[HN Gopher] Blood, Guns, and Broken Scooters: Inside the Chaotic...
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Blood, Guns, and Broken Scooters: Inside the Chaotic Rise and Fall
of Bird
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 32 points
Date : 2024-01-05 20:04 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| skyyler wrote:
| https://archive.is/B08ch
| mullingitover wrote:
| So Bird was basically a constellation of small businesses, and
| all the people who were enthusiastically stealing from the
| 'faceless corporation' were really ripping off small
| businesspeople left and right. RIP all those poor people trying
| to be small-scale entrepreneurs.
|
| One takeaway from the long-running US experiment with sky-high
| incarceration rates is that you can't imprison your way out of a
| crime problem. In spite of locking away so many people, there's a
| huge issue with criminality that's ingrained in many subcultures.
| It makes me think maybe China's social credit system might be
| more effective than what we have now.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I think the US has a lot of property crime. Japan doesn't have
| a social credit system but people there don't trash vending
| machines the way we do so they have a lot of them
|
| https://arigatojapan.co.jp/japans-unique-vending-machine-cul...
|
| on the other hand we got this bad boy
|
| https://www.telephonecollectors.info/index.php/browse/docume...
|
| which was almost indestructible. (Back in the roaring 90's I
| saw a black man tear one out of an exterior wall somewhere in
| the West 50's in NYC)
| xrd wrote:
| Having lived in Japan, I agree with you.
|
| But there was that spate of recent sushi shop licking
| incidents. Not the same type of destruction, but related, I
| would assert.
| koliber wrote:
| It's called culture. Every culture is different. It takes
| generations to shape culture.
|
| A system such as a social credit system can have an impact on
| culture. But it's not a prerequisite. Regardless of what
| methods you use to shape a culture, it takes lifetimes to
| build the good aspects.
| dmoy wrote:
| China's social credit system was developed decades after they
| had already established much lower crime rates than the US, and
| seems at best tangentially related.
|
| At the point that the social credit system was conceived
| (2000-ish?), China's crime rate was like 2-4x lower than the
| US's most recent lowest year.
|
| What they did have back then was a population rapidly getting
| richer (or at least pulling astounding numbers of people out of
| poverty). In the US we saw major shift in like 1975-ish when
| wage growth basically stopped, even though productivity
| continued to go way up.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This is like calling Uber "a constellation of small
| businesses". Arguably worse, because Bird still owned "the
| means of production" (the scooters). At least with Uber you own
| the car. Did any of these "small businesses" get to make
| decisions about hours, pay, pricing, or scooter design? Doesn't
| seem so.
|
| Edit: Reading the parent post again, it's crazy how "anti-
| freedom" it is. Accepting corporate framing of labor-law
| violations as fact in one paragraph, then advocating for a
| surveillance state in the next. Crazy stuff to see on "Hacker"
| News.
| bombcar wrote:
| Sounds more like Bird was abusing the contractor laws to avoid
| having employees (and at the same time silently pushing normal
| business expenses onto them) like so many other "gig" startups
| have done.
| bglazer wrote:
| Can you be more specific about which subcultures have ingrained
| criminality? It's better to have the courage of your
| convictions and just state outright which groups of people have
| a criminal nature.
| MandieD wrote:
| Charitable reading: in the "some will rob you with a six-gun,
| and some with a fountain pen" senses, with a heavier emphasis
| on the latter, though the former is more readily punished.
| csa wrote:
| > Can you be more specific about which subcultures have
| ingrained criminality? It's better to have the courage of
| your convictions and just state outright which groups of
| people have a criminal nature.
|
| Note op, but...
|
| 1. Very low SES folks.
|
| 2. Very high SES folks.
|
| Different types of crimes, different levels and types of
| enforcement/convictions, but seems to be true from my
| experience.
|
| The absence of race in my two groups is intentional -- SES is
| typically a better predictor of behavior than race.
| throwboatyface wrote:
| The business model was never economical. But Bird was able to
| bribe these contractors with large initial contracts to trick
| them into making unsustainable capital expenditures. Then when
| the funding dried up (after a "successful" exit) the
| contractors are stuck with equipment, staff, and leases while
| the tech company drops them.
|
| If Bird was a "constellation of small businesses" those
| businesses could take their scooters to a competing network, or
| start their own local scooter share. Bird retained ownership of
| the scooters in what sounds like a very lop-sided and
| exploitative agreement.
| MandieD wrote:
| More like a constellation of gig workers suckered into being
| franchisees required to lease their equipment from the company
| that owns the brand, with the terms of the lease being
| unilaterally changed by said company.
|
| Or the reality of most participants in an MLM.
| mc32 wrote:
| If you want to tackle the crime problem it starts at school
| --the educational system, parents, neighbors and strangers
| giving a hoot. Conformity in the form of social pressure is no
| longer there. Yes, we've always had small subsets who engaged
| in dishonorable activities, but they used to be a bit out of
| the public eye. Even in NYC in the 70s and 80s when there was
| high crime people at least knew they were doing wrong, they did
| not feel entitled to it. Sometime in the late 2010s it became
| noticeable that the taboo had been removed for a lot of people.
| Obviously there are many people for whom this behavior is till
| taboo. just not as many as before.
|
| There is no reason we can't be like Japan --well, almost. It is
| harder to achieve in such a diverse population than in a less
| diverse population. Never the less, if we worked hard at it we
| could come somewhat close.
| koliber wrote:
| > It makes me think maybe China's social credit system might be
| more effective than what we have now.
|
| This whole Bird situation is horrible. Plenty unfortunate
| people made an investment in becoming fleet managers. Some are
| now bankrupt.
|
| This is bad. However, if they were in the Chinese social credit
| system, their lives would be ruined forever. This black stain
| would follow them around everywhere, for the remainder of their
| lives.
|
| In the US there is a liberal bankruptcy system. It allows
| people who for various reasons failed at their venture to have
| a clean start after some time passes.
|
| Bankruptcy sucks. It's a major life-impacting event, even in
| the US. But you can recover from it. You can have a fresh
| start.
|
| I see the appeal of a social credit system. The US has some
| diminished version of it. But it is not as absolute and
| draconian as China's, and that is a feature that many people
| fail to appreciate.
|
| It's not that hard to appreciate though. Imagine yourself
| failing at your business venture. Really picture it. Don't make
| excuses that "I would be smarter than that." Just imagine a
| really unlucky situation. And now think about which system
| would you rather be in.
| from-nibly wrote:
| Another reminder that companies don't (and shouldn't) love you.
| It's a bad deal when you sign up for a "product" to be your job.
| You are making sure that no matter what the company above you
| makes money, while you MIGHT make money. The relationship needs
| to be the other way around. Risk needs to precede reward.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Renting out scooters/bikes just seems like a very low-margin
| business.
|
| There's just not enough money in there for the US techies level
| of grift they are accustomed to in working for near-monopoly
| behemoths like Apple/Google.
|
| Especially in a non-zero interest rate environment, putting money
| into these companies is essentially financing the upper-middle-
| class lifestyle of tech workers. The only way this appeals to you
| as an investor is if you think you can sell this kind of business
| to a company like Softbank, while somehow hand-waving the huge
| inevitable losses.
| koliber wrote:
| Hindsight makes this easy to appreciate. Looking at it from the
| perspective of when these mobility companies started, there was
| a chance it could have worked.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| Lots of discussion about the bankruptcy:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38706781
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