The total disregard for laws and regulations? Exciting. Fingers crossed Uber burns up it VC money sooner than later.
It's pretty terrible when people on HN pine for the days of less developed countries (no worker protections, no labor/safety regulations).
Worker protection should apply equally to everyone, not give preferential treatment to one group(taxi drivers) at the expense of most other groups who just have minimum wage laws and osha.
June: "In California, Uber driver is employee, not contractor: agency" http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/18/us-uber-california...
Just yesterday: "Another Uber Driver in California Ruled an Employee, Not Contractor"
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/09/10/another-uber-driver-i...
And even the cases in CA are not going to be settled for a couple years.
Also, the IRS is nationwide. Uber has a high hill to climb with them regarding contractor status.
Edit: I'd like to expand on this with a (not so) hypothetical. Autonomous cars are already here. How long until we have automated taxis? Let's just say 10 years. Would you make them illegal to keep the taxi workforce in place?
There is disruption in virtually every workforce because of the Information Era. Our work force will have to adapt.
I'm not against technological disruption. When the shipping container revolutionized shipping 60 years ago, the shipping industry split the productivity gains with the longshoreman union to buy out those made redundant by said productivity gains. I'm inferring that the same will need to be done again.
If technology obsoletes people, and they're unable to retrain, they'll be supported by social safety nets, funded by taxes on said technology.
The Developed World can not continue with it's standard of living, it's simply not sustainable. Something has to give.
The way I see it, services like Uber and airbnb can slowly chip it down to something sustainable, or we can hold onto it until the bitter end when it all comes crashing down.
Also, just because a job is offered with no worker protections, no labor/safety regulations etc, it doesn't mean a person has to take it. People vote through their actions.
People vote with their actions. But people are short sighted, selfish, and greedy. That's why labor regulations and unions were invented. It's just been so long since the days before unions and regulations were created that everyone thinks they're useless. It's been so long since it rained that you start wondering why you have a roof over your house. You'll remember soon enough.
That's not true _at all_. How productive are self-driving cars going to be with no drivers? And electric powertrains? Very! Why would a government allow Uber to have a monopoly on that? They're government owned roads!
You can entirely continue to provide a high quality of life to citizens of a developed country using automation and software.
Shall we continue to socialize the losses and privatize the gains in society? Pardon me for being crass, but fuck that noise.
You mean like mass transit provided by a government org? You own the roads, you make the rules.
Go and spend some time in the developing world, then you'll reevaluate that statement.
What you don't see/realize is that we've simply outsourced slavery. The reason your iPhone, etc. are so damn cheap is becuase there are slaves building it, who have a standard of living way, way, way lower than yours.
I'm saying it has to equalize globally, which means our has to come down.
I cried when I visited the silver mines in Bolivia - http://theroadchoseme.com/potosi
I live in the country that makes your iPhone. Same here also.
Foxconn is replacing most of its workers with robots. Most work can be replaced with software and/or robotics in the next 5-20 years.
> I'm saying it has to equalize globally, which means our has to come down.
Completely disagree. Perhaps on meat consumption, and petroleum use (both which need to decline across the entire world).
> I cried when I visited the silver mines in Bolivia
There are responsible ways for mining for the resources you need.
First, most people employed by the industries being disrupted by these companies (hotels and taxicab companies) are taxicab drivers, maids, bellhops, front desk. All relatively low-paying jobs already.
Paying people at the bottom less keeps prices low. Therefore, people with disposable income can the spend the same amount of money and get more goods and services. It raises the standard of living for the middle-upper class while pushing people in these low paying jobs closer to poverty.
This is not a diatribe against these companies or the free market. I just don't agree with you. These companies are actually raising our standard of living. Giving us more money and time to consume things and spend more money.
Globally, I mean, to bring our standard of living closer to those people who are for example building our iPhones for pennies.
The standard of living in the developed world has to come down closer to theirs, and one of the ways we'll do that is through things like uber and airbnb because they are a lot less heavily regulated, and result in less employee income/safety/security etc. I.e. the people who "work" for uber are closer to those in the developing world, than those working for the current taxi scheme in a developed country
That's fine as long as the job market is good. Have you considered that those that control enough levers in government might want to keep the job market poor in order to force low wages and less protections? This is how union-busting happens.