And yet still tiny.
Monopoly? There is only one monopoly and it is amongst hail and ride options.
A business like uber loses money because it spends a lot of money growing, just like any business in its infancy. You are basically complaining that uber is gaining market share. Go ahead and tell that to other businesses.
This ban will hurt consumers, not help them. They will now waste time waiting for minicabs which are no guarantee of "safety" if people are willing to call uber unsafe. They will also end up paying more as reduced competition results in higher prices. Uber is also the most transparent service out there.
Helps no one but black cabs and older minicab businesses (many of whom have self employed drivers) who will have less competition.
Once self driving cars become a reality, this same lobby will say they are unsafe and should be banned by pointing to some accidents. Mark my words.
Just in case no one called you on it, this is just utterly incorrect on every level.
There are two scenarios, company A charges the customer 110% of the cost of the providing the service, or a 10% profit, they are doing well so decide to expand and decide to borrow the same as the profit they expect from the next 3 years to expand.
Company B charges 41% of the cost of providing the service, they are making a massive loss, it has nothing to do with expansion, it has nothing to do with anything except undercutting everyone else by such a margin that everyone eventually moves to your service. Once you are in this position you're a monopoly and at this point when everyone else has packed up and left, when every driver works for you, you up the prices to 200% of the cost to provide the service.
Company A makes a genuine profit but speculates to improve profit over time but their base business model is profitable for the service they provide. Company B can only survive with massive outside resources from people who know your intent to massively MASSIVELY increase prices years down the line to make back their money in profit later.
Company B goes with their business plan to a bank to get a loan and they'll get laughed out of the room, Company A can secure a loan easily. Uber is company B, the only way they can turn a profit and the only way their investors get their money back is to corner the market, become a monopoly over time then charge customers significantly more than they are being charged now by normal cabs.
If one cab is making 10% profit off you, that's it, there is no debt to catch up to, it just works. If you're spending 3 times what you bring in, in the billions, for multiple years you can't make that money back by becoming a monopoly and charging 110% because you'll never catch up with the debt, no one would ever get their money back. You only get your money back if you're charging 200% or more. So right now you have the choice of paying £10 for a quick trip via normal companies, with costs rising with inflation, or pay £4.10 for an Uber.... for 3 years, but after 3 years Uber will put prices up to £20-25. You have £5.90 for a few years, but then you lose £10+ for the next 20.
Amazon mostly just charged less because with no actual stores their overheads were dramatically lower. By having several big warehouses instead of hundreds of stores, by offering more products in one location, larger stock, quicker to receive anything not in stock and the convenience of shopping from home at any time they simply beat out other stores, when those stores went out of business Amazon didn't whack the costs up to 250% to make up the losses... because they weren't making losses. A store could get 10% profit on a book by charging £5, but Amazon could make a 10% profit on a book selling it to you at £3, because the costs of the business were very different, not because Amazon purposefully made a loss to put others out of business. It was a completely superior and cheaper business model that beat traditional stores.
Uber is bad for everyone long term, it just looks better in the shorter term.
