Uber was never going to work. It's only plan, ever, was to monopolize paid car transport and jack up the rates. It was never a particularly good plan, and it has never shown any real sign of being likely to succeed. Hopefully the pandemic will kill Uber deader than the GOP's moral compass.
Hubert Horan: Can Uber Ever Deliver? Part Twenty-Three: Uber’s Already Hopelessly Unprofitable Economics Take A Major Coronavirus HitNothing has happened to change the fact that after ten years, riders have always been fundamentally unwilling to pay prices that would cover Uber’s actual costs, that Uber was always less efficient than the traditional taxis it drove out of business, that its only “efficiency improvement” was to push driver compensation to minimum wage levels, and that its growth depended entirely on unsustainable predatory subsidies.
But if anyone still thought that Uber could somehow magically reverse its multi-billion dollar losses, the coronavirus should have put their fantasies totally to rest. The coronavirus has crushed the major drivers of urban car services demand, including business travel and discretionary urban entertainment (clubs, restaurants, etc.). Their customers remain highly concerned about the health risks of all forms of public transportation.
While many industries have been devastated by the coronavirus it is critical to distinguish between those that clearly had a strongly profitable business model prior to the pandemic (United Airlines, Disneyland, Major League Baseball) and a company like Uber that had been incapable of generating positive cash flow under ideal economic conditions. There needs to be discussion about how to best restructure airlines, tourist and entertainment industries because they have contributed to overall economic welfare in the past, and clearly can in the future. Uber has only served to reduce overall economic welfare. Society has nothing to gain from “saving” Uber.
