
The Anti-Uber Way of Disrupting Transportation, Politely - arch_stanton
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-15/the-anti-uber-way-of-disrupting-transportation-politely.html
======
oleganza
"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.

~~~
snitko
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...

~~~
fminor
Russia introduced legislation around taxis in 2011 because customers were
routinely being ripped off. snitko's post is based on bad info.

~~~
snitko
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.

~~~
fminor
If one of these random cars gets into an accident and you're hurt, who pays
for your medical care?

~~~
snitko
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.

------
eruditely
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.

Give this angle a rest already.

------
mind_heist
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 ..

------
Mz
I thought this was good:

 _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."_

------
frandroid
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.

------
eglover
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.

~~~
_delirium
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).

~~~
eglover
"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.

~~~
_delirium
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.

~~~
wuliwong
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.

~~~
_delirium
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.

~~~
eglover
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.

------
lanstein
Took a while to realize the company in question is not called Politely.

------
michaelochurch
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.

~~~
nemothekid
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.

~~~
foobarqux
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.

~~~
wutbrodo
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.

~~~
foobarqux
I think the right solution is to fix an easy to remember price schedule in
advance.

~~~
wutbrodo
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!

~~~
foobarqux
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.

~~~
wutbrodo
> 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.

~~~
foobarqux
> 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.

~~~
wutbrodo
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.

------
potatolicious
My God. A sharing economy company that actually shares things!

~~~
sveme
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.

~~~
tormeh
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.

~~~
slyall
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.

~~~
mahyarm
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.

