[bugsbunnyak]

> Both of these served to discover the real market value of things

- Airbnb served to discover that someone always pays the cost of negative externalities.

- Uber served to discover the above, plus that in an environment with low interest rates and significant underemployment, a company can run losses indefinitely while paying peanuts. Calculate the net wage next time you take an Uber, accounting for their cut, depreciation, and a (generous) 75% utilization. That's only feasible at a loss while using funny money to pay desperate people. The Uber app is excellent, credit them for that. They were in the right place and time and executed very well on mobile+geolocation. But they've discovered nothing about market value.

(not interested in the "blah, blah, AI, logistics company" magical thinking. People who say that have short positions in Uber. Uber is Twitter: they could have been a profitable mid-size company making an excellent living selling all sorts of mobile service provisioning; in a capital crunch they cannot afford to pay drivers a market-clearing wage and pay back their over-inflated expectations)