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Comment by themagician | Hacker News Reader

Didn't directly hurt anyone in an easily quantifiable way.

It's not clear that Uber or Lyft are net positives to society. They are disruptive, but not necessarily in a good way.

Yes, they provided $8B worth of rides. But before that people still got around. What the world might have been like without Lyft is impossible to know, but the way it's changed the job landscape isn't exactly a huge net positive. It's put a lot of cars on the road and it's set to new "floor" for jobs in general. Uber, Lyft, Taskrabbit, DoorDash have created a new kind of serfdom.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing, necessarily, but I wouldn't say that they didn't hurt anyone. They definitely hurt social progress.

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They (Uber and Lyft) radically reduce drunk driving in every city they enter. They also radically simplify access to transportation for people of color, women, etc.

> They (Uber and Lyft) radically reduce drunk driving in every city they enter

This is cool if true. Does it show up in accident statistics?

> Uber, Lyft, Taskrabbit, DoorDash have created a new kind of serfdom.

Why are people driving/tasking/delivering for these platforms? They all have their reasons. The value of just doing some work casually to get some quick cash is amazing. It can mean the difference between getting evicted and supporting one's family. They don't need to negotiate a schedule with an employer, apply for a job, get fired if they need to miss work. They just log in or don't.

One group of people who are universally harmed are taxi drivers. Their outcomes as rideshare drivers are worse, e.g. they must drive for 20% more hours to make the same amount of money.

Yeah, stirring up some competition in the taxi industry is the good thing about Uber & co, though i hope we don't forget in exchange for what we gave those taxi companies their monopolies in the first place.

> Why are people driving/tasking/delivering for these platforms?

Everyone acting according to their self interest doesn't necessarily lead to overall optimal outcomes. See e.g. prisoner's dilemma. I'd hope we as a society strive for something better. Worst case would be power imbalances getting so bad we'd have a race to the bottom occur on the labor market with people competing to starve less slowly. Thankfully that seems far off. And not that this would be caused like Uber & co, they're probably more of a symptom.

But hey, maybe it is like you say and those drives actually don't want reliable income and value their freedom more than having to by themselves shoulder all the risks and investment that a company usually embraces for its employees. I wonder what hourly rate Uber would offer on an employment contract. But them not doing so gives me a good guess who is getting ripped off here... and I have a hard time than seeing this as anything better than another step towards the bottom.

Reality is somewhere in the middle. Most people aren't driving for ride sharing services because they just love it. I agree that a more equitable system would include a safety net for drivers. Maybe regulation will step in to solve this; the companies surely won't do so without strong market or regulatory pressure.

In SF, most of the drivers I've met have been commuting from places 1.5-2 hours away to drive in the city all weekend. Is this a good thing? Depends on your point of view.

Certainly the crush of additional cars double-parking in bike lanes, making illegal turns constantly, and driving poorly on unfamiliar streets has reduced the quality of life in SF -- speaking as someone who has lived there for nearly ten years.

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