Tech’s broken promises: Streaming is now just as expensive and confusing as cable. Ubers cost as much as taxis. And the cloud is no longer cheap::Some tech is getting pricier and looking a lot like the older services it was supposed to beat. From video streaming to ride-hailing and cloud computing.
Don’t blame tech, blame the bait-and-switch business model of loss leading products.
Uber never made money because they chose to undercut prices of all competitors and bleed them out.
I’d argue that newer streaming companies (those founded by studios, such as Disney +) did the same thing by roping in customers before jacking up prices.
It may be the “fault” of capitalism, but consider it was capitalism that birthed streaming in the first place. In the long term, the expectation would be a better solution will surface in reference to streaming… the same way streaming was a solution to cable. Thus is the business cycle.
Remember that every invention discovered and improvement made before capitalism, happened before capitalism.
Remember that even in a system in which workers own companies, those workers still want to make more money
A profit motive is not unique to nor a product of capitalism.
Not making any profit does not imply running for losses.
Many companies can run for minimal margins, ensuring they can pay staff, stock and services.
Profit is what is left on the table after every expense is paid, including salaries, which usually doesn’t reach the workers pockets.
Those workers still want to live. The money is the means- controlled by those with the most money.
Capitalism and democracy as exclusive concepts.
You act like capitalism is something that was invented. Market economies have existed since the dawn of time.
Think of it more like a spectrum where free market and unregulated capitalism is on one end and economies under total state control are at the other.
There is clear evidence that one side of that spectrum favors innovation more than the other.
I guess you could argue that one end of the spectrum is more “moral” than the other, but I would counter that the opposite end is amoral rather than immoral.
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You mean capitalism is inherent in the matrix of the space-time continuum as opposed to invented?
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Market economies have not all been capitalistic.
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Innovation is not the singular motivation of mankind. Survival, comfort, stability, peace, equality are more important.
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An amoral society is no better than an immoral society.
Also worth noting in the case of uber, even if price is equal with taxis, the experience is much better. Nicer cars, better drivers and much easier app use. Even at price parity, its a very superior product in most cases.
Other than the ease of app use I wouldn’t say any of these are accurate anymore. I’ve been in plenty of hoopties using Uber, dealt with drivers juggling different apps at once and literally driving past me with some other customer in the car on the way to their destination (while Uber app shows you your driver is arriving), and had plenty of awful drivers take me places. I think this was true in the beginning but once the facade came down and people realized they aren’t really making any money, Uber lowered their standards and took what they can get.
the expectation would be a better solution will surface in reference to streaming… the same way streaming was a solution to cable.
What would that look like though? The current streaming model was pretty easy to predict ~15 years ago with the advent of online video streaming in general, especially mainstream forms of it such as YouTube. I have a hard time imagining how any other business model for distributing video content would look like, but then again I don’t have a very entrepreneurial mind.
The answer was already found with music streaming. Whether you’re using Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube whatever, you’re still getting 99% of the same content. These companies compete on price and features not on content.
You had me until that utterly stupid drivel at the end. You cannot give credit to the system that happened to be in charge at the time…
Then you’d have to thank Monarchy for a billion things that weren’t invented by monarchs…
You’re confusing economic systems with systems of government.
I’m interested to hear how you explain the drive to create streaming as an option to cable without including tenets of a market driven economy.
Reddit/Lemmy/Etc really has a hard-on to blame all bad things on capitalism. Capitalism is amoral. It is cold and uncaring. But not recognizing it as a driving factor for growth, innovation and societal advancement is a path of willful ignorance.
Everything has pros and cons in life.
I always thought [dumping](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy\)) was illegal.
Uber never made money because they chose to undercut prices of all competitors and bleed them out.
I think that is only the first part of it. Uber invested a ton of money in autonomous vehicles. I think they were originally betting that they would undercut prices, bleed out competitors, and then be the only one who has the capital to deploy fleets of driverless vehicles.
We are still far from having driverless vehicles and I think investors are realizing that so Uber upped their prices and lowered their pay. There is nothing revolutionary about them. They implemented a good tracking system and the ability for drivers to more easily figure out which rides would be best. They do not have that advantage anymore since taxi companies now largely have the exact same tech but without the massive overhead that Uber has.
