Imagine that after the Y2000 dotcom bubble burst you put equal investments into the following companies in the early 2000s:
Friends Reunited
Friendster
MySpace
FaceBook
Two of these collapsed losing millions of dollars. A third one is limping along.
The fourth is now apparently one of the most profitable companies in the world. You could sell your shares now and easily make back all the money you lost on the other three, and a big profit as well.
That’s the kind of logic that powers the tech company investment market.
Oh wow, I had honestly forgotten about Friends Reunited. The dot-com bubble days were crazy.
Investing is always a crapshoot, but if I was a VC/investor with money to spend, and I’d just watched MySpace crash and burn 24 hours after its IPO, and its biggest competitor was saying “we’re worth twice as much imaginary money as them!” despite being twice as broke, buying a bunch of their stock would seem like a bad idea.
With the usual bait-and-switch results that benefit only Uber:
Only so many passengers can fit in the backseat of an Uber, and the ride-hailing company, not the town, is pocketing most of the revenue. With per-capita costs essentially fixed, the town is forced to hike rates and cap trips as adoption grows.
It is arguably even worse now. In those days, most of the streetcar were operated by private companies, which is why it was relatively easy for this consolidation to happen. Even some still running public systems started as private companies that failed and got taken over by the state. Which means that Uber has to either convince cities to give up their current systems or try to undercut them somehow, at least enough to break them. And what happens if they succeed, even a little? Here in the Boston area, the MBTA, which is not flawless, still moves 1.5 million people a day on the subway system. There’s no practical way to replace that with more surface traffic. If the trains stopped running, it would be total disaster for the local economy.
Yep, this is what happened to me and my spouse. NYC transit delays were so bad three years ago, we bought folding bikes. When those sucked too much, we converted to citibike (bike share). We have never gone back. More often than not, when we do have to take transit (weather, other factors), more than half the time we are reminded why we bike. It’s faster or equal most of the time, less of a headache and healthier (aside from the increased risk to safety and the notoriously corrupt NYPD ticketing scheme).
And thus further eliminate the ability of people to move about their daily lives anonymously, either via private data being sold, leaked, or demanded by government spy services, or an eventual government takeover of a monopolistic ambition in some country not as dedicated to the “free market” as say, the good 'ol USA.
Private cars have engine management computers and map systems which are linked by network to the company server. Numberplate recognition cameras are also a thing.
If you want to move around anonymously (in public spaces) you need to tackle the problem at the governmental level, by electing officials who aren’t authoritarian, and who will tackle the problems created by unaccountable private industry.
I lived in NYC for years and have noticed parking has gotten dramatically worse in Brooklyn. I’m certain this is because more people are getting cars to become rideshare drivers. ( and yeah I realize i’m part of the problem getting a car in the first place. i went years without one and just got another a few years ago because I was given it by a friend… its nice if you need to travel outside of the city much, but a huge headache in the city. I prefer to walk or use the subway. )
ALL transportation is government-subsidized. Even if you ride your bike to work you almost certainly depend on a taxpayer-funded road to do it.
When more people ride buses instead of driving cars that means the government is paying less for road maintenance, parking, etc. not to mention externalities associated with things like pollution and climate change.
right. I keep thinking of that oscar wilde quote about a cynic being “a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”. Some things we can choose to subsidize because the value we get from them is worth their cost in terms of quality of life, the environment, and sometimes even saves money in related areas (as you point out road maintenance etc)
Pretty much. The algorithms buy up the shares starting at the Bell and drive the price up then it gets dumped and the real valuation becomes apparent. Snapchat was the same.
