
The Uber endgame: privatized public transit - enkiv2
http://www.theawl.com/2015/08/ubiquity
======
omonra
I got to the

" Uber’s re-direction of the political will of its base was its total victory
over Mayor Bill De Blasio’s hapless and deeply stupid campaign to limit the
company’s growth in New York City—some of the final blows coming from
celebrities (and even some business journalists!) tweeting messages written by
Uber on its behalf. Would it be crazy to wonder what would happen if those
same people mounted a similarly forceful campaign to get Governor Cuomo to
clean out and fully fund the MTA to, say, make the L train less terrible?"

Did the writer think for 5 seconds about this? Is the political will (or
rather actual monies required) to spend 15 billion [1] on the MTA shortfall
the same as not prohibiting a company from operating a tax service?

[1] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/23/us-usa-newyork-
mta...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/23/us-usa-newyork-mta-
idUSKCN0HI29720140923)

~~~
6d0debc071
>Is the political will (or rather actual monies required) to spend 15 billion
[1] on the MTA shortfall the same as not prohibiting a company from operating
a tax service?

It's not required that the two costs be identical for the writer's question to
make sense. It's known that the Uber investment >||= the necessary criteria,
but it's not known by how much. Maybe it was _just about_ enough, or maybe it
exceeded it by miles.

~~~
omonra
The supposition that Uber spent 15bio to lobby NYC to let it operate in the
city is nonsensical.

Nevermind the alternative that it's not Uber's business to spend money on
fixing the L train.

~~~
6d0debc071
> The supposition that Uber spent 15bio to lobby NYC to let it operate in the
> city is nonsensical.

The question was what the effect of directing that sort of campaign towards
urging improvements to the rail infrastructure would be, not what the cost of
the rail infrastructure would be. They're related because the more expensive
something is the less progress you're likely to make on it if you choose to
approach it without looking at things like efficiency and labour improvements,
but they're a long way away from being anywhere near the same thing.

~~~
omonra
Yes - and the answer to the question "what would happen if those same people
mounted a similarly forceful campaign to get Governor Cuomo to clean out and
fully fund the MTA" is _no effect_.

That's why his point is stupid - because that energy directed at funding the
MTA would be a waste. It's like saying "instead of using your a/c to cool your
apartment, did you consider putting it outside so that we could cool down the
whole city block instead of just your private little space?"

------
jrockway
Privatized public transportation seems to work in other countries. This
particular plan sounds exactly like Hong Kong's minibuses. Also in other
countries, private companies own competing rail networks, competing directly
against the local government. (Tokyo is an example, compare Tokyo Metro and
Toei. JR was once the government, but was privatized. Keio, Tobu, Seibu,
Tokyu, etc. were always private companies.)

Meanwhile, the government-funded model of public transportation seems to be
failing in the US. The MTA spent billions of dollars buying new trains and
resignalling entire lines to run trains every 1 minute 30 seconds. But didn't
actually schedule service that frequently, resulting in trains that are un-
boardable during rush hours. (In fact, unresignalled lines have higher levels
of service. The Flushing line runs at 33 trains per hour. The upgraded
Canarsie line only runs 26 tph.)

Off-peak service is similarly abysmal, with trains running every 20 minutes as
early as 11:00pm, that are often as packed as rush hour trains. They can't
afford three more trains per hour to run them at 10 minute headways?

With more people using public transportation than ever before, it's a sad time
for the government to be unable to justify expanding service to meet the needs
of the new commuters. But they are doing a great job of being inept, so it
would be great to see the private sector come in and fix things. I don't care
who I pay to get to work, I just want to get there quickly and hassle-free.

~~~
Tiktaalik
It's important to recognize that public transit as a concept has major
opponents in North America and cities are constantly having to fight to be
able to build necessary infrastructure. Bafflingly expansion and funding of
transit seems to need to go to referendums, where projects are frequently
defeated (a yes vote in a referendum is very tough to achieve). In contrast
other transportation infrastructure simply goes ahead as regular government
spending.

Ideological Anti-Tax, special interest groups have put huge amounts of money
and effort into discrediting and defunding public transit and turning public
opinion against expansion projects that would benefit everyone. The most
recent example of this would be the Vancouver transit referendum, where the
Canadian Taxpayers Federation seeded the idea that the transit runner
Translink was a woefully inefficient organization even though in reality by
almost any measure it's the best performing transit system on the west coast
of NA. In the United states the Koch Brothers' Americans for Prosperity group
has been pushing back against transit expansion and funding all across
America. [http://billmoyers.com/2014/10/03/koch-brothers-war-
transit/](http://billmoyers.com/2014/10/03/koch-brothers-war-transit/)

~~~
akshatpradhan
> major opponents in North America and cities are constantly having to fight
> to be able to build necessary infrastructure. Bafflingly expansion and
> funding of transit seems to need to go to referendums, where projects are
> frequently defeated (a yes vote in a referendum is very tough to achieve).

Its not working, so what can the US Gov do RIGHT NOW to implement a better
system than Hong Kong?

~~~
Tiktaalik
I am not an American so forgive me if this answer is not viable due to the
structure of American government, but the simple solution is continuous and
steady investment in public transit detached from political tampering.

Many of these failed referendums were about creating a local tax in order to
provide that dependable pool of transit funding for expansion and operating
costs.

A solution would be for the government to take the initiative and start
seriously funding public transit, considering it a first class citizen along
with the road and highway network.

~~~
jrockway
The roots of the MTA were in an agency detached from political tampering. It
used the lack of political influence to raze entire neighborhoods to build
freeways.

The MTA was mostly created to remove this power from Robert Moses.

------
zdw
Imagine the dystopic future where Uber then colludes with the legal/prison
complex, and can track everyone.

Even if you don't use their services, their roving band of rfid/wifi/bluetooth
sensing cars with cameras that read and recognize object like other cars,
license plates, and other people in their environment will be observing
everyone and everything, all the time.

Every vehicle, a subpoena-able bundle of sensors.

Watching.

Personally, I find that even scarier than the mass destruction of public
transit.

~~~
masterleep
You find government owned transit better in this regard?

~~~
toomuchtodo
A government is (in principle) accountable to its citizens. A private company
is only accountable to its owners and shareholders.

~~~
masterleep
In reality, governments enjoy low accountability compared to private companies
that must compete for business. That is why failed government programs hardly
ever get replaced.

~~~
wfo
In reality, private companies enjoy low accountability compared to government
because while they perpetuate the myth of a highly competitive market, it
isn't so; they are generally inefficient small fiefdoms. And government isn't
allowed to keep secrets the way private companies are; and is required by
regulation to act in a certain fair and reasonable way. If someone asks you
for every email you've sent in the last year and you're a CEO, you give them
the finger and laugh. If you work at a government agency, buy a couple
thousand reams of paper and start printing.

~~~
Kalium
Are you familiar with the many abuseable exemptions in FOIA?

~~~
wfo
Once private companies have a FOIA of their own that applies to their internal
communication I'd be happy to examine the exemptions in the two statutes and
how they compare.

But for now it's so disgustingly false to claim that companies are less
accountable than government that it's hard to believe such a claim is not
intentionally dishonest.

~~~
Kalium
First, that's not any claim of mine, so please be nice.

Second, my point was that FOIA doesn't bring as much transparency as you might
hope.

Third, the question of accountability is two-fold: to whom and to what extent?
Governments and companies are accountable to different groups and to different
degrees. But just as the government of Brunei is not accountable to a randomly
selected American, a company of which you are neither customer nor shareholder
is not accountable to you. Given that companies rely more on consent that
governments, the degree of accountability to shareholders is perhaps greater.

Thus I submit that measuring accountability purely in degrees is...
incomplete.

~~~
wfo
It wasn't directed at you, I'm sorry if it came out that way: my claim about
transparency was a relative one and not an absolute one and in fact I agree
with your perspective that transparency even in government isn't as good as it
could be in an absolute sense (in some cases, of course); it just doesn't have
any bearing the point I was responding to, which is a direct comparison
between public sector and private sector.

And very few top-level employees of very large publicly held companies
consider themselves accountable to a very tiny elite group of wealthy
shareholders. I don't think that this is what people mean when they use the
word 'accountable' though. If you want to stretch the use of the word that
far, you could say everyone is equally accountable because they are
accountable to themselves, or religious people are more accountable because
they consider themselves accountable to God while Atheists don't. I think it's
fair to assume when someone uses the word 'accountability' in this context
they mean to society as a whole.

I would also reject the notion that companies rely on consent more so than
governments; they are dictatorships run top-down by generally a single manager
who commands his underlings. Companies and governments are enormous
bureaucratic organizations which have enormous impact on the societies in
which they operate and the people that live in them. Government has checks and
balances and voting and are required to publish information about their
operations and are open to being changed by the general public (through
voting). Companies are secret private dictatorships which do as they please
without regard for the wishes or needs or desires of the general public (only
when those wishes happen to coincide with a profit motive; a rare happy
accident) and publish nothing about their operations by design.

I think it's quite fair to make the claim about relative
transparency/accountability, that governments beat companies always;
governments are required to try, companies do not even pretend to try (in fact
the most profitable companies actively refuse to try). I think you have a very
good point about how transparent this minimal transparency is in government,
but the fact that it even exists means governments beat companies hands down
every time.

~~~
Kalium
Companies rely on the consent of employees and the consent of customers. Many
governments are not so nice about this. The dictatorships of companies are
ones that people _voluntarily_ subject themselves to. That is consent - to
maintain otherwise is dadaist absurdity.

Beyond that, how do you define "society as a whole"? Where do you draw the
line? Is Joe's Local Coffee Shack accountable to random fishermen in
Indonesia? Is WalMart? To what extent should a country that you are neither a
citizen of or a resident of be accountable to you? How is this different from
shareholders and non-shareholders?

Governments are not required to try. Many don't. Publicly traded firms pretty
universally are required to provide a degree of transparency to everyone. They
also provide greater transparency to shareholders and are very directly
accountable to shareholders... who can and have organized takeovers of
companies.

Perhaps you say "accountable" and mean "I, personally, have power over
whatever organization is convenient"?

~~~
wfo
No, companies rely on forcing obedience from their employees through the
threat to remove healthcare and livelihood. They rely on forcing compliance
from their customers by hiring a team of highly trained psychologists who
specialize in propaganda and brainwashing to try and subconsciously trick
people into purchasing your product. They rely on anticompetitive business
practices: forcing out competition, or competeting so hard that margins are so
thin for everyone that there is no choice but "the lowest cost in dollars"
which generally comes at the highest cost in social good or human rights.
You're describing some utopia where people work for a company because they
want to and have many choices of employer. This isn't the case for the vast
majority of people. Saying a company gets your consent because you continue to
work for them is like saying a rapist gets your consent because you didn't
punch him hard enough when he assaulted you. It's not dadist at all, it's
honest and practical. The alternative dishonest -- to perpetuate the myth that
draws a hard line between 'consensual' actions -- those which are forced by
our economic system -- and 'voluntary' ones like which brand of a product do I
purchase -- those which don't matter.

Society is defined exactly in the way that you know it should be. Asking
whether or 'society' for Joe's local coffee shop includes Indonesian fisherman
is simultaneously saying you understand what society is and that you refuse to
admit you know what it is. It's intentionally misunderstanding others for a
rhetorical purpose, i.e. arguing in bad faith and you know it. Cut it out.

Western democratic governments are required to try. You're right dictatorial
regimes operate more like large corporations and can do as they wish -- they
are possibly even worse because they tend to include death camps as well. So
if when I say 'government is generally more transparent than private industry'
your response is 'what about the Syrian government', well, fine, you've made
my point.

Publicly traded firms (a minority of 'industry') are "accountable" to a tiny
group of the wealthy hyper-elite in that they have to publish very specific
technical details about their accounting. That's quite a stretch.

~~~
Kalium
You refuse to define your words, claiming that the meanings are obvious and
that I'm dishonest for asking you to offer your definition. You define consent
as impossible because incentives are possible. You change your positions as
you go while simultaneously claiming you have not. Enough.

I wish you luck with your rhetorical games, but I shall not be playing them
with you any longer. Perhaps someday you'll stop and wonder why the
revolutionary change you wish for hasn't happened. If you've become wiser,
you'll realize that the answer is that the revolutionary is you.

------
Aqueous
Uber isn't a ride-sharing service - it's a ride- _hailing_ service. The only
thing that makes people want to use Uber over a Yellow Cab is that with Uber I
open an app, click "Request Uber," the app shows me where the cab is, gives an
accurate time of their arrival, and gives me information about my driver. You
want to compete with Uber? Those are fairly straight-forward features to add
to existing cab-hailing apps. Uber's technological advantage can thus be
nullified easily, leaving it only to compete on price. Plus, taxis have an
advantage because of the heavier regulation around taxis making them
(theoretically) safer.

The sooner the world's cabs companies beef up their technology infrastructure
the sooner this upheaval will stop. There will be no further privatization of
public transport assuming the taxi companies realize this soon. Oh, and cab
medallions are already privately owned.

~~~
noir_lord
We have a cab firm in my city that pushes the technology (as well as offering
incredible service compared to others) I'd use them over Uber even at a
somewhat higher price purely because I trust them in terms of safety and
vehicle maintenance more than I do Uber.

------
GuiA
The problem is that current technology is making this new model for mass
transit realistic. When everyone has a cellphone, and we can have tons of
sensors on vehicles that communicate in real time (and might eventually be
self driving), the old model for transit (fixed routes, pickups at fixed
times, etc.) doesn't make sense anymore.

Many socially disadvantaged people would especially benefit from such a modern
form of public transportation: if a single mom working a minimum wage job can
go to her workplace in 20 minutes rather than 1h30 for the same price, her
quality of life would dramatically improve.

If you subscribe to the view that the government should provide a set of basic
services to all of its population (eg basic food, shelter, education,
healthcare, transportation), then what should really happen is that the local
public transportation agencies (SFMTA, NYMTA, etc.) should be the ones
experimenting with new models and offering incrementally better services to
citizens as technology evolves.

But that's not how it works, because these agencies are bloated, ineffective,
and the complete opposite of innovative. In countries where public
transportation is in a better shape (e.g. a lot of western european countries)
and the government is more left leaning (ie has no qualms making Uber
illegal), services like Uber are a bit slower to reach the mass they are in
the US, but it's still going to happen in the long term.

We can't have it both ways. Either we go full capitalist, and in this case
privatized public transit the Uber way seems inevitable in the long term,
creating a 2 tiered public transit system: one privatized that works really
well for the higher social classes, and the regular public transit system that
will further languish and deteriorate as only poorer people use it (an outcome
which I personally hate and find absolutely dystopian). Or we need to figure
out a way for local governments to provide those basic services to their
citizens, growing and changing them as the technology matures. That's much
more appealing, but I'm not quite sure how to get there in a way that benefits
all citizens equally.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _if a single mom working a minimum wage job can go to her workplace in 20
> minutes rather than 1h30 for the same price, her quality of life would
> dramatically improve._

That's a big honkin' if. Here in New York, you can get an unlimited metrocard
for $116 a month; that's probably a week's worth of Uber rides.

Mom's not going to benefit much from that 20 minute ride if she still has to
get up an hour earlier and work for two more hours to pay for Uber.

> _We can 't have it both ways. Either we go full capitalist_

Also, this is a problem. If we go full capitalist and kill all government
public transit, we end up having ONLY the upper classes use transit. There
will be no reason to lower rates, there will be no subsidies. Is Uber going to
build me a train to get me across town for $2.25? Absolutely not.

A city can afford to lose money on a public transit system because it gains
that money back in having a tax base and an economy that's fueled by the
people who use it. A private transit company has absolutely no reason to lose
money per ride, except in the very beginning when they're trying to establish
a user base. After that, their interest in the local economy is not as high as
the municipal government's.

~~~
djrogers
> Mom's not going to benefit much from that 20 minute ride if she still has to
> get up an hour earlier and work for two more hours to pay for Uber

If she's saving over an hour on each end of her shift, she won't have to get
up earlier. Also keep in mind she's probably paying a good chunk of her wage
on daycare, so cutting 2 hrs off that would help a lot too.

Heck, just having an extra 2.3 hours a day to spend with your kid is way more
valuable than anything else I could think of...

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _If she 's saving over an hour on each end of her shift, she won't have to
> get up earlier._

But she will be having to pay a _lot_ more to get to work. Which means she'll
have to work more. Which means she'll have to get there earlier, or leave
later. Which means that all the time she saved by not taking the bus is now
spent at work.

And sure, 2.3 hours with your kids is great. But making sure your kids can
have dinner is better.

------
Chevalier
Oh for christ's sake. I am a major proponent of public transit and walkable
cities. Anyone who shares my support should be cheering wildly at Uber's
expansion. Uber is the greatest, and perhaps the only, threat that we've ever
had to American car ownership.

With Uber, those occasional necessary car trips can be contracted out cheaply
and easily. When you aren't FORCED to own a car to survive, many people simply
won't buy one. The fewer people that own cars, the more heavily transit and
bicycles will be used for daily trips. Ride-sharing is perhaps the most
important blow ever struck against American car dependency.

~~~
jhspaybar
To this point, I am a car guy, I was a car salesman for many years, and always
had a nice car. A few years ago when I moved to Seattle, I decided to take a
chance on public transit and Uber and decided to only have a single car for my
family of four. It worked out! I actually can't stand to even drive anymore,
and when my wife and I go out we try to avoid driving ourselves whenever
possible. We still need the vehicle for long trips and for things like going
to home depot, but it gets driven far less. I've also found myself taking the
bus to destinations I normally wouldn't because the bus stop is a few miles
from where I want to be, knowing that when I arrive I can get an Uber for the
last little leg of the trip.

------
rayiner
There is theoretically a public bus in Wilmington for $1 that makes a frequent
trip past where my wife works (in the heart of the CBD) to the Amtrak station
(about a mile and change away). Except it's never on time (in a small city
with no traffic to speak of), and drivers decide to just randomly end their
trips early and stop picking up passengers.

Now that Uber is available in Wilmington, my wife has started using it
heavily. That's great for her, not so great for all the low income people who
actually need to use the service. And ultimately it's not Uber's fault that
they're offering an alternative to the dysfunctional public transit system.
The municipal government is supposed to be the ones offering poor people a
safe and convenient alternative to walking through downtown Wilmington at
night, and they fail at their job miserably.

------
hiou
_> It is telling though that Constine notes that one of Uber’s Smart Routes
runs “up Fillmore St. from Haight St. to Bay St. in the Marina, which the Bay
Area’s BART service doesn’t cover,” when the route is directly covered by the
SF MUNI 22 bus, which runs every eight minutes according to Google Maps_

again: _> every eight minutes_ and only costs $2.25

If only we could remove the stigma an bigotry associated with riding the bus,
so many issues with public transit would be cured.

~~~
umanwizard
I think this stigma and bigotry is an SF Bay Area thing. Or at any rate, I
have never seen it here in Seattle. Plenty of well-off Amazon employees on the
bus every morning.

I wonder if it has to do with the Bay Area being so spread out and car-
centric, that only quite lower-class people don't have cars. Just a hypothesis
from an outsider.

~~~
PaulHoule
This stigma is why General Motors invented the school bus.

Whatever you are driven around in as a kid you will hate when you grow up. The
bad smells, bullying, getting puked on and feeling of being an effect rather
than a cause that you get from riding the school bus will translate to you
hating busses as an adult and wanting to get your own private car just as soon
as you can.

Nobody ever talks about Generation X, but one thing about us is that we grew
up in minivans so that the thought of driving a minivan is like putting your
hand in a toilet.

------
hoopd
The price vs. users graph[0] is hopelessly wrong, dangerously wrong even. So
wrong I can't take anything the author says about economics or markets
seriously at all. I think they're trying to make the argument that Uber will
achieve economies of scale but that would be cost vs. users, not price. Price
and cost are different things.

The graph also implicitly makes the assumption that there are an infinite
number of users and Uber has competitors. In reality as the number of users
increases Uber looks more and more like a monopoly and the price approaches
whatever maximizes Uber's profits as opposed to "free". The bigger Uber gets
the more they become the government they're fighting against.

In a healthy free market price will approach marginal cost, but Uber isn't
fighting for a healthy free market. It's the last thing they want.

> While zero car ownership will undoubtedly and unremittingly be a net social
> good—can’t wait until driving is something one does for fun, ban cars!

Can't tell if the author is for or against regulation.

[0] - [http://cdn.theawl.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/08/price.jpg](http://cdn.theawl.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/08/price.jpg)

------
mc32
For me the main problem with infrastructure heavy mass transit, which the
author seems to prefer, is that the horizons are in multiple decades. I've
forever been frustrated by mass transit going not where they are needed.

In addition, in the SF south bay, mass transit infrastructure suffers from a
chicken and egg problem. Density isn't high enough to support transit, so it
would be unwise to waste tax revenue in elephants, but without the build-up,
the environ for mass transit isn't stoked.

Personally, I don't care who comes up with a financially viable solution,
public or private. Having seen what public delivers, I'm optimistic private
can compete and deliver something meaningful in under three decades of
studies, agreements, bonds issuing, lawsuits, etc. Overseas, private mass
transit delivers at least on par with public mass transit. Moreover, the NYC
subway system was borne from originally private systems.

I guess autonomous vehicles like uber's are likely to win out over the ideas
by united technologies' "people movers". Still unsurprising that in the end
the ideas to get to efficient mass transit tend to merge.

------
ilaksh
Same as Amazon, Google, Github. Basically technology monopolies, or
technopolies as I like to call them. They have become so powerful that they
are the de facto government in certain areas. Thrn they get in bed with the
government and its hard to say where one stops and the next begins.

The endgame is for America to become the next China.

------
alwaysdoit
> _One of the more subtle underlying issues with the rise of Uber is the
> company’s slow siphoning of the political will to fix existing—or build
> new—public transit infrastructure in major cities._

I don't think this is really true, at least in the short run. Uber fills the
gaps which previously prevented me from completely getting rid of my car. Now
that I'm completely car free, I rely on public transportation for trips that
are well supported by our infrastructure and use Uber for trips that aren't,
so I care a lot about our public transportation infrastructure, and usually
support improvements, unless they are very poorly budgeted or misguided.

------
oneJob
So, I guess Hacker News is focused more on the tech than the political, but,
still, I'm kinda taken aback by the comments here. The Uber "endgame" is a
super-small fish in the bigger ocean called "neoliberalism". It's not just a
tech issue, but technology does accelerate the issue.

It's a very deep concept, and fairly complex. It includes related disciplines
such as Neoliberal Jurisprudence. Before anyone goes all "you don't know what
you're talking about" on me, I concede I'm no expert. It's a very deep
concept, after all. My exposure to the issue is largely via my wife and others
in her cohort, studying at one of the US's top political theory grad programs.
They are heavily studying/working on neoliberalism, taking it very seriously.

It's worth educating one's self about it. Both in general, and as an IT/Tech
professional. It's already a thing, most people just aren't aware of it yet.

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2011....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2011.01019.x/abstract)
[http://inthesetimes.com/article/17533/how_to_sell_off_a_city](http://inthesetimes.com/article/17533/how_to_sell_off_a_city)
[http://www.popmatters.com/column/194010-neoliberalism-is-
cha...](http://www.popmatters.com/column/194010-neoliberalism-is-changing-our-
world-without-our-even-noticing/)

------
PhasmaFelis
So they've invented low-capacity, very expensive buses?

~~~
peyton
That "fire" drivers very quickly in response to passenger feedback and ban
passengers in response to driver feedback. Doing so solves a significant
subset of the problems with public transit.

~~~
macspoofing
>Doing so solves a significant subset of the problems with public trans

'Bad' passengers and 'bad' drivers are a significant problem with public
transit? Huh?

~~~
krakensden
I don't know about drivers, but if you've ever shared space with someone going
through cocaine psychosis, you'll believe in bad passengers.

------
omouse
Uh no, the end game is autonomous logistics; getting someone or something from
point A to point B. More automation is good, we're sorely lacking in
automation.

The real issue is distribution of profits. If the money gained stays at the
top levels and doesn't move around much, you get stagnation and a poorer
standard of living.

~~~
adventured
If a small group of people gets rich off of Uber's solution (eg via stock),
while everyone else gets to benefit from the drastic improvement in the taxi
or transport system - it's everyone else that is getting the extreme majority
of the benefit, as with nearly all similar scenarios.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin have given me an extraordinary benefit to my life.
I've maybe given them a few dollars over the years. It's clear who got the
most out of that trade. They got $30 billion total (much of which will no
doubt go to charity), the world got how much in benefit from what their search
engine can do and how well it can do it? The same will plausibly be true with
Uber in concept.

~~~
gress
You make it sound as though Larry and Sergey personally created all the
content on the internet that you consume.

~~~
maxwelljoslyn
I think adventured was referring to the value created by Google search, in
itself, being so good at what it does - and not to the actual contents of its
results.

~~~
gress
And I am suggesting that the value created is much lower than the value
captured.

------
myth_buster
I think the documentary _Taken for a ride(1996)_ [0][1] which showed up

on /r/Documentaries [2] is perhaps relevant to this discussion.

[0]
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0236785/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0236785/)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-I8GDklsN4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-I8GDklsN4)

[2]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/3iflv6/taken...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/3iflv6/taken_for_a_ride_1996_how_general_motors_bought/traffic)

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dba7dba
Remember UK rail system. Used to be publicly owned, privatized and now a
disaster.

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taigeair
Jamaica has had this system for years. You stand next to the street and point
if you want to go up or down, and you get a ride for $1. It's pretty cool. 7
people in one car at times.

~~~
umanwizard
Lebanon has a similar thing. Stand by the highway, get in the next private
bus/van that comes by, pay the driver $1-$2 when you get off at your
destination. You can go anywhere in the country for $2; it's amazing.

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fredkbloggs
The author writes "One of the more subtle underlying issues with the rise of
Uber is the company’s slow siphoning of the political will to fix existing—or
build new—public transit infrastructure in major cities."

This seems quite logical, and is a common argument that's been tossed around
for a while now, previously in reference to employer-funded transportation for
employees (popularly, "the Google bus", though there are many). The only
problem is that it's deliberately ignorant of the past. Since the author
mentions SF Muni by name, we should recognize that Muni has been a total
disaster since at least the 1970s. If there has ever been political will to
improve it, it's been thwarted. The agency has never met any of its legally
mandated service requirements, despite numerous (successful) ballot measures
throwing money at the problem and setting policies giving it a high ("the
highest", per Prop A) priority. So it's pretty difficult to pin the blame for
that on something that's existed for only a few years.

It's no secret that I have no love for Uber, or that I consider it just
another taxi service that should be regulated as such (which doesn't
necessarily mean it should be regulated the way taxi providers are _today_ ).
But claims that Muni's failure are Uber's fault are simply laughable. Muni was
a worthless pile of garbage before Uber's founders were born, and it wasn't on
an improving trajectory that Uber came along and trashed, either.

The other angle, which the author did not explore, is that private mass
transit is very common and popular, as it once was in the US, in many of the
world's poorer countries. It's ubiquitous in Asia and Latin America, and while
it won't win any awards for speed or comfort, it is cheap, effective, and
capable of operating profitably without direct subsidies. This seems at odds
with the author's lament that those left to suffer the indignity of public
transit in the US are those with no other choice. Clearly that is a product of
a political system that champions public funding of mass transit, not some
inevitable outcome.

There are many ways to make transit (public or private) better. I don't
believe Uber is one of them, but nothing the SFMTA has done suggests that it's
part of the solution, either. And it's been failing without Uber's help.

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tvanantwerp
I live in DC. Our public transit is regularly late or broken, and is on fire
often enough that people feel the need to check before their morning commute
[1]. If the future of public transit is Uber, then I can't wait.

[1] [http://www.ismetroonfire.com/](http://www.ismetroonfire.com/)

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amyjess
Given how shitty public transit is here (and has been for decades) and how
good Lyft is, this is an endgame I welcome.

Ever since I started using Lyft, I stopped taking the local public transit
(except on certain special routes, like going straight downtown when I'm near
a train station) because it's _better_.

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placeybordeaux
This sounds a bit like a scare piece given that dollar vans [1] already exist,
they just aren't smart phone enabled.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_van](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_van)

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ThomPete
Honestly that sounds more like spin than anything. They are working on self
driving cars which is going to be a much more profitable business than
privatizes public transit.

I believe this is probably more likely to be an attempt to change public
perception.

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jerf
Take ideology off the hook for a moment, and if you are a supporter of lots of
government support for mass transit, ask yourself, do you _really_ want
government agencies to engage in extremely, _extremely_ speculative
development [1] of millions of dollar's worth of software, radical new ways of
organizing mass transit, and experimenting with a brand new way of providing
services that have never been seriously tried before, and by all rational
measures, at the outset of the project the most likely outcome can only
rationally be considered _failure_?

Honestly, if this wasn't an ideologically-loaded "private industry vs.
government" issue and we were all wearing our rational thought hats instead of
our politics hats, we would _vigorously condemn_ any mass transit authority
that prioritized such a risky venture at the risk of dropping actual services
to poor people! That's not their job.

This isn't a private vs. public story. Let the private industry prove out the
model at their own risk and their own expense. Let them recoup the expense and
pocket some profit for the risk at the expense of those who can afford the
service. (The poor are not actually _hurt_ by not having access to Uber,
anymore than they were hurt by not having access to it 10 years ago.) Let the
government come in behind and work on providing services based on the risks
taken and the lessons learned. Perhaps even by contracting out to Uber, or
perhaps more likely, a yet-to-be-founded mass-transit-focused competitor, when
the model has been derisked enough that the poor aren't at high risk of being
boned by the vagueries and vissitudes of Silicon Valley unicorns.

This would hold true even if all the city governments were models of
efficiency, and all had highly trained and skillful staffs of programmers on
staff who could easily write all this code. But come now, even you promoters
of government, let's all be honest with each other, this is not the case. And,
again, that's not least because it would be unacceptable for a mass transit
authority to hire all that talent when it should be using money to _provide
service_.

Government can't be good at everything, because there are something things
that it can only be good at _at the expense of_ other things it is supposed to
be doing instead. Wildly risky experimentation certainly sounds like a good
candidate for that category to me.

[1]: By contrast, to be clear, I am fully behind _incremental_ advancement,
exploration, and development by governments. It routinely happens and it
should. But in general, it is not their job to do moon shots with social
programs. (Note the "moon shot" and "the bomb" and all the other really
_experimental_ stuff that you might want to name are not _social programs_. A
line of military research coming up dry does not directly harm the poor.
(Especially under progressive taxation where "the poor" pay either very little
or negative taxes in the US, so you can't even really complain about their tax
load.))

~~~
wfo
I want to agree with you but unfortunately the system you're proposing isn't
really feasible.

The poor actually are hurt by not having access to Uber as it becomes more and
more popular and ubiquitous. We all are in fact. It's a stratification of
society; there's one transportation scheme for the rich, Uber, and one
transportation scheme for the poor, government-funded mass transit. And mass
transit is barely funded in the United States as is. Once the rich have
alternatives how long do you think it will take for people to whine "why
should I pay taxes for a service I don't use? I can afford Uber I shouldn't
have to pay for busses for poor people". Three months? Six? Maybe a year? If
people use Muni every day they're willing to support it. If not, well... Then
the wealthy with all of the political clout will push to defund our
'inefficient' public transit and it will become unusable.

I think that it would be really nice to let private industry test things like
this, but their tests are completely worthless from the perspective of
providing actual mass transportation. They will find ways to take wealthy
affluent people from places where wealthy affluent people live to places where
wealthy affluent people work. The government isn't allowed to cater only to
the rich in the pursuit of profits so unfortunately the results of the
experiment will always say: hello government, if you stop taking care of those
pesky poor and disabled and old citizens, you could have a very efficient
system and reap great profits. Too bad you aren't legally allowed to throw
people under the bus.

~~~
jerf
"I want to agree with you but unfortunately the system you're proposing isn't
really feasible."

It's the system we actually have.

I suppose that isn't proof of "feasibility", because people's definitions
vary.

"The poor actually are hurt by not having access to Uber as it becomes more
and more popular and ubiquitous. We all are in fact. It's a stratification of
society; there's one transportation scheme for the rich, Uber, and one
transportation scheme for the poor, government-funded mass transit."

If you want to define "harm" as "one day, a new thing pops up, and only the
rich have access to it because it's very expensive, and now the poor are more
harmed than they were yesterday because there's a thing they don't have access
to that didn't exist yesterday", that's your decision. It is consistent and
perhaps not wrong.

But I don't care much about that sort of "harm". You've defined yourself up a
definition of harm that can _never be fixed, by definition_. There is no way
in theory or in fact to move things _instantly_ from brand new and expensive
to "affordable to provide to the poor for free or high subsidization". And
problems that don't admit of solutions, even in theory, aren't ones you should
spend a lot of time worrying about.[1]

Far more interesting is the question of how to harness what has been created
to help the poor. And there _will_ be a time delay. It can't be helped, only
at most minimized, and economics being what they are, you can blow a lot of
money that really ought to be helping people _now_ trying too hard to push
that date forward beyond what it naturally "wants" to do.

If that reality bothers you... well, good, you're human. But that doesn't mean
you can change it. Things like this can _only_ start at the wealthy end of
society and flow down. Deny it to the wealthy in a fit of pique and you only
create a situation where the poor don't get it either! If we accept that the
poor are harmed by not getting these sorts of services we are ethically
constrained to consider that a bad choice.

[1]: "But if people just accept this, it'll be true!" Tell you what, you
create a concrete solution where innovations can generally be instantly
introduced to the entire world and I'll happily, gleefully, joyfully recant.
In the meantime, this is the world. The rare examples of successful rebellion
against some small part of reality puts a heavy survivors bias on our view of
that sort of struggle; in general, this sort of reality is not fixed by
wishing really hard it wasn't true.

~~~
wfo
Interesting points. I think the harm that's being caused is not in the
existence of a new service, but in the transition to a system where our
resources are split: the notion that funding dedicated to general
transportation is a zero-sum game and pushing resources towards a private
solutions that helps only the wealthy takes away resources from the public,
universal service -- hurting them.

It's worth noting, also, that the public subsidizes services like Uber
especially when it gets to the point where private cars are replacing busses
and larger public transit: cars on the road generate risk of accidents and
injury, pollute, generate wear and tear on the road and transportation system,
generate traffic which harms everyone, etc. Having the poor subsidize a
private service for the rich so they don't have to ride alongside the riff-
raff on a bus is pretty unpalatable.

We don't have to take away resources from public universal solutions and
transition them over the private, wealthy-only solutions. So far we haven't,
and it's certainly possible that we won't, and this private system will work
concurrently alongside the public one in happy concert. I am just concerned
that this will not happen.

And I'm inclined to agree that the time-delay is necessary, but I'm not so
sure about your assumption that the effects of this transition will eventually
"trickle down" to the poor at all.

I'll concede to your point that a two-tiered system doesn't necessarily cause
harm to the poor just through its existence; you're right and your point is
very well argued. But the remainder I think remains a valid concern.

------
curiousjorge
fat chance in hell. as soon as uber makes money by raising prices, paying
drivers less or both, many others will jump in, quickly destroying the returns
on investment.

I see uber as a giant bulldozer that is paving the way for future competitors.
Once they realize there's no way to keep people locked in unless they form a
cartel like the traditional taxi industry, investors will panick.

An Uber cartel is the least possible outcome because they do not own the
roads, the car, the people. Do I ride the bike to work or hitch a ride? Do I
use Uber or just take a taxi that's parked right across my building? Do I use
Lyft or Uber if Lyft is offering cheaper ride? Is there any noticeable
difference or do I even care, I just want to go from A to B and pay the least
amount of money.

This is the endgame for Uber: enable future competitors to reap the returns on
it's investment because they are focused on monopoly in an industry that won't
make it possible.

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dajohnson89
With very few exceptions, public transit in America sucks. In the cases where
public transit is run by a private company (usually contracted out by the
local government), it is much better. I for one welcome private involvement.

~~~
dangerlibrary
[Citation needed]

~~~
kaonashi
I think OP lives in a post-war town and is extrapolating anecdata.

~~~
dajohnson89
Baltimore ;-)

