First of all, it doesn't cost $267 to get from Manchester to London. That's an order of magnitude high. Even Amtrak isn't that bad ($0.65 per person per hour) and Europe has cheaper, faster, and better rail service than the US by far.
That said, I think it's really amusing and interesting that the only thing it's going to take in order to beat Uber, in the long term, is: not be Uber. Just having a more likable CEO and full transparency when dynamic ("surge") pricing is used would go a long way.
It does, if you want to buy a peak time ticket (eg 730am) tomorrow morning, I just looked it up. Europe may have a cheaper, faster and better rail service, but the UK is not party to the cheaper bit. You can buy cheap tickets, if you book in advance.
What isn't transparent about surge pricing? The app straight up tells you "you will be paying more for this ride." If you don't like it, get a regular cab.
I don't know why people act as if Uber is twisting their arm when it comes to surge pricing.
It's transparent but variable pricing interferes with planning and requires repeated decision making, increasing stress. Imagine if grocery food doubled in price spontaneously several times a week.
No, imagine if normal grocery stores (or restaurants) were consistently out of stock at normal high-demand times (i.e. sacrificed predictable availability for predictable price), and a new grocery store opened up whose selling point was predictable availability instead of predictable pricing.
It's absolute nonsense to categorically state that variable pricing interferes with planning more than variable availability does. In particular when the variable availability, fixed-price option is still an alternative.
All that does is shift Uber along the spectrum of predictable availability vs predictable price. You have the cognitive load of remembering/having to check a schedule, plus no guarantee of availability, since the schedule will be a highly imperfect predictor of demand, as well as not accounting for unforeseen surges in demand.
That seems like it would be more stressful and a worse solution than either of the other options (taxis' fully fixed-price or Uber's fully-floating price), since you don't even know what part of the spectrum you'll end up on at any given point!
I assume demand in major cities doesn't really change that much so that the schedule is announced and updated very rarely (similar to public transportation). Yes, you would occasionally sacrifice some availability but I think people prefer that trade-off.
If I wanted to sacrifice availability, I would use a Taxi. Uber, first and foremost, an on-demand ride flagging application. If Uber can't find me a ride then the app is broken - I lose any incentive to pay any surge pricing if I am going to get the same availability from Uber that I would get from a Taxi cab.
Any savvy individual (who needs to be able to schedule their Uber rides in advance for whatever reason, instead of just using a Taxi to schedule rides like others have been doing for the last 50 years) will quickly learn when surge pricing is effect namely, Weekday mornings when people are going to work, Weekday evenings when people are leaving work, Weekend nights (sometimes), and any event where you can expect alot of people going home at the same time (concerts, sports games).
In any case, and back to my original point, Uber doesn't force you to use their service and they are not the only game in town. If availability is more important predictability get an Uber, otherwise just get a Taxi. It doesn't make sense for Uber to become more like Taxis because people are unaware they have choices.
> I assume demand in major cities doesn't really change that much so that the schedule is announced and updated very rarely (similar to public transportation).
This is way way way off. Looking just at my experience in San Francisco: weather patterns (in detail, across different parts of the city), public transit issues, tourism, events, fluctuations in the city's population and travel across various holidays/festivals/three-day weekends, changes in price of Uber, changes in price of alternatives (i.e. Lyft drops prices)...and the interplay of all these variables (e.g. public transit happens to have diminished capacity along a critical line for a given event vs having diminished capacity on an unrelated line).
It's not market fundamentalism to acknowledge that what the market is good at is this sort of massively decentralized, million-variable price optimization[1]. This is precisely the reason why direct price controls on consumer products tend not to work: because it's damn near impossible for any entity (even the freaking US gov't) to accurately gauge the million variables that go into setting supply and demand. The idea that Uber could do this without being way, way, way off almost all the time is a hilariously bad idea.
As someone alluded to below (and I alluded to above multiple times): The product Uber is selling is predictable-availability rides. The product taxis are selling is predictable-price rides. It's nonsense to say that reducing the predictability of Uber's availability would be "less stressful" or easier on its passengers.
[1] Note that it optimizes for allocative efficiency. Much of what market fundamentalism gets wrong is ignoring that allocative efficiency is not always what our goal is. That's not relevant in this case though, since we're explicitly talking about how a centralized, top-down rate schedule is a laughably terrible idea.
> It's not market fundamentalism to acknowledge that what the market is good at is this sort of massively decentralized, million-variable price optimization
Note that Uber isn't a free market because the drivers aren't setting prices.
Yea for sure, but it's not a binary distinction. "Allowing the price to float" is the concept we're discussing in general, and Uber is further along the spectrum towards a fully-floating price.
Grocery food doubles in price all the time...it's called a sale. Soda goes for anywhere from $0.69/2liter to $1.29 at my local Safeway, for the same brands, just at different times. Groceries have just learned that people react better to high baseline prices and occasional labeled discounts than low baseline prices and occasional surcharges.
Most people just get used to paying whatever the checkout bill is at the grocery. Or if money is tight, then yes, it does cause increased stress, but middle-class American society seemingly doesn't care about the routine stresses of being poor. UberX is not targeting a market that will be stressed to pay for a ride, though.
The stress is not the stress of poverty but of deciding whether you want to spend $X dollars on a non-essential product (the buy/not-buy decision).
As for groceries usually sales are advertised, in force for pre-defined period of time and, as you say, discounted from the price that is in force most of the time so that if you are surprised by a price it is in your favor.
In the markets where they offer taxis as well, the app will even tell you that you can order a taxi and pay the regulated price instead of paying the surge pricing of UberX.
It's not transparent about how it models the supply curve and how much demand there is. If they didn't want to be hated, they'd establish enough data that one who wanted to could prove that it was fair market pricing (and that Uber wasn't making additional profit during surge pricing, silencing doubt about perverse incentives).
I honestly don't follow. I don't understand how their models would be useful to anyone except economics students. Even if they could say it was fair market pricing, I doubt complaining users who were too lazy/didn't care to read the "2x surge pricing" alert in big bold letters would be swayed by a white paper.
Not to say I'm against transparency - it would most likely be incredibly rich data and give more power to drivers, but it seems Uber's trip up from a public point of view is that users feel cheated due to surge pricing. I'm having trouble understanding how one can feel cheated when the prices are laid before you - maybe Uber should replace "4x" with the estimated amount (of course then you'd have the complaining if the estimate is a little bit off).
The cheapest tickets I can see for today are £39.85 and for next Tuesday are £35.50. Presumably there are some £12.50 tickets available, but they're not easy to find (my understanding from folks who do more train travel to me is that tickets are released some number of months in advance and the cheapest price bins usually disappear pretty quickly).
If you want to travel at peak times, the prices are much higher.
It is weird that these companies are so prominently displayed nowadays, yet a German website that is already up and running since 1998 and was until very recently not requesting any share of the fare is completely missing from the story - mitfahrzentrale.de Apparently they currently have 700,000 offers of long-distance car shares online. I remember that some other site was already up and pretty popular in the mid nineties, and in both cases you actually only had to pay the driver the cost for gas. Maybe it's the name that never really moved the story outside the German-speaking countries.
Probably just language barrier. But much of English-language culture is just American culture and it is very navel-gazing. Never underestimate Americans' ability to not consider anything happening beyond their borders, except as matters of foreign policy.
It is very frustrating to see as a foreigner. A magazine article will be talking about something like legalizing prostitution and will be more likely to quote Benjamin Franklin than to say what happening in other countries where is is legal.
America is surrounded by a near identical twin in the north, huge oceans on it's sides, and a relatively undeveloped south. The country itself is as large as europe with as many climates to experience. It's nearly inevitable.
Europeans on the other hand, can drive to a different developed nation in 5 hours. Seeing your relative across the country isn't that big of a deal. Being aware of cultural differences is inevitable.
mitfahrgelegenheit.de is another great one. Ride shares tend to be much more popular in European countries because the distances between major cities are usually shorter and people are generally more trusting of riding in strangers' cars.
GoLoco (from Robin Chase, ZipCar's founder) was an American take that never really caught on in the States.
Like Uber, BlaBlaCar takes a cut of the fare, but crucially, prevents its drivers from trying to turn this into a job. In each of the countries it operates in, BlaBlaCar uses government guidelines on driving costs to set a cap on the fare. These calculations account for fuel costs, insurance and tax. The rule helps to avoid giving the impression that the app poses a challenge to cab drivers' livelihood.
"Because they don't make a profit, BlaBlaCar drivers aren't classed as professionals," says Nicolas Brusson, the co-founder and chief operating officer at BlaBlaCar. "They don't require special insurance or a special license."
The typical notion of the sharing economy is that you're allowing more efficient usage of activity that would exist with or without your interference.
For example, car pooling is part of the sharing economy - the car was already going in that direction anyways, but now you've saved a bunch of gas by putting multiple people in the same car. Without your carpool, that driver would still be going that way - like BlaBlaCar.
Ditto if you and your neighbors got together and shared a lawnmower. You were all going to buy one anyways, but in this scheme you get to save money, and the lawn mower is sitting idle a lot less. Good of the environment, good for you, and maybe you can afford a better mower as a group. Score.
Uber isn't part of the sharing economy, since the drivers are only on the road because of you. It's a pretty typical merchant-client relationship that doesn't fit any common notion of the word "sharing", unless you consider your coffee shop to be "sharing" their coffee with you.
In Uber/Lyft's case, the supply (rides) wouldn't exist without you. The key tenet of the sharing economy is that you're piggy-backing on activity that would be happening regardless. I think it's a pretty tough case to argue that all these Ubers and Lyfts would be on the road anyways if it weren't for the people hailing them.
This is true for (most of) AirBnb as well. If you're renting out your apartment while you're away, that's a part of the sharing economy, since you'd own the space even if AirBnb didn't exist - it would just be sitting empty. If you're maintaining a room or apartment strictly for the purpose of renting out, it really isn't, and now you're looking at a much more traditional merchant-client relationship.
> Uber isn't part of the sharing economy, since the drivers are only on the road because of you.
But most are using their personal cars (at least for Lyft and Sidecar, which are the ones I use), which they would own either way. It's not the driver's time and gas being "shared" under your definition, it's the car itself, which would otherwise be sitting in a garage and replaced with another taxi or rental car.
Also, I don't see how the person not making a profit somehow makes the service qualify under your definition of "sharing economy."
Of course there are already carpools. Those generally imply that driver and passengers were already taking the same route, and they all usually know one another. Ridesharing services extend that to rides the driver would not otherwise be taking. Again, what's being shared is the car itself.
These are entirely different businesses. BlaBlaCar is restricted by unnecessary and economically damaging laws, but puts up with them. Uber and Lyft fight them and offer great jobs. The only people being "rude" are the governments that allow taxi services legal monopolies when it's obvious that doing so creates poor service.
Uber is fighting governments in plenty of places where there aren't legal monopolies, so I'm not sure that's the explanation, or at least not all of it. They've had run-ins with Stockholm, for example, even though Sweden has deregulated taxi pricing and no medallions. Anyone who's properly licensed and insured can start up a taxi service, charging anything they want, even $1000/km if they want [1]. However, while you can charge anything you want, you have to post what that's going to be, publicly and conspicuously on the outside of the cab, which Uber doesn't want to do. Maybe that shouldn't be required either, but it's definitely not a taxi-monopoly question.
[1] This part has caused some problems with legally overpriced taxis ripping off tourists. The fact that Sweden uses SEK rather than EUR helps that scam, because some tourists initially arriving don't yet have any intuitive feel for what 100 or 1000 or 10,000 SEK is worth, and naively assume whatever the taxi is charging must be "the going rate", since they assume taxi fares are probably regulated (like in most places).
"BlaBlaCar is restricted by unnecessary and economically damaging laws, but puts up with them. Uber and Lyft fight them"
That's the take away. You can't compare the two and say one is simply being "polite". They take different approaches. Uber and Lyft are doing a whole lot of good and making big and beneficial waves. BlaBlaCar simply offers a competitive service where it's allowed to do so. The article smells of a "holier-than-thou" attitude which is completely unfounded.
I guess that's the part I disagree with. I think Uber and Lyft are mostly doing harm, and not even an interesting new kind of harm: shady taxi companies skirting laws to up their profits is as old as the taxi business. (And doing it "with an app" doesn't make it tech, either, any more than Domino's Pizza is a tech company.) And in some cases (like Sweden) I suspect the conflict is even manufactured for PR purposes: Uber relies on "disruption" PR for its marketing, so has to manufacture disruption even where there isn't anything actually standing in the way of just running a legit taxi company.
So your stance is that Uber is doing "harm" as a "shady" NON TECH company manufacturing "conflict PR"?
1. How do you define harm? My experience is that every one of my friends who use Uber really like it and the drivers I've spoken to along my rides have all said they like working with Uber too. Is the "harm" done to the other taxi companies? Would you say that Apple did "harm" when they released the iPhone because people who would have bought other company's products bought an iPhone instead? Because that's essentially what is happening here. Uber's product is perceived by my friends as vastly superior to the taxis in Atlanta. In fact, before Uber, they mostly didn't even use taxis. But now that Uber exists, they will often take Uber to and from their destinations so they don't have to worry about a designated driver.
2. I guess you define "shady" as a company that doesn't want agree to current regulations from the government. So whoever the govt. deems "not shady" is basically your definition of not shady.
3. The core differentiator of Uber and a regular taxi is the app. Obviously they are a blend of tech and transportation but just because they have some "non tech" elements, I don't believe that precludes them being considered a tech company. But, this is all subjective, there's no actual meaning to the word "tech" in tech company.
4. Do you have anything to back up these claims of Uber manufacturing fake PR? They have been outlawed a bunch of times in a bunch of cities of which none of those cases were made up by Uber. It is very very hard for me to believe that they would go to the trouble of making up fake stories in the cities where things were going well.
On #4, I don't see any evidence they attempted to follow the laws. The Swedish taxi market is deregulated and not a cartel. You can enter it, as long as you follow some fairly simple consumer-protection regulations! Uber is just not interested. I suspect that part of the reason is that it would be damaging to their image to be "just another taxi company". But it could also be that they legitimately find it difficult to adapt their business to the rules.
Now you could argue even the relatively few regulations Sweden has left should be scrapped. But that's what the democratic system is for. I don't support just ignoring them when you think they should be different. I mean, maybe in extreme cases, where people are actually being oppressed, direct action and civil-disobedience are justified. But Uber's dispute with Stockholm over how to give fair notice of prices, and what constitutes a "meter", seem like a pretty small hook to hang a civil-rights crusade on.
This is exactly why many people CHOOSE to use Uber. Because they don't put up with unnecessary and economically damaging laws. This allows them to draw in either better drivers or better prices. If you're going to hang on to this point, you're going to have to provide some real reasons as to how people choosing to use Uber or Lyft over other "official" companies because they like them better is somehow harming them.
How are they doing harm? Unless you're going to tell me people are too dumb to make decisions about who gives them rides I can't possibly see where there can be any harm.
"Disrupting politely" apparently means "drivers don't make a profit therefore aren't classed as professionals". In other words, "if you would like to compete with our monopolized transportation mafia you can't make any money out of it". Which simply means that you are not allowed to compete. You can only run charity and we'll call it "disruption" and continue taking profits.
I can't wait for a purely p2p service that allows drivers to pick up people for bitcoin and get paid directly without any intermediary that is forced to "comply" with whatever arbitrary "regulations". To make sure both drivers and riders and not morons, they could use 2-of-2 multisig insurance deposit (both parties deposit $50 each with a single $100 output and can unlock it only together upon arrival, with respect for the fee). Upfront deposit would put people in nash equilibrium and force them to be nice towards each other. Instead of centralized ratings we could use an implicit web-of-trust formed by personal recommendation tokens that are passed from friend to a friend when one recommends a driver to another.
Did you just compare honest hard working taxi drivers to mafia? If government didn't require licences for taxi drivers, you'd have some crazy place like Russia where anyone can be a private driver without any licence and customers actually get cheaper prices and can get cars any time of day in seconds by just raising a hand and negotiate the price beforehand. Oh wait...
That's first hand info. I live in Russia. You go out any time of day, raise a hand and chances are, a private car would stop. Taxis are limited to by-phone-orders, but are also very cheap due to a very light regulation. Not once was I ripped off or heard of anyone being ripped off.
I do. What's wrong with obtaining an insurance? It's my choice. You want an insured taxi service - get one and pay more. I want cheaper taxi and I don't want government to mess with my choices.
It seems to me, westerners became so helpless and dependent on third parties (and government), it amazes me. Especially in the US. It used to the land of self sufficient entrepreneurial people. Now it's just a nanny state.
I was only asking because in the US, if you're a passenger in improperly insured car, you're pretty much fucked.
Private health insurance won't cover you. The driver's auto insurance won't cover you. Your private auto insurance won't cover you.
There simply isn't a generally available american insurance policy which provides coverage for catastrophic injuries that occur while in a private vehicle that's being driven commercially.
It saddens (but doesn't surprise) me that you felt free to jump to an unsupported, bigoted conclusion, and then to spew hatred at me. Typical HN. Asshole.
Actually, in Russia taxi is very lightly regulated without limited number of "medallions" like in NYC or Paris. While being in St. Petersburg this summer I ordered a taxi by phone dozens of times and it was always super-swift and human response. Unlike rude and slow taxi service in Paris.
> To make sure both drivers and riders and not morons, they could use 2-of-2 multisig insurance deposit (both parties deposit $50 each with a single $100 output and can unlock it only together upon arrival, with respect for the fee).
Or, perhaps better yet, a 2-of-3 contract with an agreed-upon arbitrator who has a reputation for being fair. That way, the implicit web-of-trust can be abstracted to the arbitrators rather than directly between drivers and passengers.
I speculate that such arbitrators would be too expensive. Who would personally go and investigate a $10 ride?
I'd try something else. If you dislike the driver (or rider), rate him and your app propagates to your friends your vote. They may re-relay that info further (with downgrading coefficient, like *0.66). This way there will be implicit web-of-trust for reputations. If this person has upset only one guy, his mistake may cost him this guy's friends at most (next tier circle may have rating below threshold). If he has upset several people, it will lower his rating for many more people.
Note that arbitrators would only be actually used in cases where the signers disagree, which would probably be rare assuming other reputation systems are also in place. Of course, the 2-of-3 contracts would be entirely optional, so it's quite possible that you're right, and that most people wouldn't bother with it for small transactions like ridesharing.
There is no need to be polite to the target of disruption if they are overtly and obviously representative of systemic dysfunction and corruption.
There might be a legitimate argument if it was just mom and grandma. However uber does provide income for regular people and it has no doubt reduced the amount of drunk driving causalities and deaths. If you're young and can get around ask any one of your friends if they have considered uber an option when they never would have a taxi. It's becoming more and more commonplace.
They are different businesses, where blablacar targets inter-urban transportation and uber targets intra-urban transportation. The best comparison in North America would be kangaride.com, which is also not challenging the established markets.
Like Uber, BlaBlaCar takes a cut of the fare, but crucially, prevents its drivers from trying to turn this into a job. In each of the countries it operates in, BlaBlaCar uses government guidelines on driving costs to set a cap on the fare. These calculations account for fuel costs, insurance and tax. The rule helps to avoid giving the impression that the app poses a challenge to cab drivers' livelihood.
"Because they don't make a profit, BlaBlaCar drivers aren't classed as professionals," says Nicolas Brusson, the co-founder and chief operating officer at BlaBlaCar. "They don't require special insurance or a special license."
Someone on this thread mentioned Kangaride.com as the closest comparision to this service. I haven't personally tried Kangaride at all , But another popular service in this sector is "ZimRide" (which offers intercity ride sharing) ; ZimRide is sort of popular among skiing enthusiasts in Bay Area, a ton of trips on the site is mostly Bay Area to South Lake Tahoe or Truckee ( and I hope there are a few more similar routes in US to skii destinations). In most cases,whenever I have zimrided with someone - I have also shared a room with the same person.
Plus, Zimride actually does not take a cut ; you simply connect with people on the site ( and you decide to pay however you want,I have done paypal ,cash , venmo and thru zimride in itself). I m not sure how they make money ..
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 142 ms ] threadThat said, I think it's really amusing and interesting that the only thing it's going to take in order to beat Uber, in the long term, is: not be Uber. Just having a more likable CEO and full transparency when dynamic ("surge") pricing is used would go a long way.
I don't know why people act as if Uber is twisting their arm when it comes to surge pricing.
It's absolute nonsense to categorically state that variable pricing interferes with planning more than variable availability does. In particular when the variable availability, fixed-price option is still an alternative.
That seems like it would be more stressful and a worse solution than either of the other options (taxis' fully fixed-price or Uber's fully-floating price), since you don't even know what part of the spectrum you'll end up on at any given point!
Any savvy individual (who needs to be able to schedule their Uber rides in advance for whatever reason, instead of just using a Taxi to schedule rides like others have been doing for the last 50 years) will quickly learn when surge pricing is effect namely, Weekday mornings when people are going to work, Weekday evenings when people are leaving work, Weekend nights (sometimes), and any event where you can expect alot of people going home at the same time (concerts, sports games).
In any case, and back to my original point, Uber doesn't force you to use their service and they are not the only game in town. If availability is more important predictability get an Uber, otherwise just get a Taxi. It doesn't make sense for Uber to become more like Taxis because people are unaware they have choices.
This is way way way off. Looking just at my experience in San Francisco: weather patterns (in detail, across different parts of the city), public transit issues, tourism, events, fluctuations in the city's population and travel across various holidays/festivals/three-day weekends, changes in price of Uber, changes in price of alternatives (i.e. Lyft drops prices)...and the interplay of all these variables (e.g. public transit happens to have diminished capacity along a critical line for a given event vs having diminished capacity on an unrelated line).
It's not market fundamentalism to acknowledge that what the market is good at is this sort of massively decentralized, million-variable price optimization[1]. This is precisely the reason why direct price controls on consumer products tend not to work: because it's damn near impossible for any entity (even the freaking US gov't) to accurately gauge the million variables that go into setting supply and demand. The idea that Uber could do this without being way, way, way off almost all the time is a hilariously bad idea.
As someone alluded to below (and I alluded to above multiple times): The product Uber is selling is predictable-availability rides. The product taxis are selling is predictable-price rides. It's nonsense to say that reducing the predictability of Uber's availability would be "less stressful" or easier on its passengers.
[1] Note that it optimizes for allocative efficiency. Much of what market fundamentalism gets wrong is ignoring that allocative efficiency is not always what our goal is. That's not relevant in this case though, since we're explicitly talking about how a centralized, top-down rate schedule is a laughably terrible idea.
Note that Uber isn't a free market because the drivers aren't setting prices.
Most people just get used to paying whatever the checkout bill is at the grocery. Or if money is tight, then yes, it does cause increased stress, but middle-class American society seemingly doesn't care about the routine stresses of being poor. UberX is not targeting a market that will be stressed to pay for a ride, though.
As for groceries usually sales are advertised, in force for pre-defined period of time and, as you say, discounted from the price that is in force most of the time so that if you are surprised by a price it is in your favor.
Not to say I'm against transparency - it would most likely be incredibly rich data and give more power to drivers, but it seems Uber's trip up from a public point of view is that users feel cheated due to surge pricing. I'm having trouble understanding how one can feel cheated when the prices are laid before you - maybe Uber should replace "4x" with the estimated amount (of course then you'd have the complaining if the estimate is a little bit off).
Or, alternatively, £459 rtn in first class ($767).
However, an off peak return (dept after 9am, basically), and it drops to under £80 rtn.
The cheapest tickets I can see for today are £39.85 and for next Tuesday are £35.50. Presumably there are some £12.50 tickets available, but they're not easy to find (my understanding from folks who do more train travel to me is that tickets are released some number of months in advance and the cheapest price bins usually disappear pretty quickly).
If you want to travel at peak times, the prices are much higher.
Europeans on the other hand, can drive to a different developed nation in 5 hours. Seeing your relative across the country isn't that big of a deal. Being aware of cultural differences is inevitable.
GoLoco (from Robin Chase, ZipCar's founder) was an American take that never really caught on in the States.
Like Uber, BlaBlaCar takes a cut of the fare, but crucially, prevents its drivers from trying to turn this into a job. In each of the countries it operates in, BlaBlaCar uses government guidelines on driving costs to set a cap on the fare. These calculations account for fuel costs, insurance and tax. The rule helps to avoid giving the impression that the app poses a challenge to cab drivers' livelihood.
"Because they don't make a profit, BlaBlaCar drivers aren't classed as professionals," says Nicolas Brusson, the co-founder and chief operating officer at BlaBlaCar. "They don't require special insurance or a special license."
For example, car pooling is part of the sharing economy - the car was already going in that direction anyways, but now you've saved a bunch of gas by putting multiple people in the same car. Without your carpool, that driver would still be going that way - like BlaBlaCar.
Ditto if you and your neighbors got together and shared a lawnmower. You were all going to buy one anyways, but in this scheme you get to save money, and the lawn mower is sitting idle a lot less. Good of the environment, good for you, and maybe you can afford a better mower as a group. Score.
Uber isn't part of the sharing economy, since the drivers are only on the road because of you. It's a pretty typical merchant-client relationship that doesn't fit any common notion of the word "sharing", unless you consider your coffee shop to be "sharing" their coffee with you.
In Uber/Lyft's case, the supply (rides) wouldn't exist without you. The key tenet of the sharing economy is that you're piggy-backing on activity that would be happening regardless. I think it's a pretty tough case to argue that all these Ubers and Lyfts would be on the road anyways if it weren't for the people hailing them.
This is true for (most of) AirBnb as well. If you're renting out your apartment while you're away, that's a part of the sharing economy, since you'd own the space even if AirBnb didn't exist - it would just be sitting empty. If you're maintaining a room or apartment strictly for the purpose of renting out, it really isn't, and now you're looking at a much more traditional merchant-client relationship.
But most are using their personal cars (at least for Lyft and Sidecar, which are the ones I use), which they would own either way. It's not the driver's time and gas being "shared" under your definition, it's the car itself, which would otherwise be sitting in a garage and replaced with another taxi or rental car.
Also, I don't see how the person not making a profit somehow makes the service qualify under your definition of "sharing economy."
[1] This part has caused some problems with legally overpriced taxis ripping off tourists. The fact that Sweden uses SEK rather than EUR helps that scam, because some tourists initially arriving don't yet have any intuitive feel for what 100 or 1000 or 10,000 SEK is worth, and naively assume whatever the taxi is charging must be "the going rate", since they assume taxi fares are probably regulated (like in most places).
That's the take away. You can't compare the two and say one is simply being "polite". They take different approaches. Uber and Lyft are doing a whole lot of good and making big and beneficial waves. BlaBlaCar simply offers a competitive service where it's allowed to do so. The article smells of a "holier-than-thou" attitude which is completely unfounded.
1. How do you define harm? My experience is that every one of my friends who use Uber really like it and the drivers I've spoken to along my rides have all said they like working with Uber too. Is the "harm" done to the other taxi companies? Would you say that Apple did "harm" when they released the iPhone because people who would have bought other company's products bought an iPhone instead? Because that's essentially what is happening here. Uber's product is perceived by my friends as vastly superior to the taxis in Atlanta. In fact, before Uber, they mostly didn't even use taxis. But now that Uber exists, they will often take Uber to and from their destinations so they don't have to worry about a designated driver.
2. I guess you define "shady" as a company that doesn't want agree to current regulations from the government. So whoever the govt. deems "not shady" is basically your definition of not shady.
3. The core differentiator of Uber and a regular taxi is the app. Obviously they are a blend of tech and transportation but just because they have some "non tech" elements, I don't believe that precludes them being considered a tech company. But, this is all subjective, there's no actual meaning to the word "tech" in tech company.
4. Do you have anything to back up these claims of Uber manufacturing fake PR? They have been outlawed a bunch of times in a bunch of cities of which none of those cases were made up by Uber. It is very very hard for me to believe that they would go to the trouble of making up fake stories in the cities where things were going well.
Now you could argue even the relatively few regulations Sweden has left should be scrapped. But that's what the democratic system is for. I don't support just ignoring them when you think they should be different. I mean, maybe in extreme cases, where people are actually being oppressed, direct action and civil-disobedience are justified. But Uber's dispute with Stockholm over how to give fair notice of prices, and what constitutes a "meter", seem like a pretty small hook to hang a civil-rights crusade on.
I can't wait for a purely p2p service that allows drivers to pick up people for bitcoin and get paid directly without any intermediary that is forced to "comply" with whatever arbitrary "regulations". To make sure both drivers and riders and not morons, they could use 2-of-2 multisig insurance deposit (both parties deposit $50 each with a single $100 output and can unlock it only together upon arrival, with respect for the fee). Upfront deposit would put people in nash equilibrium and force them to be nice towards each other. Instead of centralized ratings we could use an implicit web-of-trust formed by personal recommendation tokens that are passed from friend to a friend when one recommends a driver to another.
It seems to me, westerners became so helpless and dependent on third parties (and government), it amazes me. Especially in the US. It used to the land of self sufficient entrepreneurial people. Now it's just a nanny state.
Private health insurance won't cover you. The driver's auto insurance won't cover you. Your private auto insurance won't cover you.
There simply isn't a generally available american insurance policy which provides coverage for catastrophic injuries that occur while in a private vehicle that's being driven commercially.
It saddens (but doesn't surprise) me that you felt free to jump to an unsupported, bigoted conclusion, and then to spew hatred at me. Typical HN. Asshole.
Hey! There were lots of honest and hard working Mafiosi.
Or, perhaps better yet, a 2-of-3 contract with an agreed-upon arbitrator who has a reputation for being fair. That way, the implicit web-of-trust can be abstracted to the arbitrators rather than directly between drivers and passengers.
I'd try something else. If you dislike the driver (or rider), rate him and your app propagates to your friends your vote. They may re-relay that info further (with downgrading coefficient, like *0.66). This way there will be implicit web-of-trust for reputations. If this person has upset only one guy, his mistake may cost him this guy's friends at most (next tier circle may have rating below threshold). If he has upset several people, it will lower his rating for many more people.
There might be a legitimate argument if it was just mom and grandma. However uber does provide income for regular people and it has no doubt reduced the amount of drunk driving causalities and deaths. If you're young and can get around ask any one of your friends if they have considered uber an option when they never would have a taxi. It's becoming more and more commonplace.
Give this angle a rest already.
Like Uber, BlaBlaCar takes a cut of the fare, but crucially, prevents its drivers from trying to turn this into a job. In each of the countries it operates in, BlaBlaCar uses government guidelines on driving costs to set a cap on the fare. These calculations account for fuel costs, insurance and tax. The rule helps to avoid giving the impression that the app poses a challenge to cab drivers' livelihood.
"Because they don't make a profit, BlaBlaCar drivers aren't classed as professionals," says Nicolas Brusson, the co-founder and chief operating officer at BlaBlaCar. "They don't require special insurance or a special license."
Plus, Zimride actually does not take a cut ; you simply connect with people on the site ( and you decide to pay however you want,I have done paypal ,cash , venmo and thru zimride in itself). I m not sure how they make money ..