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Comment by HeavenBanned | Hacker News Reader

On the one hand, part of me thinks this is grimey, capitalistic slime-balling on the part of Uber; using psychological warfare to make a buck.

And on the other hand, part of me thinks that trying to unionize Uber drivers is a bad move. If I wanted to make a quick buck with a side-job, Uber would be a great way for me to do that without having to trudge through the Gigs on Craigslist, etc. etc. etc.

But if they unionize, it will become "just another job" and be tightly regulated, making the ability to get a quick buck nearly impossible; turning Uber into a full-fledged job with all the bureaucratic hooplah. While that would protect the fraction of workers looking to make Uber their full-time job, it would reduce the "Cowboy" nature of the job and make it hard for people to get in and get quick work.

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Uber bolsters its fleets in part by offering predatory loans to drivers who are effectively indentured to work full-time with the company.[1] This is a core aspect of its growth strategy and is not incidental to its operating economics.

Regardless, the ability of a company to provide transitory part-time labor should not be considered as an end in itself. A part-time worker whose earnings are subject to change at the whim of Uber's fare adjustments is even less likely to make major financial commitments than a part-time worker in a low-wage service position. This has a negative effect on the growth and security of the economy as a whole.

If anything, we should encourage the transition of these contract positions into "just another jobs." Those gigs on Craigslist will be available in any case.

[1] http://www.citylab.com/commute/2016/06/uber-subprime-auto-le...

Uber's "predatory loans" work on a week to week basis, with a minimum rental period of 4 weeks. Please explain how it is predatory.

Subprime leases at 50% more than the national average lease $/week. Seems pretty unethical to me; Companies lending to people who have no business borrowing money...reminds me of the 2007/08 mortgage crisis.

> Subprime leases at 50% more than the national average lease $/week.

I'm pretty anti-Uber, but that's not shocking given the unlimited mileage provision. My last car lease quoted additional mileage over the 10k/year at $0.21/mile, which'd add up extremely quickly as a taxi driver.

> Subprime leases at 50% more than the national average lease $/week. Seems pretty unethical to me; Companies lending to people who have no business borrowing money...reminds me of the 2007/08 mortgage crisis.

Subprime loans are expensive because they're risky. Nobody is stopping those people from taking the normal lease, except that they can't get one because they have bad credit.

The problem with the mortgage crisis was that banks were making loans to people they knew would default on them and then reselling the loans as AAA loans, and insurance companies selling credit-default swaps under the same assumption. Then suddenly everyone finds out that so many of the loans are garbage that it made huge institutions insolvent.

There is none of that going on here. Uber is just willing to take the risk of defaults for the benefit of having more drivers.

> Subprime loans are expensive because they're risky. Nobody is stopping those people from taking the normal lease, except that they can't get one because they have bad credit.

So everyone is stopping them.

Uber isn't stopping them.

This is bullshit. There is unlimited miles and they can return the car whenever they want. There's nothing predatory about it. I've had Uber drivers who bemoan the fact that they bought their own car instead of getting the lease.

I disagree. Here in Sweden, we actively discourage jobs that pay borderline-poverty wages. Taxi rides should not be cheap. You are buying someone else's time. That should be expensive for the middle-class.

I'm going to go full-on link-to-Libertarian screed on this, so I apologise in advance, but...

when regulations like this are realized, and unions protect a privileged set of existing members, the marginalized are in fact hardest hit.

http://reason.com/blog/2017/03/11/think-the-sharing-economy-...

The facts are that the bottom 5/10/20% in Sweden are better off than in the U.S. (from measures such as life expectancy, literacy, etc). Yet, our society is structured around collective bargaining. So it disproves your claim that the marginalized are hardest hit. Society provides a net to catch those that fall off the edge. Personally, I believe a society should be judged by how it looks after their worst off. That's not libertarian, I don't know what to call it. My mother would call it being 'nice' or 'responsible'.

Just to add an anecdote that reflects on Swedish society values from this weekend. The number one cultural event here is the Eurovision Song Contest within Sweden (to select the representative for the Europe-wide contest). The winner of the popular vote this year was an ex-convict who was considered 'rehabiltated' and always talked about his family. People love the way society helped him when he was down and how he rebuilt himself. It isn't a rugged individualistic notion of how he saved himself, more about how support structures enabled him to change himself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nano_Omar

Please don't sell our embarrassing fascination of Eurovision as something good by calling it our "number one cultural event". Makes me sad :(

By any objective measure, it's the most talked about/watched event in the annual calendar. Embarrassing - maybe, but it's all the kids talk about at school. Btw, I bet on Robin at 14/1 - my outsider perspective helps finding that kind of arbitrage opportunity.

While true, this is likely driven primarily by demographic factors. The US averages are dragged down by demographic groups which are common in the US, but rare in Sweden.

When you correct for demographics by comparing Swedish Americans to Swedes, it turns out that all income percentiles besides the bottom 10% are better off in the US. Even the bottom 10% are not very different.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nA4POT...

Note that countries populated by those other demographic groups also perform fairly badly. For example, Italy also tries to be "nice" or "responsible" (as you describe it), but Sicily is a very scenic (and tasty!) basket case. (I think it's not un-PC for me to talk about Sicily, since my ancestry is more Sicilian than anything else?)

I don't want to go here, because it's the thin edge of a tbh racist wedge. In Sweden there is practically zero unemployment for 'ethnic swedes'. So the debate here is now on integrating new arrivals in the workplace. The notion that somebody would say 'hey, but we have full employment for ethnic swedes, screw the others' is inconceivable. For the reason that we live in the same society. We share the same public transport and public spaces. If they are worse off, i will eventually be worse off (through them destroying our shared space). Having buy-in from everyone in society is crucial. That is why benefits are not means tested here. Yes, socialists want benefits for everyone, not just the poor. Because, when the rich stop receiving child benefit or university grants, they actively undermine the system. Naturally, our right wing parties want to means-test benefits. It's the opposite of anglo-saxon economies (disclosure- i'm from one, hence i notice these differences more than your average swede).

I don't want to go here, because it's the thin edge of a tbh racist wedge.

It's always entertaining to watch people label a claim as "racist", but refuse to call them "false" or argue against them.

I made no normative claims (e.g. "screw the others"), only a positive one.

seems to me that, for a very long while, transoceanic immigrants have tended to bring more in terms of education and other factors; influenced by the immigration process, among other things.

as "Swedish Americans" aren't exactly a properly random sample of people plucked out of Sweden and relocated, it's not clear that it's very useful to compare to "all Swedes in Sweden".

If Swedish Americans are a bad comparison to Swedes in Sweden, then surely comparing non-Swedish Americans to Swedes in Sweden is even worse.

swedish-americans vs swedes and americans vs swedes are simply two different comparisons, and it's not clear that "even worse" applies.

The goal - as per jamesblonde's comment - is to measure the effect of two different systems of government. The effect on the underlying people is the sample. So in this sense, the more different the people, the worse they are for this measurement.

>So it disproves your claim that the marginalized are hardest hit.

Even if poor people in Sweden are better off than poor people in the US, it doesn't mean it's because of the collective bargaining, it may be caused by something else.

He lives in Sweden. Of course it always can be something else, but I think he is in a better position to judge that than you, since he lives in the system that has that policy.

Unless you have a good reason to think otherwise, why not just believe him?

Collective bargaining and safety net are quite different concepts. In fact, it's been pointed out by Luigi Zingales and others that Southern European countries actually have stronger job protection rules than Northern countries, yet our workers are clearly not richer.

On the topic of helping the bottom 20%, I should also add that in Canada, those who enjoy our socialized health insurance owe a nod to trade unions who advocated on behalf of it's huge membership (third of Canadian workers, post-World War 2).

Back in the 1960s, if you look at the opposition to the proposition of Canadian Medicare, it was exactly who you'd expect: Medical associations, Pharma, Insurance Companies, Canadian Chamber of Commerce

Who favored it? Trade Unions, Association of Social Workers, Farmer Associations, United Church of Canada... it also polled heavily well amongst the population

In a public commission (1961), Trade Unions advocated for medicare by revealing the limitations of private insurance, where they could point out that profit-driven insurance schemes that enrolled their members tended to severely restrict or deny coverage in many areas (rehab, preventative health, mental health) despite the fact that their plans had costly deductibles and co-insurance charges. They also point-by-point countered the arguments against Medicare made by the Canadian Medical Association. And they also pointed out a purely market-driven allocation of resources created huge inequalities in access to care, such as the lack of doctors in some provinces and lack of dentists outside of our two biggest cities.

> That should be expensive for the middle-class.

So you're saying only rich people should get taxi rides? I thought Sweden supported the poor more.

Also, you're aware that when the minimum wage is too high, it just means there will be more unemployment, not that everyone gets a raise.

Now the debate is: are people happier with a job with a low wage or are they happier at home doing nothing? Studies show that people are more depressed at home when unemployed and have more chance to improve their condition and salary by starting at lower paid jobs doing something. But many of the supporters of high minimum wage would rather people stay at home than improve themselves starting with lower paid jobs not because it helps the poor but because it helps the high minimum wage supporters sleep better at night knowing that although more people have no jobs, at least no one is being underpaid... well... except for those not being paid at all.

> So you're saying only rich people should get taxi rides?

I do agree with that, best if middle class people use public transport (or worse, their own car).

> I thought Sweden supported the poor more.

It has nothing to do with support of the poor. In India, taxis are incredibly cheap, and there is no shortage of poor people. Poor people can drive buses and trams, too, you know.

> Also, you're aware that when the minimum wage is too high, it just means there will be more unemployment

No, it doesn't. It was never empirically proven that there is a connection between minimum wage and unemployment. (You are simplifying the whole economy to the labor market, but there is also demand side.)

That's amazing, you're basically saying better services should be for the rich only while the poor should use lower public services while saying at the same time that you support the poor. Incredible. That's what socialism always does, pretends to help the poor but in the end only the elite benefits from it.

> No, it doesn't. It was never empirically proven that there is a connection between minimum wage and unemployment.

When it comes to low skill jobs, yes, increasing the minimum wage does create more unemployment as the middle class is not able to pay for them anymore, only the super rich. That's a well no fact, you can look it up.

That's not a fact. It's nonsense you believe to be a fact. Luxembourg, Sweden, Norway, Germany all have low unemployment rates (and higher total employment rates than the US) and have higher minimum wages. Economies adapt to higher minimum wages, they may lose jobs in the short term, then adapt and total employment can return to former levels if the correct policies are in place.

Btw, when you say socialism pretends to help the poor, but helps the elite, that doesn't help your case. By all objective measures, the poor are better off in western european social democratic countries than in a free-for-all capitalist society, like the US. There are other models, like Singapore that also work well, FYI.

> Luxembourg, Sweden, Norway, Germany all have low unemployment rates (and higher total employment rates than the US) and have higher minimum wages.

France, Belgium and Ireland all have a higher minimum wage and higher unemployment rates than the US. Clearly the unemployment rate is affected by multiple factors. The issue is whether a higher minimum wage increases unemployment, not whether you can counteract it with other policies -- applying the other policies without raising the minimum wage could result in even less unemployment.

> Btw, when you say socialism pretends to help the poor, but helps the elite, that doesn't help your case.

There are a huge number of nominally socialist policies in the US that really exist at the behest of large corporations. Mortgage interest tax deduction -- "help people own a home", really makes home ownership more expensive and transfers tax dollars to mortgage banks. Ditto student loan interest subsidies. Affordable housing subsidies -- placate political demand for lower housing costs without actually lowering market rate housing costs for low-middle income working people, transfers tax dollars to landlords, encourages low income people to rent rather than own. Social security -- no progressive rate structure, tax cutoff for millionaires, benefits based on lifespan and historical income which both disadvantage lower income people. Tax deductions for employer-provided health insurance -- implicit subsidy to large insurance companies. Affordable Care Act -- huge tax dollar subsidy to large insurance companies, effectively prohibits people from saving money with high deductible insurance plans that are less profitable to same insurance companies, and discourage overconsumption and overpayment to medical companies.

Skepticism is warranted.

US is not free for all capitalism, it has one of the biggest welfare and government job program on the whole planet (the industrial-military complex), so not sure what you're talking about here. Western European countries are still pretty much capitalist countries with a pretty free market. And they are still doing not as good as freer countries such as Switzerland or Luxembourg and as you mention Hong Kong and Singapore.

The only countries that are going socialists are Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea and friends and we know how they're doing.

> you're basically saying better services should be for the rich only while the poor should use lower public services while saying at the same time that you support the poor

No, what I am saying that taxi driver's job should be paid well enough. If you want a personal driver, it will cost you. The interpretation that taxi is better than public transport is yours only.. Many people in Europe don't need taxis, because we have excellent public transport, which, by the way, also employs people.

I am not sure how you can twist the logic to think that my position supports the elites more than poor. :-)

> No, what I am saying that taxi driver's job should be paid well enough.

How about letting taxis decide how much they want to charge, crazy thought, huh? Turns out many of them are happy to drive for Uber. How about we let them be? Or do you know better than they do what's good for them?

> Many people in Europe don't need taxis, because we have excellent public transport

No we don't. Public transport are still dependent on where you live, unless you live close to a station, it's not that great cause you still need to drive to the station. Not to mention the strikes (I live in France), the delays etc. Having a personal private driver on demand is a way better experience than riding a public bus (gosh do I hate this every single time I have to use it).

> I am not sure how you can twist the logic to think that my position supports the elites more than poor. :-)

Well simply put, your policies make it unaffordable for the poor to get access to the best services and only the elites can. So, there you go :)

> No, it doesn't. It was never empirically proven that there is a connection between minimum wage and unemployment. (You are simplifying the whole economy to the labor market, but there is also demand side.)

Nobody can prove something like that because it depends on dynamic characteristics of the economy. If everyone who makes minimum wage worked for the government and the government did nothing but pay them more money by taking on more public debt then the current-year employment rate obviously wouldn't go down, but our current economy doesn't look like that.

Only ~1% of workers in the US make minimum wage, and they represent an even smaller percentage of total consumption than that. Increasing their wages is not going to create a large increase in local consumption, especially when some of the money goes to things that don't create new local unskilled jobs, like increasing salaries for existing CEOs, or leaving the local economy and going to workers in China or India, or creating demand for skilled jobs that the newly unemployed minimum wage workers aren't qualified for.

And the entire wage increase comes out of the employer's pocket, which for middle class employers means that much less consumption by the employer -- the "increased demand" from higher minimum wage is the broken window fallacy. Meanwhile there are existing jobs that can justify the lower wage but not the higher wage, so those people become unemployed, which reduces local demand, not only due to the lost amount to the employee but also the profit that employee had previously generated for the employer and the surplus for the employer's customers and suppliers and so on.

> Only ~1% of workers in the US make minimum wage

does this statistic limit to literal minimum wage? so if someone is hired at +5 cents, do they not count?

> does this statistic limit to literal minimum wage? so if someone is hired at +5 cents, do they not count?

Including minimum wage +5 cents is still ~1%.

+1.00? +2.00? does it include everything sub-living wage?

Finding the specific data at that granularity is apparently a pain because everybody provides data for income instead of wages which doesn't distinguish $15 for 20 hours from $7.50 for 40 hours.

FWIW the median wage is ~$16.

> does it include everything sub-living wage?

There are many people who work primarily for tips, but raising the minimum wage wouldn't change that.

it would certainly be curious if nobody made <$15/hr yet there was so much noise about it.

Minimum wage is traditional special interest politics. The benefits are concentrated (the specific people who make minimum wage and don't lose their jobs get a raise) but the costs are distributed (things cost more for everyone, higher unemployment).

Suppose you raise minimum wage by 10% and as a result 9 people get a 10% raise and one person loses their job. Well, you just got yourself 9 votes at the cost of one, even though the net result across those ten people is negative. And the net result across all people is even worse because now people have to pay higher prices for things, but those costs are too widely distributed to change anyone's vote.

So raising the minimum wage (or having one at all) will tend to have more political support than it can justify on the merits.

I accept your comment about 'supporting the poor' was probably flippant but still, I find the idea that the best way to support the poor is to make taxis cheaper, rather than increasing the/enforcing a minimum wage absolutely bizarre.

I also wonder whether having these artificially low prices for things like Uber, reduces the incentive to improve more efficient modes of transportation like trains/buses.

> I find the idea that the best way to support the poor is to make taxis cheaper, rather than increasing the/enforcing a minimum wage absolutely bizarre.

I explained this part in my comment. Enforcing a higher minimum wage just put people out of jobs, it doesn't give everyone a raise. So you're not raising people's wage, you're actually taking away from them their whole wage bringing it down to zero.

>Enforcing a higher minimum wage just put people out of jobs...

Maybe increasing the amount taxi drivers are paid would drive up the cost of taxis and thus drive down demand for taxis. This seems reasonable to me. We're defining a minimum amount somebody's time is worth, which means the cost of things that use peoples time go up.

The root "problem" taxi drivers solve still exists - people still need to get around, but taxis aren't the only way to solve that problem. Train and bus services could be expanded or improved.

The other thing to consider is that the extra money the taxi drivers earn will most likely provide other economic opportunities.

> We're defining

Who's We? Shouldn't taxi drivers be free to define how much they want to sell their time? Why should you decide for them? Isn't that paternalistic and anti-freedom? Why do you know better than they do what's best for them? Why not let them be?

I mean we as a society.

> Shouldn't taxi drivers be free to define how much they want to sell their time?

The problem with this is that, in my (perhaps naive) mind, the logical conclusion is a race to the bottom fuelled by greed (of the business) and desperation (of the employee) which helps nobody. In my view there should be a regulation to prevent how far this can go.

By the way, I don't think we'll agree on any of these points, but it's refreshing to have a discussion that doesn't descend into name-calling and personal criticism :)

> the logical conclusion is a race to the bottom fuelled by greed (of the business)

If that were true, we would all be paid minimum wage, which is not true. As you gain experience, you bring more value and therefor employers are forced to pay you more, which is demonstrated by reality as I said, we're not all paid minimum wage for exactly that reason. Race to the bottom happens when the minimum wage gets so high that even qualified people get minimum wage and the rest are just unemployed and don't get anything at all.

About greed, are you're aware what greed is? Here's Milton's 3 minutes video on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A&t=13s

>Studies show that people are more depressed at home when unemployed and have more chance to improve their condition and salary by starting at lower paid jobs doing something.

1. Could you cite one of these studies? This is the first I've hearing of such a phenomenon.

2. That seems insanely counter-intuitive, and even if it's true, it probably hits a wall at some point. To use an extreme example, I for one would rather sit at home collecting an unemployment check than work at a literal sweatshop. If studies are showing people are happier without a living income than with one, then perhaps that says something about society's attitude towards work and how work is glorified as not a means to an end but an end unto itself. I would say that should be pushed back against, and that we should continue enforcing a living wage, and simply giving people money if they can't find a job that pays one.

Why a lot of tv/film workers are freelancers but are still unionised IATSE (USA) and Prospect ex BECTU (UK)

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Plus, it's not a given that the union would kill off the short gig style of work for Uber.

> While that would protect the fraction of workers looking to make Uber their full-time job...

I don't have any numbers but is that fraction actually that small?

I am wondering why it seems like you were downvoted? You expressed your opinion and to me, you made a fair point.

This is my worry as well.

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