STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 11 April 2014

[antigop]

42. Fudd...did you see this?

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/04/matt-stoller-how-uber-creates-an-algorithmic-monopoly.html

Uber of course is a cab service that lets you order a cab from your smartphone via an App. It’s really neat, you get to watch the cab approach on a map, the payment is automatically applied so you don’t have to even deal with the transaction itself. The company is now taking its approach to logistics, and moving to ‘disrupt’ the delivery industry as well, competing with courier services, UPS, Fedex, and the Post Office. It’ll be interesting to see what happens there.

But it’s important to recognize just what Uber actually represents. Uber started out named UberCab, and ‘uber’ is a German word which means ‘over’ or ‘better than’ or ‘the ultimate’. So UberCab meant, the ultimate cab. At the core of Uber’s strategy has been lobbying and advocacy to make sure that it can get into regulated cab markets. And this is so Uber can ‘disrupt’ and destroy them.

A healthy cab ecosystem relies on expectations of a market (with price-fixing by political authorities, mostly taxi commissions). There have to be people trying to hail cabs, and cabs driving around to find customers. As more people use Uber, there will be fewer people trying to hail cabs, and fewer cabs picking up people, which will lead to reduced expectations cabs will be available, and so on and so forth. Gradually the ‘open cab market’ will be displaced by a closed Uber service. I’ve already noticed it’s harder to hail cabs where I live, capacity is often taken up by Uber riders.

Open cab markets aren’t gone, but they will die eventually. They will go the way of open cattle, pig, and chicken markets, which mostly don’t exist anymore due to concentration in the meat market (read The Meat Racket for a great understanding of what happens when markets are captured by big business).