A few taps on my phone and a car shows up to my exact location in 2 minutes?! And that's it? No calling dispatch and hoping they'd show up eventually (sometimes they didn't). No fumbling with cash or tip or anything.
It was like magic.
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/09/nyregion/driving-a-taxi-d...
The change for taxi drivers has only started to come after Uber was already making it big, e.g.: "For what the union involved says is the first time ever, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) declared taxi drivers are legally “employees”"
http://www.peoplesworld.org/article/nlrb-declares-taxi-drive... (2015)
My uncle was a taxi driver around the same time (maybe a little earlier?) and was paid a livable wage plus benefits.
>"There are so many drivers available that it's an owner's market," said Edward G. Rogoff, a professor of management at Baruch College who studies the taxi industry. "Drivers are competing for these low-prestige, low-pay jobs, which pushes their incomes down further."
You also missed the main part of the article. Simple stated there were too many taxi drivers. Now I don't know about you but if I were to have that many people willing to work for me its either the pay is good or working conditions.
This sucks because like the article mentions, it becomes an owner's market. On top of this it's also NYC. No taxi driver is gonna be able to afford many of the places they get fares from.
>"In '87, '88, you could make $100 a day, maybe more," said Sam Khan, a 37-year-old driver from Pakistan. But now, he said with a grimace, "maybe $60, $65."
They're more like landlords than employees.
This is the same "Walmart doesn't pay its workers and destroys local businesses argument". People work there, and people shop there. Walmart didn't make anyone do anything, and neither does Uber.
In a free market, people do what is valuable to them. How can you say those people aren't? If it's not a free market, then how is it the corporations fault? Don't hate the player, hate the government.
This is why minimum wage and other laws exist.
See also: race to the bottom.
Effectively, Walmart/Uber/etc get to double-dip -- they pay their employees less than a living wage, and based on the US tax structure, don't have to pay for the government assistance programs that their employees end up needing to make ends meet.
But that was already the situation before Uber came to the market? For all we know, driving Uber might have moved some of the people less dependent on the government assistance programs.
This is not a settled question in economics. The idea that minimum wage laws help the poor is at the very least debatable.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#Debate_over_conse...
Also, inflation. When everyone is making at least $15 /hr then that $15 means less than it used to. All costs of goods go up to match the new supply of "wealth". Burger flippers make $15 /hr but burgers now cost $10.
In more meta terms: manipulating the market is never easy if it's possible to do successfully at all.
Essentially, I believe that when the government thinks for the people like declaring a minimum wage the people tend to avoid thinking about it themselves.
Ubers model works because they externalize a lot of operating costs to ignorant (under-informed) "contractors", and obscuring the economic realities from customers.
So I think it's fair to hate the player.
When you're in financial difficulty - say your 0 hour contract doesn't bring enough money to pay the bills - you'll take whatever terms and conditions Uber is giving to you. Because you need to fulfill your basic needs.
I don't think that many Uber drivers are doing it by choice, they just don't talk about it to avoid bumming clients and getting a poor rating.
I'd like the slickness of the Uber app with a bit more ethics and I would be a good client.
Not only did I not assume that, the exact opposite is true.
Uber _just_ created all of their jobs; they didn't used to exist. Everyone started working there because they wanted to. It's valuable to them to spend their time driving. It's not like Uber forced closed other companies at a 1:1 ratio and force hired their workers for less.
These are all voluntary transactions.
Depends if it's a sellers' or buyers' market.
By removing the artificial market controls, people can voluntarily choose to get paid less, and make something (which is better than nothing).
I think people that complain about Uber not providing "basic employment rights and both minimum and living wages" don't really know what it's like to be poor. Talk to an Uber driver sometime, they're grateful for the opportunity to make some cash on their own terms.
Haven't you just walked into an argument for abolishing the minimum wage here?
(I'm not arguing for or against minimum wage. I'm just observing that the tone of your comment seems to suggest you don't like the idea, but this sentence seemed to be a good argument for it.)