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Comment by maxerickson | Hacker News Reader

What's the average hourly earnings of a busy driver after they pay their expenses (vehicle amortization, insurance, fuel, maintenance, etc.)?

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What do you expect Uber/Lyft to do differently? Minimum wage for drivers? We have capitalism. If you think the drivers don't get a lot of money, why don't all of them quit after the first paycheck? It's capitalism, no one forces anyone to do anything. People are free to do what's best for them. Many of these drivers would be unemployed if not for Uber/Lyft. I'm not saying they're well compensated, I'm saying there must be a reason why they're still doing what they're doing.

I don't particularly expect Uber to do anything different. I do expect someone praising how Uber treats their drivers to be able to answer the question (if they don't know how much a driver in a busy city takes home per hour they have no useful idea how Uber treats drivers).

I don't personally know anything about Uber, but I would be very surprised if it wasn't against company policy to provide such a figure (if it's even internally available) given the divisive and intense political climate that Uber operates in.

Sure, but an Uber policy against disclosing such information doesn't make the question unfair to ask.

We don't have unrestricted capitalism though, far from it. We do have lots of laws that protect workers' rights, including minimum wage laws, which Uber skirts around by classifying their workers as contractors.

Saying "It's capitalism" isn't a justification for anything; it's overly reductive, and we do not live in a purely capitalistic society.

but if the laws that protect workers' rights are so good, why do they even stay with Uber? You yourself said Uber doesn't follow minimum wage law or protect the workers' rights. Doesn't that mean the ride-sharing market, at equilibrium, sets the wage higher than whatever the driver's alternatives might be?

Your argument that minimum wage should be reduced or abolished has some merit. But that doesn't give Uber the right to gain an unfair advantage over other companies.

If you feel tax rates are generally too high does that make it OK to cheat on your tax return?

Capitalism doesn't work when you ignore the law. Or do you really believe Uber would be where they are at now if they followed the law to the letter?

Capitalism works best without the laws (not all but most of them). Capitalism relies on the fact that producers and consumers are free to choose whatever the best options presented to them. The market should make the decisions, not the government.

Would capitalism work better if people were free to smoke crack?

Would it work better if people could choose not to educate their children and instead spend the money on other things?

Can you enumerate which current laws capitalism would be better off without?

Occupational licensing laws, for starters. Even the Obama administration agreed: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/0...

You think competition law is needless nonsense? That a pure free market does not end up with a handful of people owning all of the marbles?

Or without factories full of workers burning down, or without pollutants getting dumped into streams, or without company towns locking workers down into slavery-in-all-but-name, etc., etc.

I knew someone who drove a taxi, before Uber was available, and he said the biggest cost is car repairs as they ride them hard each day. Then there is variables like gas and insurance which fluctuate. These costs apply to all drivers, not just Uber. He said he made around $45k/yr if I remember correctly. But he said the freedom of having no boss and driving around meeting people made it worth it.

This will probably depend on where the driver lives and works. There is also the question of whether they are a 'broker' or not with another taxi, meaning they own their own car and also do Uber and/or Lyft on the side while working with another taxi service. Which is common.

In Toronto where our taxis are far less regulated than other cities like New York, allowing for more supply but higher per ride fares to compensate, all of the drivers I've spoken to have said they make more money per ride with Uber than they do with normal taxi services and always give preference to Uber calls over the dispatcher. Also they have been busier allowing them to do more rides per night worked.

Uber likely increases the amount of people taking rides in any city as it makes the UX easier to call a cab reliably, direct it, and pay for it.

> allowing for more supply but higher per ride fares to compensate

This makes no sense to me. With excess supply, the prices should come down. You'd expect prices to increase when the supply is constricted, as it is during Uber surge pricing. It sounds like maybe Toronto cabs aren't playing by the regular rules of economics, as many other cities' cabs aren't, which is exactly why they've been so prone to disruption.

> sounds like maybe Toronto cabs aren't playing by the regular rules of economics

Indeed, I should have said the supply of cars is less regulated in Toronto, or at least it's not made as artificially low as it is in places like NYC (via medallion system which costs $1 million each). But the prices are still heavily regulated and they set the prices higher so the drivers could make money still as a consequence of having fewer rides due to the greater supply.

The big reason Taxi companies hate Uber is that it messes up their control of supply, keeping it artificially low.

Lots of articles and graphs about what happened to medallion prices in the last few years.

http://www.odwyerpr.com/story/public/6471/2016-03-08/uber-ly...

Judging from drivers posting on reddit, I would say ~$10-$15. Or in most cities it is near minimum wage.

Do you pay your drivers a large cash tip so their profits are at least the minimum wage?

I last took a cab ~15 years ago.

The alternative is lots of people without income. One upside of Uber, Lyft and the taxis' ruthless price competition has been the data. Specifically, we now know just how price elastic the demand for taxi-like services is. Raising prices to pay driver's a minimum wage would result in a predictably dire cutback in demand and commensurate cutback in earnings.

We're in the best of possible worlds. But it's difficult to fault Uber to the degree some people do when customers express their demand preferences so clearly.

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