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Comment by davidf18 | Hacker News Reader

I'm afraid I don't understand this, nor why I was downvoted.

Just as in buying computers, buying food, education, airplane fares, consumers want lower prices which is a good thing. In the case of taxis, that means the elderly who often need them because they can no longer drive and are on a fixed income can more readily afford them (surely a leftist notion).

There is no disagreement that "economic rents" are harmful to the economy, giving people artificially high profits (see the Wikipedia entry).

Are you saying that a politically left magazine want to harm the economy through economic rents instead of helping it through wealth creation? Who would be for that?

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What is so hard to understand about this? These drivers could create an app that results in the exact same price for consumers, except that any profits go to the drivers instead of Travis Kalanick's pocket.

If they create their own app, they would have to offer lower prices than Uber which they'll be able to do from the money Uber was taking from them. Otherwise, people will use the incumbent service (Uber/Lyft).

Is that easy to understand?

This is simply false.

Assuming that Uber is profitable (this is not clear) then costs to riders could be lowered and drivers could be paid more, simply by splitting the profits going to Uber between these two ends. That's what a co-op is designed to do.

I didn't downvote you, but if I had it would have been because you applied the standard arguments about Uber/Lyft without considering the specific argument here: that co-op systems can benefit both the consumer and worker.

>> except that any profits go to the drivers instead of Travis Kalanick's pocket.

This is the comment I was responding to.

If the drivers provide a services at sufficient lower costs than Uber (something easy to do in NYC at least) then they won't have to worry about Uber.

You don't believe that network effects, or first-mover advantage, play any role in the ride-sharing markets? You think it's 100% about price?

Peter Thiel would like to have a word with you. We're supposed to be building monopolies that no natural market force can topple.

>> Peter Thiel would like to have a word with you. We're supposed to be building monopolies that no natural market force can topple.

For Netflix, sure.

People spend a considerable amount of money on Uber/Lyft etc at least in NYC where I live, thus many would respond to a competitor with a 20% to 30% discount or more. This is possible in NYC because the rates are so much higher than other cities.

But there are a lot of people who need taxi like services that are price sensitive. Think of elderly who aren't able to drive or use mass transit so well and are on a fixed income.

Uber doesn't make any profit though. The question is what percentage of driver revenue is actually required to pay for the engineers/servers/background checks/insurance/driver incentives and is it really any less than Uber's percentage?

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