
Ask HN: Would a cooperative ride hailing model offer a better future? - bitrevolution
It sits uneasy with me that the future of humanity is to have large swathes of the population functioning as stimmed up zombies barely making ends meet, while Silicon Valley floats what is essentially an on-demand marketplace at meaningless paper valuations.<p>What is the reason ride hailing apps could not adopt a cooperative driver-owned model? Allegedly, Uber subsidises each trip to the tune of 40%. I imagine this added cost is broadly Uber Operations and tech infrastructure. Without any evidence or analysis, I would guess this was largely necessary to prove the model, fight regulatory barriers, incentivise riders, customer service, reference checking, etc. In fact, I would be interested in a postcard estimate on costs involved for simply keeping the lights on.<p>With the legwork largely complete, and assuming such a service is relatively straightforward to replicate technically, what efficiency does Uber as an entity provde in the marketplace? Could we not evolve to a driver-owned model which employs the necessary technical infrastructure (perhaps opensource or state-owned even) to stay operational, rather than some unicorn chasing self driving fantasy?
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narag
_What is the reason ride hailing apps could not adopt a cooperative driver-
owned model?_

That's what taxis are, at least in Spain. Yes there are license renters that
hoard many licenses, but most are individuals, that sometimes associate to
share services like call centers or apps.

Someone here told me time ago that the service is not straightforward to
replicate technically at all.

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bitrevolution
I believe the medallion/license models is no longer viable and largely a
beuraucratic, obsolete, monopolistic form of rent seeking. And Uber has
largely proven this.

I am more interested in the technical and financial feasibility of replicating
an employee owned ondemand marketplace such as Uber and more generally any
service that provides limited efficiency to the end user at an unreasonably
high cost to the supplier.

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narag
I deleted a previous response, now I understand better what you meant.

In my humble opinion, it doesn't work. Cooperatives tend to bureaucratic,
obsolete, monopolistic forms of rent seeking and then comes some uber and eat
them. But that's just like my opinion, really.

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mimixco
What part would be driver-owned? The elephant in the room here is that the
economy of scale from a taxi company comes from owning and maintaining a fleet
of cars at a lower cost than a single vehicle owner would pay.

If "cooperative" drivers own their own cars, that goes out the window. If they
have to be business partners to be "cooperative," that opens a whole can of
worms about whom you want to be in business with and how you would make
company decisions.

The Uber model is nuts; I agree with you there. But, at the end of the day,
there wasn't anything wrong with the 100 year old taxi model to begin with.

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bitrevolution
>> What part would be driver-owned?

To be clear, I don't propose changes in vehicle leasing/ownership. Indeed,
there are economies of scale to be exploited in fleet ownership and that could
be ripe for disruption as well. Having spoken to a few Uber drivers I believe
they manage their own leasing and insurance expenses. For now, I simply mean
the technical infrastructure which allows Uber as the concept of a real-time
on demand marketplace to exist and operate.

By no means is this limited to Uber only, but in general every new Uber for X
type service that pops up.

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mimixco
Uber spends far more on app development than any taxi company ever spent in
radio dispatch. There's no economy there.

Uber is a great example of a company that _sounds great_ but, in practice, has
no economies to offer.

It's worth pointing out here that all other "We're the Uber of _n._ " ideas
have failed miserably.

~~~
bitrevolution
>> Uber spends far more on app development than any taxi company ever spent in
radio dispatch.

I'm just not sure what there is to continually develop? Thinking of recent new
features... UberPool, Multi-Destination Trips? Fine tune the surge algorithm?
Some data science insight?

[http://www.businessofapps.com/data/uber-
statistics/](http://www.businessofapps.com/data/uber-statistics/)

According to this there's 3.9 million drivers world wide. As I understand it
Uber takes 25% per fare.

Hypothetically, even with each driver contributing a nominal $1 per day as an
"app license" you would amass a reasonable costbase which easily offsets the
25% commission per fare.

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mimixco
I don't understand it, either, but somehow they blew through $740 _million_ on
this last year. It seems ridiculous and only underscores my argument that they
aren't really a tech company. If I pitched needing $740 million to create a
taxi dispatch app, I'd be laughed out of the room.

Uber survives on a never-ending series of fantasies: they'll "disrupt" travel.
They'll disrupt logistics. They'll have self-driving cars. They'll have flying
taxis! No, they won't do any of these things. But what will happen (and
already has) is that the founders and their friends will become obscenely
wealthy while drivers have to sleep in their cars.

~~~
naveen99
Also disrupt ghost kitchens:
[https://www.cloudkitchens.com/](https://www.cloudkitchens.com/)

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naveen99
You could start a cooperative ghost restaurant business powered by Uber eats:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_restaurant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_restaurant)

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naveen99
I wonder why Uber pool expansion to more cities is so slow.

