Like many others, I’ve enjoyed watching Elon Musk show his ass daily on Twitter. Trying to make a profit from a historically unprofitable company, now saddled with more debt, is definitely tough even with competent leadership. And Elon is anything but competent.
But Twitter isn’t the only supposed trillion dollar company that’s in big trouble. This weekend, for grins, I opened my Lyft app to see how many drivers they had in the Rochester area. Pre-COVID, a Lyft map on a weekend afternoon looked like the inside of a bee hive, with dozens of little car icons buzzing around on their investor-subsidized drives. Last weekend, there were two cars servicing the entire area. A couple of minutes ago, there were seven cars on the map, about half of what there would have been pre-COVID.
Lyft’s latest earnings report isn’t looking great, either:
Q2 revenue of $990.7 million grew 13% quarter-over-quarter and 30% year-over-year
Q2 net loss of $377.2 million
Q2 Adjusted EBITDA of $79.1 million grew 232% year-over-year [Ed note: EBITDA is bullshit]
They lost $197 million in Q1. Never fear, though, they project a $1 billion profit in 2024!
Since I’m indulging my hobby horses, let’s turn to Amazon delivery.
Pure anecdata, but I see a lot more dents in Amazon vans than USPS, UPS or FedEx vans. Maybe that’s because the Post Office, UPS or FedEx take their dented vans off the road and fix them. Or maybe it’s because Amazon’s gig economy non-union drivers just aren’t as good as their counterparts in other delivery companies. We probably will never know, or we will learn it after a few kids get run over by Amazon vans.
Anyway, I doubt that Amazon will become the husk of a trillion dollar company, but I don’t doubt that Twitter, Lyft and Uber will be, and we’re going to be left to clean up the mess.
Old School
What do you think the mess left by Twitter, Lyft and Uber will be?
$8 blue check mistermix
@Old School: Twitter, not much. Lyft and Uber – no way to get a ride since they killed taxis.
Frank Wilhoit
What is Lyft spending money on? Their whole business model is not to have any assets; if they’re spending $1.3B/year on data infrastructure they’re being ripped off extremely badly; ditto for marketing.
RaflW
I reloaded Uber on my phone for a recent trip outside Lyft’s service area, and the desperate, repetitive push notifications for Uber Eats and other crap got me to uninstall it again the moment I was home from my trip. Lyft seems to leave me alone more, which may not be great for earnings, but avoids my annoyance (I wasn’t interested enough in Uber to find where to silence the pushes – a cursory look didn’t get the results I wanted, so dragged the app to the trash).
TaMara
It seems everyone is figuring out what many women already knew – taking rides from unlicensed strangers is not safe. Seriously, whoever thought this was a good idea was a man who doesn’t have to think about personal safety every moment of every day.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/21/tech/lyft-safety-transparency-report-sexual-assault/index.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/uber-reports-141-rapes-2020-even-sexual-assault-incidents-declined-pan-rcna36287
dmsilev
@Frank Wilhoit: Not sure. Uber spent big bucks chasing the self-driving Great White Whale, but Lyft avoided that trap.
Old School
@Frank Wilhoit:
Reading their financials, it looks like a big chunk of it is insurance.
Tony G
@dmsilev: As for Twitter: Ha Ha. I, however, use Lyft a few times a month, since I stopped driving a few years ago after a couple of major auto accidents. I’ll see what I’ll do when Lyft, Uber and the like implode due to a bad business model. Walk a lot more and use a lot more buses, I guess. More broadly, the whole “tech” economy seems to be based on make-believe snake oil that the founders hope will attract enough suckers before the companies collapse.
evap
I have to say, though, that I find Lyft and Uber really useful, although I have not used them much since pre-pandemic. I suppose that any replacement that treated the drivers well would cost a lot… Yes, I know about taxis, but around here they are not as convenient as Lyft.
Steeplejack
Fester Addams
I’ve heard Lyft described as a “bezzle”, JK Galbraith’s term for “the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it.”
Roger Moore
As I understand it, most of those Amazon vans are technically not owned by the company. They’re owned and operated by “independent” contractors who are small-time operators. That van is probably their whole livelihood, and they can’t afford to take it off the road for however long it would take to fix what is ultimately just cosmetic damage.
FWIW, in many ways I prefer the Amazon drivers to FedEx and especially to UPS. I live in a building that’s normally locked, with a call box people can use to be buzzed in. In my experience, FedEx drivers will sometimes give up when they see it will take them some extra time to get in and make the delivery, and UPS drivers will usually do that. Amazon drivers will almost always take the time to call me and have me buzz them in.
For all that people complain about Amazon being ruthless in pushing their contractors, I like their priorities better. UPS cares mostly about making sure their drivers make as many delivery attempts as possible within their allotted time, and they treat failed deliveries as the recipient’s problem. Amazon is both the seller and deliverer, so they see failure to deliver a package on schedule as customer service problem. Because of that, they try harder to make sure every package is delivered on the first try, even if it means drivers make fewer delivery attempts per unit time. My gut feeling is that the big courier services like UPS and FedEx care most about business deliveries, where they can deliver in bulk, and see residential deliveries as a wasteful sideline.
frosty
@$8 blue check mistermix: There were never any taxis in my exurban borough anyway. We’ll be asking our neighbors for a ride.
Not that I ever needed taxis Uber or Lyft here. Still driving!
Alison Rose
Damn it, that’s what Onlyfans is for.
Roger Moore
@Frank Wilhoit:
I would guess it’s still being spent on subsidies. The big thing about Lyft and Uber is that they’ve heavily subsidized their product for years in an attempt to drive taxis out of business. They’ve tapered back, but I think they’re still subsidizing rides.
Mike in NC
Just read a lengthy article about the defeat of Bolsonaro, the Brazilian dictator (AKA “Trump of the Tropics”). His supporters were hoping for a military coup to keep him in power, but that seems unlikely even though he has yet to concede. A slow transition is starting to happen. Among his biggest fans are evangelicals and truck drivers who staged roadblocks around the country. Why is all this shit so depressingly familiar?
Brachiator
Companies fail. New companies get created. How does this become “our mess” to clean up?
Is there a list of virtuous start ups that we are supposed to cheer for?
I would be a little sorry to see Uber and Lyft fail. Here in Southern California, we had shitty taxi service that essentially bribed local and state officials to carve out premium service areas. We got some light rail service built, but magically the trains still do not go directly to the airport, and only recently is there a line that goes directly to the beach.
It cost an arm and half a leg for limo service.
ETA. Beach residents didn’t want people without cars, you know, poor people, descending on beaches. Universal City fought to prevent a train stop right at their tourist attraction, but later recognized that even poor people have some money to spend, so now run free trams down to the nearby Red Line station stop.
However, other places have their own transportation issues.
WaterGirl
@Roger Moore: I prefer UPS to the Amazon delivery people by a factor of 10. The Amazon peeps have a fuck you attitude, at least around here, and they don’t read the delivery instructions.
So if it’s raining, they leave in on my front deck in the rain instead of on the side under the carport as the regular instructions say to do.
Ruviana
@TaMara: Yup. It’s why I won’t use them.
satby
@Roger Moore: As a small business owner who has to deal with suppliers who use all four (incl. USPS) I agree. Amazon tends to be the fastest and most reliable. UPS is next, USPS has improved since last year, and FedEx is dead last.
Ruckus
@TaMara:
In the job I had in pro sports I traveled more than I was home. On the road 8-9 months a year. I sometimes had to take a taxi. I avoided that like the plague if at all possible. Currently, on occasion, I use the local bus and train system to travel across LA and it is better than driving my own car, or about a million times better than riding in a cab. If Uber and Lyft are worse that is amazingly, unmeasurably bad.
geg6
This is still a single car owner country area where I live. You might see a few Uber and Lyft cars around, but they are rare. There is bus service which could be much better with more funding. I would love to see it greatly expanded and would use it if it was. As it is, there are few places here where the service benefits me based on where I usually go. There is a local taxi service, but it is expensive. So I keep my car. This is one of the reasons I want to sell this house. I really want to move back into a town where I can walk places. I hate suburban life and much prefer a city or even small river town.
Roger Moore
@Alison Rose:
A number of people have suggested of Musk’s paid, subscriber-only video plans for Twitter will make it into a competitor for OnlyFans. I think his flurry of ideas for how to make Twitter profitable are his ADHD showing.
Fair Economist
@Frank Wilhoit:
Cor-rup-tion! No inside info, but with that amount sloshing around in a private company without tight goals and standards, we are guaranteed huge amounts are going to contract with management cronies, likely with clever kickback systems.
Geminid
@Steeplejack:
Ayn Rand: “Who is John Galt?”
Elon Musk: “Me! Me!”
gvg
I don’t think Amazon is in trouble. I rarely see UPS or Fed ex trucks in my neighborhood and Amazon trucks are all over all the time. Fed Ex sucks around here. The last few times a company used them to do a delivery (Bed bath and Beyond) they took a month and twice lost track of the package and had to send again. I have had at least a hundred amazon deliveries and I think one problem which I did get fixed. UPS is better but just isn’t getting as much to deliver compared to Amazon. I also have Barnes and Noble and Books a Million Gift cards I haven’t used because when I look up the books I want they say 4-6 weeks for delivery and amazon is 2 days often cheaper in price. Even though a gift card would make a book free to me……well when I want to read something, it’s not next month. That isn’t the shipping, it means they aren’t even getting it in the mail. I also haven’t noticed any dents around here.
On the other hand my sister out in a rural area has had issues with Amazon not being able to find her but claiming delivery so she no longer uses them. Rural areas can have issues with any of them. Choices matter.
oatler
Ain’t no Uber or Lyft around here. I had the apps put into my phone and I and it looks like nobody wants to work in my part of AZ, restaurant workers included. My disability bus service is always stretched thin with ads ALWAYS HIRING. With all the real estate action around here you’d think there was some commercial enterprise happening. No, just speculators playing their long game.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I’ve mostly noticed that attitude around here in the form of blocking narrow roads while they make their delivery, sometimes multiple deliveries.
I figure those drivers must have shitty jobs and get some small amount of satisfaction from screwing with the other drivers. So I’ll cut them a certain amount of slack.
Dangerman
@TaMara: My last two rides on Uber were terrifying; not for the same reason though, in my case, the drivers were hyper aggressive, cutting Folks off left and right. I’m never been a big Taxi or Rideshare User but I can’t recall ever being scared shitless by drivers previously. Maybe just bad luck.
The Moar You Know
Turns out they have a two-tiered driving system. One uses Amazon vehicles and Amazon drivers. The other uses drivers through a third-party system, people using their own cars.
I know this because one of these third party people decided to dognap a golden retriever in my town. It’s a big dog town. The driver was caught on video making the delivery and taking the dog (yes, meth was involved). Amazon couldn’t give the police the name of the driver because they had no idea who it was.
It got sorted out, fortunately, but it took almost three weeks.
The owner is definitely to blame as well for letting the dog run loose. It won’t make the papers when Finn gets run over in front of his house in a couple of years.
RaflW
@Tony G: Half of all tech projects seem to be about ‘disrupting’ existing economies with no thought to what comes next. No doubt falling transit use in a lot of places has man causes (beyond Covid closing many workplaces for extended periods!) but rideshare was to some extent meant to f*ck with buses. Certainly taxis.
One of the reasons I sometimes still take a cab from MSP airport home. Lyft isn’t a ton cheaper, and sometimes the wait is a lot longer. And if no one takes cabs, they’ll be gone when Lyft goes poof.
(interestingly, as far as I could tell Uber only hails cabs in Athens, GR. I used it for my airport trip because I could pay and tip inside the app and just hop out at the destination.)
Betty Cracker
There are many troubling questions about the tech platforms that “disrupted” established industries, e.g., Uber and Lyft vs. taxis — passenger safety, fair treatment of workers, etc. But the pre-Uber taxi industry was easy to knock over because it sucked donkey balls, at least in my experience. It was unreliable and inconvenient. If the “disruptors” go away, I hope their replacements learn the appropriate lessons.
Geminid
@Roger Moore: One big difference between Amazon is that UPS’s workers are organized and work under a Teamsters Union contract. I don’t order packages so I don’t know how this plays out on the customer’s end, but when I’m out working I see UPS drivers often, and they are always hustling. They tend to be friendly (in a busy way) and that makes me think that although their jobs are demanding they’re being paid decently for their hard work.
Last year the Teamsters announced a long term effort to organize both Amazon’s drivers and its warehouse employees. They are starting with Canada, and are in the process of organizing several fullfillment centers in Ontario.
artem1s
@RaflW:
Yea, I won’t use Uber ever again. about 1/3 of the time their app sent my food delivery to wrong address. I prefer using Lyft for rides because the Uber app is horrendous. I’ve so far avoided using bike and scooter share vehicles because they use the Uber app. Just generally I feel like Uber treats it’s customers and workers worse than Lyft.
RaflW
@Ruckus: Further to my last, I will also say that my two taxi rides in Athens were both excellent (though not cheap – even with the Euro being pummeled so that meals and even hotels felt ‘reasonable’).
The car interiors were spotless and odor-free. Had fully working power windows in the back seats (I wanted fresh air even though both drivers masked when they saw I was masking). The cars were shiny clean and dent-free — as were basically all the many, many cabs I saw taking fares or cruising for customers. I even confirmed that the cabs had SRS side curtain airbags, since the cabbies did drive 90mph on the freeway (whee).
Both my drivers (and my friend who cabbed separately on arrival said the same) were probably late 60s or older and friendly, helped with bags, etc.
Just a world different than US cabbies I’ve encountered*. I assume that in Greece it’s a genuine, comfortable living wage job that probably doesn’t involve punishing work hours, given how much of a socialist/communist ‘hellhole’ the EU is.
*Almost all my Lyft rides have had friendly drivers. Bag help has been variable. “Unfriendly” Lyft drivers have just meant silent, which is also fine with me.
TaMara
@Dangerman: I don’t think it’s a one-off. My car dealership got rid of their van drivers and call you a Lyft instead. They are the worst – and the map directions often take them out to the highway via a road that makes you take a left across 4 lanes of traffic -and according to Lyft, you’re not allowed to tell them to go another, safer direction.
I’m not a fan of taxis, either, but at least I assume the drivers are at least screened, and this is their job, not a side gig.
Jackie
@WaterGirl: We still, to my knowledge, only have Amazon packages delivered by USPS in our neck of the woods. Sucks for the mail carriers, but good customer service.
trollhattan
@Mike in NC: Guessing they gazed northward and decided, “Hey, that looks pretty great.” No like election results? Attack election, determine “elections is for sissies.”
They’d like the Putin or Xi model of getting 98% of the vote and then disappearing that nasty 2%. “We can do better, next time.”
Somebody tried to assassinate Pakistan’s Khan, today.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Brachiator:
It shouldn’t. But when Lyft/Uber (“Luber”?) come to town, they undercut highly regulated taxis by subsidizing rides, without being subject to the same regulations that taxis were. Then, all the taxis went out of business. When they leave, the mess will be no taxis and no Lubers. I have a hard time imagining that taxpayer dollars won’t be used for a replacement, if only to subsidize taxis for a while until they get back on their feet.
trollhattan
@Jackie: I suppose in a weird way it’s good for USPS because it’s an income stream to help offset their lost business.
Have they ditched DeJoy yet?
Paul in KY
@TaMara: The only thing I liked about Uber/Lyft was the app that let you see where they were in relation to you. That’s it.
artem1s
@trollhattan:
surely that was just a gay lover’s spat? /snark
Qrop Non Sequitur
Testing testing mic check
RaflW
@$8 blue check mistermix: A 2019 study by Univ. of Kentucky researchers points to faster decreases in bus ridership than taxi use. The impact of Lyber (Ubft?) is disruption without care for what it does to the commons. aka Standard capitalism.
Delk
Pre-pandemic just about every street in the Chicago Loop was ‘disrupted’ by Uber and Lyft drivers that had no idea where they were or where they were going to. Double parked, parked in bus lanes, driving the wrong way on one way streets and blowing through red lights because they spend more time looking at their phones for directions than paying attention to traffic.
Tony G
@RaflW: Yeah. Ridiculous economics for a ridiculous culture. The prevalence of word “disrupt” should be a clue. To “disrupt” something is to partially destroy that thing (with no concern about how to replace it). The French Resistance tried to disrupt German communications systems, for example. They certainly weren’t trying to replace those systems with something better; they were fighting an enemy. In my experience (as someone who lived in New York City for six years when I was a youth, and then moved to the wastelands of suburban New Jersey) the old-school yellow taxis worked pretty well within the city, and there’s decent train and bus service to and from New Jersey and the city — but getting from point A to point B within New Jersey is very hard to do unless you’re driving a car. Therefore, since I stopped driving, I use Lyft when I’m traveling a moderate distance within New Jersey. In theory I could use a yellow cab (or take a bus) within New Jersey but that wouldn’t be as convenient. So, when Lyft and Uber inevitably implode that will be an inconvenience for me. So be it. What I still don’t understand about the “tech economy” is why the “Venture Capitalists” continue to throw boatloads of money at these sketchy companies. Back in the day, investors tended to be stingy tightwads that wouldn’t part with a dime unless they were assured of a safe return. Something doesn’t add up here. Are the MBA programs at major universities performing lobotomies on these kids?
Paul in KY
@TaMara: I would take a cab out to Douglass Park when I went to Riotfest & the cabbies were fine with going my preferred route. All cab rides in Chicago have been fine.
Baud
Having never started a taxi company, I have no idea how hard it is to start a taxi company if Uber etc. go belly up.
Kent
Which was the most profoundly stupid idea ever. The only thing that makes Uber and Lyft remotely profitable and viable is that they have outsourced every single infrastructure and capital expense to their drivers. Car purchase, car maintenance, car insurance, car parking during off ours, car fueling or recharging, etc. etc. There are ENORMOUS costs associated with owning and using cars whether gas or electric and driver or self-driving.
By eliminating drivers, Uber then has to pay for all of that themselves. How are they going to buy, maintain, clean, store, refuel, charge, all those millions of self-driving cars and still make a profit? Hint, they never were and never intended to I don’t think. It was just bait for venture capital.
Mark
@Fair Economist: Lyft is not a private company; shareholders own the comapny, and they report numbers quarterly. John Zimmer the CEO has the confidence of shareholders (which I am a small shareholder), which includes JPMorgan Mgmt, Fidelity and Blackstone., Vanguard Group, etc. All of these companies are also public and the idea that corruption or some slush fund is the issue for why Lyft is down relative to Uber, is absurd, and an indication that you have know idea what u are talking about.
Ksmiami
@gvg: Amazon’s main business is AWS Cloud services powering the internet for a multitude of corporations. Definitely not a shell.
Baud
@Kent:
Assuming the tech ever works, I bet Uber would create one or more shell companies to own and operate the fleet.
Kent
I expect someone with deep pockets will start a taxi company in the larger cities (or buy an existing one and modernize it) in which they combine the app convenience of Uber with traditional company-owned taxis. Pull up your taxi app just like Uber and order up a yellow taxi.
Probably some sort of hybrid would be most viable with private drivers who own their own taxis under the umbrella of a larger local company.
As long as there is demand for ride hailing, there will be people trying to fill that market.
Brachiator
Disruption has often been the norm when it comes to societal change and innovation. The original establishment of taxis, which displaced horse drawn livery service, was absolutely brutal and launched the…
Chicago Taxi Cab Wars.
If you check out the 12 min video, you find that one of the people who started the taxi business was this guy named Hertz. Always looking for a way to do something disruptive with automobiles.
Kent
Sure, but that still gets them back to the original problem which is that they have to give a big majority cut of the profits to others. Today they are giving a cut to their drivers. Under that scenario they are giving a cut to outside contractors or shell companies that own and operate their fleets of self-driving cars.
There is no world in which they can just sit back and profit by eliminating drivers.
Baud
@Kent:
Likely. The advantage to the Uber app for me is when I travel, especially internationally.
Geminid
@Brachiator: Something similar to the light rail situation you describe in Los Angeles happened in coastal Virginia. In 1997 the state’s Tidewater Transportation District Board identified a good 18 mile light rail route leading from western Norfolk to the eastern side of Virginia Beach, near the Atlantic. It would run along existing tracks. But Virginia Beach voted 56-44% against financing a link to thir majority Black neighbors.
Norfolk went ahead and built a 7.4 rail line across the city. Called “The Tide,” it has 15 stops and carried 650,000 riders last year.
Barbara
@Geminid: Traffic in that whole area is just dismal. It’s dismal in NoVa as well but we have so much more population, and most areas are reasonably well served by mass transit. Even when you choose to drive, you are benefiting when others use trains or buses. I don’t understand why more people don’t consider this.
Kent
Sure. Of course there is no reason why an Uber replacement in the form of more traditional taxis or hybrid taxi companies couldn’t settle on a more universal app that works in multiple cities and countries. So that you wouldn’t need to have a separate app for each location. Or alternatively someone will build a 3rd party consolidator app that you load and it will use GPS to see your location and connect you to whatever local taxi company is working in your area.
I’m not particularly worried that the collapse of Uber will leave us with no options.
RaflW
My pithy answer is that tax rates are far too low in the US.
Investable cash is so free-flowing for the rich that they just don’t care if, say, 10% of their obscene wealth is invested in things that have a 95% failure rate. The 5% successes might be runaways. And the income off the remaining 100s of millions is way more than they’ll ever need to live in overstuffed (or trez chic), multi-city, private-jet traversing luxury.
Kent
@Brachiator: That is the same reason why Georgetown in Washington DC has no Metro service. The posh folks who lived there didn’t want people to be able to ride the metro into posh Georgetown. Ever since they have regretted it because the only way to get there is by crappy slow buses.
RaflW
@Kent: What you describe sounds very similar to Uber Taxi that I used in Greece. I could see the cab I’d hailed coming, knew it’s license plate, and could pay & tip with my US credit card inside the app. But it was a standard, licensed, yellow Greek cab.
Tony G
@Baud: “If it ever works”, indeed. From my point of view, self-driving vehicles (that drive on regular streets, not on restricted pathways) will never work unless humans are really able to invent General Artificial Intelligence (i.e., autonomous robots that can function in complex environments without human intervention) — the same technology that many people believe would lead to the demise of the human species. (See the “Terminator” documentaries.) Driving safely and accurately is a complex task. About 99% of the time it’s very routine and boring, but the human or robot has to be prepared for the 1% of the time when he, she or it has to react quickly to complex and unpredictable situations. A lot of human driving depends upon complex reactions with other humans. (Is that other driver waving me through the intersection? Is that pedestrian about to stupidly walk in front of me? How about the kid chasing a ball?). The primitive AI that exists today cannot handle these situations, and perhaps AI will never be able to handle these situations (in spite of what you see in the movies). Any business plan that assumes technology that does not yet exist (and might never exist) is just stupid.
Sister Golden Bear
@Kent: Already happened in SF. There’s the Flywheel app that works like Uber/Lyft but for taxis. Albeit the company, which snarfed up various taxi companies, apparently is problematic.
FWIW, one reason both Uber and Lyft were able to get their start in SF was that SF taxis were appalling terrible, and refused to service parts of the city, refused to pick up disabled people, LGBT people POC, etc. Both were actually inspired by a non-profit services called Homobiles who would pick up drag queens and other queer people that the taxi companies wouldn’t. Taxi companies originally tried to shut it down, but came to a truce when they figured Homobiles was serving customers that they weren’t interested in.
Geminid
@Barbara: It’s possible that Virginia Beach will eventually build their section of the rail system. Another referendum might pass sometime in the current decade. People’s attitudes change and so do demographics, albeit gradually
Norfolk seems to be progressing as an urban center. The higher crime rates of the 1990s have receded, and Norfolk’s museums, festivals and modest arts scene have made the city a more attractive place for residents and tourists. That may make it a more attractive partner to it’s neighbors to the east.
Ken
It’s really quite easy if you’re planning to be DISRUPTIVE!!!
The stodgy old approach is more difficult, because then you have to worry about employment, insurance, and other laws.
Tony G
@RaflW: Yes, that sounds about right. For a billionaire, a million dollars is like pocket change for me. My 31-year-old son had a similar explanation when I asked for his opinion about those asinine NFT “investments”. “People with too much money, Dad.”. I told him to thank me for not giving a trust fund to him and his brother.
Jackie
@trollhattan: I don’t know about lost business – our carriers are working 14 hr days and often lose their one guaranteed day off – Sunday – delivering Amazon packages.
I learned early not to mention DeJoy to them. He’s very hated, which surprises nobody.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The friend of mine who works for these companies says the way to do it take jobs for all of them. It’s quite likely that those places were you can’t find a Uber or a Lyft ride are because all the drivers are working for who ever is paying the best at the time.
These Masters of the Universe clowns never get that exploitation always ends up going two ways and tradition companies go to great length to retain their staffs for a reason, threat the worker as temporary and the worker will just not show up someone else is paying 5 cents an hour more.
eversor
Uber’s big goal has always been killing off taxis and public transportation and then raising rates after to make a profit. Then when auto driving cars hit moving to that and with no more public transit or taxis running a monopoly with no humans with a fleet of electric cars. Uber, and lyft, are also behind the electric scooters that are every in cities now and at least in DC people love hurling them into the Potomac River.
This is of course insane on several levels that everyone here can see but that’s not going to stop them. The libertarian boys club loves this idea because it’s a monopoly, disrupts, and kills public services. There’s another catch about all of this as well, middle class and upper middle class types love it. It’s a way not to have to put up with people on buses and the METRO. The METRO is safe here for the most part. But there have been high profile attacks including with weapons and that has been increasing. It’s almost always when the schools let out and it’s always young men. There’s also been an increase in homeless people and panhandling that really showed up during COVID. So even people who once loved the METRO are now avoiding it and just shelling out for Uber. Uber also saves you having to walk past all the homeless Hoovervilles that have been cropping up and expanding.
I still get “pre tax METRO” and a bike/METRO subsidy from work so whatever. But a lot of women I know now prefer to take Uber for safety and there is been a flood of the middle class out of public transit and onto Uber or scooters and it’s obvious when you are on the METRO. There’s also pushes for work to subsidize this for safety reasons.
Like all these tech scams it’s going to be “we’ll create a paid high speed option for the middle class and upper class so they don’t have to deal with the poor” and people will jump at it. If my SO is forced to take the METRO she wears headphones and sunglasses so she can pass off ignoring people as she had a few bad incidents during COVID and that was that.
MattF
I use Instacart once or twice a week, and the last couple of deliveries have been below par. The shoppers have simply checked out after not finding items, rather than trying to find replacements for the missing items. I don’t blame the shoppers- they have to get customer shopping lists done in a specified amount of time. But if the slower shoppers are pushed out of the system, then customers are left with the shoppers that pile up a large number customer shopping lists and then rush through them.
eversor
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
When I’ve taken an Uber home due to having too much stuff to carry I’ve noticed that the fair is around 9-12 bucks if I leave 10 mins early. Everyone is OK with this. If I leave on time though that will jump to 20-30 bucks. I’ve frequently booked a 10 buck ride that ghosted only for me to pay 25 for it.
Lady WereBear
@Tony G:
More accurately, turning them into profit psychopaths who never see the carnage.
gvg
@Tony G: I think our tax structure is messed up. I think, possibly that income from dividends or selling stock may be taxed at a lower enough rate that it can beat in real return an investment in a company that actually has a real return in whatever it does. I am not quite sure of the details but as far as I can tell there is too much money looking for investment sand not enough savings profits nor actual businesses that are really that worth investing in. We haven’t been putting the money into infrastructure nor capital improvements for decades. For all that the economy has mostly been going up, its been at the top peoples pockets not into actual companies or factories that will cause real expansion. To me a lot of the so called markets have looked like rich people trading hats with each other. Overall there are a lot fewer people starting new businesses than there used to be too decades ago. I really think the tax structure is a reason. Probably not the only one
trollhattan
@Jackie: Our carrier usually hits the house [“ouch!”] by eleven; this election season he’s not getting here until five or so. One guy who can’t wait for Tuesday.
IIUC the lost of income from first-class postage has hit USPS hard, from an income standpoint. It explains both our north-of a half-buck stamps and the diminished workforce. Hopefully, Dark Brandon’s added funding will right the ship–I sure as hell don’t want UPS and FedEx taking over.
I’d also like to see the reboot of Postal Service banking, and sending payday loansharks back to sea.
Kelly
No Amazon delivery trucks out here in the boondocks. Postmaster DeJoy’s cut backs to the local post office hours sure inconvenienced the overwhelming Trumpish hillbillies around here but they will never make the connection.
We do a lot of mail order living far from the city. The annoying thing for us is the companies that can’t handle a PO Box. Some do not specify USPS, UPS or FedEx but end up shipping it to our post office without the PO Box number. That now costs us a small fee. Current Post Office recommended hack to sneak our PO box number in is as a gate code.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Tony G: I though the same thing, self driving cars required technology we don’t have, might not be possible (just look at the pathing problems for AI driven NPCs in computer games, going by those an AI driven car is likely to end up stuck at some parked car at the side of the road trying to figure out a new path)
And even then, it would require a lot of tech being added to the car, very likely layers of it for redundancy, which will just drive the price up and self driving would only end up a rich person’s toy.
trollhattan
@eversor:
“We charge you more during high demand, as Milton Friedman commands.”
“Watch us create high demand, so we can charge you more.”
I’m imagining McDonald’s doing this with Big Mac pricing.
Lady WereBear
@MattF: It’s an incessant race to pay the fewest people the least until the point the cash flow diminishes as a sign they’ve gone too far and they throw up a chatbot to point to different parts of the website you already looked at for help and make a fuss about improved customer service.
trollhattan
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: We don’t necessarily need self-driving cars–the Zipcar model, scaled up, can meet some hunk of the demand filled by Uber et al. Already works pretty well for carless urban dwellers-workers.
ETA I see these puttering along in downtown SF (a VERY challenging driving environment) and while they creep me the hell out, they also don’t careen into people and things.
Steve in the ATL
@Baud:
Seriously? Loser.
Brachiator
@RaflW:
And human ingenuity. The pandemic and work slowdown seriously impacted transit service in Los Angeles county. People who absolutely needed to get to work used savings and relief money to buy new cars. Some people bought vans and set up ad hoc transportation services. And yeah, some use of Uber and Lyft.
The pandemic has eased, but public transit ridership is still low. Remote work has had some impact. But then transit companies started eliminating some routes due to budget constraints. And for reasons not fully covered in the media, some cities are dealing with a shortage of bus drivers. The net result is to keep more people away from bus and train riding.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@RaflW: I can attest that in the last ten to fifteen years, cab service has improved quite a bit in Athens, especially since they started integrating hailing apps (not just Uber, but Taxiplon, Taxibeat, and now FreeNow). Ten years back, they actually staged a massive strike protesting reforms such as a requirement that they provide receipts for fares. They’d rip you off, ignore the meter or sometimes not even turn it on, and one time I actually had a cabbie jump out of the cab to get into an argument with someone on the road in the middle of my trip.
It’s a lot better now. Especially because the hailing apps give the opportunity for feedback. And as a bonus, any cabbie plugged into them necessarily has a GPS system that’ll point them in the right direction; I’ve had cabbies who insisted they knew where I lived better than I did, and promptly missed the turn to my place and took me in the wrong direction along the one-way street my apartment is at the top end of.
Hybridizing the Uber system and medallion cabs is probably the way to go at the moment. There are some islands that could honestly use it, if for nothing more than coordinating cab dispatching.
trollhattan
@Steve in the ATL: I drove cab one summer while in college. A whole parallel education. My favorite trips were the blood bank runs.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Dangerman: I use Uber quite a bit and so far have not had any aggressive drivers. I don’t drive so when I can not catch my carpool due to working later or other issues I take Uber home. If Uber and Lyft go away or have not enough cars in this area, I would have to try to get the handicap van to stop here from the local bus company and transfer to the line that goes close to my area of my town (12 miles from my work) or retire/try to find work from home…. I miss San Diego/Point Loma. There I could catch a bus to my kids day care, drop her off and walk to work. There was also a bus from the subbase to the trolley station and trolleys from there all over (downtown, the Zoo, Mission Bay). I miss the city.
trollhattan
@Brachiator: In Portland last week, Trimet was having light rail schedule delays due to driver shortages. It’s a thing, I guess.
Frank Wilhoit
@Old School: My first thought was, surely they can’t be buying liability for all the drivers? My second thought was, I guess they’d have to, else exactly no one would be willing to drive for them. But that just means the business model is irretrievably stupid. How did it get green-lit? If Amazon had done this, the first thing they would have done is buy an insurance company incorporated in a state where they could also buy the regulators.
C Stars
Haven’t been able to read ALL the comments but based on the ones I have, the experience is fairly universal. Lyft (Uber) experience has gone downhill. I used to have drivers offer me water and candy. Now I get cars reeking of smoke and drivers who think it’s appropriate to play sexually explicit songs while giving a mom and two kids a ride. So I don’t use it anymore. Zipcar (or where we are, Gig) may require a walk of a block or two, but it’s a better deal for the money. The cars can still be kind of shitty and reek of smoke, but at least you’re in control of the windows, and in the East Bay anyway you can park them anywhere, which is pretty handy. (Mr. Stars and I joke that there should be a rating on the online info/dashboard for each car, with the number of small cannabis leaves indicating how strongly the car smells of weed). Of course, this really only applies to folks who live in cities. I’m not sure how the Gig model would work in the suburbs.
Using Target or ordering directly from companies, I’ve been able to avoid Amazon almost entirely, though there are a couple of items we can only get through Amazon so we order every few months. I hate it. I don’t want to give my money to a company that won’t let its workers go to the bathroom.
I didn’t exactly leave Twitter–I haven’t deleted my account–but I haven’t been back since Musk had his premature disinformation ejaculation about Paul Pelosi. The idea of using that man’s service just grosses me out.
We can survive without these assholes!!
Steve in the ATL
@Geminid:
Depends on where they are. The Teamsters contract pays drivers the same across the country, so drivers in rural shithole are well compensated and drivers in large cities much less so.
RSA
In case not everyone noticed, Uber is no longer directly pursuing the self-driving car angle.
The article does say that Uber is funding Aurora.
So back in 2019-2020, one of my robotics colleagues got a job with Uber, moved to a different city, and then very quickly found himself working for Aurora.
Steve in the ATL
@trollhattan: oh the humanity!
Steve in the ATL
@trollhattan: same issue on Marta in Atlanta
Anonymous At Work
Amazon better hope that a badly-maintained van owned and operated by an “independent contractor” isn’t in a major accident because those drivers and those vans are 100% specked to Amazon standards, do 100% of business for Amazon, have contracts out the wazoo with Amazon, and, for the legal aspect, have 0% of the money that Amazon does. A judge or jury could easily find a few things that are dangerous to Amazon: that Amazon is really in control, that Amazons sets standards which make safe driving and proper maintenance impossible, that Amazon’s contracts are overly-restrictive and limit their “market” to “high-volume online sales delivery services” rather than “couriers and delivery services” (huge for antitrust and a few other areas.
Non-union: save a buck now, pay 10 later.
Old School
@Frank Wilhoit:
Sounds like a number of cities require it.
gwangung
VC and private equity say this out loud. THey’re very comfortable hitting below the Mendoza line and considering themselves successful.
different-church-lady
From downstairs:
I think I see the problem. Not for Musk or Twitter— for us.
different-church-lady
@Steve in the ATL: Taxi companies are just code, right?
different-church-lady
I’ve really reached the point where if one more asshole tries to “disrupt” something in my life I’m going to blow all the gaskets.
Tony G
@Tony G: Monopoly money. I used to enjoy playing Monopoly with my boys when they were little. It was fun to take “risks” because the money wasn’t real. I guess that’s what’s going on with the super-rich in our “economy”. Once a guy (they’re almost always guys) has enough money for the cars, the yachts, the luxury apartments and houses, the private jets, the trophy wives and girlfriends; any money left over is Monopoly money. If it burns up in a dumpster fire when a “disruptive” company goes south — so what? It’s not real money.
Tony G
@different-church-lady: Disrupt them with a baseball bat.
Tony G
@gwangung: Hah. I had to look up “the Mendoza line”. Our meritocracy!
Will
What exactly is the mess we will have to clean up from Uber, Lyft, or Twitter going out of business?
Is it going to be a mess different than other companies going out of business?
Are we all going to have to go out into the streets with a mop and bucket to clean spilled oil? Are we going to have to hire thousands to individually print every tweet that happened during its existence to be saved in a filing cabinet?
Or is the argument something like people have become hooked on the cheap and relatively less discriminatory environment for transportation that Uber and Lyft provided and we will have to support people as the move back to the local taxi monopolies that overcharge and keep on moving till they get a white rider?
Tony G
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: That’s right. The closest that humanity has come to General AI is with certain military systems — for which “price is no object” — and even there it’s very specific AI (destroy the target while avoiding countermeasures). It’s a good thing that humanity is so far from achieving General AI, because if we ever do our creations may decide to eliminate us.
Captain C
@Steeplejack: I like how Elon keeps getting roasted on the very platform he just overpaid for.
If Twitter dies on his watch, will it be a Musk Husk?
Paul in KY
@eversor: I hate those electric scooters when they drive them on the street. Usually a young dipshit who thinks they are invulnerable.
If the sidewalks are wide, I can usually get away from them.
bbleh
What to do with the husks?
Take off and nuke ’em from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Tony G
@gvg: Yup. Our tax structure exists the way it is because the handful of people who own this country can purchase — sorry, I mean “give campaign contributions to” — Senators and representatives that will pass the tax laws (and other law) that benefit that handful of people. Democracy!
Captain C
@Kent:
The surviving outer borough car services have done this; my own service seems to have merged with a few others and they’ve really upped their game since Uber and Lyft emerged. Most places don’t have this option, though.
I think you can also summon a yellow (or light green) cab in NYC with an app too, nowadays.
Ruckus
@RaflW:
I have taken taxi rides in northern Europe half a century ago, while in the navy. Spotless, cleaner than new Mercedes sedans, drivers extremely concerned about their cars, their driving, and they were better than any taxi in the US. The cost was about the same in dollars, the experience dramatically better. So much better that there really was no comparison. My experience decades later of taxi service here is “Why in the hell would I want to get into that vehicle?”
mrmoshpotato
@Paul in KY: I hate those electric scooters. They litter the sidewalks. Same with them damn electric Divvy bikes.
Will
Actually was able to think of a mess we might have to clean up. If Uber/Lyft went out of business, we will likely see a rise in car accidents and deaths caused by drunk drivers. Forgot how much of a lifesaver this has become to communities across the country.
Geminid
@gvg: It’s true we haven’t put money into transportation for decades, but that changed with passage of the infrastructure package last year. That measure included $60 billion for AMTRAK, a sum that exceeds total investment in the system for decades, and will expand a service map that has remained static even as the nation added over a 100 million residents.
Money for mass transit includes $10 billion for New York City’s MTA alone. Well over $15 billion will be spent easing transportation bottlenecks that impede rail traffic on the east coast and elsewhere. Lead waterpipe replacement, electric school buses, and refinancing the Superfund for toxic site cleanup are just a few of the other progressive elements in this underrated piece of legislation.
To be sure, more investment is needed, but this was a good start.
Captain C
@Tony G:
All it takes is one big hit from the Next Big Idea exploding and many failure’s worth of losses are paid for, kind of like how back when record companies completely controlled the music industry the platinum albums would pay for the bombs and never-made-its. Plus, since the ’80s, investment has really become more of a casino mentality than a let’s-allocate-private-resources-responsibly attitude.
Tony G
@gvg: The whole system is dysfunctional, obviously. I worked as an “IT contract worker” doing software support for a while at IBM about ten years ago. Very inflexible, bureaucratic upper management. The people who had been there for years clued me in at the beginning: At end of each quarter, expect to see people literally disappear (with no explanation). That’s because the upper management gets quarterly bonuses that are a function of quarterly profits, and when profits are not high enough, the upper management tries to goose them up by cutting staff. That seems to have been the extent of their decision-making expertise: fire people now or later? One day, of course, I as disappeared — given one hour to turn over my projects to another poor sucker and then get out of the building. Meritocracy!
Annie
@Brachiator:
This, this. I use Lyft a lot because I don’t drive, and taxi service in San Francisco pre-rideshare was garbage-level rotten (though that is a different rant). And although some of our bus lines are excellent (1-California I’m lookin’ at you), cross-town connections are often lousy, especially outside of working hours.
FWIW, I’m a middle-aged woman and I’ve never had a problem in Lyft. I’ve had some great conversations with the drivers — one was a grad student in Elizabethan literature, and another was from Mongolia, in San Francisco while his wife was in med school.
Another Scott
@Kent: Careful of the easy myths… GGWash.org:
More at the link.
Cheers,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
@Kent:
But there IS a Georgetown Metro stop! I saw it in No Way Out! ;-)
(The fun part is when the entrance turns out to be a magic portal into an entirely different city’s subway system, but somehow Costner still finds his way back into DC when he emerges.)
Annie
@Sister Golden Bear:
Oh yes. Even though San Francisco is only 7 miles square, I’ve had cabs refuse to take me to my address because it was too far. I once called a cab when I’d been working really late; the cabbie picked me up at midnight, then refused to take me all the way to my address. The last cab I took, I hailed after a root canal — too dazed to do the Lyft app — and the cabbie could not get the cab up the hill to my building. In San Francisco he could not figure out how to drive up a hill. Haven’t taken one since. Pre-rideshare, a cab would not wait for a fare; you went straight out to the street after you phoned for a cab. I once tried to take a cab home from my vet’s office in central San Francisco. The vet assistant called 3 times. Cab never showed. The vet gave me a ride home — he had finished all his charting and I was still waiting. And for years they refused to take credit cards. It never occurred to them that there were women who did not want to get cash at an ATM late at night to pay a cab.
Geminid
@Steve in the ATL: The part of Virginia I live in has a relatively high cost of housing near the UPS terminals, less so for drivers who commute a half hour or so.
Do you think the Teamsters will ever agree to a pay differential based on the cost of living in different areas?
Steve in the ATL
@Geminid: hasn’t happened yet! The bargaining unit is all US drivers, as opposed to, say, each metro area having a separate BU and CBA, so the city drivers get outvoted by the more numerous rural and small town drivers. Much like rural voters outnumbering educated, thinking city-dwellers, thus giving us horrible governors and senators.
Baud
@Steve in the ATL: I’m starting to think the food isn’t worth it anymore.
MisterDancer
Yes! This is one of those utterly invisible issues that visibly marginalized people have dealt with for decades — I ran into it in Boston nearly a decade ago trying to hail a taxi, and just stopped trying after that.
Here’s a short article on studies of racism in ride-sharing, measured by rates of cancellation for Lyft/Uber/local taxi: https://uproxx.com/technology/uber-lyft-racism-study-taxis-black-riders/
Y’all — it’s bad all around, and yes there’s real safety issues for Woman. Yet it’s also true that, as in many things, Women of Color, LGBTQIA+ people, Disabled people, and a lot of others oftentimes have very limited choices — which might mean, yes, using Uber or Lyft. That makes it dangerous for us to condemn unilaterally the fancy new services, lest we ignore those realities.
Geminid
@Steve in the ATL: Do you think the Teamsters will be successful in their effort to organize Amazon? How might that change the union, and change Amazon?
I’ve always believed that Amazon would be better off in the long run if they were unionized, at least so long as its competitors were in the same boat. That would make for a stronger working class in general, with more money to buy stuff from Amazon. And a stronger working class would make for a stronger middle class with more spending power too. Even wealthy people would benefit, although most would never admit it.
Anoniminous
@Tony G:
Depending on who you believe there’s between $35 and $70 TRILLION dollars floating around the world in cash, cash equivalents, and other places needing to be used for something. Anything! Money managers and other pilot fish, flunkies, toadies, and parasites are at their wit’s end trying to place that pile in investments paying more than 2%.
Fact: Denmark issued a tranche of negative interest loans a little while back and sold it out. That’s right: “investors” (sic) paid Denmark to haul the cash away for 10 years.
So the answer to your question is: “Why Not?” If the money is lost they can write it off their taxes and if it succeeds then they’ll have even more money they’ll need to throw away on “Innovative” and “Disruptive” High Techy-tech TechBro brain waves like a gypsy cab company with a website, aka, Lyft, Uber.
Ann Marie
@Kent: In Philadelphia we already can use an app to call a taxi. It’s called Curb. I prefer to call and speak with a human dispatcher, but it’s available.
louc
@Sister Golden Bear:
This was why I’m not completely against Uber and Lyft. Taxis refused to pick me up in my DC neighborhood. And they’d take rez for early morning pickups and never show.
@eversor:
Metro is picking up now. It’s standing room only when I board at Union Station and the lines to get up the escalators at Farragut North are back to pre-COVID levels. I hate the new fare gates, btw.
Steve in the ATL
@Geminid: hard to say. Organizing is tough to predict. Adding Amazon workers would likely reduce the average age in the union, which would be a good thing. And from what I hear about how Amazon treats its workers, it would help both sides.
But what do I know? I’ve only negotiated two deals with Teamsters this month!
Tony G
@Anoniminous: Makes sense. Anything past a few million becomes Monopoly money.
Geminid
@Steve in the ATL: Ahh. David versus Goliath!
But which one is Goliath?
Steve in the ATL
@Geminid: I should also mention that they balance of power is shifting back toward employers rather than employees, and that will likely reduce the flood of organizing that we’ve seen.
I support whatever creates more jobs for labor lawyers!
Tony G
@Tony G: Maybe an analogy: In several of my various jobs, I’d kick in $10 a month to buy lottery tickets with my co-workers. I never expected to win anything (and I never did win anything) — but it was only ten bucks, and it was fun to pretend that I’d win some money. For some of the rulers of the world, $100 million is about the same as ten bucks were for me.
Cheryl from Maryland
I’m worried RE: Door Dash. My 99-year-old mother-in-law doesn’t go to stores; she refuses to ask her neighbors to buy things for her; I’m 45 minutes away and her son isn’t in the best of health and my main priority; the little shop in her retirement community is horrible; the local big grocery chain won’t deliver to her door and requires an appointment anyway; she doesn’t notify us that she needs anything until she has run out; we now RELY on Door Dash as we can order multiple times a week with immediate and at the door delivery. Door Dash has improved our quality of life so much.
Tony G
@Anoniminous: As long as I’m airing grievances (Festivus is coming soon) it just annoys me to hear these companies referred to as “tech” companies. With rare exceptions, none of these companies create any new technology. Most of them are just piggy-backing on the ARPANET technology that the Pentagon paid universities to create more than a half-century ago. You might as well call Dominoes Pizza a “tech” company because it uses automobiles.
Baud
@Steve in the ATL:
Because unlike a lot of employees, employers aren’t dumb enough to vote for the wrong political party.
Steve in the ATL
@Baud: I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter!
trollhattan
@MisterDancer:
Confess I’m having a hard time imagining how an SF cabbie could avoid picking up gay fares. “We call him ‘Mister Starvie.'”
OTOH it’s not hard to believe the taxi service is sketchy–seems SOP in most US cities. And it ain’t an easy city to get from A to B in a personal car.
Steve in the ATL
@trollhattan: ha!
Geminid
@Steve in the ATL:
Labor lawyers: “Who says it’s a zero-sum game!”
MisterDancer
@trollhattan: There’s a reason I used the term “visibly marginalized people” — and yes, people do “guess” if people are LBGTQIA+ based upon appearances, and act accordingly.
Source: me, as a Belly Dancer, and how people react when I’m in costume versus other outfits. And even before that, I got called “gay” a lot, but that’s a somewhat different story.
sab
@TaMara: I am amazed and horrified about how many women in my family use them.
Nancy
In the Rochester area, I can recommend Airport Taxi. I’ve had good luck with them.
Vehicles are clean and the drivers show up on time.
Tony G
@TaMara: Absolutely. Using Lyft is one of the many things in which I, as a man, have a different experience than women do. I have literally never felt threatened while taking a Lyft — or when walking down the street for that matter. Male privilege.
The Lodger
@Tony G: Back in the day, investors weren’t all looking for casino payouts. I haven’t been in NJ for a while myself, but as I understand it, there aren’t even that many casinos left.
Frank Wilhoit
@Old School: Well of course it’s required, probably everywhere. What they (evidently) didn’t do is cost it out per passenger mile — an oversight that may well bankrupt them.
billcinsd
@trollhattan: That Waymo is going so slow you can get twice as much work done on your commute
C Stars
@Cheryl from Maryland: Yeah, it’s an extremely handy service and definitely fills a pretty basic need (quick, reliable, door-to-door grocery delivery).
StringOnAStick
@mrmoshpotato: I know gen X city dwellers who refuse to use the electric scooters because of a similar aged friend ending up with a permanent TBI from colliding with a car.
The Bird bikes here in Bend get a bit of tourist use, and occasionally get left in really out of the way places for days, or tossed into the river.
Pete Mack
Outside the big cities, local cab companies have prices competitive with Lyft and Uber, and are a whole lot more reliable.
Rebel's Dad (fka texasboyshaun)
@Kent: Suburban Houston has dealt with this nincompoop NIMBYism for decades, all because
suburban racist trashsalt-of-the-earth God-fearing people are terrified that the blahs will use the train/bus to break in and steal their TV while they’re at work. Wouldn’t surprise me if this is a universal American phenomenon.Steeplejack
@Rebel’s Dad (fka texasboyshaun):
Because FYWP doesn’t like “straight” apostrophes in nyms, you’re going to have to have every comment approved by a front-pager. The answer is to use a “smart” apostrophe instead, which you can copy from here: Rebel’s Dad. With that in your nym, only your first comment will need to be approved.
Tony G
@The Lodger: That’s probably true. I’ve never set foot in Atlantic City or in any casino. I prefer to burn my money in a dumpster; more fun. Online “sports betting” has been legal in New Jersey for more than four years now, so now people with a gambling addiction — I mean people who enjoy the excitement of betting on their favorite teams — can just sit on their sofas and gamble, without getting up and going to Atlantic City or elsewhere.
Tony G
@Tony G: A good case in point is Saint Elon Musk himself. He just paid about $44 billion for Twitter, and now he seems to be determined to destroy the company, like a two-year-old breaking his new toy. That $44 billion represents a very significant chunk of his total net worth, but if it all evaporates he’ll still have more than $150 billion. Monopoly money!