I like @wraithburn but I disagree with every sentence in this tweet.
Cab drivers often owned their own cars in the old model as well as the new, and cabs are actually cheap.
Amazon rarely uses USPS, and when it does, USPS clears a profit.
Neither spreads costs to others.https://twitter.com/wraithburn/status/1296835383456681986 …
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2/ And none of these is socialism. Individual drivers owning their cars is the EXACT OPPOSITE of socialism - it's many small capital owners, rather than one large capital owner. "OMG, the American housing plan requires people to own their own houses - SOCIALISM!" wat?
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3/ Oh no this terrible body shop requires workers to provide their own tools! You're saying that free individuals investing in their own success and owning the means of production, which they can TAKE WITH THEM WHEN THEY LEAVE is worse than big firms owning the capital?!?
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4/ Mechanics owning their tools, Uber drivers owning their cars, etc is the American ideal - this is the Jeffersonian Yeoman farmer. The thing that people dislike is that market competition makes clear exactly what value people deliver, which shatters pretty delusions.
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ⓘ Dogs don't have thumbs Retweeted Zombie Claude Rains
5/ The Uber business model is viable, as demonstrated by the fact that it's working.https://twitter.com/ZombieClaudeR/status/1296837562359660551 …
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6/ Also capital is trivially available to big firms. It's the easiest thing in the world to solve for! Market fit, hiring, profitability, growing as fast or faster than competitors - these are all hard. Borrowing $100M SECURED BY HARD CAPITAL? They can do that w a phone call
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7/ Uber is not achieving success by forcing the poor working man to leverage himself to buy a car, thus relieving Uber from the impossible capital constraints of car ownership. The working guy ALREADY owns the car, in most cases, and is monetizing an underutilized capital asset
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ⓘ Dogs don't have thumbs Retweeted Prometheus 2.1
8/ I'd argue that software from 1990 to 2020 is the story of capital demands getting smaller and smaller. To launch a startup back then required $2M in servers, Oracle license fees, etc. Today? $4 to buy some ramen. Capital is stunningly cheap.https://twitter.com/wraithburn/status/1296839522379014144 …
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Prometheus 2.1 @wraithburnReplying to @JASutherlandBks @MorlockPMostly I find the position here interesting both for what happened with Software development in the 90s re: Consulting and how that parallels things here. But also because there's an odd thing in here I have trouble describing for what is expected within what people do.3 replies 0 retweets 10 likesShow this thread -
ⓘ Dogs don't have thumbs Retweeted Bobby Riggs
9/ Uber has a "take rate" of ~ 20%, meaning that's what they pocket off of each ride. If VC was subsidizing it, that'd be negative, no? I think Uber is spending VC dollars on R&D ... which is the ideal use of VC $, no? https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-uber-ipo-lyft-fare-increase-20190511-story.html …https://twitter.com/BobbyRiggsTankd/status/1296839891519705088 …
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Replying to @MorlockP @wraithburn
If you're looking at their net income or operating income then Uber is (wildly) unprofitable--they regularly post net operating losses of more than a billion bucks per quarter. The only actual profits I can remember them making were off selling businesses (ops in other countries)
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I have no idea what this means
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Replying to @MorlockP @wraithburn
"If VC was subsidizing it the take rate would be negative" doesn't hold. They lose money on operations so the take rate is "too low;" it's below what it would need to be for Uber to make a profit from operations (really the price charged is "too low"). Non-ops does "subsidize."
0 replies 0 retweets 1 likeThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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