<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>URSpider94</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a fine line between predatory pricing and &amp;quot;forward pricing.&amp;quot; It&amp;#x27;s a very common, and valid, business practice to price a good or service at a level that will be profitable in the long term, rather than try to be marginally profitable on every single transaction. For example, on UberPOOL or LyftLine, the companies are betting that they can support the reduced pricing for shared rides when they get a large enough customer base. The only way to prove out that business model and grow the scale is to offer the discount pricing for those rides from Day 1.&lt;p&gt;In my mind, the situation is a little more suspect if they are subsidizing standard rides in the market. However, at this point, there are two major competitors in almost every US market, Lyft and Uber, so they are making the market between them. Whether or not either of them is losing money, if they raised their prices at this point, they would suffer a precipitous drop in market share. Sooner or later, they&amp;#x27;ll find an equilibrium. Taxi companies can choose to ante up and participate in the market, or fold and get out -- that&amp;#x27;s how it goes. From a competitive standpoint, it takes two to tango, it doesn&amp;#x27;t take three.</text><parent_chain><item><author>kbart</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m no economics expert, but if Uber loses money on subsidiaries, that&amp;#x27;s dumping(1) against local Taxi companies and these companies actually &lt;i&gt;might&lt;/i&gt; have some valid points, no?&lt;p&gt;1. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Dumping_(pricing_policy)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Dumping_(pricing_policy)&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Uber Loses at Least $1.2B in First Half of 2016</title><url>http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-loses-at-least-1-2-billion-in-first-half-of-2016</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>tim333</author><text>Technically predatory pricing rather than dumping which is for products. Probably hard to do them in the US:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;the U.S. Supreme Court has set high hurdles to antitrust claims based on a predatory pricing theory. The Court requires plaintiffs to show a likelihood that the pricing practices will affect not only rivals but also competition in the market as a whole</text><parent_chain><item><author>kbart</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m no economics expert, but if Uber loses money on subsidiaries, that&amp;#x27;s dumping(1) against local Taxi companies and these companies actually &lt;i&gt;might&lt;/i&gt; have some valid points, no?&lt;p&gt;1. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Dumping_(pricing_policy)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Dumping_(pricing_policy)&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Uber Loses at Least $1.2B in First Half of 2016</title><url>http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-loses-at-least-1-2-billion-in-first-half-of-2016</url></story>