[arp242]

It really screwed over a lot of regular working-class people. In some European cities getting a taxi license was a serious monetary investment. People took our huge loans for this. This was now suddenly worthless. It's like being told your very expensive university education is no longer accredited, but the student loan still exists. kthxbye.

I'm not saying the existing systems were always good (they weren't), but you need to be willing to overlook a lot of real-world suffering to be "rooting for Uber". Phrases like "taxi cartels" sound nice, but they're hardly neutral phrasings that simplify things to the point of being useless phrases.

And "I'm just going to willingly and knowingly ignore laws I don't like for personal profit" is not a great take-away either. This isn't Aaron Swartz breaking a law as a matter of "civil disobedience" – it's just a plain "how can we make money?"

And where does that leave competitors who are NOT willing to break the law? It's an unlevel playing field; there can be no free market if some people don't need to follow the same set of rules. Uber's actions are fundamentally anti-capitalist and anti-free market.

[6510]

I always tell the story of this restaurant 18 km from my house. If I order their cheapest 6 euro hamburger they deliver it for free within 30 minutes. If I take a taxi to the restaurant I may have to wait for an hour and it costs about 100 euro and another 100 to get back.

[arp242]

I took a ~20 minute 12km taxi ride just last Monday, and it was about €22. That's in Ireland. Considering fuel, the drive back for the driver, and that taxis have a lot of downtime, that seems like a reasonable price.

You live in Netherlands according to a recent comment; I can't believe taxis are almost 4x more expensive, unless you're stuck in traffic for a long time, but then your burger can't arrive in 30 mins?

And free delivery on €6 food item is almost certainly netting them a loss.

[decimalenough]

There is no way anybody is making a profit on driving 36 km to deliver a hamburger for 6 euros, and it's a matter of time until whatever faucet of VC money subsidizing this runs dry.

In much of the world the price of food delivery has risen to the level needed to make it profitable, and it's not cheap. I paid around $10 in fees plus Uber's 30-50% markups on the food itself to get a couple of burritos yesterday from a shop a mile down the road.

[6510]

A 30 min drive would be 7 euro and 3 cent in minimum wage. Then you need a car and you have to fuel or charge it.

The only solution to the riddle I can think of is that (like postal services) they can cleverly combine orders and rarely lose money on delivery. The fast delivery would have to be luck or perhaps the burger preserves poorly?

That the food is absolutely fantastic might also have something to do with it. If they can get food into your mouth repetition is almost guaranteed.

[twelve40]

> getting a taxi license was a serious monetary investment. People took our huge loans for this

it was a terrible system that sucked for everyone involved. For all of Uber's flaws, would you rather go back to that today? really??

[arp242]

> would you rather go back to that today? really??

I absolutely said said no such thing. There are good ways to change things and bad ways to change things. Allowing a private entity reap huge profits by blatantly breaking rules and screwing people is not a good way to change things.

[CamperBob2]

There was no other way to change things on less than a generational timescale.

If governments don't like it, well, bummer. They were supposed to serve the people, not the incumbent taxi cartels. They failed, so "we the people" routed around them.