[kuschku]

1. Uber competitors existed – although those were usually financed by the Taxi companies.

2. AirBnB competitors existed in the way that you could rent your apartment to others via such services. Renting out private apartments was standard for decades and centuries even.

[ThomPete]

Taxi companies are regulated which means there was there is a limit to how many taxi drivers are allowed. Uber doesn't have such a limit and is thus undermining the market. Uber is planning on replacing all drivers with automated cars, how many taxi companies you think are working on that right now?

What you are talking about is car-sharing which is something Uber also does but not what they do mostly.

With regards to Airbnb. If airbnb ish companies existed before why didn't they then outcompete airbnb? Why is Airbnb fighting fights and not European rentals.

Anyway we are getting away from the main point which is that american companies dare take up a fight with legislation very few european companies if any do that. Because of reasons I mention in the essay. Tesla, LendingClub, KickStarter and so many others have had to find ways through the legislation system.

US companies just have a better culture for challenging incumbents and legislation. A much richer culture for lobbying and so on.

[Scarblac]

The thing is that both Uber and AirBNB are harmful companies, and EU legislation hasn't quite dealt with them yet. But it will.

[ThomPete]

Thats an ideological opinion, one you are not alone with. However it has nothing to do with the discussion we are having.

[kuschku]

Well, the argument is that we don’t need that kind of lobbying, because that kind of restrictive legislature doesn’t exist.

Anyone can start a service to drive other people around for money where I am as long as they have an appropriate drivers license and insurance, there’s no limit on how many drivers there are.

Uber only has to fight legislation because they want to get around the insurance.

[icebraining]

Hum, maybe that's true where you live, but as another EU citizen, I can tell you it's not true everywhere - around here, there was no on-demand service beyond taxis, which are limited to a certain number of licenses. And as far as I know, the same is true in Madrid and Paris.

[ThomPete]

Thats a wrong argument then given that the legislation is in fact in place to hinder too many drivers to flood the market. And so to get into the taxi market is very hard and politically controlled.

In most European countries european insurance isn't really a problem.

Ironically your view on this is proving my point by mixing your political view with what the discussion is about.

And so instead of European companies disrupting the American market you we have American companies disrupting the European.

[kuschku]

There is no regulation at all regarding the amount of drivers where I am.

You need a drivers license of type P (same as bus drivers, chauffeurs, etc) and you need insurance, and you can start driving. It’s literally that simple, and we could have a million drivers by tomorrow and it would be legal.

And Uber isn’t disrupting anything in Germany. They’re just one cheap company under many, others of which provide better service.

[ThomPete]

You need medallions for things like taxi stands and hailing people off the street so it's just not true what you say.

Anyway your ideological view is getting in the way of the point of this discussion.

It wasn't a german company that created uber, wasn't a german company that created airbnb it wasn't even an european on and that is the problem.

[kuschku]

> You need medallions for things like taxi stands and hailing people off the street so it's just not true what you say.

That’s not even part of the discussion, as uber isn’t trying to change that.

Fact is, uber isn’t disrupting anything.

Fact is, there were uber-competitors in Europe like mytaxi, some of which even existed before uber did. Exactly same business model.

The issue isn’t that these companies never get started in europe – because they do – the issue is that these companies expand slower than their US competitors, and therefore lose in this extremely volatile market.

But if the market crashes, these companies can continue to exist, while many of their US competitors would crash, too.