Uber and Lyft really might suspend operations in California.
Personally I think that would be a flying start to closing down this wealth extraction plan that operates an an excuse for a business.
@JohnPhilpin Altogether useless if these changes aren't also made in our rich countries:
- Better regulated and funded public transport, including use of modern technology.
- Massive increase in pedestrian zones within cities.
- Significant investment into other mobile methods and technologies.
- Huge improvement in the maintenance of all public paths and roads.
Otherwise similar operations to Uber and Lyft will simply appear again; all they did was take advantage of our shamefully shit urban infranstructures, it wasn't even clever.
@simonwoods well similar operations do exist - e.g. Ola that is eating the Uber lunch and dinner - and long before uber and lyft there were similar operations - we used to call them taxis … and a lot of those taxi companies now have apps.
a recent newsletter, where i wrote;
”If travelers stopped to think about it, even though they seem to be paying less, they probably don’t think about the effect of the wealth extraction play that is going on. In round terms, wherever you are in the world $3 of every $10 that you spend with that service is going back to a corporation on the other side of the world. With a local taxi, 100% of that money stays circulating in your community! “
... where i also talked about cooperatives - providing Uber-like service at a local level but - ‘community support’ built-in and - keeps ‘the money’ local - a great example in Austin, Texas.
”Oh, sorry world-beating entrepreneurs, your brilliant business model — based on increasing the precarity of workers — happens to be illegal."
@JohnPhilpin Yep, taxis have finally caught up. That it took competition built on such false foundations to get them to pay attention to just the idea of an app will forever be a mark against them.
I think you and I are largely in agreement with regard to a need for our societies to better concentrate on prioritising local infrastructure. It's encouraging to see it happening in fits and starts; hopefully the pandemic will further inspire enough people to realise how important this is and thus improve support for efforts to strengthen communities at the local level.
SLIGHTLY unfair - its hard for companies in a multi hundred year industries to think differently ... hell - its hard for new industries to see change coming ...
remember when bill gates thought the web was a passing fad
when ken olsen couldn’t get his head around the idea ofa PC
how IBM totally misunderstood how MSDOS was going to upend them
... the world is littered with corpses of ‘never saw it coming’
@JohnPhilpin Eh, I've previously been told my standards are too high. Seeing as we now have absolute incompetent scumbags in charge of large and important parts of our societies, I'm comfortable with continuing to look for the improving standards. I've yet to see proof that dropping your standards leads to anything good.