awilliams87

sog35 said:

gatorguy said:

Why do you suddenly have an issue with a company becoming wealthy? I've never seen you complain before about companies finding ways to reduce costs to achieve or maintain a high (sometimes VERY high) profit margin. 

If Apple all of sudden fired 10,000 Apple Store workers and replaced them with robots I'd be complaining also.

Also I don't like Uber the company. They pay their drivers less than minimum wage and still charge so much. Uber is making BILLIONS just for making a decent App. 

When did Uber become profitable worldwide? They lost $3 billion in China and only recently broke even in the U.S. Their biggest cost is, you guessed it, labor.

sog35 said:

awilliams87 said:

So in your example, the drivers quitting their jobs demanding more money aren't greedy? If the drivers quit, everyone, including them, are in a worse position. The drivers have less money than Uber as a corporation.

By the way, Taxi companies rely heavily on the government for monopoly privileges. That's why they're able to be so profitably.

Taxi companies charge about the same as Uber. There is no reason Uber can't make profit with human drivers. Especially since they pay them minimum wage, and bear no risk of owning billions in car inventory.

If the drivers quit then Uber will be forced to come to the negotiating table. No way Uber can survive if they even lose half of their drivers. Sure the drivers will hurt for a few weeks, but it will be worth it if they can form a solid union and have bargaining power, and a multi year deal. That's what strikes are all about.

Taxi companies, such as those in NYC for example, uses a medallion system to limit the supply of cars, which is distributed by the city government. Each medallion use to cost millions of dollars to buy before Uber brought that price down. Also, Most medallion are owned by politically connected Jewish millionaires. It's illegal for any non-yellow taxi to pick up any person up off the streets of Manhattan, giving people no other choice but to use it. By no means can we ever compare how Uber operates to the taxis.

Uber's purpose is not to provide jobs to people. It's to provide a service (a taxi service in this case) to customers. Getting mad about how much the drivers make is senseless when they wouldn't even have this job had it not been for Uber.

sog35 said:

Uber drivers are paid crap after taking out auto expenses, gas, insurance, ect.
It is estimated that in most markets they are getting paid close to minimum wage. Ridiculous.

And now Uber is making solid plans to replace drivers with AI.

IMO, Uber drivers should organize and form a union.  If they don't Uber will continue to pay them less and less and eventually replace them with a bot.

Apple should also charge Uber for every fare they get using iOS platform. Its ridiculous that a small software company needs to pay Apple 30% when someone buys their app, yet Uber gets billions in sales and does not need to pay Apple zip.  Apple should get at least 1% on every transaction on the Uber app on iOS.

So the drivers should conspire to maintain their high cost of labor, thus giving Uber a greater incentive to dump them in favor of driver-less cars? Great advice; And you're the guy on this site always giving Tim Cook tips on how to handle wall street?

Uber's goal is to get people from point A to B. That's it. In the near future, driver-less cars will be the most efficient means of doing so. It's remarkable that people bitch about how much others make.

sog35 said:

So is the opinion that cloud will be a cheap commodity?

Funny how Wall STreet is pinning all its hopes on cloud services for Amazon and Microsoft. Both are getting ridiculously high valuations because of cloud revenue growth. Crazy.  In a few years cloud providers will be just like gas stations. Commodity.

I really can't believe how insanily stupid wall Street is.

It's not just the street but the tech media as well. I still remember reading articles chastising Apple for not offering cloud services like AWS or Azure.

jetpilot said:

supadav03 said:

Pretty sure you can still used wired headphones even without the headphone jack. So missing your point? It's called lightning connected (not wireless) headphones 

Yes because Lightning headphones are so plentiful on the market. Oh wait...they're not.  Apple doesn't even make them.

Your comment proves that even Apple fans lack imagination. This is similar non-sense I heard about the disc drive removal.