i heard they revised it up to like $9 after feedback
they lose like $3-4b a year and have like $5.5b left in funding. people keep pumping money in to keep it afloat, hoping for the breakthrough to come
also to artificially keep fare prices down and put cab companies out of businesses so they can jack prices up when they have a monopoly
these tech dreamers love crushing workers but theres always gonna be lyft and other leeches fighting for space in the same market, even if they successfully push all the cab drivers into self-immolation displays. all it takes to enter the competition with this model is putting an app on itunes
anyway though their problem is that the drivers dont make much at all, so they always quit or try driving for one of the other services. theres huge driver turnover and they have to keep offering these costly incentive packages to try to sucker in more desperate driver scabs. then after the incentive period runs out the drivers realize it's a bad deal or find something better and quit. keeping the driver supply is a serious challenge even as it is, and they cant really increase wages at the rate theyre hemorrhaging money
so basically what's happening is that peolpe are getting cheap rides and it's being subsidized by dumbass venture capital because these people are looking for places to dump their money in this market with these low interest rates, and then that money is getting bled by the billion. yeah uber has an app but that and the subsidized rides is all they actually have to offer. theoretically they believe crushing cab drivers and replacing them with starving contractors has to work since it weakens labor, but theyll never have the same sort of efficiencies as cab companies where they can have a garage for car servicing or where workers can share a car to keep it on the road for more hours, and if they try to pay their drivers competitively then prices go up and people will have no reason to use uber anymore either, so they're caught in a box i dont see any way out of
it's so funny because to the average joe on the street the whole uber thing has been sold as this wildly successful, optimistic, and future-looking, despite drivers getting peanuts and the company bleeding billions, and an actual livable occupation (cab driver) being destroyed and replaced by people either not making a living wage, or hustling for a little bit of supplemental income. yet theyll only be able to avoid bankruptcy for a little more than a year unless they keep getting more cash injections indefinitely, or make a ton going public and selling stock to rubes in the hope that driverless cars will bail them out someday. and if driverless cars ever do come thatll just mean fewer jobs for working people and more money for companies that own the cars which is not the recipe for a functioning economy, but hey the rich will get richer and stocks will myopically go up before the final inevitable crash
