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Comment by yunti | Hacker News Reader

The answer is that, you are using a service that is unsustainably too cheap. In the longer term the price will have to increase, probably quite significantly and you'll have to choose whether you think it's still worth it or take the bus. Unfortunately you, and many others are the ones benefitting from drivers being underpaid.

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It's almost like Uberpool could be a privately run bus service using larger vehicles and transporting more people at once, instead of private taxis. Depending on the angle you view it from, perhaps the Uberpool service isn't too cheap, but simply a bad idea from the start, without the infrastructure or a suitable class of vehicle to make it viable.

So... privatised public transportation?

Maybe that's what it'll take for the US to improve its public transportation. Having good ol' fashioned private enterprise instead of the government paying for it.

If a bus went down every side street and picked up riders from their house it would take forever to get anywhere, cause bunching etc.. Most people would probably rather walk 5 minutes to a bus stop for a more reliable ride.

> Unfortunately you, and many others are the ones benefitting from drivers being underpaid.

To be fair, these drivers would be out of jobs without Uber. They are not qualified enough to find better paying jobs. Being underpaid is still better than not being paid at all. However, there's a limit to how little Uber can pay its drivers before they start looking for better paying jobs elsewhere. Uber needs to balance this with their need to be profitable in order to keep existing. And they're not profitable already in spite of these low wages. If anything, it's Uber who needs to worry about its existence. Drivers will find jobs elsewhere.

I think Uber started as a high margin business, which is always a great place to be but they quickly turned into a (very) low/negative margin business because of competition which requires exponential growth and constant injection of money to pay for the growth. The amount of pressure on the ceo must be insane, glad I'm not in his shoes (doesn't justify him being a-hole to his driver though obviously).

To be even more fair, a huge factor in them being underpaid is that the average driver will have a hard time factoring in depreciation, which hits you on a delay.

Not to mention that Uber pretty much bait-and-switched a lot of drivers, starting with artificially high payouts and then aggressively pushing the price down, fishing money out of the drivers' pockets and making their investments unprofitable. Which is what the driver in the recent video was complaining to Kalanick about.

That's not entirely fair or accurate to call them out on lack of skill. Many of the drivers I've met along the way over the years have all enjoyed the flexibility. College kids making extra party/food money, stay at home moms who are avoiding being bored. Just the other day I had a driver who was in between jobs and was using the time for interviews.

Any serious driver who is full time will most likely move up to the black cars and get private clients over time.

Sure, most of the happy Uber drivers (and there are many obviously if not the service wouldn't grow so much) are the ones you describe. The ones that are not so happy are the ones that rely on Uber to put food on the table, these people tend to lack skills to find better jobs (usually because they were born in underprivileged areas). Some of these people bet a bit too much on their Uber driving carrer at the start and now they're angry. Which is understable but it is also true that no one forced them to make that investment.

Two Uber anecdotes:

I had a driver in a brand new Mercedes Benz. He was an older gentleman, that owned three existing companies, and drove for Uber for fun, donating his paychecks to a local community organization.

Friend of my brother bought a van specifically to use for Uber. He is a married stay-at-home dad, and his wife is a practicing MD.

>The answer is that, you are using a service that is unsustainably too cheap. In the longer term the price will have to increase, probably quite significantly and you'll have to choose whether you think it's still worth it or take the bus. Unfortunately you, and many others are the ones benefitting from drivers being underpaid.

Uber is already hiring lobbyists with the goal of boondoggling municipalities into providing Uber subsidies in lieu of investing in public transit. They talk a big game about how self-driving cars are what's going to make Uber profitable, but that's just marketing to earn some 'cool points' because that tech won't be ready before the VC funding runs dry. They're banking on public subsidies.

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