Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

They're pissing all that money away on loosely related r&d and their hopes/dreams of an autonomous future. They now also need to somehow continue justifying their mind boggling 72 billion dollar valuation.

I expect in the coming years Uber will die and be replaced by a service that works exactly the same way but for a far smaller revenue take and without any of the lofty ambitions.

We all know what is the end game here. Driving a vehicle will be recreational activity.

Everyone has their own individual vice preferences, but some vices are demonstrably worse for health than others. I'm not one to tell a person to quit smoking, but it seems likely that in this case, the guy's two heart attacks did just that.

That's the whole problem with this issue: Uber has made the market for taxis/rides incredibly liquid, which has driven the prices down to pretty much exactly the marginal costs. There are plenty of people who have already sunk the cost of a car, and have nothing else to do, so it still makes economic sense to do this with their time.

If the demand for unskilled labor doesn't increase, this will get worse.

Seeking alternatives in tandem with regulation?

Yeah. Us all saying these over exploitative companies are OK?

No way.

Fact is, these companies, and many others, simply do not have to be as toxic to people as they are, and because of that, I am perfectly fine with attempts to clean things up.

Or, they can do it.

I do not care which, only that improvement happens.

That's probably what it is. They're still not profitable. They might be hoping that this will tip them over the edge into profitability just before the IPO. This is a 25% cut. That's likely to piss off many drivers and make them want to do something else, but they might be counting on the fact that they have a steady supply of new drivers. The new drivers will never have experienced the higher rate.

The sustainable equilibrium approach is the summation of profit margin x ride numbers.

How so? Uber can and does control the number of drivers on their service at any given time.

My guess is Uber has actually done enough legwork and figured out that contrary to these sob stories in the press, there are more than enough drivers that 1) have efficient vehicles that are cheaper to operate and 2) are willing to work for that profit in quantities to cover demand.

If the rates Uber is providing drivers are so dismal they're protesting in the street, frankly, they should quit. No one is forcing drivers into a money-losing proposition. I'm especially unsympathetic given that they're paid on a per-transaction basis and there are alternative ridesharing companies out there.

Those drivers can go work for a company that charges more for rides, and passengers who care about that can choose that option. The fact that passengers currently seem unwilling to pay for that (somehow we never consider it "socially responsible" that passengers are provided cheaper service...) makes me think that will be unlikely in the short term.

All I hear from my red-state family is how basically the world is coming to an end because the country has veered so far to the left.

I live in SF and things here always seem to be drifting leftward as well, but of course this is probably left HQ so I guess that's not surprising.

That said, some of my farthest left friends in San Francisco are convinced that some kind of extremist right-win revolution is about to happen, and one of them literally moved to Canada in fear of it.

I don't say any of this to disagree with you. Rather, I say this because I feel like something weird is going on in the world. There doesn't seem to be much consensus about what's going on around us - like people aren't living in the same reality.

As for me it seems like mostly life is just going on like it always has - but I deleted social media a while back and quit watching cable news... I think unplugging from that made me realize it's all a giant circus and a lot of people are getting roped into various factional hallucinations and sort of losing touch with reality. But I just don't get how it's become so pervasive, and it leaves me questioning how you can even know if anything is true or not.

Okay, side tangent over... carry on...

won't help systematically but it seems like a way to personally work towards the mission you've outlined.

It's generally easier to just try it and see what happens, and then deduce the how from the what. Note however that this will not necessarily be the same thing that happens in another area or at another time, because of all the things that can be different and affect the outcome.

Again, this is a complex subject, and I’m not sure why you are so confident about your lack of knowledge.

EDIT: I think I get it now—chriseaton is from the UK and is unfamiliar with US labor laws. In the US the primary purpose of unions is collective bargaining (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_S...). Independent contractors very much cannot join a union for the purpose of collective bargaining, which is confirmed in both my reference and their reference. The NLRA, which empowers employees to form unions and collectively bargain, explicitly excludes independent contractors (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Labor_Relations_Act...). I should have noticed his misunderstanding earlier.

Uber pays people who otherwise might not have a job at all. That doesn't mean paying them incredibly low wages is something that should be free of criticism.

This is impossible to say, since we cannot run a simulation in which Uber/Lyft never existed, just like we can't measure the crimes that weren't committed because of laws.

We can only examine the world as it is, including the economic conditions that precipitate a person taking a ride share job, the long-term financial implications of slowing selling time and vehicle condition, combined with the diminishing returns offered by the company to make some inferences about whether this whole thing is 'good for people' or 'not.' And, I gotta say, the situation is looking more like the latter than the former.

Uber didn't necessarily create the conditions, but it does knowingly exploit them. That kind exploitation is not value neutral and can be wrong.

Your rationale could be extended outward to every adverse outcome for poor: "Well, poor people have higher rates of obesity and cancer because of their poor life choices in eating fast food and smoking."

It's a convenient out for the exploiters to blame their victims.

Maybe there are lots of jobs there, but do these jobs give the flexibility of working whenever one wants, like Uber does? In life, nothing is as simple as that. Applying the same logic, we can say if a woman is mistreated by her husband/bf, she can simply leave him. If a manager is bad, find another job. If a country is hostile to immigrants, leave and move back home or to another country. And so on. The reality is somewhere in between "just pack up and go" and "stuck indefinitely".

Uber/Lyft/Instacart etc are in fact exploiting their drivers simply because they can. The drivers aren't unionized, they aren't getting much help from government regulations (it isn't illegal yet, just immoral and unethical), so they are at the mercy of these gig economy companies.

Here is an exercise. Can you name one gig economy company that is treating its workforce well? I am trying, and failing.

Because you're looking at the benefits in a vacuum. This is a company the skirts the law and intentionally blurs the line between employee and contractor for profit. It is entirely possible that driving for Uber is a rational choice for some people, and at the same time, that Uber is undervaluing their labor and taking advantage of them.

Similarly, in the past, people made the rational choice to sell themselves into indentured servitude. People also made the rational choice to sell their children to factory owners or into marriages for dowries.

Typically, if people had bargaining power through, say, collective action, there would be a corrective force when a sudden unilateral decision to reduce compensation by 25% is made.

Information is hard to organize. It’s easy to say that everyone has the potential to be economically rational but practically weighing decisions is hard.

Interesting that this is the line of thought that you decided to follow and refute, despite the fact that I never claimed that Uber was at fault for those particular problems a person may face. I'm not really a fan of engaging strawmen.

It's entirely possible that for some people, driving for Uber is a rational choice. It is also entirely possible that Uber is undervaluing their labor and taking advantage of them. Hope this helps.