ah ah ah ah one was lower has had more of an impact on international transportation than any other single person in the last decade. when he disclosed over 100000 documents, showing the dark side of one of the most popular rightshare companies in the world . hello, i'm john curiosity and you're watching the whistleblowers. 2

2 2 2 2 2 whistleblower mark mcgann disclosed more than 124000 documents, detailing how ober flouted laws in countries across europe. duped police exploited violence against drivers and secretly lobbied governments in order to aggressively build its global empire. the 52 year old irishmen served as uber is chief lobbyist for europe, the middle east and africa from 2014 to 2016, and oversaw government relations and public policy in more than 40 countries. he was responsible for courting governments in more than 40 countries to convince them that ober was the next big thing. investment opportunities of bounded people around the world wanted to get in on the ground floor. executives threw themselves at the company, hoping to work for what they thought was the next google or apple, and ober presented itself as a life changing opportune. especially for low income people with access to

a car. they could work for themselves as many hours a day as they wanted. the sky was the limit to what they could accomplish. but it wasn't all that easy and the picture wasn't really that rosy. the company began facing pushback, especially from taxi drivers, protest erupt in berlin, london, paris, and athens courts in germany, restricted some of movers services, and in greece, the company was banned altogether. mcgann was put in charge of a team that was to confront these challenges. he argued that over was not anti regulation. it was a tech company he said, using data to match supply with demand. but in reality, it was much more than that. mcgann leader said, quote the mantra that people repeated from one office to the other was the mantra that came from the top. don't ask for permission, just hustle and list drivers. go out, do the marketing and quickly people will wake up and see what a great thing over is, unquote. in reality,

over was running rough shot over the status quo. gig work in many countries offered no benefits, long hours, low pay and grinding work conditions. ober wasn't a great job opportunity at market itself to be the opportunity that would lift people out of poverty. and to make matters worse, the company's leadership knew that from the beginning. finally, earlier this summer, mark began provided 124000 pages of internal documents to the guardian newspaper, which in turn shared them with the international consortium of investigative journalists. and with the most important newspapers in the western world. the documents which cover the period from 2013 to 2017 lay bare the companies tactics to establish footholds and to win market share, even if that meant violating the law. now we want to bring in an over expert who's knowledge of the economics of transport. competition and regulation allowed him to demonstrate that uber is incapable now or in the future of ever earning profits.

his over analysis through mid 2017 was incorporated into is transportation law journal article called will the growth of hoover increase economic welfare. i want to welcome hubert her in welcome to the show. you're an expert on uber and on transportation. tell us, in brief, where you think cooper stands right now as a company in our society. is it something indispensable? and that will be with us for a long time. or is it the type of company with a business model that is out moded or just can't last for very long? ober is phenomenally unsuccessful against any measurable objective criteria. you can think of economic, financial transportation. it's racked up $31000000000.00 and losses. it took 11 years to produce the very 1st dollar a positive cash flow. no one at cooper or following goober can

produce a prop, plausible story. how those massive years of losses can suddenly be turned around and become years larger and sustainable profits. it's now producing less taxi service at much higher prices than traditional taxis did. the ones that drove out of business before it started all of its claims that its stock would be highly valuable because it would achieve amazon type, profitable growth in its core business. which is to say urban transport and then profit explained in lots of other businesses have been proven to have been total nonsense ober keeps claiming that all we have problems in the past. but those were fixed 4 years ago when we change ceo's. but in those 4 years, hooper has done nothing to fix its awful basic economics are all right, sharing companies operating on this same broken business model list is concentrated

in the domestic us in a narrower set of markets newburgh. but it's the identical business model. yes. and it's, it's losing money and has no plausible story. and even better example was d d in china, which actually achieved the virtual monopoly market dominance that over was trying set out to achieve 10 years ago. and it still can't make money. so there is no evidence anywhere on the planet that this kind of business model for me is just pure standpoint. finances can, can producing my research, which started 67 years ago was, was basically focused on that question. goobers underlying business model was

always incapable of either improving the transport service in big cities or generating the kinds profits that investors needed. it's claims about technological advances were never demonstrated and we're always false. it's business model is actually less efficient and higher produces at higher cost. then the, all the traditional taxi business model did it never had the kind of big scale and network economies that allowed other venture capital backed firms to quote, grow into profitability after initial losses. now the old taxi industry had lots of problems that as everyone knows, but overs business model didn't pick any of overs business model couldn't profitably produce lots of additional drivers at low fares on saturday night when peak demand hit or when all of ooh,

burst early popularity and growth was driven by billions and billions in unsustainable investor substance. it's trying now, those subsidies are basically run out and it's raised fairs enormously, b. but there's no evidence that the mass market that uber and these other companies are pursuing will ever pay the true cost of the service. you could be a tiny, tiny niche serving wealthy people. ah. but the mass market, that was the heart of the business model can't be serv, properly. it's up to extent that it's improved rich reduced its losses. let me not say from profit ability. it's almost entirely driven by squeezing driver compensation has nothing to do with scale economies. or improved efficiency,

it is simply cutting driver pay. what's wrong with the business model, and is there a solution? they've been producing those 31000000000 in losses over time. if there was a solution. i think they would have found it by now. i think they would have found that years ago, i don't think there's a solution, but i think the evidence that they can't produce money, you know, suddenly make this service profitable? is the real demonstration, ah, a niche high priced taxi service that is limited to the pockets of highest demand and city is not a viable business. they're trying to scale back to that, which again reduces the cash string but doesn't make it a profitable business. if you research goober, you won't find anyone who says, oh yes,

here is what i could do to become sustainable. probably no one has made the other than just sort of scratching their belly and announcing wishful thinking. no one can lay out. here's how they improve the economics, here's how they improve revenue. here's how they improve efficiency and productivity to make it work. and again, if there was a way they would have done it, is it only a matter of time before ober, and these other similar companies just collapse? well the, the, you normally here is that who berg had an unprecedented level of investor funding in its earliest years. i think it was hoover's pre i p o funding. i may not get them remember the number exactly right. which 1600 times more funding. then amazon has before research amazon and facebook and companies like that lost money at 1st,

but they quickly got to becoming cash flow positive. and they funded their growth out of user revenue. ober was never able to do that. all of those subsidies, again, were designed to sort of create the impression back in 2014, 2017 o over has found a way that no taxi company had found in a 100 years to, to produce service way more service, higher quality service. and it much lower price. that was all part. it was just, there were subsidizing all the trips. they were subsidizing drivers that were subsidizing everything. they were using no subsidies to fool investors in the thinking that it had amazon type growth economics. and oh, yeah, we lost money last year, but just like amazon noticed, that will, will soon be,

you know, spouting more money than we can count the subsidies eliminated competition from all of the prior traditional lexia. so there was no alternative the subsidies funded all the massive political lobbying and p r programs that, that lead politicians to eliminate all the industry oversight that have protected consumers, you know, enforced labor laws and lead the mainstream media over the greatest thing since sliced bread. my friends all love it, and it's all this technology inefficiency is really wonderful. but those subsidies, the power in the early popular meant the mainstream meeting never actually investigated. and yes, they've all been proven to be complete garbage subsequently. but no one's gone back

and written. oh, all those stories we told you about ober in 2016, 2018. they were totally wrong. how does zuber squeeze its drivers? well, step one, you create the kweisi monopoly. and again, think of goober and lift. if you're looking at the u. s. situation as a do awfully. that's driven the traditional operators out of business. so we're the only game in ober aggressively lie 2 drivers. it's earlier. there were press releases liberally over crush releases, saying ober drivers in new york or $90000.00, complete dishonest, and all sorts of other things in the were f t. c, fines for some of the statements. but so all of a sudden these drivers are now work driving for go back 8 years or whatever

they're getting. okay. they're getting better pay than the old company because of those subsidies. hooper's now owns the market. it simply turns around a customer. you know, how much of each customer dollar does the driver get its been cut back and cut back and cut back, and the drivers have absolutely no recourse. they, they lied to drivers. oh, you'll have total flexibility as an independent contract. only drive when you feel like, well, no, that was a lie too, because the drivers who didn't respond to the oberg demand for drivers when they needed them, simply got fire. you know and you can't operate. it was always a why you can't operate a large scale transportation company, or probably any other kind of company on purely casual workers who show up when

they feel like that was always nonsense. and ober knew throughout this that you know, the mainstream media and it's wealthy users who liked it, the most didn't care what drivers were being paid. they didn't care that, they'd been squeezed down to the minimum wage level. they didn't care that watch them were sleeping in cars in order to make ends me and wall street actually thinks those are wonderful things that kind of transfer of wealth from labor to capital, even if it's the most marginal labor in an urban marketplace to silicon valley investors, that's how capitalism ought to work. they think it's wonderful. so no one was going to push back. you know, whenever you know, those politicians who were being handled buckets of cash by uber lobbyists and who

gutted all of the protections that had existed for decades and decades, went out, you know, the democratic process somehow wait a minute, this isn't working when you know, minimum wage doesn't cut it. let's put some basic protections in. let's be fuck o'beirne, exploitation false claims about independent contractors. as you saw with california proposition, when you, they spend a limited cashed beat those back. you know, ober had more lobbyists in california than the entire banking. uber had more lobbyists in nevada than the casino industry. this was not free markets at work. this was a silicon valley funded company where the investors were looking for the kind of riches amazon and facebook generated going to politicians with lots of cash saying,

please pave the way. so we have limited power over workers and consumers. thank you hubert, but don't go away. we're going to a short break. and when we come back, we answer the question, how vital have martin begins? revelations been to huberts work, analyzing rubers less than transparent business practices. you're watching the whistle blowers stay tuned. 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 for ah, it took me to reach you, dickie. you were yesterday. the joy graham seems like it was more than one foot 3rd. so the mean, you know, it's why it's

a vehicle or a splitter, whichever some way more serious. um, we trust the spiritual like, oh, once you have to go visit albuquerque, we do it. we're buying, she's in severe watching to walk with me. it's kind of short as with in to near come, who said digital video trying to stop locally. when you were one of them are as you know, your tire size, cross sides financial wellness, which i it then you will was held at the tip floor. the brother got out a when was on, but usually 3 of them was call up nice. at the movie mining carney committee from michael up, any billing i with

. 2 2 2 ah, welcome back to the whistle blowers. i'm john kerry aka, were discussing mark mcgann, the whistleblower who exposed illegality. goober, we want to welcome back our were over expert hubert ran. welcome back, hubert. were discussing mark me against revelations here on this program. how vital were his revelations to your own work? the guardian series that included the gans statements were factually accurate. but they were simply reminding the public of stuff that

had been widely reported 56 years ago. you know, the magnitude and importance of all of those lobby, all those things. i quoted you about the magnitude of lobbying in california in nevada that been in the press at the top. everyone knew that dozens of major politicians had been working actively to help cooper in return for those donations programs like gray ball explicitly designed to obstruct law enforcement that had been on the front page of the new york dots open efforts to intimidate critical journals on it's ongoing programs to pay academic to produce totally indefensible findings that no one would ever critique properly, but it could then incorporated which p r programs that had been reported years ago

. so nice to have a reminder of all that stuff. but especially in the us, it's not going to overcome the magnitude of the lobby in cash and legal changes. no one cares. what do you know about uber in the developing world? it's position in those kinds of countries is somewhat limited. i'm not sure of, it's how it's south american coverage would really split out between the large wealthier city is the san palos and santiago's, and one was irish has bogota, the world versus less develop parts of those countries are stuff elsewhere. they

felt hooper failed in china. they film russia, they failed and salvaged asia. so there are other local companies following this ah, with probably a little more sensitivity to the labor and transport issues in those things. but as i mentioned in terms of didi in china, none of them are well over ever break up urban transport. it has humongous economic problems. that's why the new york city subway in the denver bus system and the services, whether it's in mom, buy or moscow, are not private sector. businesses funded by investors hoping to get fabulously rich their publics,

their quasi public services. the benefits produced by urban transport be they expressways or transit buses and taxis is always been small. part of that are fundamentally the economics are awful. and over as i said over, didn't solve any of those problems. it's urban transport. why? anyone thought that over after 100 years of every urban transport service being a public sector, operated and funded service was suddenly away for silicon valley. investors to get rich is incomprehensible. but that's what happened. oh, we have an air we have technology. technology can solve every problem known to man and everyone in the urban transport industry in every country in the world, in every city. and everyone was too stupid in the last 100 years to see that if you

just put it on an app, the economics will be totally transformed. the totally stupid people were the ober investors who bought that. and all of the politicians and media observers who swallowed that hook, line and sinker, without thinking about he go back and read all the stories about rubers growth. no one ever talked to anyone who knew anything about urban transport. it was all technology stuff. technology is cool, but technology cannot and has not transformed urban transport into something that will spit off returns for speculative investors. we've covered so much here, any final comments to wrap up what we've discussed. i'm, i'm always asked to speculate on the future. and i hate doing that, ah,

if people say, well, what's gonna happen? one, if nothing else in the world change the, the investor cash could probably last another for 5 years. there is no political force anywhere in the more developed world to say this was a mistake. we have to restore the kind of taxi industry we had in 1990. we have to roll back. what ober did there's to it? there's no support, not because it's a bad idea, but politically there's no support for that to the extent. so if everything else there will be muddle along, maybe being cash break even and constantly trying to shrink back with service in cities, continuing deteriorate prices continuing to go up. the issue for uber is the stock

price. if it's investor suddenly wake up to morrow and said, this is never going to be worth any. we're not gonna ever expect become profitable or not good experience, amazon growth, and bail on stock. and i don't think that again, all these folks have drunk enough coolie to not be able to look think about that critically. but if you look at the collapse of the broader chapel, which is happening, that's caused a lot of people in other context to say, oh, this technology stuff was not as wonderful as the press releases set. oh, these companies that grew fast without any sign of profitability, that was really dumb and none of them turned into successes nor, you know, nonsense amazon. 1520 years ago. if they're that and

pressured by higher interest rates and overall decline in stock, the stock market, ah, you no longer have mass. so federal programs basically designed to increase stock market speculation in inflict those kinds of bubbles if that kinds of bursts from those kinds of external forces. i think that is more likely to be what drives changes and i hear her and thank you so much for joining us. that's all we have for you today. this has been the whistleblowers. i'm john kerry, aka. we'll catch you next time. ah. 2 2 ah, ah, these are the she had went to sweden, steve. oh,

god knows. he switched fund out. washington foot about shawn on house. please be fun. claudia, beauty amid mention john other day. and you play with tell the guys, i'm a, i'm a constant soonish my means when you get, when you come to live with partition, you show a teacher, go get a new owner of she like we did always get a minute cooks from the kid a minute. ago but to push those in the promotions to get a minute in those new when we stole creased young goto. but i should characters a new fact. he's an uncertain hamish he says i soon down off to washington. dick tier 2 doors on to assist. t says i'm so lazy, finish in v fan to the folk along as often deutsch from the sun behind his billing

for i dont know police mechanic a sponsor dawson with an ac. 98. the island of puerto rico became a u. s. colony, but still retained its own cultural identity. we can speak in favor of independence . we be thrown into prison today, close to half its population live in the residence of puerto rico. have new representation in congress and con, vote in the u. s. presidential elections like okay, you wanna make you american citizens, which you didn't ask for, even if we were office citizenship with the head and we would prefer around when one figure is in his twenties, he chose to fight for his homelands independence. we felt that we could generate more of a spirit of resistance rather than of submissive accept reality that we felt was like shockingly unfair. my sorry,

that i decided to fight for my country. no one could have done things differently. yes, absolutely. do i now think that violence is not the means to achieve anything? absolutely. with the headlines right now on our team international as russia rings in the new year with president vladimir putin delivering his traditional mid nice speech to the nation. and other parts of the world, of course, welcoming in 2043 with spectacular fireworks displays and mass celebration with although a pop in the celebrations, we understand blasts are reported across ukraine. explosions have been seen in the nation's capital po, tell domination with unconfirmed report saying that hotel has been housing, foreign, military advises.