
The End of the Taxi Era - jseliger
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2016/01/yellow_cab_in_san_francisco_is_just_the_beginning_uber_s_war_on_cabs_is.single.html
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gaius
When Uber is forced to recognize its employees as employees, it's game over
for their business model. That is the elephant in the corner of the room.

~~~
jacquesm
The weird thing about the whole Uber affair is that as long as the drivers
can't set their own prices that's a very strong piece of evidence that they
are not independent operators, whereas that very same fact about Uber setting
the prices is the biggest bulwark against a race to the bottom, which is very
much to the advantage of the drivers.

Sooner or later Uber will have to let this go to enhance their position that
drivers are independent and then suddenly Uber won't be nearly as interesting
to work with/for and the quality will plunge.

~~~
kelseydh
Uber's biggest risk will come from competitors or co-ops eating into their
20%-25% profit margins.

There are a lot of regions that like the concept of ride sharing, but don't
like how an American silicon valley company is capturing wealth locally and
sending it to Silicon Valley.

That's why I'm convinced we will soon see efforts to make co-op versions of
Uber that copy its technology, but return 95%-99% of the money in each
transaction back to the driver.

~~~
rahimnathwani
"There are a lot of regions that like the concept of ride sharing, but don't
like how an American silicon valley company is capturing wealth locally and
sending it to Silicon Valley."

I live in China, and enjoy cheap rides with Uber. I'm pretty sure the money is
flowing the other way, and investors are subsidising local drivers and riders.

~~~
hiharryhere
"I live in China, and enjoy cheap rides with Uber. I'm pretty sure the money
is flowing the other way, and investors are subsidising local drivers and
riders."

For now. When the local market is won then the taps reverse and the money will
flow the other way.

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robotcookies
I think they'll both survive (uber types and taxis). They fill different
needs. When I'm at an airport, I really don't want to have to search the crowd
of cars for my particular Uber driver - I just want to hop in a cab. When I'm
home and need to get to the airport, I like to use Uber to get there because
they reliably show up.

Of course taxis are decreasing in numbers because they've been trying to fill
both roles. But there will always be a demand for hailing a car in dense
cities. No reason why we can't have both.

~~~
cballard
Getting to the airport is actually the one time that I still use a local car
service, because you can actually _schedule_ them. I can say that I want a car
to JFK at 5am tomorrow, and they will reliably be outside my door.

You can't schedule an Uber, and just hoping that one will be available at the
time I need one (or else I miss my flight) is scary.

~~~
ghaff
Scheduled car services are a pretty different business from Uber. When I
schedule a ride to the airport, I'm paying a premium to have a highly reliable
on-time pickup. And, coming home, I'm paying for a highly reliable pickup
where I expect my service to do their darndest to work around flight and
flight schedule changes. (There's also basically no Uber out where I live.)

~~~
cballard
The car service is actually cheaper than Uber for me - I don't do it on the
way back because there's reliably 100 Ubers hovering around JFK.

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danepowell
There's a certain sense of schadenfreude and cosmic justice knowing that
Yellow Cab probably could have saved itself by pivoting their business model
years ago like DeSoto did. Instead they tried to fight change with
legislation, and this is their reward.

Having said that, I do worry about this contributing to Uber's growing
monopoly...

~~~
webXL
How is it a monopoly? There's Lyft and if anything, we see how easy it was for
technology to inflict serious harm to these publicly protected cartels.
Incumbants will have to innovate or perish.

~~~
danepowell
Eh... I suppose Lyft is technically a competitor, but at an order of magnitude
less marketshare, it might as well be non-existent.

[http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/05/24/lyft-vs-
ube...](http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/05/24/lyft-vs-uber-just-
how-dominant-is-uber-ridesharing.aspx)

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whatnotests
> It’s old news by now that taxis are struggling to compete...

Er...not competing at all.

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jakeogh
Unless you want to pay cash.

------
SFjulie1
Once upon time in a far away country, workers were slaves or serves. Rich were
getting richer, poor poorer because a very authoritative stupid king thought
that colonizing countries that did not belong to him was a good idea. So the
country indebted itself (notably to bribe the enemies and build fortifications
that were over-engineered and would be delivered 150 years to late).

The riches refused to pay the taxes, especially the church that would have 10%
of everything for relieving the poors ... ecclesiastics.

Workers were owned by life long renting contract by which they would belong to
their bosses.

Then a revolution happened.. asking for fiscal equity, that given the
obstruction after month of status quo and a famine due to something weired in
the weather made people change the system.

Slavery disappeared syndication were prohibited, workers wishing to work less
than 12/7 wished to make a point and made a demonstration. They took refuge in
a church and Napoleon had them shot. A book to follow the movement of the
workers was created to control them. "The identity papers". Napoleon was the
friend of the bankers he created the fed bedore the fed. A private bank used
as a way to control the public money.

Then, capitalism got wild. Kids were working, the contracts stipulating and
hour worked was an hour paid stopped to be respected. Security conditions were
not respected especially in masonry. But it was no problem, companies not only
were not paying they were not liable legally neither for harms nor financial.
And the army would shoot the vehement workers.

Blood was spilled. A lot of it. In mines, in textile industry ....

Masons proudly broke the noses of their bosses refusing to pay for the death
resulting in their work. Social security appeared at first as an arson. Masons
were proud stupid people not caring about the law and pretty well organized.

A company noticed diminishing returns after 40hours/week, 12h/day so they
tried to make more money. But, other companies were not agreeing.

WWI happens. In another country far away (UK) strategist discover fire arms
kills less than explosive and explosives with tired workers persons tends to
kill the wrong soldiers. UK as a country at war does everything; producing,
healing, fighting. They force the companies to respect working norms because
accidents and defects don't worth the costs. A discovery is made: human can
suffer from fatigue.

WWII happens, in France wealthy people like the nazi regim and the idea of
suppressing unions. Weirdly enough the army have problem fighting because of
weird orders. The country higher instances collaborate and not a name of
wealthy people will appear amongst the one who saved the jews.

On the other hand in the population some people would fight against the bad
guys. Commies, foreigners, jews, armenians, soldiers, and one general in
London that was gifted in politics. This general did not like very much these
commies, and foreigners ... but they helped won and whitewash the reputation
of the country when USA were preparing the total replacement of the
administration and money.

War kills blindly. Skilled workers were killed. The companies had to accept to
negotiate and improve work conditions.

Also commies were accepted in the government and had the right to put in
motion commies laws like : protection of the youth, respect of the contracts,
an hour worked is an hour paid, bosses are legally responsible for the harm
coming from their decisions.

Cold war happened. USA was scared of commies, so with the help notably of
mafia, henry kissinger created fake commies-real terrorists groups to make
people vote right. People were killed, assassinated.

A race to the arms ruined almost every countries in the world, but everybody
made great expensive useless equipment creating huge debts ....

And we are back at the social inequity square (companies not paying their
taxes), penal irresponsibility, an hour worked is not paid ...

So, since history repeat itself, what is the next step?

A bloody revolution that could worsen the situation or a war in which
resources instead of being used for the improvement of life will be diverted
to make the miserable kill each others (and resulting anyway in skilled
workers killed alike)?

