(Why) Is Uber Failing? – The American Conservative

Now, even those typically on the side of big, progressive business, such as Bloomberg columnist and Substack blogger Noah Smith, are ready to call time of death on the rideshare experiment. In a blog post this week on the gig economy s underwhelming showing after Uber s apparent early success left many speculating that its model could spread to any number of other sectors Smith asks, Why has the gig economy been a disappointment? His answer: Maybe because traditional companies still have a good reason to exist. That reason, in Smith s estimation, is the same explanation economist Ronald Coase gave for the formation of corporations almost a century ago: the minimization of transaction costs. Gig economy platforms are failing because they can t minimize transaction costs the way traditional companies can.

via www.theamericanconservative.com

Well this looks like complete and total BS. Uber is beginning to fail, obviously, because the taxi companies et al. have gotten the CA judges to impose the massively inefficient regulatory blob upon Uber and Uber is suffocating under the tumorous mass. This is because a proposition isn’t enough in California to stop them, even if that proposition passed hugely and in spite of the enormous amount of money spent by the lobbyists, consultants, entrenched interests, etc., etc. against them. And to bring Ronald Coase into the argument and say, oh, it must be because taxi companies — taxi companies! — have lower *transactions costs*!? I am gobsmacked, reduced to silence. This is how stupid wins I guess.