Hacker News Reader

Comment by peacetreefrog | Hacker News Reader

Deciding to drive for Uber is a mutually beneficial transaction between consenting adults (or an adult and a company). If the driver wasn't benefiting, they'd do something else.

Well-intentioned (by some people, prob most people on HN) and not so well-intentioned (anti-competitive lobbying by taxis) efforts to make the relationship less "exploitative" are likely doing more harm than good.

What happens when the gov mandates all these extra benefits? "Drivers WILL earn more money!" The answer is some combination of: Uber becomes costlier, people take fewer rides (or growth is slower than it should be), and some people who are perfectly willing and able to drive right now are unable to do so. Or (if demand is more inelastic) a bunch of new drivers decide the new benefits make it worth entering the market, and not everyone who wants to drive can/people sit around idle, etc.

Either way, you're hurting consumers and many existing drivers.

View on HN

Edit: Yeah I'm off the mark, median pay is more like 10-8. I gotta read more closely

I think the "mutually beneficial" is somewhat debatable. If you take in to account the cost of upkeep on the vehicle from increased driving some drivers barely break even or even lose money driving for uber. On median a driver makes something like 3 dollars an hour https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/01/uber-lyft...

No they don't. From your link:

> The first draft of the paper, released last month, said the median profit was $3.37 an hour, but the author released a new analysis on Monday following criticism from Uber. In the new analysis, the researcher reported the higher median profit of $8.55 an hour.

Another quote from your link:

> Alex Tabarrok, a George Mason University professor who called the paper’s findings “dubious” last week, said he still had concerns about the researcher’s reliance on questionable survey data and that he believed the average hourly profit of Uber drivers was closer to $13 an hour (similar to figures the company has cited).

My bad. I read one article and linked to another without reading it. I gotta check my sources more closely.

It has to be mutually beneficial, otherwise drivers would be doing something else. We don't have slavery in this country anymore.

One of the biggest benefits is working whenever you want. A paper by the NBER found drivers get twice the consumer (or producer in this case I guess) surplus they would from less flexible arraignments:

http://www.nber.org/papers/w23296

>It has to be mutually beneficial, otherwise drivers would be doing something else. We don't have slavery in this country anymore.

I want to be clear here, and I'd appreciate it if you did not put words in my mouth. I never claimed rideshare drivers were slaves. I was questioning the degree to which the arrangement was beneficial to both parties.

If everyone was perfectly rational, I would agree with you. But many of these additional costs are hidden. Uber advertises ~$8 an hour, which sounds pretty good. But they don't mention the wear and tear on the car, the increased cost of mechanics, etc. I'm not convinced most drivers are aware of that or look into it.

Clearly it is somewhat beneficial for the drivers. $4 an hour is better than $0 an hour, but I still think it's worth pointing out it's not even minimum wage in the US.

No worries, not suggesting you think it's slavery. I think that would be a pretty extreme position to take.

I do agree people aren't always rational, and there are certainly other costs in terms of wear and tear etc. But I think people are (1) relatively more rational when it comes to money, (2) get more rational with experience (i.e. as they observe having to take their cars in more after driving a while).

Uber has > 160k active drivers, I think it's very paternalistic to suggest they aren't rational enough to realize how screwed they're getting and think gov or some other third party needs to step in. I think it should also give us pause that many of the loudest voices saying these things (especially locally) are associated with the taxi industry.

These researchers say it's $8.55. Some people argue it should be more (like $13), but -- like I said in another comment -- a job is a bundle of things including pay but also: flexibility, liking who you work with, feeling like you accomplished something, etc. Uber provides very high flexibility (literally can almost work on demand), which economists have estimated gives drivers twice the surplus over similar paying, less flexible options.

I agree with your numbers after doing some more reading, i was definitely off the mark going in.

I would point to the high turnover rate as an indication that people do realize that maybe they aren't making what they thought they would when they started. I think people catch on, but that doesn't stop others from signing up without realizing it. However I'm not convinced the drivers are being exploited to the degree I originally claimed.

You make good points and have given me much to consider

> We don't have slavery in this country anymore.

The US, post-13th Amendment, still has both de jure (specifically, penal) slavery and de facto slavery, though there are laws designed to combat the latter (including, inter alia, the ones Uber tries to hack around.)

And is your argument that driving for Uber is de facto slavery?

I really think one of the biggest blindspots of the (generally well-intentioned, smart) crowd at HN is lack of appreciation of economics and markets, and the belief that tinkering with these markets for the better is as simple as turning a dial on a knob (or passing a law, or getting a good ruling in a court case).

Good article with related thoughts on this: http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2005/Robertsmarkets....

Every gig-based employer needs to be lobbying hard for universal health care. It's not the only benefit of being a employee, but it's a big one. If we keep insisting that only employees get health care then people are going to want to be considered employees.

"Regular" employees don't have universal health care. It's just that employers get a tax deduction for employer provided group insurance. Most economists believe this is hugely inefficient and a big policy mistake. If we're lobbying hard for pie in the sky goals, it'd be better to get rid of that (or let employers deduct contributions to individual plans instead) instead of applying the same crappy policy to gig economy jobs too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com