You aren't mentioning the people hit by this behaviour - people who use to run cab firms or drive their own cab. Or B&Bs and small hotels.
These people are potentially pushed close to bankruptcy and have to exit the area - because they can't sustain competition against a heavily subsidised competition.
That's value being destroyed - not in a creative way by something better, but as a side effect of a financial shell game.
Also the state often picks up the cost of that - by supporting those people back into work - and the companies that caused it carefully avoid contributing to that by avoiding taxes - because they never make any money....
I think the Uber example is a very good one - bottom line why the predatory practice? Bottom line if they got self-driving cars working - then it would be transformative and they wouldn't need predatory pricing to grow market share.
Why spend all that money on growing the market share, rather than spending on R&D?
I can only assume it's all about engineering a financial exit....
And sure you can say buyer/investor beware - but as I pointed out above, the behaviour is costing others through no fault of their own - sometimes dearly.
"Cab firms were monopolistic, often user-unfriendly, and needed a change" and "Uber is a horrendously predatory company that should not be allowed to operate outside the law or undercut competitors due to not having to make a profit" are two statements that can coexist.
Just because what we had was bad doesn't mean that what replaced it was better.
These people are potentially pushed close to bankruptcy and have to exit the area - because they can't sustain competition against a heavily subsidised competition.
That's value being destroyed - not in a creative way by something better, but as a side effect of a financial shell game.
Also the state often picks up the cost of that - by supporting those people back into work - and the companies that caused it carefully avoid contributing to that by avoiding taxes - because they never make any money....
I think the Uber example is a very good one - bottom line why the predatory practice? Bottom line if they got self-driving cars working - then it would be transformative and they wouldn't need predatory pricing to grow market share.
Why spend all that money on growing the market share, rather than spending on R&D?
I can only assume it's all about engineering a financial exit....
And sure you can say buyer/investor beware - but as I pointed out above, the behaviour is costing others through no fault of their own - sometimes dearly.