Comment by _m8fo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _m8fo | Hacker News Reader

I suspect there's some legal strategy here, but this fine seems pretty meh. The real punishment should be paying them what they advertised: 600,000 * 0.10 (at least 10 percent of all drivers were paid less) * 15/hr (average advertised wage) * 40 hours = 36M minimum. More if you do a more granular analysis. Keep in mind, this is just paying them what they advertised. There should also be a large consequence for lying to begin with.

Without severe punishment for doing this, there's little reason to not do it. You and your team can just do a cost-benefit analysis and see if it's worth lying. Why not have a super severe punishment to discourage this type of behavior forever? Say 10% of all revenue since this was in place? This is just another practice that supports big-business. Large firms can easily absorb these kind of minimal fines. To pay they'll layoff the people who had nothing to do with this. Leadership isn't going to be affected by this.

All companies with revenue in the billions should be fined in the billions at minimum. As a society, are we going to allow companies to lie and deceive in the name of "disruption"? We already know how that went once during 2008 (of course it's not the same thing here).

EDIT:

I realize that I used the word 'fine', when really this is a settlement. They're not the same, but I hope the point I'm making still gets across.

For a long time in Spain fines for polluting were lower than the cost of actually fixing the issue. As you can expect factories continued polluting. Then that changes to bigger fines or even to stop the factory until the problems were fixed. In no time factories hired people to fix the problems and to make sure that it didn't happen again.

If a company is allowed to break an agreement with no consequences. How do we expect it to abide to the rules?

> As a society, are we going to allow companies to lie and deceive in the name of "disruption"?

I dont' see any disruption in Uber business model. They just offer a service without paying the proper taxes that other companies (taxi) have to pay, and without paying minimum wage or having other guarantees for the employees. That is as old as the rule of law and taxes have existed, the only novelty is that they use an app to do so. And apps have been already out for a while.

The disruption is that it surfaces all those problems which already exist for taxi drivers in the current system. They often work insane shifts, lose money if it's a slow day, etc. They have to enter into long exploitive contracts just to rent a medallion from the politically-connected rent-seeking monopolist who owns it.

Also, I often see drivers who don't resemble the photo ID in the cab at all. Likely they're unlicensed friends of the medallion renter, who help cover the insane shifts they rent the medallion for. But it negates much or all of the supposed value of taxis.

By giving those drivers an identical (somewhat crappy, as you point out) choice which doesn't lock them in, it's shaking up the taxi industry. And by reducing the value of the medallion it's hurting the monopolists who lobby to keep the number of medallions low, etc, which helps us in the long run with healthier markets.

As for Uber specifically, their value is surge pricing. And I say this as a customer, not a shareholder. I routinely wait for taxis that never come when I'm in cities that have banned Uber. But I never wait for an Uber where it exists - I can choose to pay if I want it. If I'm late for a meeting, I'll pay. It's a service that was unavailable before at any price.

Uber has such a history of simply ignoring any and all regulation until governments start fining them and dumping resources into enforcing laws.

People with strong libertarian values saw this as disruptive and helping break the Taxi monopolies. This may have been true initially, at least in some regions. (Uber drivers in NZ would tell me they use to work for Taxi services, and most of them made more when they switched to Uber. That was 2 years ago -- wonder if it's still true there).

I remember in Berlin, the laws changed and were enforced in such a way as Uber was just a call service for all the standard taxi companies, so it's the same price whether you use Uber or just flag one down.

The fact is that Uber is just another company and they use their money and position to just ignore laws. In the case of their self driving vehicles, the laws in California aren't even all that insane. They're basic laws around safety and liability for all self driving pilot programs, which other companies have applied for and gotten.

I realize people want cheaper taxis, but drivers need to be able to make a living. Yes, many of them are exploited by their taxi companies that take way too much off the top, but now we see Uber doing the exact same thing -- a bait and switch. It's a thankless job and companies like Uber really exploit the vast majority of them, except in markets where governments have really stepped in to put a stop to it.

There's a reason labour regulation and unions exists. Some of it may slow some business development or keep corrupt people in positions of power, but a lot of it originally started with the idea of stopping things like child labour, unsafe factory conditions and slave wages.

> I remember in Berlin, the laws changed and were enforced in such a way as Uber was just a call service for all the standard taxi companies, so it's the same price whether you use Uber or just flag one down.

Which defeats the whole purpose. Without the ability to pay more we don't encourage drivers to cover demand. Demand-based surge pricing is a feature.

> I realize people want cheaper taxis, but drivers need to be able to make a living.

That's silly. Landscapers need to make a living, which they ensure by not taking jobs at below cost. Ditto, everyone else except those in protected industries.

> There's a reason labour regulation and unions exists. Some of it may slow some business development or keep corrupt people in positions of power, but a lot of it originally started with the idea of stopping things like child labour, unsafe factory conditions and slave wages.

But few or none of these rules apply to taxi drivers because they're usually forced to work as independent contractors despite being like employees in all ways; we know that's not actually the issue cities have with Uber.

So why do we protect taxis? It's emphatically not to protect drivers (or we'd protect landscapers, etc...) but to protect the medallion-owners.

It doesn't cost a politician a penny to grant a monopoly. For them, it's just paper. And they claim the cash benefits ($x million raised on medallions) as an accomplishment despite that everyone suffers from then on. We didn't get here because some concerned and learned person did a study and decided it was best, we got it because some politically connected trolls got kickbacks (cash or favors) for making sure only the right people got the medallions. If medallions go away, so does that power.

The majority of corporate "settlements" in the U.S. are infuriating and they almost make the whole exercise in charging these companies pointless. If you're going to accuse a company of doing something illegal, make it count. Don't do it just so your lawyers/agency can score another "win".

IANAL (obviously), but how would the government levy a fine? This is a settlement, so there's no legal wrongdoing, correct? I assume all the charges were dropped?

Settlements often frustrate me. They seem like a "get out of jail free" card (I know no one is literally going to jail). Especially in Class Action suits. I'm afraid that most large companies just see it as a cost of doing business and prepare accordingly.

There is insurance for that kind of stuff I think...

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