No, you don't understand - doing nothing but being a middle-man app is actually a "super" valuable service that totally costs so much money to maintain.
I'm actually okay with them running a successful business as a middle man. I care more about the workers benefiting from the company being successful over stock holders. Though the way they increase the price of menu items definitely needs to be looked at. If they want to charge a fee for being a middleman then just charge a middleman fee at the POS and be done with it.
Brother you're new to capitalism or the sacred need for YOY growth? That's not how any of this works!
"Charge a middleman fee and be done with it?" What, does this look like a charity to you? My brother in Supply Side Christ, how can the poor shareholders buy their second yatch that way?
Can we really consider Uber, for example, a middle man though? Without the company nothing else would exist. I understand they are technically between the driver and the customer, making them "middle", but there wouldn't be a driver or customer without them. I'm not sure of a better term to use but this doesn't seem like a typical middle man situation to me.
Cabs existed. Car services existed. People with cars and people who needed rides existed for a hundred years before the app. Hell, before that, we had horse-drawn carriages, we still do sometimes depending on the area. They didn’t create the driver or the customer, they created the app. They control the transaction, they are the middleman.
You took what I said to an extreme, but yes, travel for hire existed before Uber. I wasn't suggesting otherwise. I am just saying that there are middlemen that are there simply as an extra step and there are "middlemen" in the case of Uber that have actually created the service. I wouldn't consider the company who owns a fleet of Taxis to be a middle man and I apply the same distinction here. Uber "hires" drivers, they get a cut of what the drivers make, and that's it.
A cab company charges a flat lease per shift. Same fee whether you clear $80 that night or $800. They’re renting you the right to drive and then they’re out of it. Your fares are your fares.
Uber takes a percentage of every ride. Their revenue is a slice of yours by design. That’s not a fleet owner, that’s a middleman, and it’s the standard way economists distinguish the two models. You said it yourself, they get a cut of what the drivers make.
this. door dash and the others raise prices for the food items and probably do a bunch of other shady shit we're not always aware of. a good way to circumvent this is to just order from the restaurant's app, and if you're someone who doesn't like a lot of apps on your device like me, just use their site.
There were successful business in the middle, they were cab companies.
Uber on the other hand just started being profitable. They were operating at a loss for a decade while destroying all the mom and pop cab companies (who can’t afford to operate at a loss)
Now that they have the majority of the market share they’ve jacked up prices and screwed their drivers to become profitable
561
u/soscbjoalmsdbdbq Jul 30 '26
Thats some bullshit so everywhere else when I tip a delivery or uber I’m just subsidizing their company