Today in Hack Journalism

The New York Times has an article about how how some drivers are trying to form a cooperative to compete with Uber and Lyft.

There are a lot of obstacles that this effort faces, but this paragraph is full of fail:

………

The Drivers Cooperative, which opened for business in New York this week, is the most recent attempt. The group, founded by a former Uber employee, a labor organizer and a black-car driver, began issuing ownership shares to drivers in early May and will start offering rides through its app on Sunday.

The cooperative has recruited around 2,500 drivers so far and intends to take a smaller commission than Uber or Lyft and charge riders a lower fare. It is an ambitious plan to challenge the ride-hailing giants, and it faces the same hurdles that tend to block other emerging players in the industry: Few have the technical prowess, the venture capital dollars or the supply of readily available drivers to subvert an established company like Uber.

(emphasis mine)

Clearly there are network effects, Uber and Lyft have a pool of drivers as well as customers who use theri apps, and both of the gypsy cab company firms have sufficient VC money to operate for years at a loss.  (In fact neither appears to have a path to profitability)

However, the claim that operating a ride share firm requires any significant technical prowess is false, and does not withstand 5 minutes of examination.

The creation of apps with review capabilities has been old school for over a decade.

Claiming that there is a need for specialized "technical prowess", is a humbug, and it pisses me off.

The innovation of Uber and Lyft were never technical, but regulatory.

Their innovation was that the two firms found a way to break the law and bulldoze authorities into acquiescence, not any technical innovation.