[timr]

The metaphor is faulty. Uber hasn't brought down the cost of limousine service, and it didn't make cars cheaper or more efficient to create UberX -- it just tapped into a larger market of drivers who were willing to do commodity work for less money.

You don't pay people $100 an hour for commodity work. Unless you're so rich that price doesn't matter, I guess.

[dcpdx]

Perhaps I should have extended it a bit more--as someone else commented, they will likely drive the price point down as the tech improves and they're able to do things algorithmically which will reduce overhead. The Tesla strategy is probably a better fit here than Uber, though.

[timr]

Yeah, I understood what you were getting at. That's why I was emphasizing the difference between commodity services (like driving a cab) and services that require specialized skill (like being a concierge that can get you into the restaurant, tonight, or a meeting with a celebrity). The former you can "scale" by throwing relatively unskilled people at it. The latter takes training, connections and experience.

Even Tesla isn't a good comparison. Tesla is making cars, the task that invented the assembly line. This more like applying "the Tesla strategy" to the job of a butler.