On 01/04/2017 15:50, tim... wrote:


"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 14:36:46 on Sat, 1 Apr
2017, tim... remarked:
the one thing about the taxi trade is that they can't monopolies the
market through lower fares and then hike them when the competition
pulls out

the barriers to entry for a taxi company are so low that if you take
your fares back up to the regulated maximum the competition will soon
pile back in again.

to keep the competition out you have to keep your fares low forever

which is fine if your costs of operation really are low enough to
support that, but does mean that operating an unsustainably low fare
to grab market share doesn't work.

Except Uber is trying that.

I know

So your theory crashes in flames.

but as it hasn't got to the "lets put the fares up again" bit, how does,
where we are now prove that it will work?

There is a theory that its real MO is,

1) force out the competition

2) replace cars with self driving cars and put the fares up

But I don't believe that model will work either as:

a) I believe the date that driverless cars will be routinely available
is 10 years beyond what the optimists think the date will be. (We have
discussed this before and you were in the same place as me), Uber can't
survive that long subsidising fares.

A recent New Scientist article was discussing how you programme ethical
considerations into self-driving cars!


--
Graeme Wall
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