Uber and Lyft Are Adding Jobs, Not Just Stealing Them | Hacker News Reader

Uber and Lyft Are Adding Jobs, Not Just Stealing Them

bloomberg.com

30 pointsucha47 comments

"Stealing" jobs, is that the narrative we're suppose to subscribe to? Or are they breaking up a government backed monopoly and democratizing it. I personally don't care if there aren't any net new jobs if they've created thousands of small entrepreneurs and provided much needed competition.

Side note: I find it interesting how media outlets decide what the debate is, create a false dichotomy, then us simpletons are just suppose to pick a side.

What do you think chuck? Is it ok that they're stealing jobs?

> created thousands of small entrepreneurs

Or, in other terms, removed stable jobs from the economy and replaced them with risky ones that require workers to provide their own capital with no promise of reward.

Entrepreneurship in the sense of forcing low-wage workers to provide their own capital and take on a disproportionate share of the risk, while the company itself makes money with relatively little risk, is not a good thing.

If you think taxi jobs are stable and well-paying and don't cost any capital... I've got some bad news for you.

Jobs are becoming more unstable, lower paying, higher risk.

If Uber didn't do it, someone else would.

Go into business for themselves? These centralized platforms even set the price on behalf of their "entrepreneurs". They can squeeze providers anytime, as Amazon squeezed publishers, as Apple Facebook and Twitter pushed around app developers etc.

Don't be fooled. This is the dynamic. Centralized platforms squeeze producers and make them compete globally. Jobs shmobs. As soon as self driving cars go mainstream, all those jobs will be gone.

Providers will alwas be squeezed. We as a society should stop expecting everyone to produce in order to not be homeless. There is no economic law that says demand for human labor will always be high. We need to tax the machines to fund unconditional basic income.

> As soon as self driving cars go mainstream, all those jobs will be gone.

This is the key. I can't imagine that "gig economy" services like Uber see this new job market they've created as anything but a temporary inconvenience to be done away with as soon as autonomous systems can do the job instead.

Like you say, if we haven't started to at least get comfortable with the idea of a basic income by the time autonomous systems start replacing human jobs wholesale, things are going to get scary.

Uber hasn't created "thousands of small entrepreneurs." They've created a special class of labor that has all the burdens of both employee and contractor status, with none of the privileges of either.

> They've created a special class of labor that has all the burdens of both employee and contractor status, with none of the privileges of either.

I'm not even sure that's really the case; taxi drivers were already largely theoretically independent operators contracting with the cab company which provides dispatch, provides the vehicle under a lease arrangement, etc.

Calling drivers "small entrepreneurs" is BS -- but equating a "work whenever and however much you want" driver gig with a fixed-work-hours employee is also BS.

It is truly a new class of "job" -- with pluses and minuses (the distribution of positives and negatives are up for debate).

Good to know quantity supplied/demanded is still related to price

This is intentionally misleading (but in a typical, not uncommon way.) If you want to see if employment has expanded, you count hours, not employees. But, again, this is commonly done when a low unemployment/high employment rate is needed for press purposes - it's the reason why U-3 is used in government press releases instead of U-6, which also includes part-time workers who want full time employment. This is not a universal standard - in Germany, for example, the distributed unemployment rates include do that category (and others.) Even worse, US media (NYT, WaPo) frequently compare nominal US and German rates as if they were measured in the same way.

Before Uber in SF, there were 2,000 taxis.

There are now 20,000 Ubers in SF.

Bad for the environment, good for jobs.

Those extra Ubers have surely reduced some cars (which are worse). Not saying the reduced cars outweigh the added cars, but could be worth considering when thinking about the environmental impact.

Yeah until they lay everyone off in favor of self-driving cars in 2 years...

What seems to be the issue here? If you can get a machine to do something that a human can do then you give that human the opportunity to place his focus, time and attention elsewhere.

The issue is that the only jobs that seem to be vanishing through such "opportunities" (what a weasel word) are all unskilled labor (easiest to automate). Sure, doing work in the car instead of driving home in California freeway traffic for an hour a day is an opportunity, except that's not the problem here...

Most people that work unskilled labor jobs today aren't qualified to work alternative skilled jobs.

A large class of unemployed (and unemployable) workers is a nightmare situation and is detrimental in any economy.

There is dignity in work.

eh, if people are so much against basic income, get those unskilled hands fixing the country infrastructure.

I guess any country has plenty of fixing to do anyway.

most importantly, stop producing unskilled workers. automation isn't going to go away.

"most importantly, stop producing unskilled workers. automation isn't going to go away."

Now, we're talking about improving the education system, which has its own fair share of problems.

There are solutions, but none of them are easy to implement.

Or maybe this (fact that some humans cannot write code, etc. for a job) is a consequence of the bell curve or the human condition itself?

> If you can get a machine to do something that a human can do then you give that human the opportunity to place his focus, time and attention elsewhere.

Assuming the human was rational, what they were doing was already the thing that provided them the greatest utility of the options they had -- if putting their focus, time, and attention elsewhere was more beneficial to them, they already would have been doing it.

If you remove that option, unless there is some better new option created for that same human -- rather than merely displacing them from their best option -- then they experience a net utility loss.

Moreover, the article is touting that "Uber and Lyft Are Adding Jobs, Not Just Stealing Them" without mentioning this VERY important caveat that makes such a headline quite an inaccurate statement.

There's no issue whatsoever, just there's no point in saying "Lyft and Uber are creating jobs".

Luddites are alive and well into the 21st century

Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited about self-driving cars, but the loss of jobs is a REAL issue here, and unlike the factories of yestercentury that created replacement jobs, it's not really clear to me (or even the @LoSboccaccs of HN) what the "replacement job" for a driver will look like.

That is a pretty scary situation, don't you think?

by moving from hunter-gatherer economies (where every single person was engaged in food production) to agriculture, and then from agriculture to mechanized agribusiness, we created a vast pool of unemployed humans (like 90 to 99% of the human race) who were available to do all sorts of other things, basically everything in the economy that is not food production. The REAL issue there was the availability of the jobless to do new work. To that vast list of productive economic activities we soon will be able to add jobs for newly-former drivers.

That really is how it works and it really is not an issue, other than it is what has "paved the way" for our modern high income, high nutrition, high health (by historical standards) lifestyles.

yes I agree, but I'd bet more on stop producing unskilled laborers - or the problem will never end. it was clear that automation was going to make a big mess of the low end a decade or two ago, but steps weren't made yesterday not today to plan for a solution.

now I know basic income doesn't give the same dignity as a job and not everyone can be an astronaut, but society is just keeping the head into the sand regarding this problem and it's just aggravating

what I think is that the sooner it pops the better, especially if it happens in a significant but not widespread sector, so solution could be made before all the manufacturers and most services are automated away from jobs, because there it will become really nasty.

What's the opposite of a Luddite? What do you call a person who assumes that applied technology will fix everything, and anyone hurt by it is merely a necessary sacrifice to usher the rest of us into the coming technological utopia?

Technophile

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technophilia

They are adding jobs.

However, we now having more people making less money for essentially the same job. It's a win for consumers, because it's more convenient and in some cases, cheaper.

But it's a lose for the people that actually made a decent living driving who now are competing with college kids that are doing the same thing in their spare time without having any of the same startup costs.

Uber and Lyft removed the barrier to entry by breaking the law and the monopoly the Taxi unions had over the entire industry. But the result is lower wages and benefits.

Why should the incumbents have security in their position, when as you pointed out college kids can do the same work at lower cost? It is unfair to the unemployed and to consumers to provide special protection to incumbents based solely on their position and earlier entry to the market. That is a classic case of rent seeking with governmental protection.

Good for Uber and Lyft for breaking the law and pushing us out of that local minima. Sometimes you have to harm a few privileged rent seekers to remove coercive monopolies and reduce regulatory capture.

It isn't just regulatory capture though - permits for taxis carry all sorts of protections for consumers. Those protections are guaranteed by law and I see no replacement for those protections from either Uber or Lyft.

We used to have the free for all we're building towards and we regulated to stop it. Why won't history repeat itself?

As a consumer, I strongly prefer the protections I get from Uber/Lyft/Olacab to those that I get from the regulated taxis.

For instance, some months back I got in an Ola to Delhi Airport. The guy took some crazy long route while pretending he didn't understand my broken Hindi (with very clear street names and pointed directions), and very nearly caused me to miss my flight. I took out the app and made a complaint while waiting for my flight. When I landed I got an email about my money being refunded.

How effective do you think it'll be to try and make use of my government provided consumer protections? http://www.delhi.gov.in/wps/wcm/connect/doit_transport/Trans...

Another wonderful thing we are getting from the regulators - protection against drivers of the wrong ethnic group. Imagine how terrible it would be to be driven by a Bihari? http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-shiv-sena-defends-marat...

(Similarly, in the US, try to flag a taxi while black. Uber solved this problem, have the US regulators?)

We stopped the "free for all" because the incumbent taxi monopoly captured the regulatory bodies. That's all. Rather than ideologically defending all regulation, why not focus on having good regulation?

First, I'm speaking of the US. I have no experience in India.

I'm certainly not defending all regulation, but unregulated taxis caused all sorts of problems in the past, which is why we regulated them. Background checks, improved guarantees of vehicle safety, minimum competency in English, etc. Why not have both? Break the monopoly, but create realistic and working regulations for all players.

Something rather big has changed since the regulations were put into place (sometimes fairly recently, my city didn't cap taxi plates until the mid-90s). It used to be most taxis were gotten by hailing, and some by phoning. Neither allowed you to verify anything about the cab that eventually picked you up. Apps change this greatly, and now when I ask for an Uber I have reason more reason to trust that the person picking me up is an Uber driver, and has met the standards they established and I can verify in some way, than I ever did that the cabbie who picked me up is the one I called, or that they're a legally sanctioned taxi if I hailed it.

This change is glossed over in this discussion a lot, but it is the single most important distinction between the old and new systems, and it definitely should reduce the barrier to entry when it comes to regulatory reasons.

I'm absolutely in favour of maintaining extremely strict controls over vehicles that can pick people up off the street with no prior arrangement. Loosening that is a bad idea, and it's not really at issue in the current debate.

Certainly, but Uber has Uber-controlled protections (however they're determined). It certainly appears as "vehicles that can pick people up off the street with no prior arrangement". I'm not advocating for a return to what was, I'm advocating for a reasonable set of protections in this brave new world that aren't controlled by the company. The company has no compulsion to maintain any protections beyond the minimum required to maintain profitability.

Profitability in their case does include a requirement of an expectation of safety (one that in my experience exceeds the expectation of safety I can expect with city-approved taxi services, incidentally). I am not, in general, a fan of appeals to the invisible hand (I fit somewhere on the socialist end of things, to be honest), but the truth is that the capitalism of uber is an improvement on the quasifeudalism of taxi oligopolies.

And no, it does not appear as that at all. The prior arrangement may only be minutes before, but it includes knowing the name, license plate, and location of the person who's picking you up, all of which can be verified before getting in the car. This is categorically different from a taxi hail. It baffles me that someone could assert they're the same.

The US is no better. Suppose a Vegas or Austin taxi cab takes the scenic route to the airport. What do you think the odds are of me getting my money back?

http://taxi.nv.gov/Complaints/Complaints/ (Yep, they require the form to be notarized. So consumer friendly.)

If I'm a tall black man, what do you think my odds are of successfully hailing a cab? (Hint: my black male friends in the US often ask me to hail them a cab.)

With Uber, I have full confidence that my complaints will be resolved to my full satisfaction. What regulatory regime do you propose to give me Uber levels of consumer protection if I take a yellow cab?

The fact is that technology + capitalism has solved the market failures that your proposed regulations theoretically address. Uber already does background checks. Uber inspects your car to make sure it's safe and comfortable. Perhaps taxi regulations were once necessary.

But with 2016 technology levels and current market environs, what is the specific problem that you think these regulations will solve, in either NYC or Mumbai?

I believe that Ubur and similar services are providing a more transparent review and protection process by bringing this in to a peer to peer social review layer.

Drivers are rated by passengers, passengers are rated by drivers. More data is collected and correlated, leading to stronger statistical correlations about bad actors on both sides of the system.

It isn't clear that the permits systems provided better protection than UBER's system, and there's at least theoretical reasons to think UBER's data rich system could become better than permits, especially if combined with stuff like background checks,etc.

Agreed, but Uber has no reason to support background checks, etc. Any move towards regulation would make their business model fall apart.

Does Uber support wheelchairs and disability accessibility?

Protections for consumers that apparently comes at a much higher price point, which some consumers may not wish to pay. How is that protection for them?

As a consumer, you don't get to opt out of regulation "because you want to". You then create a race to the bottom, negatively affecting your fellow citizens.

You don't want to pay for safe airlines? Non-rancid meat? Agriculture runoff regulation? Too bad.

Your comment isn't an argument that the level of regulation (and subsequent regulatory capture) for the taxi industry in most U.S. cities is appropriate and on the whole beneficial.

It's a much less controversial argument that some regulation is for the common good. Sure.

Isn't it obvious that some level of regulation is too costly for consumers to justify the benefits they receive? To me, that's the charitable reading of bsbechtel's comment.

> Isn't it obvious that some level of regulation is too costly for consumers to justify the benefits they receive? To me, that's the charitable reading of bsbechtel's comment.

I don't dispute this. If you want the regulation changed, vote on it. If you simply ignore it because you think it doesn't apply to you, I hope to see you go out of business.

ftfy

> As a consumer, in $my_economic_model, you don't get to opt out of regulation "because you want to".

Just calling it how it is in countries with a real working government.

Not sure why you're getting downvotes, this is completely accurate (except that the competitors aren't necessarily college kids, as a demographic they are closer to taxi drivers).

But I would add that on net this is a good thing, and the beneficiaries are not just consumers, but the new drivers.

The logic of the free market is fairly simple and intuitive. One reason people shy away from it is that they are subconsciously afraid of organized labor. The left have drummed it into people's heads that these people mean business, and if they beat you to a pulp it will be your own fault for threatening their livelihood [0].

[0] e.g. see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7L_cuQJ1pQ

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