Uber's Bezzle
Doctorow defines a bezzle as "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it" (note, he didn't coin the term, but I first learned it from him).
The idiotic narrative: Uber could establish itself in the market by pouring billions down the drain, losing 41 cents on every dollar it brought in, subsidizing unprofitable rides at unsustainable rates…but someday, it would make it up in volume.
Here’s how that proposition worked: Uber loses a lot of money on every ride. But someday, it will corner the market on transit (not just taxi journeys, but all transit), and it will be able to raise prices and cut wages and recover all those loses and turn a profit.
The problem:
The (mythical) day Uber attains dominance and profitability, someone else can start a competitor that provides exactly the same services, with exactly the same drivers and exactly the same passengers. The only difference? That new service won’t be $31 billion in the hole, unlike Uber.
Self-Driving Fiasco
Uber spent $2.5 billion on a self-driving car division that served as window-dressing for its IPO, but which ultimately produced a car whose mean-distance-to-lethal-crash was 0.25 miles. In 2020, they paid another company $400,000,000 to take this shitshow off their hands: