Hacker News Reader

Comment by deedubaya | Hacker News Reader

Duh?

Duh. But not duh is that we are, through info leakage from our technology, unknowingly allowing companies to exploit our current circumstances for their profit. I think the reason this story has gotten a lot of play is that people are not comfortable with this kind of thing, and yet also feel helpless to prevent it.

There is Lyft and there are normal taxi services too. I don't see Uber having a (unfair) leverage over the user.

network effects means it's winner-take-all in each market. all the drivers go to the service that has the most users who then have no reason to use the other service. then after being anti-regulation during the 'disruption' phase, Uber will be the incumbent and be quite happy to accept regs to make it harder for other services to start up. and they'll charge as much as they can based on being able to tell from your phone what your usage pattern is and how price-sensitive/desperate you are at any given time.

you ever called a taxi service while in the middle of a suburb at 1am?

Ride sharing has probably really hurt people who need a ride in the middle of the night. There used to be a whole crew of taxi drivers who preferred working the night shift. They'd make most of their money from the bar traffic. It'd get slow after 2am (last call), then people would start waking up to go to work at 4am. Sometimes I'd get a fare between 2am and 4am, depending on if I was taking a break in the right place. The fares that popped up on our electronic dispatch "board" in the middle of the night would usually get snapped up quickly, by someone.

Then the vultures skimmed off a lot of the "easy money" bar traffic (7pm-2am). There are now only a fraction of the cabs on the road in the middle of the night as there used to be; I'm certain that "ride share cars" have not replaced all the cabs that used to be available at 3am.

Towards the end of my taxi driving career, there was a fellow trying to go home from work at 10pm, from his restaurant at the edge of the map. He'd mostly switched to using the vultures' phone app, but there wasn't a "ride share" available. So he called Phoenix's legendarily-reliable taxi cab company, and I got him home. It was a few dollars more than getting a "ride", but at least he didn't have to walk.

not to be rude, but this makes no sense to me. I would be a customer so that is the lens I am viewing this from but my interpretation was:

* I liked working nights until the "vultures" allowed other people to work nights which increased supply and lowered prices.

* One time, I picked up a guy who had trouble getting home because there wasn't always a vulture nearby. It cost him more money.

* 7pm-2am on weekends are high volume times

edit: I think the point was that because ridesharing typically knocks off at 2am or 3am there is a hole between 3am and 5am or something. However, taxi rates are pretty murderous at this hour at least when I've paid them. Regardless, between a taxi, lyft and uber someone needing a ride will be better off at all times of day.

Thanks for your comments.

There are fundamental problems involved in transporting people from place to place that are not solved by the new entrants to the industry. The only innovation offered by "ridesharing" is having a more flexible workforce. While this helps with periods of high demand (drinking holidays, etc), the ridesharing model is not sustainable.

I mean to reconstruct my kuro5hin blog [1], but haven't gotten to that project yet.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11612648

Do you mean that this is a classic case of supply and demand? I don't see a problem with this.

But I don't think this is what was mentioned in the article.

you ever plan a round trip instead of winging it?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com