Musk: American workers are lazy. Chinese workers are awesome.

[Capt. Squints 176]

14 hours ago, Thatguy said:

  Once again regular house owner here. But yes, while your kids are small get a plan together to get out of the grind. We executed the dad will be present plan perfectly, though it was scary as shit for the first few months of being my own guy. The next phase is operation downsize. We are going to sell this house as soon as my kid graduates 4 years from now, and get something small, cash, with the equity we have in this house. Then we are gonna travel and work comfortable hours because we can. Shit, depending on where she decides to go for school we might sell it beginning of her senior year.

That type of behavior might just fuck up your future plans.

[Thatguy 8895]

6 hours ago, Vegas64 said:

This thread is wild’n out now. If you disclose “I have HIV+ and/or AIDS, still want to do this?” Then okay, caveat emptor and let your freak flag fly. Consenting adults should be free to do whatever they want morally and legally (and I understand sex work is illegal in this scenario).

If there is no forthcoming disclaimer then that should criminal assault with a deadly weapon.

Also the guy who used Uber as an example, what are you even talking about? The worst trick finance heads ever played on business was that EBITDA was a good metric. Charlie Munger has a funny blurb about it.

Still, Uber also posted a $5.9 billion loss in the period.

"We are serving multi-trillion dollar markets, but market size is irrelevant if it doesn't translate into profit," he said

    So 1st qtr of 2022 is your barometer? Forget about the 5.8 billion gain in the 4th qtr of 2021? Also, why did the company lose money in q1 of 2022 when it was up 136% yoy? Perhaps its because they invested in a company in China called Didi, took it public and it flopped. That has nothing to do with the Uber rideshare side which had an 18% increase in trips vs last year.

  You should either do your homework when investing in companies or quit cherry-picking stats and leave the conversation to the adults.

   Companies like this squeeze the pockets of their drivers to get the capital to invest in the company that flopped when they could just keep rolling. So now they took a larger share of their drivers' earnings and over extended themselves, losing billions. This is exactly what I was talking about.

 

Quote

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/04/business/uber-earnings-revenue-pandemic.html

 

[fattyflattie 4638]

20 hours ago, Thatguy said:

Companies like this squeeze the pockets of their drivers to get the capital to invest in the company that flopped when they could just keep rolling. So now they took a larger share of their drivers' earnings and over extended themselves, losing billions. This is exactly what I was talking about.

I know you know this, but companies make investments in other companies constantly. Some work, some don’t.  The drivers have direct competition they can work for.  

[Thatguy 8895]

14 hours ago, fattyflattie said:

I know you know this, but companies make investments in other companies constantly. Some work, some don’t.  The drivers have direct competition they can work for.  

  Once again, this doesn't need to be like this. Companies don't HAVE TO swallow other companies. They bought out Didi(another ride-sharing platform in China) to try and corner the market. I am sure you know this but entities being the only option is bad for business, because once they force everyone else out there is no competitor to keep them in check. Thus allowing them to set the levels for the consumer wherever they want. Currently its pretty much Uber and Lyft. If those two companies meet in a board room to decide where to set the market the consumers are along for the ride, as well as their drivers, Antitrust Laws be damned. Its also bad for us when entities become too big to fail, like Amazon currently is. That means that if they tank they will take the economy with them. That's what happened in 08 and the government had to step in with the bail outs. For example, we bailed out GM which has 244 billion(149 in 08) in total assets. Amazon now has 420 billion.

   Bank of America was eating everything it its path until the crash. By then it had acquired Countrywide and needed 20 Billion in aid and 188 Billion in guarantees from the US government to keep from tanking 1/4 of the US economy.  In 1997 the top 6 banks were 20% of the GDP. By 2008 they were 60%. Now the top 4 banks Chase, BofA, Wells, and Citi have a combined total of 8.43 trillion in assets. Bigger is not always better.

  This country had a lot of safeguards in place such as Antitrust Laws and the Glass-Steagall Act. We went decades operating in the sweet spot and flourished. Then the greedy people at the top started winning and we started going backwards. NAFTA, WTO Treaty, Glass-Steagall reform, and the government virtually turning a blind eye to antitrust laws. Now if the IDCBY in China(5.5 trillion in assets) goes down, so does the US economy.

  It's ok to pay your workers well and grow at a slow rate. It seems like 40 people at a party all had a bet to see who can be the richest person in the world and the rest of us are suffering for it. It's the real world version of Trading Places. Bezos just handed Musk a dollar.