
An Unholy Alliance Against Public Transit - JaimeThompson
https://jacobinmag.com/2019/08/uber-koch-brothers-david-charles-rideshare-public-transit/
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tootie
There's no evidence in this article or the cited articles that Uber/Lyft are
seeking to subvert public transportation or are working with the Koch
organization. It says they are partnering with public agencies to supplement
mass transit. This might be part of a bigger scheme, but there's no evidence
presented that they are lobby against public transit at all.

~~~
cfqycwz
The article mentions that Uber hope to replace public transit miles, and
recognize it as profitable to do so. There's a link to a Times article that
elaborates on this claim. It is true that Uber on occasion enter into sort of
last-mile "partnerships" with transit agencies, but we should all recognize
how such a strategy can be a wedge for privatization-a sort of public service
embrace-extend-extinguish.

There is no conspiracy or collusion with the Kochs alleged in this article.
One tidy aspect of Marxist politics (Jacobin is a socialist magazine) is that
it recognizes that wealthy people's actions aren't arranged through some grand
and unlikely conspiracy, but rather by a shared material interest that causes
them to tend to desire and work toward similar things. Thus the note that,
though Uber and the Kochs have many superficial aesthetic differences,
including preference of political party, they appear to often work toward the
same political ends anyway.

~~~
tootie
Probably shouldn't put the word "Alliance" in the headline. This is just a
case of coincident incentives. And yet still, there is no evidence Lyft or
Uber are actually taking any steps to undermine public transit even if it is a
possible outcome.

~~~
esailija
> And yet still, there is no evidence Lyft or Uber are actually taking any
> steps to undermine public transit even if it is a possible outcome.

Nobody said anything about Lyft. Uber _itself_ said that they aim to replace
public transit. I really don't understand why you would go to such lengths to
make up bullshit.

~~~
tootie
The point of the article is that Uber is working with the Kochs to lobby
against public transport. That is a lie. Uber are not lobbying. They see
public transit consumers as a big market that they can take a piece of. They
are currently using only supplementary strategy (ride back and forth to train
station). Eventually, they may compete directly. If they offer a better
service than mass transit and it drains riders, great. Job well done. Until
they actually do something underhanded to achieve that, there's no story here.

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Simulacra
IT has baffled me why government continues to stand in the way of private mass
transit. Sydney opened its system up to private lines and it has flourished,
whereas the DC Metro system is just one more wreck from total collapse.

~~~
munk-a
Governments should be heavily subsidizing public transit, it provides
extremely good benefits to city growth, health and the environment.

I don't personally object to private mass transit, but it can't compete with a
system that can be afforded to take a loss year after year unless:

1\. The privatized portions are the high profit portions of the lines - so
essentially the public is subsidizing these private companies by paying for
the last mile coverage without the marginally profitable backbone.

2\. Privatized transit companies use regulatory capture to hamstring public
transit (i.e. Comcast and municipal internet)

3\. The public company is so unbearably inefficient that a private company can
make a profit through direct competition - as stereotypical as it is to think
of government organizations as being poorly run this still usually doesn't
leave enough of a gap between public funding and corruption to find a
profitable region that the public company can't match.

So, I'm fine with private mass transit so long as the companies go bankrupt,
in any other case I would suspect that some pretty massive corruption is
happening either within the public corporation or of the private one
influencing the government.

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Havoc
Hugely undesirable.

Competition is good for the consumer. And public transport is a competitor in
a way

~~~
einpoklum
1\. People are not just consumers. 2\. Competition is not necessarily good, it
has a lot of overhead. This is especially true when relevant resources are
limited/scarce - e.g. land in an urban area. 3\. Commercial companies often
either form cartels or combine into monopolies, or just divvy up the market.
It makes business sense - much more than competing.

------
xyzzyz
_The company continues to heavily subsidize per-ride costs to inflate its
value to investors and undercut existing options, despite bleeding billions of
dollars. “Uber is effectively a middleman for a money transfer from venture-
capital (VC) firms to consumers,” writes James P. Sutton in National Review.
Simply put, effectively supplanting the taxi industry wasn’t enough: Uber
plans on undercutting public transit to finally turn a profit._

If Uber can undercut public transit, I'll be impressed. Fares tend to cover
30-40% of operational costs of public transit, and if you include capital
costs, it will be even less. With the amounts of subsidies public transit gets
from the taxpayer, even the venture capitalists can hardly compete.

~~~
ksdale
My grandfather always tells a cheesy joke about a donut shop owner who, when
it is pointed out that he loses money on every donut responds, "But I'll make
it up on volume."

The article makes that passage sound sinister, but how will they ever make
money? What are the chances that every other transportation option dies before
Uber runs out of money and then literally no one decides to create other
transportation options when prices start to go back up?

~~~
xyzzyz
_What are the chances that every other transportation option dies before Uber
runs out of money and then literally no one decides to create other
transportation options when prices start to go back up?_

I don't understand the scenario you're proposing. The government can always
decide to run public transportation. They are not constrained by supply and
demand, as they can simply cover the cost from the taxes, like they do right
now. If public transit was expected to pay for itself, you'd pay $15 for a bus
ride. Because of this, Uber's entry to the market doesn't make a huge
difference: it's already wildly unprofitable to run public transit, and VC
money doesn't make it worse, because Uber even with VC subsidies is much more
expensive than public transit with taxpayer subsidies.

~~~
munk-a
Public transit also shouldn't be required to turn a profit as it's something
that's been demonstrated to provide clear societal benefits. The loss that
public transit suffers is helping to subsidize all sorts of local businesses.

~~~
xyzzyz
These "societal benefits", while surely exist (e.g. improved access for poor
or elderly, reduced congestion), are far from clear. I don't think anyone has
ever considered any estimate of these when deciding whether to run public
transit or not. We run public transit because we feel like it, not because of
some cost-benefit analysis.

