Why hipsters idolize a losing company

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

You can endlessly look at three things: how the fire burns, how the water flows, and how lovers of the Western post-industrial economy admire fashionable Western companies that are not like the Russian Gazprom.

Among some of our fellow citizens, the attitude towards companies such as Tesla or Uber has become something of a "friend or foe" marker. That is, those who, at the word "Tesla" or Uber, do not begin to jump enthusiastically, squeak and roll their eyes with delight, are automatically considered quilted jackets and retrogrades who do not understand anything in the modern economy, life, and in general such people should be deprived of their voting rights long ago.

In this regard, I would like to share the following cynical observation.

The trick of the same Uber is far from the technology that this company uses. The Uber story is the story of a private enterprise trying to circumvent established laws. In general, the essence of the "revolutionary business model" is not to meet the requirements that are imposed on traditional carriers, and at the same time to engage in dumping.

If you look at things honestly, then according to these criteria, every second entrepreneur who is inclined to bypass laws and spit on standards is a progressive start-up.

The success of Uber in the United States and some European countries is due to the fact that Uber simply does not pay for licenses to provide transportation services, which causes anger and lawsuits from the city halls of many cities. Good competitive advantage. And if you also don't pay taxes, it will be perfect.

Only it is not clear what the talk about some kind of breakthrough business has to do with it? Everyone knows that non-payment of taxes and fees is good for the wallet.

The vanguard of combat hipsters love to present astronomical estimates of the cost of the same Uber as an argument. According to various estimates, this company is worth from 62 to 68 billion dollars, and this is indeed more than, for example, the market capitalization of Gazprom.

And at this point, I urge you to turn on common sense: well, a global company providing unlicensed taxi services cannot cost more than the main supplier of natural gas to Europe, without which the EU would simply freeze and the European chemical industry would go down the drain.

This is one of three things: either Uber is priced too expensive, or Gazprom is too cheap, or both. And please do not believe it when you are shown a graph of exponential growth in revenue, which must necessarily turn into revenue. Will not turn.

The specific example of Uber shows how, with the help of competent PR, Americans can inflate a financial bubble and attract more and more money, while simultaneously using this blown success to create an inferiority complex among residents of other countries.

In fact, as reported by Bloomberg, Uber had a loss of $ 1.27 billion in the first half of 2016 and the company's financial condition shows no signs of improvement. Uber's losses have been on the rise for the third year in a row. The company started with a loss of 671 million dollars, a year ago the company lost a billion dollars, but in just six months of this year, Uber managers managed to lose more than in the entire last year, which is clearly a "sign of good planning and excellent prospects" of this business.

If such results were shown by any Russian state-owned company, then the entire progressive Runet would hate it, and some Navalny would definitely demand that its leaders be jailed. But in the case of Uber, everything is in order, and none of the militant hipsters on Facebook will pay attention to the fact that this symbol of the American economy is a banal machine for burning money.

Once again I am convinced that in the modern world, good PR is often able to close even the most unattractive reality, but this certainly cannot go on indefinitely.

And you can laugh as much as you like at the plans to transform Russia into an energy superpower, but sooner or later reality will put everything in its place.

Startups are good, but startups and the oil and gas pipeline are much better!