. It should be less, and it should be in the driver's favor. They should be able to afford a decent living.
Well not really, if they were screwing people to the maximum people would be ordering cabs instead, the goal is to screw them for the maximal amount that they feel like they can to accept in the market that exists. Cabs might still screw you for more which is out of your control, so you don't take them.
That's the whole goal with the pricing model. Its not predatory because the customer is still paying for it. There is a choice to not pay and use a different service. If there are reasons to not do so, we are not at the predatory levels yet.
Uber was never really in Nigeria much, despite apparently being here a long time. I use ride-hailing a lot, and I've never used it because it is not available in my state, or in most states, for that matter.
I read that in Nigeria (may misremember), the fares set by uber were too low (possibly it was a long-tail country with some incorrect exchange rates), so the drivers and riders had a custom of agreeing to different fees, I believe it came to the point where drivers would share an image or a copypasta with the actual rates and would ask the passenger to accept before picking them up.
has Uber had a positive ROI on the billions invested in it? I am pretty sure the return on the preferred price from the late rounds 10 years ago is basically zero. Net income has always been negative or close to zero. From a consumer perspective, in late stage cities, uber rides are the same or more expensive than old taxis, and the quality of vehicles is lower. what was it all worth?
downvote isn’t personal. it takes more than one to become gray.
Im trying to say it doesn’t matter what we plebs think about these massive entities. Maybe it should but if we’re talking creating (economic) value, they clearly are.
> at $156B market cap someone sure is making money.
So 50x Pets.com or 2x Enron.
> judging a mega-corporation on lemonade-stand level accounting is a fool's errand.
Disagree. Unit economics matter and can help you cut through a lot of hype and nonsense. "Where's the money coming from?" is always a good question to ask. Sure, sometimes a megacorp loses money on each transaction and makes it up on float or whatever, but that's at least worth knowing if that's what's going on.
Agree due diligence is required. FTX, Theranos, Enron are a reality. But it’s also tempting to color the assessment with virtue.
Im morally against Meta but it’s the world’s greatest money printing machine ever conceived. To say they or Uber don’t make money would be too virtue-tainted.
This reminds me of this bit on a podcast where a tidbit of learned information so blatantly contradicts basic logic.
There's always an explanation, in this case, the tidbit was that "dull knives are more dangerous", because you apply more force when cutting vegetables and can end up hurting yourself, but it's laughably wrong when applied to weapons.
In the case of the tidbit of "uber actually loses money" that might have been relevant in the first years, there's this phenomenon where companies operate at a loss for some time (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_dumping) in order to accumulate market share (i.e a monopoly) and then they increase prices in order to recoup their investment and make profits.
So you read somewhere that "uber actually loses money" and this was from presumably a trusted source, but you failed to account the date of the knowledge, when Uber was somewhat smaller and their margins were smaller, and you read it assuming it applies to the present, so you somehow thought that one of the biggest tech companies in the world, that charges around 30% per trip, and has almost no marginal costs, would operate at a loss.
So I don't want to be offensive, but it's so wrong that it has a comedic quality.
In Nigeria: Lithium totally irrelevant compared to oil. I think people have this really weird idea that lithium is to electric cars as oil is to regular cars, but it’s literally like a factor of 50 less.
Datacenters need batteries too, and they're drawing a BUNCH of power these days. 1 rack can now easily use as much power as 100 US homes (120kw), with some rack designs pushing to 200 and 300kw.
Seems more likely to be due to Uber failing to really penetrate the market. There are a number of markets where they’re really a distant second to Bolt or a local thing or both, and at some point they presumably have to start rationalising.
78 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 60.5 ms ] threadhttps://x.com/gergelyorosz/status/2095256757178188113
If Uber wasn't a VC backed company, they would have been charged with destruction of evidence or similar.
Unfortunately, the growth potential that software industry generally provides has generally prevented governments for creating and enforcing similar laws for software products and such.
I personally think countries should start sanctioning and international warrants for all large investors and senior executives in a company if something like this happens.
But it won't happen unless US changes their stance on companies being liability shiled.
Sure it should require very exceptional cases but I know companies whose negligence has cost lives of hundreds of people, the reason they and all their investors weren't jailed is the real scam of the democraciez we have gifted ourselves.
Bolt creates 'good' jobs for criminals, but I don't think that is what we want.
[0] - https://www.khaosodenglish.com/tech/2026/05/12/bolt-tightens...
“Tell me the last time you hacked a non-computer system to your advantage”
https://www.facebook.com/TrevorNoah/posts/uber-tried-to-take...
There were ways to get safe drivers in some cases by booking them through the yellow machines. But in the end the company hired private drivers for us. Though personally I would just use the metro and tram a lot too :P If you know where you're going it's not a dangerous place.
Not sure if the taxi situation is still as bad there by the way. I would hope not.
And now in places like Seattle, Uber and Lyft are far more expensive than traditional taxis. Taking uber or lyft from the seatac airport to anywhere within a 30 minute driving distance is ridiculously costly now.
Rides are 20-40% cheaper elsewhere, why would anyone pay extra for Uber?
Since the customer knows less about how much things should cost, they are more likely to be ripped off. People pay a 30% premium to ensure that they dont feel ripped off alone.
https://len-sherman.medium.com/ubers-long-and-winding-road-t...
(I'm ex-Grab).
I've no say in the manner in which they ran/run their business but judging a mega-corporation on lemonade-stand level accounting is a fool's errand.
Im trying to say it doesn’t matter what we plebs think about these massive entities. Maybe it should but if we’re talking creating (economic) value, they clearly are.
So 50x Pets.com or 2x Enron.
> judging a mega-corporation on lemonade-stand level accounting is a fool's errand.
Disagree. Unit economics matter and can help you cut through a lot of hype and nonsense. "Where's the money coming from?" is always a good question to ask. Sure, sometimes a megacorp loses money on each transaction and makes it up on float or whatever, but that's at least worth knowing if that's what's going on.
Im morally against Meta but it’s the world’s greatest money printing machine ever conceived. To say they or Uber don’t make money would be too virtue-tainted.
This reminds me of this bit on a podcast where a tidbit of learned information so blatantly contradicts basic logic.
There's always an explanation, in this case, the tidbit was that "dull knives are more dangerous", because you apply more force when cutting vegetables and can end up hurting yourself, but it's laughably wrong when applied to weapons.
In the case of the tidbit of "uber actually loses money" that might have been relevant in the first years, there's this phenomenon where companies operate at a loss for some time (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_dumping) in order to accumulate market share (i.e a monopoly) and then they increase prices in order to recoup their investment and make profits.
So you read somewhere that "uber actually loses money" and this was from presumably a trusted source, but you failed to account the date of the knowledge, when Uber was somewhat smaller and their margins were smaller, and you read it assuming it applies to the present, so you somehow thought that one of the biggest tech companies in the world, that charges around 30% per trip, and has almost no marginal costs, would operate at a loss.
So I don't want to be offensive, but it's so wrong that it has a comedic quality.
To be clear, it is the DoD - Department of Defense
* People assume that Uber is a big brand in Nigeria and Uganda, this might not be true
* People assume that Uber is popular in these countries, this might also not be true
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IYaBPIwope0