The Uber Dilemma
stratechery.com
stratechery.com
I enjoyed going through these scenarios quite a bit. Now with the context of this Uber Dilemma post, it's reinforced further.
I'm guessing game theorists have these kind of tools, albeit more complex ones. DO you know of any of them?
I'm sure this has been studied a lot so I'm guessing there are graphs about the different rules and outcomes and such?
I also became a patron to the author. My first time ever doing so on Patreon. Way to go Nicky Case and please keep up these amazing programs.
Incredibly though provoking and makes you feel very different about the issues by actually involving you. I think there have been few pieces of media that emotionally impacted more than Nick's work. This is, what I feel like realizing the full potential of moderm media looks like.
Some links:
EDIT: I should have probably also mentioned the fact that the Author has made a site collecting these types of sites: http://explorabl.es/
WE BECOME WHAT WE BEHOLD – a truly shocking game about mass media: https://ncase.itch.io/wbwwb
Coming out Simulator: https://ncase.itch.io/coming-out-simulator-2014
The most famous one, Parable of the Polygons: http://ncase.me/polygons/
behold the beast! the magnificent 2d matrix!: http://ncase.me/matrix/
NEUROTIC NEURONS: http://ncase.me/neurons/
https://reddit.com/r/explorables http://explorabl.es http://explorables.cmucreatelab.org
For those who don't know the story.
Mark Zuckerberg's Brutal Prank On Sequoia (2010)
http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs-brutal-prank...
http://archive.fortune.com/2010/05/06/technology/facebook_ex...
The valley grudges by top executives has always been amusing and entertaining to me -- for example, Ben Horowitz's refusal to work with E&Y after they nearly blocked their acquisition by HP.
Why was Netscape a weird example (to me) of Equity Sharing between Founders
I'm not entirely sure now. But it's covered in the book mentioned here and by the other poster.
According to the article Sequoia had a long standing willingness to play hardball. A reputation earned through consistent long term behavior.
It's hard to see how a one time event in extreme circumstances leads to a change in reputation. Presumably any rational founder would assume that any rational VC firm would act the same way in similarly extreme circumstances. One doesn't earn a reputation by being struck by lightning or spraining your ankle falling over a turkey in a city street or any unrepeated unlikely events.
And, if you believe you can clearly prove "fraud, break of contract, and breach of fiduciary duty" presumably you are only discouraging bad actors with whom you wouldn't want to get into bed with in any event.
Huh? It doesn't?
If I understand the risk correctly it would be that Waymo prevails, gets a huge damage settlement which the company has to pay, but doesn't have the cash to pay so the board of directors have to go to their resources to pay. Is this understanding correct? Does anyone have a precedent for this? I'd be interested in reading it if they did.
I think personal liability for their director is a somewhat more likely concern in the same vein. Smith v Van Gorkam[2] is a relevant case for that. Intentional misconduct is definitely something that can trigger this. I'm not sure that getting their obliviousness on the record is a particularly helpful defense against this though.
Overall, I doubt this theory is a major motivation on Benchmark's part. Benchmark obviously has billions at stake here and has also obviously concluded Kalanick is toxic to those billions. Seems reason enough to me for scorched earth legal tactics.
[1] http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
This would be my guess why a GM or ford (Can't remember which) would invest in someone like lyft.
There's nothing to crazy here outside of an app that pairs two GPS coordinates. Access to user pools for self driving car fleets is going to be big money though.
This is why uber could be in so much trouble over the otto/waymo thing. If they get barred from self driving cars, their competators will be able to offer the same or lower rates without having to pay drivers. Uber will have to continue to subsidize until then or loose mass user base.
Current valuation is 70 billion, Last known monthly active users is 40 million. Monthly spend per user is $50.
Meaning: instead of buying those users for 70 billion, a car company could offer each one of those users $1700 of free credits, or about 3 years of their typical use.
Considering that switching is as easy as installing some other app, I'm pretty sure they could buy marketshare for less than a 10th of that.
...and I haven't even factored in that the novelty of self-driving cars would probably make it incredibly easy to sign up users for whatever car company is first-to-market.
If there are real benefits to the tech, it will be impossible to keep them off Instagram. From there, it will spread to opportunist governments... Places who will try anything if it draws interest to their municipality.
At some point after that it becomes a liability to not allow it.
Now, how long before each of these stages? I don't know, but there's pressure there.
when you’re playing for the long run it is better to be nice — you’ll make up any short-term losses with long-term gains.
It also depend on the population distribution. If everybody else is mean, being nice in long run still lose. So the optimal strategies in different culture are obviously different.
I think TIT FOR TAT is good because: 1. it give a gesture for cooperation at first 2. but respond immediately if the response is hostile.
There were some variations of TIT FOR TAT, like being nice for several rounds, then revenge later. Those variations didn't work well.
The random strategy(being nice or mean randomly) also doesn't work because it's difficult for others to predict your behavior.
The experiment was designed for long term survival, so it doesn't apply to these cases:
Being nice for all the time, then use the reputation to scoop the biggest gain in the last step.
So the experiment is very interesting and revealed a lot of points, but the simple takeaway of "being nice is good for long term" is just too limited.
Hence the age-old debate over whether God is vengeful or compassionate
Here it's framed as the game theory for the Evolution of Trust.
That way, you could get the best of both worlds being a bad actor in the prisoner's dilemma and being a tit-for-tat member. They only hope would be is that nobody finds out this grift.
I question this assertion.
As others pointed out in the HN comments for the lawsuit announcement, the only people who have to worry are those with questionable ethics. We need fewer of those people in startups so this is a positive signal to me.
...Anyone who actually cares about their firm and is smart enough to actually attract VC interest?
Yes Lyft has gained some marketshare in the past 6 months. But Uber still dominates the US rideshare market (Uber by public accounts still has greater than 70% Market Share). Uber dominates in several other regions (Western Europe, Latin America) and is competing in several other huge markets (India and SouthEast Asia). Uber also has significant stakes in the dominant ride hailing companies in China and Russia.
This is not to diminish what Lyft has done. They're successful company. But they are in no way seeing more long term success compared to Uber as of today
To be fair, this doesn't (I believe) take into account if traditional taxis are still dominant in some countries
Additionally, if there is frequent and reliable train or bus service to your destination that may be a better option than driving. I know several people who don't own cars but travel 100+ miles via bus on a regular basis. On the other hand, I travel 100+ miles regularly but buses and trains don't go to where I am going.
(There's people who justify buying a truck because they need to haul stuff twice a year at the most. Renting a truck twice a year is almost guaranteed to be a better option financially. That being said, if you want a truck because you like trucks, that's also a perfectly valid reason to buy one.)
-- Amount that you drive
-- Availability of Uber when/where you need it
-- Whether you have to pay for parking
-- Whether you also take a lot of weekend trips
-- etc.
$100 per month is actually not very much. That suggests you're only traveling 100 miles per month or so on Ubers which is nothing. By contrast, that would basically take me to the nearest large city and back once or get me back and forth to my office a couple of times.
If you live in a city, you'd probably pay a pretty decent chunk of that amount just in auto insurance.
If you go for a new car, you could easily pay $600/month - at that point it would take > 18 years to break even.
Of course, there are other things to take into account: convenience on the one hand, maintenance, parking, & insurance on the other.
But, my gut instinct is that you'd be better off to keep taking uber and invest the difference in an index fund. Keep that up for long enough and you can buy a new car in cash (or retire early).
[edit]: Don't forget that you can bicycle also. A $400 bicycle has an incredibly high ROI if you replace a few regular car trips with bicycling. It's a net gain for your health too! (You may already be doing this, but it's worth pointing out anyways ;)
Do those numbers include maintenance and insurance? IME just routine maintenance on an oldish (60-100k) Toyota runs into the hundreds of dollars. Insurance again something like ~$800-1000.
I got rid of my car after I did the math and realized I was spending $1500-2000 a year on just insurance and maintenance.
My wife and I have never had any significant trouble (tickets/accidents/etc.) though, and it was collision insurance only. We also don't drive much. (I bike into work or else work from home.)
(Collision = cover other people's bills when you cause an accident. Comprehensive also fixes/replaces your car if it's wrecked, but that doesn't really make sense on a 10+ year old car.)
We also have home and life insurance through State Farm, so there may be some bundle discount going on.
Consumer Reports and the like have calculated "true cost of ownership" for different model cars you can use as a rough guideline. They estimate depreciation, taxes, financing, gas, maintenance, and insurance over 5 years. However, that's just a rough estimate and only a first step, it doesn't take into consideration individual variables. If you are a young male, have to drive in stop-and-go traffic every day, and pay to park everywhere your cost of ownership will probably be close to double.
Auto insurance alone is probably close to $100 a month for the average American - depending on your car, location, and driving record, of course, I'm just making an educated guess. IIRC, last I ran the numbers with my car (average budget model) cost of ownership was around ~$20,000 over 5 years. That's amortized to $333 a month.
The main (and perhaps only) advantage to having a car is the convenience and the ability to go where ever whenever.
But it's certainly true that for people who don't need to drive on a regular basis, a lot of reason to own a car may come down to things like not wanting to deal with Zipcar or a regular rental car every time you want to do a big shopping trip or get out of town on a Saturday or for the weekend.
For example if you have a friend who lives 15 miles away - it becomes "do I want to spend $50 to visit my friend?". If you drive your own car, the economic calculation is invisible - it's about $2 of gas, a bit of depreciation that you don't even think about, and [huge already-paid upfront cost for vehicle/financing/insurance that you don't even think about] - "of course I'll pay $2 to visit my friend!"
One thing that helped was making a spreadsheet that showed how my total cost of transportation went from $8k/year to about $1200/year when I switched to Lyft/ZipCar and ditched my own vehicle. So even if I were to add in a weekly $50 friend-visit, I'm still paying less than half for my transportation than I previously was.
Some might say this was a good thing. Personally, I think mobility is generally positive.
As it should, as well as an environmental consideration.
My specifics: I live in Cupertino and work at home. I have a wife and kids. About four times a month we have a situation where we need two cars, because one of us has to be somewhere other than where they kids need to be.
Unfortunately, most of the time that's San Francisco, which is about $80 round trip with Uber/Lyft. I could sometimes use public transit, but usually the times don't work out and it takes a really long time, and I'd still need a ride to and from the train on both ends.
I have a five year old car so the payments and maintenance still come out to a little be less than Uber/Lyft, and since I've already got another car, the cost of insurance doesn't add much.
It's pretty close in cost, and the convince pushes it over the breakeven point.
12 trips a month makes the calculus easy: don't buy a car.
Edit: that was sarcasm
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/24/heart-head/
The older I get, the more it seems to me that context is the basis of strongly held political beliefs. Growing up in Idaho, I'm often dismissed out of hand when I offer my (by regional standards) liberal opinions. I've met many people from liberal states (even California) who offer conservative opinions, which always struck me as ironic. How would our positions hold up when confronted with a change of context, if we saw how their application backfired?
I'm wondering if there is a duality here, where different approaches can both be right but one could and should be chosen based on desired outcome. People unaccustomed to pragmatism may be performing a logical fallacy by assuming that their way works in all cases, when it practice they would lose to experience (and in the case of the prisoner's dilemma, cooperation).