The economics of ride-hailing or ride-sharing looks great on paper: pay as you need and do not carry assets you are unlikely to fully utilize before they depreciate. Yes, do not buy a car but anytime you need to move around, hail one or share with someone that owns one. But what happens when there is no driver in the city, and you need to go to a pharmacy to pick a prescription? What happens even if there is one, but the driver is afraid that a contact with you could be risky to his life? And what happens when governments put lockdown ordinances – but allow essential trips for grocery shopping, fueling, farming, healthcare delivery and such?
It becomes evident that in life, it is NOT only things you need that you have to own. Yes, there are moments you just have to own things even if you do not really need to own them because the day a particular asset is not available, you would look really stupid for all the days you have tried to avoid it!
As we get over this coronavirus, citizens of California, New York and some Italian cities will see companies like Uber, Lyft, and Bolt from different angles. Simply, owning a car is no more an economic decision but a family security one because when those “rented” drivers cannot be available, at least, you can drive your family to the doctor, pharmacist or grocery. Oh yes, when hailing Uber becomes risky, you can jump into your own car to bring that prescription home.
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Coronavirus will change our generation and how we make decisions.
Updated – 3/23/2020
Uber and Ola have suspended all ride options in Delhi till March 31 and the Indian ride-hailing firm is restricting ride options across the country in a bid to slow the coronavirus pandemic.
The firms said the suspension of their services in India’s capital was in compliance with the local state government’s lockdown order that went into effect earlier Monday.
“In compliance with the government guidelines, we are temporarily suspending all Uber services in your city. This means that Uber rides services will not be available until further notice,” Uber told customers in New Delhi.
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That is if humans are that intelligent or wise enough to learn anything, because when those narratives filled with emotions start flying, common sense will obviously take a flight.
It’s the same way a super nation like the US outsourced her drug production and other essentials to China, the logic? Because capitalists are supremely greedy, and politicians are anything but noble, so there will always be arguments that put sense into the most senseless things out there.
Yes, our super universities and corporations, plus their start-ups cousins have modelled a future where you don’t need to own anything, even the cloths you wear, until Coronavirus came to town, and now we gonna see tons of new books lecturing us on how to rethink and re-strategise; as if the authors got a clue beforehand.
For those who questioned whether the US was right to put brakes on Huawei’s runaway achievement on 5G development. Now you can see the future dangers staring nations in their faces, if they can’t own the critical telecom infrastructures powering their economies. We dream of a future filled with AI, IoT, 5G and Blockchain, to be built and controlled by who exactly? Of course human wisdom is grossly overrated, we know nothing!
Game on…