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pininja

I work at Uber outside of the rides/eats business and observed many feature releases to adjust the business after AB5.

What I saw released:

- Enabling drivers to see where a rider is going before accepting the trip [0] [2]

- Removed a main penalty for declining rides, “No More 85% Acceptance Rate Requirement For Uber Pro” [2]

- Drivers get set their own fare with a multiplier [1] (the article details screenshots and backend balance rules)

Now every dollar coming in seems to very clearly go from rider to driver.

- removed upfront pricing in California and once again charging riders the precise trip amount based on time and distance. [0] [2]

- A new driver incentive was released too tied to purchasing the service fee at a lower rate [3] (since every dollar is supposed to flow clearly from the price breakdown)

- “Favorite Driver Feature”, so even if they set higher fares, riders will be able to request one of their favorite drivers if they’re nearby [2]

These seemed primarily to try to address the flexibility evaluated by “Prong A” of AB5, however some public experts were concerned it wouldn’t address “Prong B”, which requires the “drivers’ work is outside ‘the usual course of the company’s business,’” [0]. This might have been where the judge focused their ruling.

Other companies didn’t make changes for drivers, “Lyft [also afaik Postmates, and DoorDash] continues to operate as if it’s business as usual.” [0]

[0] https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-02-03...

[1] https://therideshareguy.com/set-your-own-rates-uber-feature/

[2] https://therideshareguy.com/uber-rolling-out-new-driver-feat...

[3] https://therideshareguy.com/uber-drive-pass/

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That's pretty interesting! In my view, the set your own fare part and penalty removal definitely moves them from the "employee" zone to "self-employed" in the everyday definition.

I guess AB5 is much more strict.

AB5 imposes an ABC test on businesses after the precedent set by Dynamex [1]. The specific point of contention the judge has is the B of the ABC - that is whether drivers 'perform work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business'. Uber argues it is a technology company first, and drives/delivers second, whereas the judge argues the opposite. Convincing arguments can be made for both sides.

The modifications discussed in the top-level post address the A and C portions of the test, but not B unfortunately. The B clause is very broad, so likely has ramifications for many tech companies.

Taken to its furthest extent, AB5 makes Airbnb hosts Airbnb employees, Amazon marketplace sellers Amazon employees, eBay sellers eBay employees, Twitch streamers Twitch employees, etc.

[1] https://www.californiaemploymentlawreport.com/2019/03/unders...

So if Adorama sells on amazon.com, does adorama the corporation become an employee of amazon?

If the separation on that mindfuck is 'register a corp / LLC', then what prevents drivers making an LLC to drive for uber?

Couldn't Uber allow other operating companies to use its service along with Raiser/Raizer LLC as long as they follow certain platform terms?

That’s exactly how they operate in, for example, Croatia. Every driver owns an LLC.

There's the $800 California LLC annual fee, which is the highest in the country, and applies before you make a dollar in revenue.

Does something prevent incorporating in another location that allows it? Doubt it.

Of course they could do that, but any corporation or LLC that does business in California [1] (surely a Uber driver operating in California would be considered as such) has to pay the fee. Incorporating out of state would just mean a second set of fees and more forms to file.

[1] https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/business/doing-business-in-calif...

Ah, I did not know that. Thanks

You don't need an LLC to run a business. Plenty of sole proprietors do this along with filing self employment taxes without ever forming an LLC.

No, because Adorama is a company, and companies can't be employees...

Nothing prevents drivers from registering LLCs to drive for uber, and that is in fact what the CA DOL website says is a bare minimum for satisfying another part of AB5.

I think you might mean this as a "gotcha" but it is the correct way to move forward, for both individuals and the nation. Incorporation allows the kind of formalization that the government prefers, and that point the government is much more willing to recognize an independent supplier.

The people absolutely required for Amazon to function are actual employees. Remove drivers and Uber’s business instantly shuts down literally that second, but Amazon can keep selling until their inventory runs out. Amazon.com sells inanimate objects or intellectual property which can’t be employees. Uber sells rides which require a physical person to preform them.

So, I really don’t understand what your trying to convey.

Whether Uber's business is providing taxi service or just providing a platform for independent drivers to connect with clients, intuitively it seems like the work drivers do is clearly within the usual course of Uber's business. What would Uber's counterargument look like here? Am I just reading it too literally?

No, you've just described Uber/Lyft's problem in a nutshell.

Please first define what is "work in the usual course of business". What work that any contractor does, given that it is work contracted for a necessary economic purpose within the business of the contracting party, isn't within the latter's usual course of business?

Gig companies are market makers. By their very nature they are sitting in the middle of transactions and would be without a job without the transacting parties. Are all transacting parties therefore employees of market makers?

> What work that any contractor does, given that it is work contracted for a necessary economic purpose within the business of the contracting party, isn't within the latter's usual course of business?

There are existing, relatively easily identified examples: tech companies hiring (on contract) workers to provide janitorial or cafeteria services, retailers hiring contracts to fix plumbing or install fixtures in their stores, landlords hiring individuals to paint homes, and the list could go on.

The "usual course of business" has a clear legal definition under California law: "the regular and customary work of a business, performed within or upon the premises or worksite of the client employer."

In the case of Uber, "software development" and "drivers" clearly are required in the "ordinary and regular and expected course of dealings" in their marketplace. The company's entire premise is built on connecting drivers to passengers via a software platform: they don't have a business without both of those things. One might argue over whether drivers' cars count as a "worksite", or whether remote workers working from home count as working from a "worksite" or "on premise"--but those arguments would be thin and shallow.

Already the landlord hiring a painter example is getting tricky. That is required upkeep of the property. What about hiring a manager? What distinguishes that from hiring a painter?

Regardless, I see you specifically haven't addressed the market maker question. Please articulate a standard by which eBay's on-premise customary work is software development but a gig tech company's isn't. That's literally their regular and customary work of business that is performed on premise at HQ by a workforce that they can actually control (call to work and dismiss). There is no difference between those employees and drivers, huh? None at all? No market maker would have a business without participants doing their own work. The argument is neither thin nor shallow. It gets to the point of whether you can be in the business of making a market for contract labor or services. You seem to argue that that cannot be a business at all, and for what reason exactly?

> Uber argues it is a technology company first, and drives/delivers second

I can see Uber desperately looking for non-obvious applications for its core software to strengthen its argument.

Suggestions?

Uber already re-uses this type of supply/demand matching platform for Uber Freight[1] to match shippers with "haulers".

They also have a vertical agnostic "Uber Works"[2] that lets contract workers find jobs, sort of like Fiverr or TaskRabbit.

They also partnered with the Thames Clipper to allow passengers to book tickets on the ferry in London[3]. You'd have a hard time arguing that the Thames Clipper staff would be considered Uber employees, even under the AB-5 test.

[1] https://www.uber.com/us/en/freight/

[2] https://www.uber.com/blog/chicago/uberworks/

[3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uber-boat-lo...

Taken to its furthest extent, AB5 makes Airbnb hosts Airbnb employees, Amazon marketplace sellers Amazon employees, eBay sellers eBay employees, Twitch streamers Twitch employees, etc.

Airbnb: no, because hosts aren't being paid for providing services, they're being paid for providing access to their accommodations. Its a subtle distinction but one that matters legally since it means there isn't a compensation-for-work arrangement. (A host can choose to voluntarily go above and beyond, but that's not required or expected.)

Amazon Marketplace and eBay: No. The Amazon marketplace acts like a real marketplace, so sellers transact with the buyers for AM purchases and Amazon acts as an agent of the seller in that transaction. Sellers determine what they sell on Amazon, how much they charge for the products they sell, and are largely responsible for acquiring sales traffic on their own. Sellers independently acquire and own the inventory they sell on Amazon, and can sell on their own websites or on competitors' websites. Crucially, Amazon isn't paying AM sellers for their labors in selling products. They only receive payment for goods actually sold, meaning again, there is no compensation-for-work arrangement.

Also, for Amazon and eBay: AB5 carves out exceptions for direct sales, in this context defined as any sales not made through a retail store, so direct sales salespersons may continue to be treated as contractors or employees as the business so chooses.

Twitch: Possibly! Twitch and streamers are in the business of streaming live video. Streamers are usually exclusive to a particular streaming service. And generally, except for the biggest streamers, they are unable to set or negotiate their own rates for streaming.

BUT...Twitch doesn't actually pay streamers for streaming; most of them do it for free. When it does pay streamers, it pays them commissions and marketing fees for any ad revenue, sales of digital products, or subscriptions tied to their channels (even if not actually arising from streaming), and marketing services and commission-based arrangements are largely excluded from AB5. And generally, for the bigger streamers, it pays them through personal companies so that AB5 does not apply (since AB5 does not apply to contracts between two legal entities).

Twitch streamers also retain ownership of their content which is often repackaged for revenue on YouTube.

Twitch is really the least employee vs employer relationship as payment is essentially independent of specific actions preformed by the streamer. It’s not like a streamer is paid to beat a boss, or even play a specific game it’s a question of entertaining people.

IMO it’s the closest to a ‘new economy‘ out there, though sharing roots with earlier real time online performers (porn).

> Airbnb: no, because hosts aren't being paid for providing services, they're being paid for providing access to their accommodations.

Hotels aren't classified as a service in the US? Or is this going along with the fiction that Airbnb is different from hotels (and not subject to regulations etc) the same way uber isn't a taxi service?

Different meaning of service. Many hosts have automated the process so they hand off entry remotely and employ an independent cleaning service. It’s hard to classify someone as an employee when some have been paid for ‘work done’ after they died.

Well, I'm pretty sure receptionists and booking (sales) people at hotels are service workers too - not just the maids. But interesting point about there being sub-contractors all the way down re: this thread (who is an employee).

The sticking point is Prong B and here you're talking about Prong A. Re-evaluate with respect to Prong B. What's Airbnb's customary work or business? What's Amazon's and Ebay's? Do "people" "think" of Airbnb, Amazon, and eBay as "technology" companies or "hostels" and "stores"? Can they survive without hosts or sellers? (All these arguments were made against gig companies.)

The prongs don't matter for AM or eBay, since AB5 exempts them from the analysis altogether.

But on that note, a lot of people seem to be ignoring the crucial differences in the transactional relationships between the parties for websites like eBay.

Sellers use eBay to conduct auctions and sell their goods. They have control over inventory, pricing, starting and ending auctions, accepting final bids, etc. eBay as acts the seller's agent and provides services to the seller with respect to transactions similar to how an employee or contractor would. IOW, eBay is acting as a contractor to the seller.

Similarly, for AirBnB, hosts use AirBnB as a marketplace for provider hoteling services. AirBnB is acting as their booking agent and payment collections agent for the host. IOW, AirBnb is acting as a contractor to the host. To the extent that AirBnB itself is paying the hosts (and is not merely passing along money from guests), it isn't for providing hoteling services on AirBnB's behalf, rather it's an incentive for making a property available on the AirBnB marketplace. (I know this because my former employer got paid $$$ to make certain beachside properties it owned available for booking on AirBnB, and these payments were separate from payments we received related to AirBnb-booked stays.)

For Uber/Lyft, the relationship is reversed. The driver is acting as an agent for Uber/Lyft: Uber/Lyft assigns them a ride, and they must provide the ride to get paid. Moreover, in contrast to actual marketplaces, the amount drivers get paid by Uber is not directly tied to the amount charged to the passenger; indeed, driver's generally do not know how much riders actually pay for a trip unless they ask the rider what they're getting charged. This indicates that the transactional relationship for both the driver and the passenger is with Uber, not each other. (Further explanation would dive into principles of contract law, so I leave it to you for further research if you want to go down that path.)

It's clear to me that Prong B of AB5 is broken and it's not fixable, except by arbitrary exemptions galore. Rather than admitting this, the state seems hellbent on shoehorning this law into something politically motivated against gig companies.

All the actions on the state's part points to bad faith.

Or maybe the state is acting in good faith on behalf of gig workers, and it's the gig companies tying themselves into knots trying to avoid legislation who are acting in bad faith?

No, that's delusional. The state is at most interested in recouping revenue because it's out of money due to Covid. There are proposals on the table that would realistically improve the environment around gig work, but the state doesn't appear to care about those.

So altruistic Good Guy Underdog Uber fighting in good faith to stick it to Big Bad Government is not delusional?

Also, the legal wrangling over this started long before Covid.

To first order, both Uber and drivers were willingly choosing to work together. The state is outlawing a money-making venture consenting adults wanted to do. You don't know that the second order effects will be what you want. Government is a blunt instrument and many ordinary people will be upset and perhaps completely screwed by this. As the story says, for the next several months at least, the state may have cost people their source of income. Owners of taxis and shuttle services should be thrilled though. Were they the little guy here?

Yes, the state's actual goal is to end gig work, by forcing gig work companies to actually treat their employees like employees. I'm for it. (It also seems weird to dismiss government action as politically motivated - of COURSE it is, it's literally political action! It's not going to be motivated by the tides!)

Then just come out and make a clean law against gig work. That's not what's done though.

It's fine to be politically motivated, however it's not good faith to be motivated against specific businesses while pretending to be following a broad principle that then needs exemption holes poked all over it to make work. It indicates there is no principle being followed, or at least they don't know what it should be, a situation which everyone should agree is dangerous.

What is "gig work"? It needs to be very specifically defined. It needs to include Uber and Instacart but exclude beekeepers and software developers. So, as with most practical laws, it ends up as a very long list of do's and don'ts, so it actually covers the thing to outlaw while interfering minimally with others. This isn't unusual.

I'd just like to point out that while Uber may argue that they are a tech company first and driver/delivery second, the judge ruled that they are the opposite. The judge isn't arguing anything.

> Uber argues it is a technology company first, and drives/delivers second, whereas the judge argues the opposite.

That argument reminds me of the George Costanza quote, "It's not lying, if you believe it."

Regardless of what they consider themselves, everybody else thinks of them as a big taxi company.

> Taken to its furthest extent, AB5 makes Airbnb hosts Airbnb employees, Amazon marketplace sellers Amazon employees, eBay sellers eBay employees, Twitch streamers Twitch employees, etc.

I don't think it does, and that sounds like FUD. Do you have any references of those businesses actually being required to reclassify vendors as employees?

> Uber argues it is a technology company first, and drives/delivers second, whereas the judge argues the opposite. Convincing arguments can be made for both sides.

Uber is a mess.

It clearly needs to be a franchise.

You have Mother Uber that develops the app and sells the franchise and Uber SF, Uber LA, Uber Seattle etc that hires the drivers. It's utterly unclear to me what efficiencies can be found for having one company doing all that.

> It clearly needs to be a franchise.

Think bigger. Why should transportation infrastructure (which is a public good) be controlled by a private, for-profit corporation?

Because that’s how innovation happens in the US? How are passengers trains innovating over the past 60 years?

Yes, the US sucks at investing in public infrastructure, especially transit. Obviously we should do nothing to try to change that. =)

Not the GP, but what would you suggest is a realistic alternative in the current state?

Reforming public institutions to more effectively build public transportation infrastructure seems to be incredibly difficult. Local institutions seem to have maxed out their ability to improve beyond what exists.

So why not let the private market innovate and improve? If the public institutions where smarter they'd be taking advantage of these innovations the same way as has happened in reverse when public institutions have had success with innovation.

Well one alternative is to not vote for parties which have a history of gutting government services to make them unviable and then saying "look here this must be run private" giving private companies a license to print money by offering less service for more money. Just look at what is happening with the USPS right now.

> Uber argues it is a technology company first, and drives/delivers second, whereas the judge argues the opposite. Convincing arguments can be made for both sides.

UBER could theoretically function without the technology (a taxi service) but it could not function without the drivers, yet. If the fleet was driverless, then of course, they wouldn't have these problems in the first place.

Keep in mind, Sidecar went all the way with that -- drivers set their own prices and riders picked from a list of said drivers' offers, weighing their quality/time/cost. And yet I can't seem to find anyone at at the time of operation (i.e. up to EOY 2014) defending Sidecar as being substantively different from Uber with regard to the contractor distinction.

Edit: corrected the year

This wasn't a big issue back in 2014, so there wouldn't have been much if any discussion on it for a much smaller service that had almost no market share.

That's a different memory than I have, where it was huge by late 2013. Here's a HN story from mid 2014 where a taxi company discusses adapting by selling medallions (and thus ceding some car's right to street hails) and going more app-based in order to compete with Uber, so yes, low cost Uber rides were huge then.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8134323

We were talking about Sidecar, not Uber. SideCar was not huge at any point in its lifecyle. At one point in 2016/2017 it very briefly had the opportunity to become big, but failed the execution.

We were talking about whether critics are going to go hands-off for a company that does it the "right" way (and grant driver's genuine independence) as Sidecar did, when they have a viable example to point to. As best I can tell, no one distinguished Uber from Sidecar when the latter was a legit rival. Example of a typical article that mentioned the three but said nothing about what made Sidecar's case more defensible.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2014/01/08/big-liabi...

Raising the question that on-the-job injuries for drivers for the three could bring liability to the platform; no distinction for Sidecar:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/01/06/workers-co...

So yes, I'm skeptical that there's anyone out there who would actually follow through and recognize a driver as a contractor even if they had 100% control of who they accepted that platform really were just a matchmaker.

Edit: If nothing else, I think that shows that SC was significant enough to be talked about alongside Uber.

>> from the "employee" zone to "self-employed" in the everyday definition.

Courts are not everyday people. For decades they gave lip service to a variety of factors, but inevitably each decision turned on one question: how are taxes handled? If the employer is managing the payment or withholding of taxes, then the worker was an employee. That is changing slowly but remains very much a determining factor.

This is horrible for customers, the worst part is when drivers don't want to pick you up.

I think it's going to depend by area. The last time I tried to use Uber to get a ride from the airport, I had several drivers accept, then call me - "I'm all the way in midtown, it'll take me 45 minutes to get to you, you probably want to cancel this."

The incentives for drivers have always been fucked. I'd rather the drivers not accept my ride than try to play a weird game of chicken to get me to cancel when I'm trying to get somewhere.

I never had that at the airport but my contingency plan for the times when drivers decided not to show in an obvious attempt to get me to cancel was to pull up the other ride sharing app and then use that, and leave the original one running.

Have you ever had them both eventually show up?

I thought about doing that. But I don't want to punish people whose economic incentives are apparently so shitty that they have to pull this kind of nonsense. I'm only that petty against spammers.

Here in Germany proper Taxis have to pick you up (as far as I know, I almost never need one). That's apparently the main reason they offer why they should be protected against services like Uber.

Or you could just extend the law to the ride sharing services...

That’s a horrible law. What if it’s a female driver and a sketchy rider? Or worse, her abusive ex?

If you let drivers decide whom to pick up, you end up with situations like black men never being picked up.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/postever...

That’s an article about the unwanted side effects of monopolistic tax cabs.

In a competitive market, this should happen much less. And the big innovation of ride sharing is it gives a valuable tool to drivers judge potential fares with besides their appearance or pickup location, specifically their rating.

Free markets don't solve racism. The "monopolistic" taxi cab company had numerous individual drivers, each making a decision. Moving this monopoly to Uber and Lyft doesn't work. And no stars are going to override bias.

Your assumption is that the bias is only racism, when sometimes it’s racism and sometimes fear of being robbed/assaulted. Stars definitely curbs the latter.

I don't think being robbed by a passenger is a reasonable fear - after all, the app has their location, both start and end, their credit card info, and their phone number. Criminal activity by passengers is easy to catch. Fear of crime in this circumstance is reasonably other, unrelated people, which stars does nothing to prevent.

I thought we were all about equality? Are we now not about equality? I can't keep up.

And if a woman for some sexist reason can refuse a fare, why can't a man refuse a fare if, e.g., he does not like the destination area because it is riddled with crime and he is exponentially more likely to be robbed?

Of course all drivers should be able to refuse fares and refuse to pickup in specific neighborhoods.

Jesus, no. The entire point of a taxi system is a supplement to mass transit to not require private car ownership. Once you start denying the service to the people who need it the most, you're eliminating the reason for its existence.

The point of a Taxi system is to heavily regulate it into a monopoly where owners get to gouge riders and drivers have to pickup riders wherever they are told, no matter how unsafe.

We're not. Everyone just likes to pretend that they are. Every white girl likes to virtue signal about how awesome they are but the reality is that white people have the lowest [0] miscegenation rate. The reality is that those who most claim to be against bigotry are often those who most perpetuate it.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/12/interracial...

Again, another person being downvoted for living in reality and understanding that the existence of a phone app mediating things doesn't fundamentally change the risk profile of Uber from that of picking up hitchhikers.

Yes, it can absolutely happen that you pick someone up and they end up raping you. The opposite happens too, you order up an Uber when you're drunk and end up the raped one yourself. While the app might possibly offer information that makes it easier to get justice in the future, and while that may dissuade some folks, in the end crimes of opportunity like this will continue to happen.

Intelligent, self-preserving people will always use their own personal heuristics for risk management regardless of political correctness. If this ends up looking prejudiced, the problem to solve is the input information (in the form of observed events and news) that causes the prejudice, not to tell the person to just pretend that there's no reason to have such a risk calculation.

Yes, here in Canada too. It just wasn't enforceable and taxi drivers regularly refused fares and kicked out passengers if they weren't lucrative enough.

https://globalnews.ca/news/3907475/taxi-driver-refuses-to-dr...

Medallion-taxis are comprehensively awful, and California seems determined to regress to where they're the only choice for riders again.

That’s the law in most places in the US, too. Uber was founded because it wasn’t really true in practice. You couldn't order a taxi in most places without giving your destination, and frequently they just wouldn't show.

Uber was, and remains, a huge improvement over the pre-Uber status quo.

For drivers or riders?

Both. As a driver, no medallion mafia and astronomical prices to deal with. As a rider, no taxi drivers and their horrible service to deal with.

Taxi companies are monopolies allowed by the state, it sucks for the last ones who paid $300,000 for a license to operate just before Uber took off, but technology finds its way.

Yeah, here in The Netherlands too. Once I got into a taxi, and I ask how his business is doing, whether his car is paid off, etc. The guy tells me that he had a shitty week, because he had several days driving at a loss.

Apparently it's possible for a rather slow week to happen, in combination with rides that mean a loss for the driver.

I can't help but think that the business is quite tough.

I think that's absolutely true, and it's one of the reasons that society benefits from the idea of an "employee" relationship, where you can rely on a single corporation, beholden to some kind of public consensus, to enforce a uniform set of rules. A world where everyone is a "contractor" is one where everyone is subject to the tragedy of the commons. (e.g. "You can't get a ride in a poor neighborhood")

But part of the social contract is that employees, having given up that autonomy, need someone else to advocate for them collectively. Thus... labor rights and benefits legislation.

Frankly this whole thing seems silly. They knew where this was going when AB5 was passed. Those features aren't a good faith attempt to comply with the law, they were an attempt to evade it (something very much in keeping with Uber's culture).

The only real surprise here was that the final reckoning came sooner than expected via injunction.

> A world where everyone is a "contractor" is one where everyone is subject to the tragedy of the commons. (e.g. "You can't get a ride in a poor neighborhood")

Well no, it's just the opposite. When everyone is a "contractor" you can get a ride in a poor neighborhood, you just have to pay the market rate for getting a ride there.

When you try to legislate it, then you get avoidance. The driver gets assigned and then suddenly has "car trouble" or becomes ill. You summon a ride but it doesn't show up for 45 minutes because all of the drivers avoid being anywhere near that area if it means they could be forced to go there.

Whereas if you just pay the market rate then a driver shows up right away because they're getting paid extra to do it. And if you don't like that rides cost more in poor neighborhoods then the government could subsidize it explicitly, instead of creating all of these perverse incentives by trying to force people to do something they otherwise wouldn't be willing to do for that amount of money.

Which also puts a dollar value on the subsidy and makes it explicit, so that we can see how much we're paying in order to get it, instead of sweeping it under the rug by making the cost implicit even though it's still there.

So... most of what you wrote is just standard-issue libertarianism and I know how those arguments go. But this part intrigued me:

> And if you don't like that rides cost more in poor neighborhoods then the government could subsidize it explicitly

OK, how does that work? How do you write such a law such that it can't be exploited? Are there any examples of this kind of regulation you can point to from other markets or other legal regimes or nations or whatever?

I mean, this seems crazy to me, but it's also an opportunity to get you to engage on a genuine issue of social justice (c.f. "it shouldn't cost money to be poor"), so I'm willing to make the effort.

So the hardest part is calculating the amount of the subsidy. Once you know that you just make it a deduction from the fare the customer pays and the government pays the difference.

Calculating the amount is finicky because the subsidy itself is going to affect the market pricing. But in the end, as long as there is a competitive market for both drivers and ride share companies, you know whether the subsidy is too high or too low because the subsidized cost of a ride there will be more or less than it is in other places (rather than exactly the same as you're trying to make it).

Because if the subsidy was too high then there would be "too many" drivers and the subsidized price would fall below what's required, and if the subsidy was too low then the opposite.

Not the original poster, but the answer I can think of is the mail service. In many countries it guarantees the cost of sending a letter from A to B is the same, independent of distance between A and B or the popularity of A as a source and B as a destination of letters.

That often even stays the case when the mail service gets privatized.

I’ve never heard of such services to originally be privatized, though, or of the service to be privatized to multiple providers (say with one company serving the large cities and another the countryside, or one doing half the country, and another doing the other half)

Also: are you sure this is libertarianism? I would think subsidies can’t exist in a libertarian world because the government doesn’t exist there.

Typically lower income folks can received reduced fare or free public transportation cards. Municipalities around the world are opening up to the idea of explicitly subsidizing ubers or replacing mass transit with uber in some cases: https://prospect.org/infrastructure/cities-turn-uber-instead...

This is a relatively new model, although makes a lot of sense (lower cost and more flexibility to operate uber pools vs empty buses late at night). It is not a stretch to assume you could get income based "discount cards" for uber usage.

I don't really understand this. Firstly before this whole contractor vs employee situation, Uber was extremely strict on drivers and enforced a high degree of rider privileges. Drivers were penalized for rejecting rides without reason, rider destination was hidden and surge pricing was uniform and purely demand based. These policies objectively improved availability to and from poor neighborhoods, and reduced the opportunity for profiling passengers.

The employee debate has near uniformly turned into dialing back rider protections, removing up front costs and handing drivers more control. The employee requirements will unquestionably increase ride costs and decrease driver availability. This is going to worsen access to poor neighborhoods and add costs on people who cannot afford to pay them, making ride share further restricted to "good" neighborhoods and higher income folks.

Taxis have had "You can't get a ride in a poor neighborhood" for ages. If California kills Uber, we're back to the same taxis. So how exactly what is happening now helps solve the "You can't get a ride in a poor neighborhood" problem?

> Those features aren't a good faith attempt to comply with the law

There can be no good attempt to comply with this (completely terrible) law from Uber, since this law was meant to outlaw the whole business model Uber is using. Uber was founded on creating a novel working model, which didn't exist before. California decided to outlaw this model wholesale. The only "good faith attempt" from Uber to deal with it can be to stop operating in California completely. Of course the same goes for Lyft and any other company which uses "freelance employee" model.

> There can be no good attempt to comply with this (completely terrible) law from Uber

Actually, it's very simple: treat them as employees, including granting required benefits and paying them at least minimum wage for time worked (presumably at the higher of either minimum wage or per-trip earnings for the time period).

Nothing about this is incompatible with allowing employees to pick their own working hours.

> Taxis have had "You can't get a ride in a poor neighborhood" for ages.

Also restaurants refuse to deliver to poor neighborhoods after their delivery person gets robbed there once or twice. I've seen this problem in New York.

I've had Uber drivers pick me up and refuse to go to the part of the city I wanted to go to... complete pain in the ass (and also racist in this specific case). Uber offered me $5 for my trouble each time, which is... very Uber.

If the part of the city is unsafe (as some parts of some major cities are frequently nowdays) to the point the driver risks being assaulted by a mob, dragged out and beaten or shot, and their vehicle destroyed - I see no reason why they shouldn't be able to refuse such ride. No ride worth your life, and unless you're paying 1000x the Uber rates, no ride is worth your car ruined.

I didn’t know Uber is live in Syria.

It's live in Seattle, Portland and Chicago.

Can you explain your point, the point is unclear. They're also live in other cities as well..?

They're claiming that those cities are extremely dangerous.

But in reality, that's just innumeracy.

I think someone attempting to get an Uber pickup (or getting dropped off by an Uber) in the middle of CHOP/CHAZ might have had some problems. Particularly at night.

Or any "drop me off within the ongoing protest" ride, really.

Problems? Sure. It's going to be hell to try and get in and out of the area, since you'll have to either go at about two miles an hour while people move out of the way (while regularly stopping and waiting for unorganized crowds), or just go around the long way.

'Getting dragged out of your car and beaten'? No, unless the police do it (https://www.newsbreak.com/georgia/atlanta/news/1577488884462...).

If you're going to include individual incidents, you should include the CHAZ/CHOP shooting, and the various "people beat up the car as it drives through" occurrences too. Sure, those cars may have done something to offend/anger/threaten the protesters, but...

> the CHAZ/CHOP shooting

The one where a man drove into protestors and shot one of them, or one of the four non-related-to-protest shootings in a neighborhood that had been suddenly abandoned by police and already had a high violent crime rate compared to the rest of the city?

> people beat up the car as it drives through

That's an inevitable result of somebody trying to push through a crowd that won't move. If you sit there, nobody moves out of the way, and you hit the gas anyway, people will inevitably try to damage the car to make you stop again, because you could kill somebody doing that.

> or one of the four non-related-to-protest shootings in a neighborhood that had been suddenly abandoned by police and already had a high violent crime rate compared to the rest of the city?

I was thinking specifically of the "two black teenagers shot, one killed" incident that made the news everywhere. The fact that there were others is itself a great reason for Uber drivers to not want to drive there. (Protester's fault or something else, it's still dangerous)

> That's an inevitable result of somebody trying to push through a crowd that won't move. If you sit there, nobody moves out of the way, and you hit the gas anyway, people will inevitably try to damage the car to make you stop again, because you could kill somebody doing that.

It's an inevitable consequence on both sides. The driver sitting still who gets spooked by people banging on their windows and floors it is also a predictable outcome. (There's reasons that protests normally have streets closed off, and it's not just for the protesters containment) Personally I'd put both driving up to a crowd AND surrounding a car on foot as "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" - for exactly this reason.

I think to a hypothetical uber driver, the reason a neighborhood is risky matters less that the fact that the neighborhood is risky. Knowing that it's the cops fault for pulling out of the neighborhood won't pay the repair bill.

The point is some places in some cities at some times carry high risk to whoever drives there. I consider it immoral for the company to force an employee (or contractor) to go to such high-risk place, and for that person I think makes complete sense to refuse going to such place and risk their assets (e.g. car) and their health for a relatively small payment.

Portland, Seattle and Chicago are examples of the cities which had recently well-documented examples of some areas being dangerous and carrying risk of violent encounters.

I live in Portland and there isn't a single instance of your insane claim happening ever.

Amazing that you're downvoted. Are HN posters really so sheltered that they don't know that this is a reality in many major American cities? I'm sure it's in areas they never visit, for totally unspecified reasons, but it's real. There are areas (e.g. in Camden NJ) where the police will tell you to not stop your car for any reason, just get through and get out.

Pretending this isn't a reality or that it doesn't have an impact on someone driving for a living is pretty asinine.

There's a major difference between 'unsafe because of high crime rates' (the actual case in some places) and 'unsafe because an entire mob of random people will manifest out of the ether, drag you from your car, and beat you up' (the nonsense part). The latter has been seeing increasing use lately as part of the endless barrage of 'all of (city name) is a flaming ruin constantly prowled by antifa supersoldiers' claims against the ongoing protests in several cities.

It doesn't have to be "constant". It's enough to happen to you once to cost you tens of thousands of dollars, or your health, or, if you're very unlucky, your life. I've seen photos of people with firearms drawn stopping motorists at protests. You can talk all day about how it doesn't happen, but I've seen photos and videos of that happening. There's no way I would go to such place for $20/hr (Uber's average wage in SV, for example). It's just not worth the risk.

Exactly, it's simple risk assessment. As much as people try to stay politically correct nowadays, it doesn't remove the most basic system we have, called survival. Life experiences and situations, creates these "stereotypes", and becomes widespread, because they are actual issues people try to avoid talking about, to not come off a certain way.

In what American city will you get dragged out of your car and beaten? Somewhere cartel controlled in south America, maybe, but that would be a pricey uber coming all the way from the U.S.

How about Portland? https://nypost.com/2020/08/17/blm-mob-beat-white-man-unconsc...

I can tell you from personal experience, much of the reporting on chaz/chop has been exaggerated. While any given incident may be accurately reported, the media selects the worst incidents/angles then tries to pass that off as the standard experience.

The incidents reported are reality, however that doesn't mean the picture being painted isn't misleading.

Here's one exaggerated incident: https://nypost.com/2020/08/17/blm-mob-beat-white-man-unconsc...

They exaggerate that the mob dragged a man out of his car, and they exaggerate that he was kicked in the head and rendered unconscious. In fact, they exaggerate so much that they had to take him into the ER. To me, it paints a completely misleading picture that in Portland you could be run off the road, dragged out of the car and beaten unconscious. Surely if reported properly, they'd notice there are thousands of people in Portland who weren't beaten senseless that night, so we'd better focus on that.

  Are HN posters really so sheltered that they don't know that this is a reality in many major American cities?

Man the irony here is really lost.

I take it your experience in cities is extremely limited.

I really don't know how you got that from me being the one who's warning you things can go sideways. If you've only had good experiences in cities, if you've never been mugged, if you've never been scared, or seen someone else in such a situation, it's you who has the limited experience.

Not that I want you to have a bad experience. Not that all cities are so bad, or that you're guaranteed a bad time everywhere. There's plenty of good left. But it's easy for someone who doesn't have their wits about them and doesn't know where to avoid to end up in the wrong place and have things go sideways. Don't be that person.

I've lived in this city my entire life and the vast majority of scary experiences have happened to me downtown. Which suburb do you live in?

It sounds like you're making assumptions that the driver cited a reason when he did not. Where from that comment did you get the driver feared being "assaulted by a mob, dragged out and beaten or shot, and their vehicle destroyed". Was it the part where he said it was racist?

Crime in my city (and most of the country) is lower than it's ever been. I've literally never been denied a ride by traditional cab drivers.

How is an area racist?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

The area wasn't, the driver was. Keep up!

Not the area, the drivers.

Boston is incredibly segregated and in the area I live in is less than 10% white. It's not a coincidence that this is the only area in the city I've ever had trouble getting a ride to (roughly 200 total rides).

Which area?

Maybe they were afraid for their own safety? I know when I visit the US, each city has it's no-go areas that you want to avoid. I remember my first time in Dallas many years ago pre-GPS era, drove somewhere for dinner, stopped to fill up petrol and get directions to my hotel and the service station attendant told me I should probably exit the area ASAP because it is not safe.

I lived in Boston a couple years before Uber was a thing and if I was out at night and needed a ride back to Southie (where I lived), it would take me four or five taxis at least to get one to agree to go there.

Uber eliminated that problem. It would be terrible to go back to that system where drivers can just refuse you based on where you are going or what you look like.

We're just regressing back to black people not being able to get a taxi.

Does Uber show a picture of the rider before they accept or just the location?

If the location is a low-income, racially segregated neighborhood, it's functionally the same thing (at least when it comes to not being able to get a cab). This was an issue before Uber even existed, since you'd need to get a cab dispatched to you if you lived in one of those places.

I have never used Uber so I'm a bit ignorant. What is so bad about a driver not wanting to pick up? Wont it just keep searching for the next one. It is not really different than if there for one reason or another no drivers are available nearby?

The discrepancy between finding a ride quickly to low-crime areas, while finding one slowly or not at all to high-crime areas will be attacked as systemic racism from the organization. Political correctness basically requires drivers to take rides without regard for their safety.

Could allowing the driver to see the destination before accepting the trip be used as a way to discriminate?

Yes, and taxi drivers have always been able to do that. As a consumer, it was nice using Uber because drivers couldn't do that.

However there is no penalty for drivers refusing to take your to the airport once they show up. It's an absolutely infuriating experience. Drivers should be banned from the platform if they are not able to take people from downtown to the closest airport.

I think there is/was a penalty for that. You could report drivers for abandoning you through the app.

i was unaware of these changes, its interesting to see the changes that were made. it will be interesting to see how they effect riders/drivers over time. thank you for the post.

Former Uber employee here...unfortunately many of those changes either made rider experience worse or made the marketplace less efficient. Lyft gained share as a result of these changes.

At the current rate, the gig industry will be regulated out of california and other regions that follow suit (this surely sets regulatory precedence for others). The product won't be at a mass market compelling price point without a better legal framework for gig workers until self driving technology catches up. Its best hope to make it work (and what Uber is lobbying for) is a third 'worker' classification between contractor and employee like what the UK has.

Goal of the government isn't to make marketplaces efficient. Regulations focuses more on making them "fair", "safe" and "non-discriminator". Note - definition of those is very political and open to huge interpretations.

Gig-working enjoyed unregulated market, which is great for efficiency. But law is catching up now.

Note - I'm not arguing that laws passed by government are correct. But they're in line with what government thinks it should be doing, and how they act in other business areas.

But was Uber unfair and unsafe? That's very hard to argue, especially when compared to the prior reality rather than a theoretical perfection.

Safe and maybe fairer for consumers yes, not so much for the employees. That's why they are getting ruled against with employment law.

I can think of quite a few other businesses who would love to toss out all employee protections and benefits. I'm sure it would slightly lower prices and improve efficiency here and there. Is that worth the cost though?...

So if Uber does shut down, how are drivers better off than if they simply chose not to drive for Uber? (or Lyft)

Either companies will fill the gap left by Uber in a way that gives drivers a better version than they had before, or drivers will find other work.

This same faulty argument is made often to argue you shouldn’t reduce exploitative child or sex labor, especially in developing countries, but it’s not valid.

If Uber employment option is exploitative, you cannot use drivers’ own willingness to accept work via that platform as some tacit endorsement that “consenting adults” are each ok with the arrangement, because the exploitative nature creates a duress / desperation aspect that means you can’t differentiate between drivers who are fully aware of the situation they are agreeing to and are happy to do it vs people who were banking on Uber being very different and now find themselves underwater on a car loan and not making enough for health insurance and thus unable to stop driving and look for other work because of a nasty feedback loop or reinforcing problems.

Part of a governments job is to set up rules whereby such a situation cannot be entered into in the first place, given that by doing so you become stuck in it under duress (eg not having health insurance, paid rest periods, etc.).

I want to point out, it is possible for government to over-regulate a business model out of financial viability. Employees can and often will push for unreasonable compensation or protections.

You may argue the model can regress to essentially taxis. But realize that taxis work due to artificial supply side restrictions generally using a medallion system and strict limits on numbers. This is fundamentally different from Uber where there is basically no restriction on supply.

I do agree, it’s not an easy problem.

But I think in the case of Uber it’s beyond debate that drivers, as an overall class, are not better off “having the freedom” to work under Uber’s (or other firm’s) poor conditions.

I’d say the same thing of Amazon warehouse workers too.

The conditions of these employment agreements should become legally not possible, so that workers don’t become effectively indentured servants to a working agreement that makes them worse off than some societally agreed standard, and feeling trapped and having the bad working conditions create a feedback mechanism bu which they can’t realistically choose to stop that working agreement and seek betterment.

These examples, in American standards, are egregious, nowhere close to any boundary where the government is asking unreasonable concessions of Uber.

If meeting these conditions doesn’t allow Uber to remain financially solvent, then Uber is not and never was a business, only a scam.

Beyond debate by whom? Are you a driver? It is highly debatable whether the conditions are poor or that drivers do not want this kind of job vs. say, working at McDonald's.

99.9% of Uber drivers would debate you on that. Flexibility to work when and where they wanted was the paramount reason for most of them to do this work.

As long as there's a safety net, I actually don't think sex labor should be outlawed as long as all parties truly consent and there's no drug addiction or shady trafficking going on. And no Uber driver has ever asked me for a bump or picked me up acting high, so I'm sorry but I don't buy that argument.

If better jobs existed, drivers could go there now. If any company can fulfill these regulations, I would expect it to be companies that already have market share like Lyft and Uber. If they choose to shut down because they can't meet these regulations and be viable businesses, then I'm not really optimistic about your other argument either. Personally, I'd be even less likely than ever to try and do (or invest in) an Uber-like startup after this decision.

Nobody is forced to drive for Uber. If they are, presumably they feel Uber’s existence is better than Uber’s nonexistence, otherwise they would be doing something else.

The fact that Uber was their #1 choice means Uber driving was an upgrade for their options.

Or Uber doesn't tell you the whole story of what you're actually going to make after gas, maintenance, repairs and insurance.

There is a reason that 60% of their drivers leave after 6 months.

https://www.businessofapps.com/data/uber-statistics/

More likely people don't find out the true costs of being an Uber driver until they wear out their cars, and have to start paying for repairs and maintenance. When your car is in the shop for 3 days, you can't make any money, so you're getting a double hit.

If Uber was so great, people would be sticking around.

> Or Uber doesn't tell you the whole story of what you're actually going to make after gas, maintenance, repairs and insurance.

It's mainly this.

I did a deep dive on Doordash during the pandemic/lockdown while I was going back to school for Supply Chain and Logistics as I wanted to take a better look at how it worked. I even did a few dashes myself.

And the people I spoke to, including the owners of the resteraunts, weren't aware of the many hidden costs of these gig economy services. Which is why you have vigilantes like the guy who did that Pizza DD arbitrage and then went on to tell the the whole World about it and ended with; F' Doordash [1]. Then the taxes as an independent contractor at the end of the year are something they seldom take into account as they've never been an independent contractor before.

These systems are pretty damn predatory and I think the people (business and tech side) who work on them should have to do a mandatory couple of shifts on their own dime every month to get a perspective of what is occurring.

When I lived in Switzerland, one of the coolest things I heard about certain management roles was about how the SBB requires that management and above have to do the more 'menial' work to get a better grasp of what is occurring at the passenger level and help improve the system. My friend was a manager of one of the branches in Bern and she had to go around and collect tickets and clean the train once in a while.

She said it is humbling, but also very useful as it helps her tackle some issues she wasn't even made aware of. Gig economy work has the reputation it does, but the loftier position at these places are extremely isolated from what is actually taking place, which seems like it could be much more of a disconnect than outright malice that's occurring--or at least I'd like to believe that.

'$2 Buck Tony [Xu]' should go back and do it again himself and see how he deals with the app crashes and delayed in order processing.

1: https://themargins.substack.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-arbitra...

That's quite fascinating about SBB. I wish this were standard practice elswehere. I wonder what airlines would be like if C-level execs had to book their own flights and fly coach for instance.

> If Uber was so great, people would be sticking around

I agree that Uber is not so great but I'm not sure about this logic. I can imagine other reasons for people not sticking around than them being duped, perhaps that many people just start Ubering when they're temporarily between other jobs, or students doing it during the summer.

The taxi industry has existed for a long time with a lot of the regulations that people are trying to force onto Uber. But drivers flocked from taxis to Ubers as soon as that option became available. That suggests that at least for those who've opted into Uber, Uber is preferable. Reducing the availability of that option (which is what these rules will cause) is going to hurt them, because the fact that they're doing Uber means that it was their best available choice.

Rideshare was preferred for two reasons:

1) It was VASTLY cheaper due to VC cash subsidy attempting to become the single monopoly. That's not an "efficient market"--that's predatory--and eventually the cities will have to deal with the aftermath in the cab system when Uber/Lyft collapse.

2) My feedback could hit the driver directly--so the failure modes of cabs were prevented (not picking people up, taking too long to pick people up, not driving them where they want to go, taking stupid paths, etc.).

>The taxi industry has existed for a long time with a lot of the regulations that people are trying to force onto Uber.

Not really. Most taxi drivers are 1099 contractors as well. They pay the dispatcher a cut of the fair for connecting them with the ride. They either own their cab and medallion, or rent them from the dispatch company.

It will be interesting to see if Cali prosecutors go after the dispatch companies the way they are going after uber and lyft.

Except in this case they make it less fair, safe and non-discriminatory because those in government think they can ignore basic economics.

A government can ignore "basic economics" (bit of a vauge term), the government creates the environment that businesses exist in.

If "basic economics" produce a result that is clearly unethical or a detriment to society then it can be ignored.

You're missing the point. The environment being created makes rides less fair, safe and non-discriminatory. That is what ignoring basic economics does in this case. What are you arguing for, exactly?

I would agree and what's especially bad about it is that these changes complicate what was what made Uber so special. You could quite literally press a button to summon a ride and it would show up, you'd get in, and they'd take you to exactly where you inputted, and then you'd get out, no other fussiness to deal with like tipping or unpredictable pricing, etc.

These changes make Uber become more like the traditional taxi world, which is quite honestly what people hated about taxis but had to live with anyways because it was such a regulated environment and filled with cronies in many cities.

You vote for politicians whose ideology is to micromanage your life including taking a cut of your money, you get exactly that.

This is not it.

The problem is that the law does not account for ‘gig workers’, so produces are shoehorned into one extreme or the other.

I don’t think that Uber drivers should be employees, but I think the law should afford (enforce companies to give) them more protection than they get as ‘contractors’.

It’s funny - the laws and regulations changed to accommodate ride sharing, creating specific schemes for them. But it hasn’t for this new bread of worker.

Did Lyft figure out another legal way to do this? Or are they simply ignoring AB5?

> Enabling drivers to see where a rider is going before accepting the trip

Not having this was a feature for Uber's customers when they were still in Southeast Asia.

Grab (Uber's competitor, mainly in Asia) allowed drivers to see their proposed destinations, and the experience just wasn't as good.

Why can’t uber just position itself as a lead generation service for drivers?

Uber positions itself that way all over the place: Uber is a tech company that connects riders and drivers. It is not a taxi service.

To some extent, they are right. To their customers, they pretty much are a (more convenient) taxi company.

To their drivers? They are a shittier taxi company that doesn't provide cars, yet still charges drivers 25% of fares in exchange for legal protection against taxi laws and customers/brand.

The absurd part is that this is exactly what a taxi service does as well. Most Taxi drivers are 1099 contracts that are connected with rides by dispatch.

Taxi driving contractors have less autonomy than uber drivers, but you don't see Cali prosecutors going after taxi companies.

>Why can’t uber just position itself as a lead generation service for drivers?

A rideshare company could theoretically be just a pure lead generation platform but the economic forces preventing that is the nature of multi-sided platforms: The drivers don't hold all the leverage. The other actor in the multi-sided platform are passengers/customers who _pay the money_.

If Uber was only lead gen, they would be outcompeted by another company that offered all the following conveniences:

+ predictable fixed price to prevent customer anxiety of overcharging

+ integrated payment processing so no worry of drivers playing games such as, "my Square credit card processor doesn't work so you need to pay cash"

+ driver ratings for reputation

... because customers/passengers value those features.

If you create a rideshare platform that's too advantageous to the drivers (e.g. no ratings, can charge variable fare per mile, etc), it would end up being hostile to potential customers and it won't attract enough paying fares to be financially sustainable.

That's assuming the economic cost of not having those things exceeds the economic cost of classifying drivers as employees.

Or that those services couldn't still be offered by independent companies, so the customer still has them but the drivers are still contractors because they're not employees of the lead gen company nor the driver ratings company nor the payment app company. It merely so happens that the lead gen company shows the customer whether the driver accepts that payment app and is listed with that rating service.

What you've described is exactly what happened when Sidecar (the totally hands-off drivers-set-prices-and-riders-choose option) tried to compete; they lost against Uber/Lyft and shut down EOY 2014.

This is literally their positioning, California's lawmakers just hate them.

What these changes amount to is removing qualification from the leads, which to me seems like the sort of anti-consumer outcome the law should not produce.

That's what Sidecar was! Drivers set prices, and riders chose between drivers' offers. It failed against competition from Uber/Lyft and shut down EOY 2014.

But arguably, that was because Uber/Lyft had an unfair advantage from being able to exercise tight control over drivers while not having to obey regulations for employees, while Sidecar had more limited control over drivers. If everyone had to use the Sidecar model, it might work out, but you need equitable laws (that apply to everyone) to make that work.

The goal of AB5 is to help drivers - so they can get health insurance, etc.

All these changes Uber is doing just so that drivers are not employees.

The question here is: what is the problem with making drivers employees? How much money that will be?

Average monthly pay for an Uber driver is $400. Not all of them will qualify for health insurance, as you have to work 30 hours a week.

Median health insurance cost is $600.

Median health insurance for someone making $400 a month under the ACA is not $600.

Corporate plans don't qualify for the ACA, only individuals. That is the actual median rate, from Anthem, for a corporate plan. Uber might get a better rate.

Ridiculous that it takes a legal battle for Uber to offer these customer and driver friendly features

How is removing upfront pricing friendly to customers? It's horrible UX.

getting charged exactly for what you use is great

I as a user would far rather know exactly what I'm getting charged ahead of time, on basically everything, even if it were more. I'm 100% certain most people would.

I would rather be charged for what I'm using instead of an amount that's fudged to amortize unexpected incidental costs over all users. Maybe some kind of additional insurance against extra costs might be a feature that some users would use, but I prefer to self-insure than help others defray costs.

The upfront pricing was just an estimate of the total based on previous data. I much prefer it, because it incentivizes the driver to take the most efficient route, since they get paid based on arrival and not the way they go.

In the pay as you go system, you are at the mercy of the driver, and they are actually incentivized to take a longer route.

I've definitely had drivers take longer routes under the pay as you go system. I would complain to Uber and they would refund the money, but it was still a hassle to complain.

Interestingly, in places where Uber still has up front pricing for riders, drivers are paid on time and distance. Uber is taking the risk of the estimate being too high or too low.

Right, and removing upfront pricing removes that.

no, it's absolutely not. There is obvious incentive misalignment here: rider want to get to the destination as fast as cheap and possible, and the driver wants to earn as much and as little work as possible. Here is taking the longer route

That’s how taxis stole from customers for decades, taking the long way there.

The driver controls "what you use" based on the route and time taken to get you to the destination.

Upfront pricing is still calculated based on usage, but it sets a fair amount without giving up control and the potential for overages.

In what world is enabling drivers to see where a rider is going before accepting the trip, or removing requirements for Uber Pro, or removing features from the loyalty program, or removing upfront pricing, or removing the ability for customers to have favorite drivers "customer friendly"?

driver and customer friendly, all are not necessarily both

Both sides are "customers." This is something Uber emphasizes (or at least used to) within as well.

I think it's just the opposite: Uber is trying to change the platform so they no longer fit the definition of "Employee". Three changes are so that the driver more closely models a taxi service which is a self employment.

In other words: Uber wants the service to be worse so they don't have to give drivers with health insurance. If people complain, that's to Ubers benefit, because they want to keep their indentured workers.

Seems reasonable to me. Cause and effect. It's a compromise that gets mixed feedback from all sides... rather ideal, and a sign this industry is maturing. I still happily ride my bike but am thankful these services exist for my aging parents, and for the economy that could use any help it can get.

I used to work at Uber.

I'll focus on one particular point: allowing drivers to see where riders are going before they accept the trip. Uber, at least when I worked there, was heavily against this functionality as it allows drivers to discriminate against riders who are going to poor neighborhoods or from cities to suburbs where they may have difficulty in getting another rider. That feature is bad for the overall ecosystem. Because of it, you may not be able to get a ride to the airport during rush hour, or home from the bar when you live 30 minutes away from downtown. The overall service becomes less useful if there's doubt as to your ability to be able to use it when you need it.

This sounds like it is bad for the customer experience of the rider, but is essential for the driver to be considered a contractor. It makes sense to me as a tradeoff: Uber can decide that the drivers are employees and dictate what routes and fares they must take, or they can decide that drivers are contractors who have the ability to review and decline those fares

My last point was that it's good for both riders and drivers. If riders come to expect an unreliable service, then they'll use a different method of transit, which leaves the drivers with less work overall.

> which leaves the drivers with less work overall.

...which is a positive feedback loop that should encourage them to pick up those previously declined routes. Or charge higher rates that better reflect their reluctance for those routes. Isn't that how supply & demand is supposed to work?

But how can you then claim you're better and cheaper than a taxi company?

Marketing material does not cause the universe to reassert itself.

I used to work at Lyft. It is disgusting how Lyft and Uber treat drivers with their A/B testing etc. Those PMs have no sympathy for drivers. A driver can end up in an experiment group that totally screws his income.

WRT to drivers not going to neighborhood I have a solution for you: let passengers offer higher pricers. This is not a new idea BTW

> It is disgusting how Lyft and Uber treat drivers with their A/B testing

Society as a whole needs to answer the question "is it moral to roll a dice and offer a worse service to people who get an odd number?"

In my view, it is. As far as that person is concerned, they can pretend your company doesn't exist and go to another company (and maybe roll another dice)

Some other people would say "all businesses must treat all customers equally and fairly". In many ways, I don't see how this can be universally true - there is always the superstore that has run out of a product - why should Mrs Smith who picked up apples at 9am get some, when Mr Jones who tried to buy some at 9:15am finds the shelf empty? Thats unfair.

Instead I'd like to see a list of characteristics a business is not allowed to discriminate on (religion, race, etc.), and explicitly allow discrimination based on another list (random number, position in queue, length of service as a customer, etc.). Any other factor, judges can decide which list it falls into.

I think companies run A/B tests because they don't know which option is the worse service.

This is silly.

Companies have ALWAYS had test products that they offer to a subset of customers.

There's no legal test to be applied here.

I'm curious about whether a/b testing would be considered human subjects research and therefore governed by federal regulations. [1]

I suspect that it will be in some cases. Does Uber have IRBs? What about other big tech companies?

If you work in a company and see them doing something immoral and possibly illegal, you should speak up or report the behavior.

1. https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/decision-cha...

I work at a large tech company. I have to maintain a certification for human experimentation with my IRB. Usually, A/B testing falls outside of the experimentation framework as the actual feature in question cannot cause harm, is engaged with voluntarily, and users are already aware that the software changes arbitrarily (usually through marketing material as "continuous updates"). We usually only get into the human experimentation bit when we send out a survey or the like.

Is said a/b test supported or funded by the Department of Health and Human Services? If not, that website clearly indicates that the regulations do not apply.

his comment said that drivers don't go to poor neighborhoods. you're suggesting customers to pay more for a ride if they live in a poor neighborhood.

> as it allows drivers to discriminate against riders who are going to poor neighborhoods or from cities to suburbs where they may have difficulty in getting another rider.

This is exactly what being a contractor is though. Accepting contract work you'd like, and turning down work you don't. Otherwise you are an employee.

In the case of rideshare, I imagine the driver contract agreement has that stipulation in it. You'll agree to pick up a passenger taking a trip to an unknown destination with up to N hours of travel time. If you don't like the terms of the contract, you don't have to work for that company.

How is that different from a regular taxi driver?

Where's the "sharing" in the "ride share" if the driver is forced to take any ride?

Regular taxi drivers are often contractors. At least, they were in the past, I'm not sure how this new stuff is affecting regular taxi companies.

This is the thing that really chafes my testes.

People need to get real and start calling it what it is. It's a taxi service. This is not ride sharing. The driver was not already going somewhere. The driver was waiting around for a call to pick someone up, and was going to take them where they wanted to go. Nothing is being shared. This is a Taxi service and the Uber app is the dispatcher.

If I was already going to work, and I picked someone up along the way, that's sharing a ride.

The only thing the driver is sharing is the money they are giving to their mechanic when all the around town driving wears out their car.

What about UberPOOL?

Only misguided journalists use ridesharing anymore. Its been "ridehailing" the best past 3-4 years now.

"Taxi with a logistics app"

A ride is more like a task. I've been a contractor and I couldn't refuse jira tasks. You've signed a contract with the company, you should do all the jira tasks they throw at you.

Many people argue that those kinds of contractors are employees. Often your an employee of the contracting firm AFAIK too, so you have to follow the implicit orders of the contracting firm.

I am a "contractor", but yeah, if you only work for one company for X months, you should be an employee.

If all your money comes via a single company, even if you phisically work at a different place each day, you should be an employee of that company.

That's kinda the problem with ride-sharing though. Many (most) drivers are driving with multiple apps.

Many, many people in the US are employed with multiple companies at a time. Everyone who "works two jobs". Employment is not exclusive.

I was responding to a comment about "only working for one company for X months".

But you could have refused the customer in the first place. Nobody forced you to make a contract with him. Of course, once you did, you are compelled to keep up your end of the bargain, and that probably included you doing those jira tasks (you could have probably refused to do entirely different work, like walking the dog of the manager, when you were originally contracted for doing IT development work).

A true contractor in the rideshare space would have an individual contract with each rider, and could of course reject riders based on the terms of the contract (of which the target location is one). However, once a customer is accepted based on the agreed-upon terms (fare, target, number of passengers etc.) he wouldn't be able to throw the passenger out in the middle of the ride for no good reason.

If you now want to say that a rideshare contractor should not be able to reject a customer based upon the terms of the ride, I ask you: why shouldn't he? With whom does he have a contract that binds him? And you say: with Uber. And I say: yeah, and that's why your analogy is fundamentally flawed, why he isn't an individual contractor for each customer but simply an employee of Uber, with whom he has a contract that mandates him to accept all customers that Uber deems acceptable. Exactly like a plumber working at a plumbing company who also has to do plumbing work at any customer his boss sends him to, while his individually contracting plumber colleague can decide to decline or accept customers at his own discretion.

Alternatively, the contract is between the driver and the rideshare platform. The driver is a participant in the platform and is contractually expected to behave within the rules and bounds of the platform. This does not require defining the driver as an employee.

When the driver activates uber driver mode, they are initiating a contract which states they will work within the bounds of the app. The driver is able to terminate that contract at will and at any time, and reactivate it at will and at his leisure. When the contract is active, the driver has committed to operate within the pricing, pickup and dropoff structure of the platform - as in the driver has committed to minimize discrimination of their rides and accept the platform's rider oriented pricing structure.

I am pretty sure that you cannot "activate" a work contract by opening an app. What is the notion of "activating" a contract anyway, I mean legally. Does something like that exist in US law?

I would doubt that, and I would also doubt that you can simply define opening an app as the beginning of a legally binding, entirely new contract with as many implications as Uber's driver contracts have. I am pretty sure that in reality, Uber signs a contract once with a new driver, after checking his background, driver license and everything, and that contract is active from that point in time until explicitly terminated by either party. Just closing the app does not terminate it, neither does opening the app create a new contract. Closing the app just amounts to the driver leaving his "workplace", opening it again amounts to the driver entering his "workplace", but the contract under which that work takes place is the same and active all the time, it just gives the driver a lot of leeway with regard to how many hours he wants to work.

That is a generous employment, but it is an employment nevertheless in nature.

Which is why I'm vehemently opposed to classing Uber drivers as contractors.

Can you change the destination once you get in the car?

The solution would be to increase the amount you are willing to pay until someone agrees to it, not trick a person into doing work they don't want to do by hiding the details of the job until after they have begun.

I don't know whether it's the same in the US, but here in Germany, the good old taxis have a special obligation that disallows them to decline a rider based on where he wants to go, as long as that target is within the geographic area for which a particular taxi is licensed. The idea is that taxis are part of public transport and thus should have a certain reliability for customers, regardless of how lucrative a particular ride happens to be.

I find it laughable to hear that Uber, the arch-enemy of the taxi business, attempts to (secretly, because obviously the customer isn't informed about drivers not seeing the target locations beforehand) rebuild this particular property of the system it aims to replace. And it's doubly laughable that they now stumble over that exact attempt, which they now can't actually continue, because in order to have the necessary authority over drivers they would need to make them official employees.

The law in Germany is a fantasy. Drivers still can and claim a break down, bad cell service, etc.

Having some people cheat their way around it does not invalidate the law in the first place and neither does it invalidate its intention. The equivalent in Uber's system is a driver cancelling a ride after accepting it and seeing the destination, maybe claiming his car broke down on the way to the pickup location or whatever. The fact that people can pull that off also does not invalidate Uber's original attempt to make drivers accept riders regardless of their destination.

At some point, every time I called an Uber to take me home after being out late, the driver would first call me, ask me where I was going, I'd say somewhere far away, and then they'd immediately cancel the ride. So I stopped picking up the phone when someone called right after I called an Uber, and then maybe only half would cancel if I didn't pick up.

> or from cities to suburbs where they may have difficulty in getting another rider.

That just indicates Uber is undercharging for these type of rides.

Its possible that if they charged more ridership and Uber's profits would go down.

Incentives are not aligned.

Seems pretty simple - offer financial motive.

No one wants to go to airports anyway, they're a nightmare normally and are typically far from city centers and potentially further to a rider - so the fare goes up and you have surge pricing.

It does not strike me as a legitimate case to strip people of their human right to free agency and will by forcing people to do things they don't want to or may even be dangerous to their health and safety. It should be anyone's right to refuse going to dangerous neighborhoods, just like forcing drivers to drive out into nowhere where they have to spend their own money/resources to get back to the network, should be compensated by Uber if they want that feature.

It's rather abusive and tyrannical to force people to do things against their will or safety. But I am guessing you live in a dangerous neighborhood because you did not "discriminate" and are paying really low rents since you don't discriminate. Right? … exactly!

You realize its OK to decline trips, and also to stop using a ridehailing service that mandates a policy like this?

>should be compensated by Uber if they want that feature. Do you really think Uber has not gone through these thoughts millions of time in the past? I can personally tell you that these are things that are constantly discussed and evluated, with the primer driver of everything being the growth of the service.

You still have free agency. As an Uber driver, you can accept a ride, pick up the rider, get the destination, decide you don't want to go there, and then kick the rider out of your car.

Then, Uber can decide that they no longer want you to be a driver on their platform.

> It does not strike me as a legitimate case to strip people of their human right to free agency and will by forcing people to do things they don't want to or may even be dangerous

But in a normal employer-employee relationship, this is totally typical. You can't sign up to be a firefighter but then refuse to go into burning buildings that you find too scary. You can't get a job as a developer and then refuse JIRA tickets you find boring, claiming that's your "human right."

In those cases, and with Uber as well, your free agency is that you can quit the job if you don't like it. But you have no fundamental right to be retained as an employee or contractor while refusing to do parts of the job you'd signed onto. The employer has their own right to terminate you if so.

Those will probably be rolled back as result of the legal battle. With employees, you don't have to do any of that.

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