Secret to the Uber Economy Is Wealth Inequality

> With nothing more technologically advanced than a phone, you can arrange to have delivered to your doorstep, often in less than an hour, takeaway food, your weekly groceries, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs (over-the-counter, prescription, proscribed), books, newspapers, a dozen eggs, half a dozen eggs, a single egg. I once had a single bottle of Coke sent to my home at the same price I would have paid had I gone to shop myself.

I never understand these anti-uber rants. The author points out the ubiquitous nature of on-demand services, their affordability and convenience. He even admits that the market has to be large enough to warrant such a service. And then he goes on about how this is fueled by inequality when I see it as doing the opposite, providing services to large portions of the US that were never able to indulge in such conveniences.

> Another distinction, just as telling, lies in the opportunities the local economy affords to the army of on-demand delivery people it supports. In Mumbai, the man who delivers a bottle of rum to my doorstep can learn the ins and outs of the booze business from spending his days in a liquor store. If he scrapes together enough capital, he may one day be able to open his own shop and hire his own delivery boys.

This to me just romanticizes manual labor. I'm not sure how the author defines "local economy", but he provides no rationale why someone working for a "local" business would be better off in the long run than someone working for an Uber-like business. My impression of on-demand services is they allow for flexibility in hours as well as utilization of capital (e.g. a car).

The fact is that growth mainly occurs through specialization and trade. I'm sure if the author were writing 100 years ago, he would bemoan the fact that fewer people are making their own clothing. Micro-services such as cabs, laundry, delivery, cleaning, etc, are the natural extension of a wealthy society.

The way in which this Uber stuff is about wealth inequality is that there is no "Uber for getting on your feet after serving time for a felony" or an "Uber for teaching high school kids how to get on a path to a good job" but there are three "Uber for cupcakes"'s.

There's nothing wrong with Uber for cupcakes[1], and people can argue that we should start there because it's just easier to make money off of rich people. But what's the plan for Uberizing the stuff poor people need? Is there one? I don't accept that it's just too hard. Margins are margins.

[1] I have no idea whether there is an Uber for cupcakes

I actually noticed something when I was living in Argentina, South America (I'm from the US). It was more common for people to have maids, nannies, etc, than in the US. Not super rich people either, just upper middle class people. It made me wonder if there was some kind of "maid index" - an indicator of the percentage of people who have a maid. I suspect it could be used as some kind of indicator for wealth equality (or inequality).

Pretty much every labor transaction is based on "wealth inequality" - the person paying has money, the person doing the work wants that money. Programming pays better than driving, but the principle is the same. I certainly wouldn't be working on your project if I was independently wealthy...

I don't know what to say. My ex-roommate used to be a door to door salesman for comcast contractor, selling comcast's services on commission. He gave up that gig, as it was not paying enough to live in Hayward, CA.

Now he drives for Uber, uses his Scion xb 2006 car, makes around $6k a month. Yes, he needs to deduct expenses like gas, insurance, etc. But he is happy even after those expenses.

Uber has destroyed the taxi industry. And it has also made easy for others to become Uber drivers. So, one group has lost, another group has won.

Taxi industry has gone hitech; so, the companies like Uber get 100 multiples for their stock prices, if they go IPO. Even if Taxi industry had gone IPO 20 years ago, it would not have helped taxi drivers.

The losers are those who bought SF taxi permits, and those who used to drive for yellowcab, but can't become Uber drivers.

Inequality exists as long as greed exists.

What Uber did is reduce the overhead of being the middleman. Which is what lets these services expand to smaller markets.

The people who get screwed are the previous middlemen, not the worker bees. If anything, the job of middleman will be a race to the bottom where the next Uber find a way to do it a little cheaper (or take a little less profit to hit a larger scale).

At least it is another work option. Flexible enough for students and people with a day job that want to supplement their main income.

That's the reality we live in. Some people have multiple jobs, some people have no benefits, some people work on a 100% commission basis and in slow months they need to continue to function. "Uber-style" jobs can help you work in a more flexible schedule.

But to be honest, I do not think that being an Uber driver full-time is a very good option. Then, I do not see Uber at the moment being at the same evil scale than Walmart, for instance... a company that has a anti-union training, anti-union team and standard operating procedures, and makes billions of dollars in revenue while having their entire workforce on welfare.

According to the graphic linked in the article, Mumbai has a Gini of 35. That's not very high - it's comparable to Italy, Spain or Sierra Leone - and only marginally higher than India, France or Bosnia (33) as a whole.

It contradicts the author's thesis to note that a country with so little inequality as India was (and still is) way ahead of the US (Gini 41) in terms of providing domestic services.

Isn't the takeaway here "the secret to getting people to do stuff for you that you don't really want to do is wealth inequality?"

I'm struggling to see why Uber is a particular example of evil, rather than say a restaurant or a nanny service.

damn good article! thank u for the deep insight.