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Comment by treis | Hacker News Reader

Taxi companies have always been crap places to work. The job is (relatively) dangerous, pay is bad, flexibility is bad, and probably no benefits. Didn't help that most cities had a medallion system that enabled a group of rent seekers. And outside of NYC, Chicago, and maybe a couple other cities taxis sucked.

I think Uber is much more efficient and better overall for society than what it is replacing. Not a great job by any means, but far better than a taxi company. And when I look back 10 years ago Uber/Lyft are probably top 3 things that have made the world better. It opened up an enormous amount of flexibility when going out at night and eliminated concerns around drunk driving.

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Uber doesn't just compete with taxis. It also competes with public transport.

Also, there is a chance that sole riders would actually be increasing their carbon footprint compared to driving, as the Uber driver is also involved in your trip. Unless Uber is proven to cut car ownership and vehicular use, it is very possible that it is worse for society and the environment than the previous status quo.

that competition is fairly small. in the US, there is very few cities with good public transport

Yes, I can accept that it's region specific. It's the case in London, for example. Uber has made central London traffic worse. And that would be the case for many places outside of NA.

In NYC Ubers have contributed to increased car traffic, so definitely a net negative for congested urban life and global warming at the same time.

"contributed to increased car traffic" = "lots of people use it"

Yeah that was part of it, but the same study found a lot of it was due to circling blocks around already high traffic areas without passengers waiting for fares. In that case, that added traffic would be from people not using the service, but the service requiring a physical footprint in the city in the name of an empty uber vehicle anyway for it to function, if people were to use it.

You can argue buses and trains also need space, but you can fit way more people into a bus or a train before you need to make square footage available for a second bus or a train.

The per-mile cost of rail or bus is much, much lower than a car or SUV.

If they are so mismanaged that they can't offer drastically lower prices, then driving them out of business and replacing them with better management seems like a great idea.

> when I look back 10 years ago Uber/Lyft are probably top 3 things that have made the world better

Really? A car service in your opinion is in the top 3 of what made the world measurably better in the last 10 years?

What are your top 3?

In no particular order:

- polio cases worldwide have dropped to well below 100 per year since 2010 (except last year, 175)

- same sex marriage if you want to focus on the us

- Sharp drop in air travel with the corresponding benefits on global warming. Recent, but analysts seem to agree that business travel will permanently drop to between 1/2 and 1/3 of what it was before now that the world has discovered video conferencing is a thing.

There hasn't been a reported Polio case in the west for over 40 years. Likewise, according to Wikpedia, LGBT individuals represent 5% of the population.

I don't mean to downplay these accomplishments, but I think the impact of Uber/Lyft is greater than these on a simple per capita basis. Maybe that's a American-centric view but it's far more realistic for many Americans than "no polio cases"

It's a privileged american centric view on top of an american centric view. Lots of people use uber and lyft here on HN, and in other corners of the internet occupied by people satiated with a tech worker's salary. But for most working people, rideshare remains a frivolous cost that can quickly add up to the price of whatever you were doing at that destination, and it is not this world changing thing that some imagine, but just another service for the wealthy.

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