Rideshare services - Uber, Lyft, Hailo, etc.

That would be a worthy legacy for sure; the post does address it: "It’s true that Uber had upsides, like bringing transport to underserved communities of color — but because Uber was always doomed, this was a temporary mirage that would strand those communities again."

On that front, while I understand his pessimism, I'm also willing to bet that said formal taxi companies are more on the 'uh let's not leave obvious money on the table here' tip now. We'll have to see.

The rideshares may have fucked up by ensuring that the legislature couldn't legislate

Breaking: CA Superior Court judge finds Prop 22 UNCONSTITUTIONAL!!! pic.twitter.com/R4gFoDrs0n

— Veena Dubal (@veenadubal) August 21, 2021

Lmao

Spending $200m to buy a law and having it struck down as unconstitutional bc you tried to make it impossible for the legislature to ever amend it couldn’t have happened to a nicer industry

— Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) August 21, 2021

The last two times I had to use Uber, my drivers were seething about ways in which the company had actively been ripping them off of late.

This was … maybe 4-5 weeks ago

https://sfstandard.com/technology/san-francisco-birthplace-of-ridehailing-becomes-the-center-of-its-decline/

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/08/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-part-thirty-three-uber-isnt-really-profitable-yet-but-is-getting-closer-the-antitrust-case-against-uber.html

“The third factor, the delinking of passenger fares and driver compensation was a major driver of this labor to capital wealth transfer. Prior to 2022, driver payments were a function of what passengers paid, with adjustments for incentive programs and peak period demand. Uber has developed algorithms for tailoring customer prices based on what they believe individual customers would be willing to pay and tailoring payments to individual drivers so they are as low as possible to get them to accept trips.

This is fundamentally different from Uber’s pre-pandemic price discrimination, where it could apply Surge Pricing during periods of high customer demand (or driver shortages) but any customer in a given zone requesting the same trip at the same time would see the same price, and drivers would receive the same payment for those trips. Now different passengers/drivers making the same trip can see very different fares/payments. System average revenue per trip goes up, average driver payments per trip go down. Airlines have decades of experience changing fares depending on demand but have no ability to discriminate between passengers booking the same flight at the same time. [5]“

Love drunken conversations with drivers. Best part