Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

Now that the labor occupies a much less central place in our society, these common norms and knowledge have been lost. I happen to be appalled by this because of my own political views, but good or bad it's certainly a sign of the times.

Your point still stands, of course. (Though I choose to avoid taking the moral high ground not by condemning all of those entities, but by refusing to condemn any of them, since I don't see any fault here.)

It seems to be one of those terms that depends significantly on the specific context within / to which it is applied. Yet people will just say "baller" -- like my acquaintance -- and leave you to fill in the background. In other words, you have to be in the know, to know what they are really saying.

Which, IIRC, per some of the definitions I encountered, is actually part of its definition. :-/

Then it would appear there are far fewer Trump supporters than people who oppose Trump.

This is true of the vast majority of activists in any political cause. Most join as social signaling to their community that they are "one of them". Case in point, almost nobody interviewed for occupy Wallstreet could even agree on what the goal of the group was.

Particularly in this case, showing support is literally as simple as installing an app that does almost the exact same thing as another app. "sure, I'll do that and post to Facebook about it to show how forward thinking I am"

Apparently the latest outrage on Twitter is over Elon Musk's condemnation of Trump's order not being tough enough. They're mad at him for trying to convince Trump to modify his proposal, because "making compromises with the opponent validates them," and he's being "morally cowardly." Well, ok. But at this point the order is (unless the ACLU wins) a reality, and the pragmatic thing to do is to work within the bounds of reality to make things better. Would these people rather he not do that, just to show that he's "standing with them"?

I have an increasing suspicion that the word "solidarity" is becoming a word the means less and less. As far as I can tell, when applied to public figures, it mostly means sending the message that you care. I wish we'd care less about messaging, and more about what works.

This is ridiculous bullshit doing nothing.

Thousands of people doing something that would risk their job, or land them in jail (and I'm not talking about a couple of out-of-work stragglers while the rest high tail it home when the police come out) might change something.

But this? Just a big circle jerk which if Trump has a brain in his head, will just ignore.

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/lyft/investors

Imagine there was a competitor to Uber and Lyft that was owned by the drivers themselves in the form of a cooperative, so that any new drivers would have equal say in the direction the service took. Would that not be more ethical than Uber and Lyft?

Unless this is a coordinated effort, drivers and passengers will just go down the list to see if Lyft/Gett/Wingz/you-name-it is working.

This is a political opinion, and the context definitely matters. This wasn't a strike for higher wages, this was a strike to back a political stance.

How would you feel if the cabbies went on strike because we allow Muslims to vote? Would you so vehemently blast people that want transportation to continue functioning in the interim in that case as well?

"If you don't actively participate in my exact form of political activism, you're a bad person!"

This is the kind of rhetoric that pushed a ton of people on the fence towards Trump. For some reason, it's a common leftist tactic right now to insist that if you aren't actively engaged in whatever form of extremism the speaker is advocating, you are evil and (propping up the man | part of the patriarchy | oppressing <group> | a literal nazi | etc.). Entirely predictably, this is likely to alienate anyone even slightly to the right of the speaker and push them further right.

Maybe most Uber drivers don't really want to protest in this way. Maybe they agree with Trump. (Probably not, given that it's Manhattan, but who knows.) Maybe they feel like they don't have all the facts and don't want to make a stand based on an incomplete understanding. Either way, attacking them for it is counterproductive for you.

a) You expect Uber/Lyft to take part in your strike, in which case you are impeding travel, or

b) You don't expect Uber/Lyft to take part, in which case no one should be coming down so hard on them for "breaking the strike".

I think it's great that NY Taxi gave their immigrant employees time to participate in the protests, but, they could have... y'know... just done that. Not called for a strike. I'm not sure where you're hearing that it wasn't a strike, though: seems like everyone here is convinced it was an actual labor action, as does the original article. Not saying that's the final word on the matter, but it's pretty confusing what went on, and it seems a bit crazy to call for this strike or non-strike or whatever it was, and then get pissed at Uber/Lyft for not participating.

I don't agree with you that my words are "demeaning". People's actions have consequences. If protesters had extra trouble getting to/from the airport due to the strike, then I consider that a bad consequence of the strike. If there was even the possibility that someone detained by the CBP could have been released during the strike and had trouble getting home because of the strike, then I think "poor taste" is a generous description of events.

The taxis started a strike action (in support of the protest, but a strike nonetheless).

> By not participating

strike-breaking.

> I'm not taking sides here

Of course you are.

- It also shows people/companies what a liability free drivers / unions are. Especially were there is a limit of available taxis (taxi badge).

- Individual taxis are being disrupted and facing competition from Lyft/Uber at the moment.

- the country is divided over support of Trump. Strikers may not be able to reply on a majority for support due to the political nature of the strike.

What's the difference??

Now, on business side, image management is so important it's a huge industry. Many businesses have gone under or lost substantial money when their brands were tarnished by what potential buyers thought of them. Looks like they made another bad move on this front. Most Fortune 500 companies would at least pretend to care more than Uber does. Also in a way highly visible to customers.

You mean how it doesn't work. Cartels eventually fall apart when there's no way of enforcing the rules (no way to force someone to strike) because the incentives to cheat (drive during strike) are high.

If I was going to work and some strangers told me not to because they were on strike, I'd tell them to get lost.

That seems absurd. Uber is not a union. There is a dangerous conflict of incentive in relying on the people harmed by a strike to be organizing them.

If Uber had forced a strike on its drivers (without a vote no less) people would have been pissed that they were left stranded.

If enough Uber drivers wanted to strike, they would have. They didn't. Maybe they are a different demograph with different concerns. Who knows.

You know the last time Uber had surge pricing during a huge surge in demand in Australia they got a lot of shit. They said they wouldn't do it again. They kept their word.

And why must Uber be on the side of the strikers or face punishment? What about all the people hailing cabs, Ubers, or Lyfts? They are exempt from morality? Lyft picked up people too. The fact that Uber chose not to price gouge is not a support of the ban.

- Disagree out of principle. Someone else will step up to fill your stop.

- Agree and provide your POV of policy. A 'worse person' won't replace you (immediately).

Is Bernie a fascist for saying he would work with the Trump admin on the good parts of his agenda?

People will always protest against things that are more immediately visible to them than things they read about in infrequent news articles. That's just human nature.

You don't have to protest every cause to protest any cause. You can even protest things that, taken together, demonstrate you hold ideologically inconsistent views, if you want. That's on you.

This in a nutshell is why things will get worse stateside. There will be those who write off the circumstances behind where we find ourselves today as human nature (an absolution of sorts, a moral line item to be paid when the circumstances are brought to their attention, not too dissimilar from the likes of HSBC et al when they pay penance in the form of monetary notes for aiding and abetting criminals as defined by a given state) and join the protest, and there will be those who apply the tools refined during war agaisnt their "own" at such protests.

Either way, only those who come out ahead outside of any virtue signaling will probably be the suppliers of such tools.

NYC residents being hazily "on their side" in a broad political struggle is distinct from actively doing something to oppose the EO. Again, read the Letter.

And no, it wouldn't. Although that is something that he did quite a bit of, given that he got his start as a Baptist preacher, so I'm not sure your analogy works.

But racial injustice isn't just a side effect. It is quite often the point. If you read Loewen's Sundown Towns, you can see that quite often white people just don't like to see black people doing well, especially doing better than themselves. You can see the same thing echoed in Hochschild's "Strangers in Their Own Lands", although people have mainly learned not to say it out loud.

Yes - some people might be less sympathetic, those are not the people the protest set out to influence. It's the people who haven't made up their minds yet, the people who think that "This will all blow over soon" and want to get on with their lives in their bubble. They NEED to be inconvenienced to react, to make up their mind that this is something they can't ignore. Only then when you engage the apathetic can the protest grow, and protests must grow otherwise most of them fizzle.

I think that protestors should be careful about their tactics, but I don't think they should have to invent ways to tie a protest's theme to its objective. We protest when our moral values are offended, and that's enough of a reason.

But let's run with your notion. Suppose there is somebody who says: "I guess I didn't know about the civil rights violations and the deaths that this policy will result in. And I guess it's terrible that these refugees have been waiting years in limbo trying to rebuild their lives. But what's really important is that I expected to be home on time for dinner, so now I won't help them."

I don't think a person like that was every going to be sympathetic to the cause. They weren't going to do anything. They were going to ignore it.

And that's exactly the point of MLK's style of protest. It is to make a problem for some into a problem for all. It is to make it impossible for comfortable people to keep ignoring the problem.

If you just want to delete Uber not because of Trump, then it's not a big deal then.

Being an Uber customer and complaining about surge prices is beyond hypocrite.

Edit: Well, I slightly disagree. Even if the product doesn't require mass-adoption to be useful, it could surely benefit from branding/marketing and viral adoption to make it the desired product, in which case, it does still depend on who does all of that better. Even if Starbucks or Macbooks are more expensive, they have won their audience and increased their effective marketing force.

Something like 2k points will get you a night in a low category Sheraton, 20k will get you the W in Singapore.

I'd like that, and it is a good way to support a cause and it makes employees feel good too. It would also be more impressive if they did it in a time or place where it would be have been unpopular or dangerous because of general prejudices. But I am sure they didn't push emails to customers every-time some politician did something against marriage equality.

Another perspective is that Christian and Muslim employees of those companies were told that the management's official policy is that certain aspects of their religious beliefs are wrong. Can you imagine those employees weighing speaking up for themselves vs. their need to keep their jobs?

I've seen employees in that situation, and their morale was definitely not boosted.

The trend this thread is related to (Lyft downloads surge because of #deleteUber) is a blatant hypocrisy. Neither company complied with the taxi boycott, and Uber only removed surge pricing after the strike was scheduled to end.

This leads more pragmatic bystanders to believe that the people involved in this trend aren’t earnestly invested in finding a rational solution. They just want to hop aboard the first petty public trend that superficially signals that they’re backing some side of a divisive debate; even when that bandwagon trend may ultimately turn out to be counterproductive to their professed ideals and objectives!

This is not a problem for one side of the aisle or the other, but both. That tribal group-think is the EXACT same problem that led to a Trump presidency to begin with.

So the only way to move forward in any meaningful sense is to stop this childish nonsense. That means calling a spade a spade (or virtue signaling) when it comes along, and not wasting time/effort with those who are only interested in self-aggrandizing (you, per your comments).

Because it achieves NOTHING. If the goal is to help those affected, the ONLY way to do that is by engaging with the administration. The only way you can engage with this particular administration is by not shitting all over it no matter what it does. This is what Musk is attempting to do. What the protesters are doing is ACTIVELY HARMFUL to that goal, because it makes softening of the restrictions politically unfeasible.

On the other hand if the goal is to show each other how "progressive" you are, sure, go ahead and block the airports, burn effigies, beat and torture Trump supporters, etc. But don't act all surprised when this leads to nothing of consequence.

One of the most important and difficult debates during the drafting of our Constitution was whether representation in the national government should be equal for all states, or proportional based on their populations. The makeup of our Congress (one house where every state is equal, one where they're proportionally represented), and the manner of electing the President are compromises introduced in the 1780s to assuage fears from smaller states that larger, more populous states would be able to tyrannize them.

There are also historical roots here in slavery: many southern states actually had large populations, but only when slaves were counted as part of the population. So those states wanted slaves to count at least partially, even though slaves were of course not allowed to vote (which is how we get the infamous compromise where a slave was counted as 3/5 of a person for proportional-representation purposes).

And the economies of the northern and southern states diverged very early on; northern states' economies were based more on trade and manufacture, southern states on agriculture and resource extraction (supported by slave labor until slavery was abolished, then by things which emulated slavery as closely as was legal, like exploitative sharecropping and debt slavery).

This naturally leads to a divide and a conflict of lifestyles and values, wherein there are basically two countries existing within the same set of borders. One of those countries has always had a larger (free) population and always been more urban, dense and globally connected. The other has always had a smaller (free) population and always been more rural, sparse and isolationist. The southern and now midwestern rural/sparse/isolationist faction has also consistently used the compromises of the 1780s to their advantage, since they are represented and wield power in the national government disproportionate to their percentage of the population, and can at times effectively reverse the original fear and tyrannize the majority northern and coastal urban/dense/globalist faction.

But so long as the Constitution of the United States continues to be based on those two-hundred-year-old compromises, this tension will continue to exist.