How the sharing economy might be pricing itself out of the market

Yesterday I arrived at the airport from a business trip and immediately turned to my Uber app to request a ride home. The twenty minute ride that is usually about $35 was now $129! I was shocked, then turned to the yellow cab line and got a taxi ride home that ended up costing me $65.

What happened? How did the gig and sharing economies that were supposed to save all of us money ended up pricing itself out of the market and becoming irrelevant?

Here are some reasons that might have did it in:

The gig economy is not for gigs anymore

In theory this was supposed to be just that: a gig economy, a side job that people with “real” job do in their spare time for some extra cash and that is designed to supplement income have become the primary job of many.

Most of my Uber drivers have been doing this for a living so in essence they are simply taxi drivers that are using their own car and using the app as their dispatcher.

Off course when you drive a private taxi for a living you cannot rely on your “day job” for benefits so your cost increases.

Government regulation

Just like everything it does, the government changes things for the worst. For everyone. Always. New regulations or attempted regulations have generated tremendous legal bills for the ride share companies and those bills need to be passed to the consumers for those companies to stay in business.

Out of control money printing, the great resignation and the great inflation

Once a gain a perfect example on how the Government does everything wrong for the majority of the time.

Paying people to stay at home, squeezing property owners out of their property so squatters don’t have to pay rent, and turning workers into self-entitled Karens have completely changed the way the American worker thinks and acts. The phrase pull yourself up by your bootstraps that was the moto of self-made and hardworking Americans is no more. Instead it was replaced with: “I’m waiting for my stimulus check”.

I can't tell you how many people we interviewed in the last year that asked to work only part time and get paid in cash so their income will not disqualify them from unemployment benefits. Shameful!

Do I see the gig economy coming back? Not under this administration.

M

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