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by lucideer
1942 days ago
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Sounds like the old system was pretty bad, but also sounds like you're looking at Uber through extremely rose-tinted lenses. > a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber brought a breeze of fresh air In what way is Uber not a rent-seeker taking advantage of often poor new immigrants? The fact that the old system was so poor just lowers our standards for anything that may seek to replace it, but that's no reason to throw all critical thinking out the window. -- Europe is a really good example to look at. Uber entered the market in most (all) European countries, but they simply couldn't compete with what already existed. (speaking only of Uber taxis; Uber Eats is doing fine in Europe) |
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Doesn't trap them.
Used cars are a liquid market (with a lot of transactions) with well established pricing. It's easy to buy and sell at the blue book's price and get cheap financing. This makes it easy to get into Ubering and out of it, as at any point you know exactly how much money the car is still worth.
Compare that to a taxi medallion, often financed through "alternate means" (no banks will touch them), completely opaque pricing (there's no market place, transactions are often done privately) and at the mercy of regulators (tomorrow the city council might create 10x the current amount of medallions out of thin air, thus crushing the price of existing ones).