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Comment by chucknthem | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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?

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

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