Uber in London

Uber will lose its license in London by the end of this month. Although Uber has said it would repeal, I do not think Uber would earn back its license in London. Uber was a tech company that aimed to share people’s cars when they are not occupied. However, Uber has already turned to become a taxi company. This is how the London Public Transport Authority has control over Uber’s cooperation in London.

The reason for Uber becoming a taxi company is because it violates one rule of sharing cars. Uber does not only occupy people’s cars when they are not using their cars, but also occupy people’s time as well. However, the principle of the labour market is people selling their time to companies; therefore, Uber starts to occupy people’s time, it indirectly pull people back into the labour market if they want to sell their excess capacity of their cars. At most time, when people are not using their cars, they do not like sacrifice their luxury time for working in the labour market again as well. This makes many people do not have incentives to joining the car sharing program created by Uber. Thus Uber started to hire professional Uber drivers to drive taxis across cities. 

I think that Uber may become more successful when people can separately sell their free capacities of their cars and their free time that people can let others drive their cars for taxi business when they are not using their cars and the earnings can be split between car owners and drivers. Of course, insurance companies can also step in to provide insurance for inappropriate use of cars to lower the risk of car owners lending cars to others.