Hacker News Reader

Comment by user_7832 | Hacker News Reader

Meta - I am honestly surprised, and sightly appalled at the general attitude in these comments (and also in yesterday's thread).

Uber has essentially not just broken laws, but outright exploited workers/drivers... and people comment "Aah but the local taxi mafia was bad"...??!? I'm sorry but that does not justify exploiting workers. That does not justify using political influence to enter/gain markets. This isn't some messiah coming to save us all from the "horridness of local transport".

I'm not saying that having Uber as a player is necessarily bad, mind you. But it's possible to have some positive benefits for some people while hurting a lot of others. I sincerely doubt too many HN users have driven taxis, but my conversations with Uber/regular taxi drivers hardly painted a favorable picture of Uber. (Nuance - please note that my taxi drivers doesn't represent all drivers. There will be happy and sad drivers, my point being it's not always sunshine and rainbows... which the article speaks about too.)

I wonder if this being a YC owned communication platform affects/biases users (some of whom I'm sure are YC founders etc themselves), however the ratio of apathy/"taxis were already bad" to "Uber shouldn't exploit workers, nothing justifies it" is disappointingly low.

(I know this is a particularly ranty comment and I had kept quiet on the last thread but seeing the same type of comments here pushed me.)

View on HN

Every single time there’s an article about Uber exploiting workers/the law the top comments are always some Uber propaganda pieces that seem totally astroturfed. Yes, Uber is better than the old system, they can also treat their drivers like human beings.

I get a sense that many on this site never want the gravy train to stop and will overlook/downplay anything to keep it going. The slightest scrutiny leading to regulation of one tech giant could be the first domino in a series of regulation against all. I don't think that most are outright shills for Uber but I think that many are unwitting shills for big tech.

We are peculiarly inclined to suppress whatever impugns the security of that to which we have given our allegiance.

- Walter Lippman, The Basic Problem of Democracy, 1919 (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1919/11/the-bas...)

Thank you for your comment. I also have a similar view - folks working at Facebook et al often might suspect/know what they're doing is misleading at best to illegal (dark patterns for eg), but the cognitive dissonance (esp regarding regulations) is a bit too much.

I'm not trying to have a holier than thou approach - lots of people simply need a job, and humans are only human in their actions - but I would be curious to see how opinions of folks working at small startups differ from those working at GAAFA/FAANG etc.

(To be clear, opinions are your personal subjective thought and I don't think they can just be "wrong", I'm just curious on if there's a difference in who thinks what how.)

>they can also treat their drivers like human beings.

If this was the case, why didn't workers continue what they were doing before they worked for Uber? Did they have no job before Uber, or did they view Uber as an improvement to their previous situation?

In my experience, gig workers are being exploited as they do not take into account their expenses. Most see uber as decent pay until their car starts having issues.

If that is the case, maybe there should be some regulation that compels employers to post full and transparent costs and actual incomes for its employees, all normal costs considered. Then workers would be more likely to make the decision that is best for them, without the possibility of being tricked by the numbers.

Yes, perhaps more regulations would help the matter. Except Uber also (sometimes illegally) lobbies governments to prevent regulation, as this leak has shown.

You can’t blame Uber for workers who make bad decisions, can you?

By that logic any employer could do anything because "working for a bad employer is a bad decision"

If Uber were holding guns to peoples’ heads and forcing them to work, then I would most definitely condemn them. But people work voluntarily for Uber. So I can’t see that as oppressing them.

I would normally agree with you, but the concern here is about information asymmetry. Workers can make bad decisions when they don't have a full picture of the costs of working for a company. I'm normally hesitant about regulation, but hat is something that regulation could help with to improve a worker's decision-making (similar to healthcare price transparency) without interfering with a company's operations.

Well I have to admit, I don’t know their business model very well. But, at least in my case, if I did it for a while and calculated my reimbursement after the costs of running the car—and found out I wasn’t making enough—I would quit.

A lot of people driving for Uber don’t have the skills to do tco calculations… it’s exploitive that Uber is taking advantage of these people. Whether Uber is culpable is arguable. I believe it’s more if an issue for government because they aren’t teaching people the skills they need to understand this.

Our societal system does hold proverbial guns to peoples heads to force them to work. We all need money to pay rent, eat, take care of our families and our health, etc. That money has to come from working (or inheritance if one’s lucky).

Our “societal system” does no such thing. If you wish to acquire something, you have to either trade for it (trade, for example, work), steal it, or acquire it from nature (as in hunting/gather thing). This is just nature, not a human system.

Your post does nothing to negate the fact than many, many people fall under the definition of a wage slave.

Private property doesn’t exist in nature.

Ask any dog if private property exists. Ownership is a very deeply ingrained, basic concept.

Who owns what, however, is not.

Why is it always "blame the victim for being exploited" rather than blaming the multi-billion dollar corporation doing the exploiting?

Uber doesn’t force anyone to work for them. If they feel exploited, they quit and do something else. That the company is making a lot of money shows that there is demand among their drivers. I just fail to see what’s wrong with that.

To me force—including reckless regulation—is the real exploitation.

Too many people live paycheck to paycheck to have the freedom to quit their jobs to find something else.

Also, Uber isn’t making a lot of money. They have been hemorrhaging VC for years and aren’t making any profits.

Not so much exploited as given the opportunity to trade vehicle depreciation for immediate cash, likely at a discounted rate. That also assumes the opportunity cost of the driver’s labor is zero is as well.

Trades can be exploitative if the exploited doesn’t have a good understanding of the trade.

There are tons of papers on the information asymmetry in ride sharing. I’ve seen more than one paper claim that after fuel costs and depreciation Uber drivers are on average making less than the minimum wage. But since those costs can be quite high drivers believe they’re making a decent bit above minimum wage. This would easily be solved by regulation forcing Uber to spell these costs out on paystubs, the only downside is that drivers would demand more.

As someone generally hesitant about regulation, I'm down with this. Markets can only function well when this kind of information is freely available.

So not Uber propaganda, but ... Belgium Uber-ing out an F-16 to a Russian oligarch (Kerimov) is ok?

While Belgian road traffic victims lay on the road, the ambulances and dispatching services colluded to assign more distant ambulances for maximizing the per km driven profits. That's not a victimless crime: lives, limbs (think infections) and livelihoods (both of the victims and the typical scapegoats who shall carry all the blame, round down all liabilities and round the remaining liability up). Hurray for "socialism", money must roll.

Comments like this break the site guidelines.

"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That's because, overwhelmingly, cases like this where people are convinced that something seems "totally astroturfed" turn out to simply be people disagreeing with each other. The community is divided on divisive issues like this one. To a first approximation, it really is as simple as that.

Of course there are also various kinds of manipulation, but because of what I said in the previous paragraph, the only legitimate way to address those is to look for evidence—that means something objective, which is not just based on people having opinions that seem obviously wrong or bad (i.e. sufficiently different from one's own).

This phenomenon is extremely well established and you can find many years of past explanation about it here: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... .

Edit: incidentally, perceptions like "Every single time there's an article about $topic..." are also hopelessly subject to cognitive bias. HN has had many, many threads about Uber which have been dominated by negative sentiment.

Thank you Dang. I actually did not mean to insinuate that the posts are astroturfed, in fact them being legitimately held opinions is the most upsetting aspect to me. I feel we’ve got a community of strong critical thinkers here, and I’ve observed a pattern (anecdotal as you point out) of sidestepping on threads about Uber’s legal/moral obligations to their drivers. It pains me to see us selectively using our critical thinking skills when it suits us, and then hunkering down with “so what it’s better for me now” when it doesn’t.

> Uber is better than the old system

You forgot to add "in some places".

The old school taxi business has built up a massive reserve of consumer dissatisfaction to the point of blind hatred. Uber/etc disruption generated so much consumer goodwill because they demonstrated clearly superior features/advantages/benefits.

When someone pops your bully in the nose, you don't care if it was a cheap shot.

Of course that is short sighted and today's hero can easily become tomorrow's bully.

Uber USA != Uber Germany.

Taxi business here is quite different.

We easily claim the opposite for other companies (Apple, Facebook, Google) and other countries (mostly Asian fabrication centers). Why do we have such a strong belief that Uber USA != Uber Germany?

(Edit: I'm Croatian and fairly well aware of how taxis work in Europe)

Taxi in Europe is hugely dependent on country. Take Sweden, anyone can start a taxi company as long as you have a capital reserve of €5000 per vehicle, some requirements on equipment and insurance and a taxi drivers license for anyone who is driving, nothing hard to get. There haven't been anything similar to medallion systems and what not since it was deregulated in 1990.

Uber Pop got kicked out in a couple of months with Uber having to pay the social security costs of the employees. Now it's just an aggregator of Taxi companies, same with Bolt. The possible margin is minuscule since the drivers change apps depending on which pays the best. Often having both open.

For the companies themselves it's an extremely cutthroat business. From what I have heard the only chance to make any money is to own about 50 cars and have all maintenance in house. Otherwise it's just a fools attempt at being independent.

Taxi services in Germany pre-Uber weren't perfect but they weren't the disfunctional rackets you see in the States. Uber "succeded" in Europe by undercutting existing farily decent service providers with subsidised fares. Those subsidise seem to have dissapeared and at least in London Uber is now in my experience no cheaper and significantly less reliable that the older firms which have survived.

I didn’t ride in cabs that much (US) but I never had the dysfunctional racket experiences described in this thread. They didn’t show up once, but that has happened with Uber too.

edit: And Uber charged me a fee to cancel the no-show ride and I had to call and argue with them to take the charge off.

I suspect taxi regulation is strong on every developed country and different.

I'm skeptical. I've only briefly visited Germany, but my very first experience upon arriving was being scammed by a taxi.

In what sense? Not choosing the shortest path for example?

Oh, had that happen in Canada! Drive was supposed to take 10 minutes, 12 minutes in it doesn't look like we're close, "where are we going?", "Oh, didn't you say you wanted the scenic route?" Of course I never said that, ride ended up almost triple what it should have been :/

The taxi that picked me up at the Munich train station didn't start the meter. When we arrived at the hotel, the driver demanded a fee which seemed quite high for the short distance we travelled.

I don't speak German and had been in Germany for only a few hours at that point, so I didn't know for certain that I was being scammed. In fact, I still don't. As far as I gather, taxis are supposed to use their meters to calculate the cost of the trip, but perhaps there are exceptions I am unaware of.

There's a lot of things I find questionable about Uber and its business practices, but the fact that they tell you the price up front is definitely a positive contribution.

Reminds me of the time when I was in Leipzig in late 2018 (at CCC) and I tried to sign up for CleverShuttle. Turns out they had a bug where they could not register using an American number. The app just silently fails and I was left stranded late at night. I tried to use their support line to get help...turns out its an email address and they responded to my inquiry with generic steps to try again....two days later. Luckily a friend was kind enough to give me a ride home. I don't know how Germany manages to write such a garbage app but its their prerogative to chose a lower standard of service compared to the US. I always dread some things about visiting friends in Europe and the quality of service is always one of those things.

At least for me - This is pretty spot on.

Is Uber horrible? Probably. But at least they provide the service they claim to.

The taxi companies in my area before Uber (and frankly still, after Uber) are literally rage inducing. You can call them and confirm that a cab has been dispatched - and it will NEVER show up. Call them back and confirm again? Same thing.

Need to schedule a ride to the airport? Cab won't show.

Need someone to take you home after a house party? Cab won't show.

Literally flag down a cab on the side of the road? They will hassle you over card usage, intentionally drive out of the way (like - seriously, bitch I've lived in ATL for 33 years, I know this is the long route you fucker), and have terrible safety standards (oh, none of the seat belts in the back of your cab work? fun!).

So Uber might be horrible, and I would really, really love to see cities increase spending on public transit.

But I FUCKING HATE the cab companies. They can fucking rot for all I care. If Uber puts them all into chapter 11, I will cheer them on.

Would I still prefer to see investment in public transit instead of dealing with Uber? Of course. But we weren't seeing that with cabs, and at least Uber will god-damned show up when called.

and in my experience, uber is the same. cabs just don't show up, drivers ask where you want to go before coming and if they don't wanna go that way, they just don't move. and i have to cancel the trip (chargeable btw) and book another, but same story. insane waiting times for booking a cab, prices that fluctuate more than crypto, and I've had better luck asking random taxi drivers for rides on the street (sure, not as safe, but standing in the Delhi heat for fifteen minutes waiting for a swift desire does a number on your consideration of safety) Ola has always delivered a better experience for me and the drivers I've talked to seem happier using Ola. I'm too young to remember "the old way" of getting a cab, but that seems worse somehow.

At least with uber you have a remedy in the form of the rating system

I have only experienced that with ride hailing companies in India. Use Uber/Lyft in the US and always have had a great experience. Not sure how the platform does not penalize drivers if they keep cancelling rides or they hold customers at ransom. That would not work in the US. Makes me think that they have either figured out a way to circumvent the system or they just don't care that their ratings are getting dinged.

they didn't have to circumvent it, its a design flaw.

> When someone pops your bully in the nose, you don't care if it was a cheap shot.

I don’t understand this analogy in this context. In the case of Uber, uber is also a bully, arguably a worse one. In this case you want both of them to be arrested. Even when their fighting each other, it is still disturbing everyone and you just want them to stop.

Uber is not a hero of today, nor was it the hero of yesterday. It was always a bully,

Also not having a great cab service is nothing compared to the exploitation of workers occurring.

No one has a god given right to have cheap taxis in their city at any cost.

The people complaining in this thread sound like the people complaining that they can't run a restaurant without paying their workers poverty wages.

People have rights, businesses don't.

Its not just cheap, in fact it seems like cheapness is the least discussed aspect in this thread. You seemed to have missed all these stores of a minimum Quality of Service. The professional white collar people here can probably continue to pay the increasing Uber fees. But its the general quality of service that keeps them coming back. I don't think you can go back now that the genie is out of the bottle.

It is not unlikely that the "taxi mafia" was created by a similar mix or lobbying and corruption. Basically, it looks like a mafia replacing another mafia.

Two things can be true:

a) Uber was a crappy business model that required the exploitation of the labor force to raise money. If this fact can't be fixed for the company to be profitable, the company can shutdown or become a co-op for all I care.

b) Toronto and SF have banned sidewalk robots (until they "study" the situation i.e. until only monopoly transport companies can afford to wait around). NYC had banned scooters and e-bikes till last year, and in fact spent precious police time chasing down delivery workers who motorized their bikes to reduce the physical drudgery of their work. So when the Guardian says "Uber broke municipal law", my question is always "How stupid were these laws?". Most of these city laws consistently over-index for the opinions of the wealthy retirees who can show up at 10am on a Tuesday to yell at their council meetings. So, if VC's want to fund lobby arms to move the needle in breaking through to these councillors, I'm here for it.

We need "Uber for housing".

That would be Airbnb, and it seems to be turning out about as well for the market

I think they mean Uber for “building” housing. Not just using it.

So instead of workers hanging out at the big box home improvement store wondering if a contractor will scoop them up that day for a few bucks and a sandwich (and said contractor wondering if the work will be any good), these matches will be made by an "Uber for x" app? On the one hand, why not.

Yes labor shortages are a problem.

But in this context, the Uber methodology would be useful for busting through the archaic city approval processes + frivolous environment lawsuits aka the prime driver of the housing shortage [1]

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1089174630/housing-shortage-n...

Oh, you will find one comment of mine about the taxi mafia on yesterday thread.

Of course, it does not justify exploiting workers. Protecting people from those practices is one of the reasons we have governments composed of independent powers, and entire structures with the only purpose of keeping those honest. People aren't complaining about Uber because it looks like that on their case, those safeguards are working. (As an example, this article could only be written because the safeguards are working.)

And yeah, they were some courageous people that insisted on breaking some really immoral laws and destroying a really bad local actor. If it wasn't for them, city transportation would probably be the same it was at the 2000's. Of course, they did it for their own immoral motives, using bad practices that should be punished. It just looks like they will be punished, so why bother hating them? Just use a lower priced competitors that probably treats their drivers better, and forget them.

>courageous

Yes I'm certain the folks at Uber were feeling the pressure every day at their Bay Area office with its foosball tables.

Good grief.

>>so why bother hating them?

Perhaps because "the ends justify the means" is not a sound code of morality. Lying, cheating, stealing, exploiting, lawbreaking, hiding rapes & assaults, and more are rarely justified for any ends, perhaps only fighting literal authoritarianism.

These immoral behaviors are certainly not justified to merely open a stagnant market because you want to exploit the workers even more than the entrenched entities (e.g., at least in the old system there was a path to earn a medallion worth 6-7 $figures and get a retirement, w/uber, it's only 'what are your stats last week') and steal some of the gains for yourself.

And now, after over a decade of lying, cheating, stealing, exploiting, lawbreaking, hiding rapes & assaults, and squandering $billions of investor funds, they still aren't profitable, and are shedding drivers & customers as they attempt to raise prices to anything sustainable.

We were promised flying cars and all we get is a new form of exploitation, except now driven by a smartphone app? If they put all that funds and effort into an actual honest non-exploitative effort for a flying car...

Oh, for sure. The investor should sue, any driver that feels exploited should think about it (but most will be better by simply changing to a competitor), and the government sure as hell should do its work.

But the investors don't seem to care, they are losing the drivers, and the government seems to be acting quite well against them (at least here it is). So, again, why should I bother?

Anyway, AFAIK:

> If they put all that funds and effort into an actual honest non-exploitative effort for a flying car...

They would be squashed (literally) by the taxi mafia. That's why nobody did it before them.

(About the "hiding rapes & assaults" thing, do they still do that? They tried it here and it backfired quite strongly (as it should), so now they have a policy to help the police on those cases. If they are indeed doing that somewhere, well, maybe people should look at the other end of the problem, it's way more effective to fix it there.)

>>Oh, for sure. The investor should sue, any driver that feels exploited should think about it (but most will be better by simply changing to a competitor), and the government sure as hell should do its work.

So, are you saying that just because someone has recourse that acting immorally is OK, and because that recourse exists, we shouldn't hate on them?

I have an attny friend who took a case against Uber. In a liberal US state with strong worker and consumer protections, it still had to go through multiple layers of appeal to the state's supreme court until they finally got a settlement from Uber. It would have been literally impossible unless the plaintiff was very rich, or the attny hadn't taken the case on contingency/pro bono basis (IDK which he did).

Hordes of unethical people like the Uber executives will fight everything tooth & nail, legally or not.

They do not deserve respect in a civilized society merely because they manage to make money. Any clan of asshats can make money by exploitative and illegal means.

>>They would be squashed (literally) by the taxi mafia. Just because the "taxi mafia" is bad also does not mean that it is OK to impose bad consequences on everyone else to fight them. If the taxi mafia were the only ones harmed, maybe OK, but that group has harmed a lot of people.

> So, are you saying that just because someone has recourse that acting immorally is OK

It's certainly not ok. But I'm certainly not losing sleep over it, because the worst case is really not that bad.

Anyway, I do encourage people to look at alternatives to work for, and I will start to lose my sleep if I see my government's attitude changing.

> Hordes of unethical people like the Uber executives will fight everything tooth & nail, legally or not.

Yeah, and if you look carefully, the root of the problem here is not inside Uber. I keep hopping some high-profile criminal acts on exactly the correct way to disrupt the Justice system and for it to change into something more democratic, but well, that's pretty unlikely. Odds are getting higher that my country will get a plain old revolution to change that, what is a much worse option.

>>I keep hopping some high-profile criminal acts on exactly the correct way to disrupt the Justice system and for it to change into something more democratic, but well, that's pretty unlikely.

I'd agree that this is extremely unlikely in any country, and even conceiving & detailing such a plan, nevermind executing it perfectly to obtain a desired effect seems impossible in that the possible actions do not overlap with any solutions.

>> Odds are getting higher that my country will get a plain old revolution to change that

What country is that? It may be necessary. That said, just because most of an elite is unethical doesn't give some sub-group license to be so, at least in my book.

> but outright exploited workers/drivers

Out of curiosity, what coercive power does Uber wield that allows them to exploit workers all while non-exploitative employers have struggled to find anyone to hire? We've been living through what has been possibly the best job market in history for most of Uber's existence. Locally, we've been at full employment for nearly a decade now (less a few months during the height of COVID). It's certainly not a matter of "They have no other choice".

Uber was founded in the wake of a global financial meltdown. The same crisis that begat amazon’s mobile retiree workforce (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/02/nomadl...) and in general the concept of the “gig economy”. The recession created a backlog of job-seekers, so competition for the good jobs was tight - the end result was having to settle for lower paying jobs with less prospects - i.e. gig economy work (https://www.npr.org/2022/07/08/1110610504/jobs-friday-gen-z-...)

“Full employment” doesn’t accurately describe the last decade. Worker power was maybe never lower than it was between 2008 and 2020.

> Worker power was maybe never lower than it was between 2008 and 2020.

Wages blew inflation out of the water through the later half of that period, so I'm not sure that tracks. Wages struggle to keep up with inflation, let alone beat it, when workers don't have much power. The reality is that the job market was very strong from the mid-2010s onward, save the COVID shutdown period. Although, obviously, not uniformly so.

It is true that the job market was difficult at the beginning of Uber's existence, which is why I said "most of" not "all of". I suppose what you're saying is that the exploitation was short-lived during their early days or limited to certain local markets?

> I suppose what you're saying is that the exploitation was short-lived during their early days?

Not at all what I’m saying.

I’m saying 2008-2020 was a bi-modal situation. Just like the COVID shutdown was: recall how for many workers, it meant working from home and a buildup of funds because there was nowhere to spend it. For another group it meant struggling, gig work, moving back in with parents, and draining your savings - because their entire industry was just GONE. Depending on what numbers you look at, and at what resolution, you see the first group, the second group, or both.

So wages went up during the 2010-2020 period, but for who? Minimum wage didn’t keep up with inflation in most places during that period. More lower paying jobs, less overall power. What are you going to do, quit this $10/hour job and go work at another $10/hour job? Why bother

> Minimum wage didn’t keep up with inflation in most places during that period.

Locally, minimum wage increased 50% over that period. Inflation was 17% over the same period. Like I asked before, maybe they only exploited workers in certain markets? There is no evidence of the bi-modal situation that you refer to locally. Obviously not all locales are equal, but the remark is presented without local information, hence wanting to know more about what it means. Does Uber treat workers like gold in some markets?

> What are you going to do, quit this $10/hour job and go work at another $10/hour job? Why bother

The reason you'd go to the other $10/hr job is to not face the same exploitation found at Uber. If all jobs on the market are seen as being equally fair, you're not being exploited... You might not be worth what you wish you were, but that's not what exploitation is.

I’m glad in your area minimum wage has beaten inflation - I’d argue it actually hasn’t, because to my knowledge minimum wage hasn’t kept up with inflation anywhere. It may have gone up 50% in the past ten years, but it languished for decades before that. But that’s a side point.

On the main point - first in most US states minimum wage has not kept up with inflation.

Second - does minimum wage apply to gig workers in your location? Because in most places they have successfully classified their employees as “contractors”.

As to your point, uber is in many many places in the world - and the degree at which they have exploited their workers is variable. Where I am, uber costs about the same as a regular taxi did before uber arrived. But taxis drivers made and do make more than uber drivers. That sounds like a middle man got in and lowered wages. The same work, less money for workers, more for middle men? That is exploitation.

> It may have gone up 50% in the past ten years, but it languished for decades before that.

I appreciate your attempt to find some kind of reply, but, locally, minimum wage is up 1,567% since the first year it was in effect. Inflation is up only 810% over the same period. That's a substantial real gain.

> Second - does minimum wage apply to gig workers in your location?

As of a couple of months ago, yes. But, really, was anyone turning on their car for less than minimum wage before? You'd be losing money hand over fist doing that. There is no purpose in driving for Uber if you are losing money. Doing nothing at all is the clear winner in that scenario.

> Because in most places they have successfully classified their employees as “contractors”.

Which is fair. It's clearly a contractor position by every measure, and remains a contractor position here even with the recent laws surrounding those contracted services. As you can see, contractor doesn't have to mean a free-for-all. Contractors can be given worker rights too.

> But taxis drivers made and do make more than uber drivers. That sounds like a middle man got in and lowered wages.

Taxis, in many jurisdictions, have historically held a monopoly/oligopoly. That sounds more like new competition has increased competitiveness, which doesn't come as any surprise. A lowered price isn't the same as exploitation, though.

> But, really, was anyone turning on their car for less than minimum wage before? You'd be losing money hand over fist doing that.

Yet people were. That’s literally what we’re talking about here. Because starvation was the other option. Burning your capital (i.e. your car) to the ground was a sensible choice given the other options.

> A lowered price isn't the same as exploitation

See my other comment. It isn’t exploitation, unless someone else is getting rich off it. Which they were.

> Burning your capital (i.e. your car) to the ground was a sensible choice given the other options.

But that brings us back to the top. If you're going to burn your car to the ground, why not burn it by driving it to an employer? The farmer at the edge of the city has been paying $25-30 per hour (even pre-pandemic), sometimes more, to anyone willing to show up – and still, nobody shows up.

It might not be the most desirable work, and maybe you're not quitting your developer job over it, but compared to losing money driving for Uber because you're in a crunch? You're not losing money making $25-30 per hour in an employment situation, even with some commute required to get there.

As we have discussed multiple times, not all locations are the same, but the question: "Does Uber treat its drivers like gold in some markets?" remains outstanding. There is an implication that Uber is exploitative everywhere (perhaps to varying degrees), and if that's the case, why so where the job market seeks workers elsewhere?

> It isn’t exploitation, unless someone else is getting rich off it.

That's not in line with the common definition of exploitation, and even if you want to use your pet definition, saying that all client-worker relationships are exploitative isn't particularly useful.

> That's not in line with the common definition of exploitation

What’s that definition?

I’m using exploitation in the common sense of “treating someone unfairly” or “making use of someone for your own gain”.

Work relationships are not always exploitive. Ideally they are mutually beneficial. Sometimes they’re slightly skewed where one party profits a little more than they other. None of that is what we’re talking about.

> Sometimes they’re slightly skewed where one party profits a little more than they other.

I imagine they wish they could profit. Uber isn't profitable. They lose stupid amounts of money. It subsists on investments made by capitalists looking to metaphorically burn up their car. Given your definition, if the workers were making more than nothing they would be the ones exploiting Uber.

While your definitions are correct, your interpretation is not. "Fair" in economics isn't some moral position. It simply refers to where people generally agree. If Uber isn't meeting its agreements with the workers then there may be a case for exploitation, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Your point, if I interpret correctly, seems to be that the workers are making agreements that you wouldn't agree to.

> If all jobs on the market are seen as being equally fair, you're not being exploited

That’s one interpretation of the data. Another would be that a lack of worker power is preventing wage increases. How does your interpretation of the data handle the fact that people on the capital side of the economy - i.e. uber ceos and shareholders - are getting rich off all those $10 hour jobs? There is clearly lots of money in the system… it’s just not going to the workers

Minimum wage arguments are a red herring in this economy. No one except the young, disabled, and felons are getting paid minimum wage now. Looking at prevailing "low skill" wages, they more than doubled for starting positions in my area since 2010. From something like $8 in 2010 to something like $16-17 today.

Do the young, disabled, and felons deserve to suffer so you can get a coffee for 50c cheaper?

And you forgot immigrants, the other large group working minimum wage jobs.

Good point re: immigrants! I was making an inflation/wages argument, not a value-based one here. The prevailing minimum wage (for 95% of "low skill" jobs) is significantly different than federal minimum wages.

I think my point was actually a little off as well. Framing it as someone suffering for your cheap goods. Some things ARE like that. Fast fashion's $6 t-shirts come to mind. But service industry stuff like your cup of coffee - it's usually more like: does someone have to suffer so that you can get your cup of coffee and someone can become VERY rich off it.

that's just not true. Maybe in some areas, definitely not in others. Do you actually know a lot of people working at CVS or dollar stores or supermarkets, etc? Wawa is paying $15 an hour and every single other place in my area is significantly below that

Is the implication here that founding a company during hard financial times is exploitative because workers are willing to work for less?

It does seem in many people's world view the only way to not exploit workers is to not hire them in the first place.

You think you’re caricaturing my view but yes - that’s true. Employment is exploitation, and we all know that. Why else would we all seek situations where we are shareholders or partner in a business? Because ownership is power, and using your power to profit off someone else’s labor is exploitation.

>You think you’re caricaturing my view but yes - that’s true.

That doesn't make sense though. A worker can choose not to work and do nothing, same as if the "exploitative" job wasn't offered at all. Are you saying the existence of the choice is immoral, and that someone else should decide whether or not a job is a good use of their time?

First off, Uber existing and me choosing not to work for them isn’t the same thing as uber NOT existing. They’re taking up space, driving labor markets, altering our basic perception of what work is. They’re not some garage startup providing another option - they’re leveraging billions and billions of dollars of capital and shaping the world around them.

Second, the logic you just used could easily justify feudal serfdom. Does the existence of the choice to become a serf make the lord immoral? If your line of reasoning can be used to justify modes of living that we all agree are bad, perhaps it’s a flawed line of reasoning?

>They’re taking up space, driving labor markets, altering our basic perception of what work is.

Yes, because a larger number individuals choose to work for them instead of not work. If everyone (or even just a simple majority) decided not to work for them, then the company would likely die.

But to your point, I don't agree that the existence of Uber warps the labor landscape in such a way that it removes previously available jobs in other sectors. It would make them more available (and employers more desperate), if other workers moved from those jobs to work for Uber.

>Second, the logic you just used could easily justify feudal serfdom.

I don't know enough about feudal serfdom to comment on that, but I would point out that you haven't shown where my logic is wrong/flawed. Only that you think it justifies something bad. I would ask that you point out the flaw in the logic instead.

> you haven't shown where my logic is wrong/flawed. Only that you think it justifies something bad. I would ask that you point out the flaw in the logic instead.

That it can justify something bad is the flaw. For example, racism isn’t bad because it’s logically flawed. Depending on your core beliefs, something I’m not going to be able to change, it may be the logical conclusion of them. The reason it’s bad is because it is used to justify mistreatment of others.

You’re on your own dissecting if you believe in something that can justify feudalism because of bad core beliefs or because of bad logic.

Racism is bad because it is logically flawed, and the (im)morality of it derives from this logic. The logic is simple: individual behavior cannot be inferred by any prejudice against their group. From that, the immorality of racism is clear.

You are putting the horse before the cart by saying that something is bad first, regardless of whether or not it is logical. If you are saying feudalism is bad (again, I don't know enough on the subject to speak about it), but it is consistent with my logic, then you have to explain how the logic is flawed, which you have already asserted in your previous post.

> individual behavior cannot be inferred by any prejudice against their group

That's exactly what was describing as a "core belief". I share that belief, but plenty of people don't. If you hold the opposite core belief "individual behavior can be inferred from a person's group membership" bam you've got a logical chain that leads to however far down the racism spiral you want to go.

There is no logic that can prove or disprove which of those two is "correct". Empirical evidence, maybe? But that involves changing a core belief - you can show me mountains of evidence, but like anyone I'll discount the evidence that disagrees and overvalue the stuff that does. It's a long road, far too long for the HN comments section.

> You are putting the horse before the cart by saying that something is bad first, regardless of whether or not it is logical.

I'm not. As best as any human can do I am attempting to put my core beliefs first (examining them for faults and prejudices), and following logical chains to end up at my morality. Within this conversation I'm saying that I can dismiss an idea without tracing it's logic back to first principal because there is a logical chain between it and a different idea (feudalism) that I have dismissed already.

The implication is that one of the reasons THIS company was so successful was that there was a whole cohort of people without any options due to hard financial times. Gig economy companies used that crack in the economy to wedge in and displace good jobs with temp work.

Not parent but I read this as an answer to GPs question: “what coercive power does Uber wield that allows them to exploit workers all while non-exploitative employers have struggled to find anyone to hire?”

Hiring during a recession is not in and of it self any more exploitative then hiring during an economic up swing. However, during a recession you can easier get away exploitation which you wouldn’t have gotten away with if the labor conditions were better and the jobs were plenty. This is what Uber exploited.

I will add to that that Uber also played with the psychology of their workers, exploited addictive behavior by “gamifying” the work. This creates a cognitive dissonance among the worker which “tricks” workers into accepting conditions they otherwise wouldn’t have.

I mean, it is kind of shitty, no? Surely we can do better as a society... Is the optimal state for corporations to hoard when times are good and then to feast when times are bad, killing off their smaller rivals?

In the extreme case of this, we end up in a world where quick trip buys up all available fuel during a hurricane...

I agree we can do better (and we will), but other than small incremental improvements, I personally have not seen a compelling full refactoring that would be objectively better yet.

There's a lot of moving parts... the good of everyone vs the good of the individual vs the good of the present vs the good of the future. All of that is clouded by people with poor reasoning or malicious reasoning, and the fact that nobody can predict the future, and nobody wants to be held accountable if something fails.

Uber started out as a black cab service for high end customers with high end workers. UberX came out in 2012 well into the recovery of the global financial meltdown, at a time when Facebook IPO'd for $100 Billion

I think people can have healthy cognitive dissonance that says, "Uber showed how much unfair power companies are willing to build and exploit" as well as, "I don't think anyone could've taken on the taxi mafia without doing similar things."

To me, those statements don't eschew accountability, it just acknowledges sometimes we send companies/people to the gallows that did both good and bad things. Gallows here being a metaphor, I doubt the political elite that were recruited to Uber (and other companies) will be held accountable or mentioned any more than in passing in the press. That said, I do expect to see policy changes and regulations in the future regarding mixing lobbying, recruiting highly connected staffers, etc

To be clear, I don't think there's some conspiratorial undercurrent of former Uber engineers here acting in coordinated fashion to cover up the story of what they're affiliated with on a place as relatively small as HN. For as popular as this forum is with nerds, the only thing we're really reknown for is the contrarian nature of the forum and how that contrarian nature sometimes (most of the time?) picks big winners. HN doesn't decide the future of hacker culture, it's just a voice in observing and dissecting it.

I've never used Uber by myself (I think I've used it twice when someone else was organizing transport) as I've heard a lot about exploitation of workers in the beginning so I decided to just not use it.

However, as I dreaded calling a taxi service - I never knew, which taxi service is good/had good prices, it was frequent, that taxi driver would take you long way just so you would pay more, and of course old mercedes which smelled awful was a norm here where I live. Some people talked about how taxis are awful but nothing could be changed.

Just then Uber was introduced here, few months later we have multiple Taxi application, where you see how much you will pay in advance, you can call taxi with ease for exact time. Thanks Uber, you can go now ;)

If the main driving force leaves(Uber), its just a matter of time until all the companies revert back to the old standard. It will be a slow boiling frog but it will happen.

> Meta - I am honestly surprised, and sightly appalled at the general attitude in these comments (and also in yesterday's thread).

>Uber has essentially not just broken laws, but outright exploited workers/drivers... and people comment "Aah but the local taxi mafia was bad"...??!? I'm sorry but that does not justify exploiting workers. That does not justify using political influence to enter/gain markets. This isn't some messiah coming to save us all from the "horridness of local transport".

Except this isn't a david against goliath story like you're implying.

The fact is that those laws are not just practically wrong, but they are also morally wrong, and serve primarily to protect entrenched interests, both from the taxi companies, and of the workers who you claim incorrectly are being "exploited".

The fact is, if anyone is "using political influence to enter/gain markets" it's the established interests. The taxi companies, the workers, etc... Those very regulations that you are complaining are being broken by Uber, are the the problem!

I don't like Uber. I think it's a bad business. But its effects on muscling in on the taxi industry, and its blatant breaking of these immoral and economically ruinous laws are quite frankly commendable.

Would that we had more companies like this in other areas of the economy with entrenched interests.

I’m not sure those are the same laws your parent is referring to. Uber was caught engaging in illegal lobbying (which in my vocabulary is simply called bribing officials) and labor violations. In addition to those they also frequently broke traffic laws and transport laws. The former two are the more worrying and what most people are angry about.

The latter two are also a concern given the total disregard and emphasis on private profit over public good. Where I come from there are pretty restrictive drug laws which public health officials have frequently pointed out are harmful for people with a substance abuse disorder. In response a non profit organization took a direct action and illegally provided safe use shelters for harm reduction with on-site medical professionals to observe safety. This is an example of somebody braking the laws for a public good.

What Uber did was for their own profit, and profit alone, irregardless of any public benefits. In fact there are examples of cities divesting in their public transit systems using ride hailing as an excuse. This is an example of Uber resulting in net harm, regardless of the effect they had on the traditional taxi companies.

I don't believe that deciding whether Uber behaved ethically or not is really a useful question (they clearly didn't) in a market where no one does. I look at alternatives. And when the alternative is a corrupt and massively inconvenient government backed cartel, then I will favor Uber. If they had acted like saints, we would be stuck with the cab cartel. I also don't consider the law as the decider of morality, or I would have to judge myself as immoral for a lot of things that aren't. And when the current law is a government cartel, I don't care when someone breaks it.

I also don't buy that Uber is any worse to its workers than the cab cartel was. And "exploit" is a nebulous term. If you want to say that Uber "exploits" its workers, you have to say how. I don't see providing a platform where drivers can choose when they want to drive as exploitative. I don't see the pricing system as exploitative, as they can quit at any time. I don't see employment systems where you are paid for the amount of work you do, rather than time spent, as exploitative.

> I don't believe that deciding whether Uber behaved ethically or not is really a useful question (they clearly didn't) in a market where no one does. I look at alternatives. And when the alternative is a corrupt and massively inconvenient government backed cartel, then I will favor Uber.

You're making the point well, that they're not necessarily worse than the system(s) they disrupted.

- - - -

> If you want to say that Uber "exploits" its workers, you have to say how.

Here is one answer from "The Market Fairy Will Not Solve the Problems of Uber and Lyft" (2016):

> They don’t pay the cost of their capital.

> The wages they pay to their drivers are less than the depreciation of the cars and the expense of keeping the drivers fed, housed, and healthy. They pay less than minimum wage in most markets, and, in most markets, that is not enough to pay the costs of a car plus a human.

> These [sharing economy] business models are ways of draining capital from the economy and putting them into the hands of a few investors and executives. They prey on desperate people who need money now, even if the money is insufficient to pay their total costs. Drivers are draining their own reserves to get cash now, but, hey, they gotta eat and pay the bills.

https://www.ianwelsh.net/the-market-fairy-will-not-solve-the...

> They don’t pay the cost of their capital.

If so Uber will eventually cease to exist, and this is not an ethical issue

The depreciation and operating cost of a car and the living expenses of a driver are variable by the choices of the driver. I have taken Uber rides in new SUV's and in old Priuses that have little depreciation value left in them. Is Uber supposed to pay more for drivers with less efficient / more expensive / newer cars? Is Uber supposed to pay you more when you move into a more expensive apartment? Is Uber supposed to pay you more if you are married or have kids to feed (which would be illegal). Decisions on what car to drive and where to live are economic decisions made by the individual driver, and if they lose money by deciding wrong, that is not Uber's fault.

> Drivers are draining their own reserves to get cash now, but, hey, they gotta eat and pay the bills.

So basically this is like the economic profile of taking a loan. You get cash now in exchange for additional costs paid later. If Uber's deal was similar to a payday loan in its cost/benefit ration, I would say you have a point here. But if it's more similar to a regular loan, then no. But this gets back to my point that it is variable by driver, and it doesn't make sense for Uber to offer higher rates to some drivers based on their choices. So basically I assume what you want here is for Uber to refuse to take on a driver that they calculate will lose money based on their vehicle expenses. I don't think this is entirely unreasonable, but IMO it's on the driver to make that decision, and Uber is not ethically responsible.

I think this is a perspective you can only really take with a fair bit of privilege since you continue to state that all of these are choices individual drivers are making. For what its worth I share that privilege to a certain extent in my response here. The reality is these choices are not as transparent as you are illustrating them.

Say you lose your job and your pension and all the things that make your life comfortable tomorrow. You have a choice to wait it out, maybe take some time to learn an advanced skill and find a new line of work. However, you need money now to take care of a sick family member. So you start driving Uber...

Yes the mechanics of the rideshare platforms are such that you can start earning money now, but the cost is as you pointed out, to you in the future. So then the question is this like a regular loan, or is it more exploitative like payday loan. I think the lack of transparency and the circumstances one has to be in to even consider these choices are such that make it appear, at least to me, more like the latter than the former.

I think what the person responding to you wants, I know what I would want, is for Uber/Lyft to pay a bit more to take these costs into account. However this would raise the cost to riders, which have already been artificially subsidized for some time [0]. Uber won't do this because it would, to your first point, cause the company to become insolvent.

The assumption that poor people are not making rational choices is just plain wrong. I think the reality is closer to - people are trying to make the best choice they can, but often have a limited number of really bad choices to chose from. Sure some drivers drive an SUV instead of a Prius, but that may have been a function of the incentives presented by the app itself (i.e. qualifying for more exclusive rides, the appearance of making more money from this vehicle, its the only car you have now, etc. etc.).

A company that takes advantage of limited choices, and then offers you an option that appears to temporarily solve your problem now, at great personal expense to you later is in my view acting in bad faith because they are to some effect misrepresenting the service they are providing to their drivers. it is this point, in my view, that makes it look more like the payday loan than a "regular" loan.

[0] https://slate.com/business/2022/05/uber-subsidy-lyft-cheap-r...

You put it so much better than I would have, cheers!

If all the actors are bad, it is reasonable to assume that there is something wrong with the market. And if that is the case, it should be straight forward for the government to step in, either with new or changed regulation, or—even more straight forward—public alternatives.

So asking if Uber behaved ethically is indeed a useful question (even more so if the answer is obvious) because if they did, and if their behavior is indeed common in the industry, it provides a pretty solid justification for the government to jump in and improve things, where the free market isn’t.

But the government did jump in, and they didn't improve things. They created the cab cartels which is what made it so shitty in the first place.

I think people are asking them to jump in in a different way, or at least that’s my reading of the situation.

People are asking for general labor laws which prohibits companies from misusing contractor status as a way of bypassing benefits and reasonable work hours.

People are asking the for a public alternative to taxi service, including more frequent buses that service wider areas, longer into the night so they won’t have to use the taxis so much.

Note that better labor laws will also fix the situation for the traditional taxi companies, as they won’t be able to exploit their workers either by e.g. a weird medallion system. You’ll probably have to pay more then previously for your cab ride (as the driver needs fair wages for their work), but that’s where the public alternative to cab rides comes in.

The worst thing the taxi mafia did to me was force me to use cash instead of card a lot of the time... but that was due to the credit card transacion fee mafia hah

About a third of my female friends had an unsafe experience with a taxi driver.

In my location (West Coast, USA) local tradespeople will give me a 10% discount for paying with cash. That's more than they'd pay in check or credit card processing fees. I assumed that taxi drivers' preference for cash was for basically the same reason: under-reporting income to tax authorities.

Eggs get broken. I've been both on the giving and receiving end of that. It's part of existence and I don't think anyone is surprised by this or justifying it, it's just hilarious how shocked people are by revealations like these. I suspect most corps are just as crooked as Uber but Uber just got caught. Uber shaking up the taxi market was good, but it had bad consequences for -some- drivers, both things can exist you know? I think HN has some trouble feeling bad when people were -never- forced to drive for uber.

wrote this below but worth posting here -

A lot of the conversation here is based on anecdata (interactions with uber drivers or cabs) or people projecting what its like to be a driver on uber and they are unwittingly being exploited.

I worked at a company that provided products to uber, lyft and doordash drivers, and personally interviewed well over 200 drivers, (along with having access to detailed data on a much larger dataset). The vast majority of drivers we talked to did not feel like they were being 'exploited' and generally liked the flexibility of the gig economy. Most workers were part time, working to supplement income from other jobs or in between other gigs, in fact when i was there, most drivers worked less than 6 months before stopping. I would say these people have a much better sense of whether they are being exploited than people who are not in their shoes.

There was a small but important minority (we called them 'professionals') for whom driving had become their full time profession (most were not cab drivers before) who were perpetually annoyed by uber and their main gripes tended to be the changing promotions systems, and algorithmic changes that reduced/limited profitable rides (like airport pickups) and just general loss of control.

Obviously taxi drivers will not be happy talking about uber, they were beneficiaries of an insane and unjust guild system that Uber finally broke down.

Unless you can show me someone forced to drive for uber, any claims of worker exploitation are incredibly suspect.

Uh, what's wrong with Taxis? I didn't use them often and perhaps I got lucky, but they always showed up on time and I always arrived in time (although, at least on two occasions, I wondered whether I would arrive alive -- the ride on Crete from the airport still haunts me twenty years later). With Uber I would face the same risks, plus drivers not trained for commercial transport of persons. And boy, did I observe some utterly clueless Uber drivers.

You're going to need a decent definition of exploitation or better word if you want to make any Headway with people.

Some people claim that every employer is exploiting their workers

It is a separate but related issue then the law-breaking. They need to be discussed separately.

Most people recognize that there are bad laws that should be broken, and bad laws that should be changed.

If Uber broke a bad law, the most important solution is to fix the law. If Uber broke a good law, the most important solution is to stop them.

We have some good employment laws that Uber is skirting by classifying their employees as "independent contractors".

As someone who always wanted to be an independent contractor but can't, I especially don't like those laws.

I think the most charitable interpretation of them is legal duct tape over other bad laws. The most obvious examples are tax laws and incentives that tie Healthcare to employers.

I think Uber totally flipped the power balance between drivers and customers. Before Uber etc., taxi drivers usually had a good experiences driving while customers usually had horrible experiences being passengers.

Now the situation has flipped. When most people think back to taxis before Uber existed, they'll unfortunately rather accept poor working conditions for the drivers than going back to the taxi hellhole they still remember.

This is a very local take. Some places, cab drivers were being taken advantage of even more than Uber does (by the medallion holder). In other places, the driver had a lot better gig pre-uber.

Agree, I should have phrased it a little differently.

My main point was that customers aren't being treated badly like with taxis anymore, and they'll accept a lot of exploitation due to that.

maybe the government regulation was the unfair business competition and abuse of workers in the first place because i mean this has been a slow moving avalanche that nobody did anything about again because all the rich people have rocks to hide behind.. goofook

im a ex pro gamer who broke into fort knox with no intentions

Call me naive, but if Uber exploits workers, why don’t they choose some other employer? If it’s the workers’ best choice, then thank goodness for Uber, right?

Can’t speak for the rest of the world, but in South Africa the Uber drivers I spoke to have very few, if any, other opportunities.

But that argument portrays Uber as a godsend for such people. It sounds like without Uber, they might go hungry.

But that argument suggests Uber could exploit them if Uber were morally bankrupt.

Even then, some drivers were not happy with their margins. I would say that they are aware that they are being exploited.

I think I'm not surprised, and I share the sentiment, largely for 2 reasons: (A) I see Uber as significantly less "exploitive" than most or all other work relationships, and I think the term is quite frankly confusing, and (B) I think overall that if laws are bad/unjust it is good to defy them.

Re: (A) If you really zoom out to the history of labor, it is a huge stretch to say Uber drivers are "exploited". They have almost perfect clarity on what they are being paid to do, they do it and it matches VERY closely the expectations, and they get paid in a timely fashion on the agreed-upon timeline. They have no lock-in, and can quit on a moment's notice. There are so many drivers globally who use Uber and vote with their labor. Frankly, it's generally very easy work too, compared to almost every other job (I'm sure it has its moments).

If I were to try and make the Steelman argument for why workers are "exploited", I can come up with basically 2 things: 1) Workers are incapable of deciding what is the right work for their situation. 2) No worker should earn below $x for any reason, and it is better that they be unemployed. In my experience, I have found that people are very savvy about money when it comes to earnings. Where people have issues is long term planning, but short-term, I have found people are very good at "this hack makes my job easier/make me earn more". So I don't buy either of these arguments, I believe it is generally a pessimistic and paternalistic view of workers.

I don't believe using the term "exploited" is generally helpful here, as it is an emotional term and not specific enough to address. If you were to break it down, we could have a real discussion.

Re: (B) You can't really look at the laws for moral guidance, There are many bad laws out there, that many many people disregard (e.g. the average US commits 3 felonies a day https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...). It is totally possible in many cases to break laws justly and comply with laws unjustly. You can look at the "illegal" actions of Rosa Parks and Gandhi for extreme examples of just lawbreaking. There are laws that are absurd, for example in New York during COVID, it was both illegal to wear a mask and illegal to not wear a mask. But there are many other smaller examples in people's lives where they think breaking the law is the right moral thing. And the reason most people support Uber's "law breaking" is that it was NET better for everyone than the old system, both drivers AND passengers. This passes a moral "smell test" for me. If one action is illegal, and the other legal, but everyone is better off doing the illegal thing, then the law is the problem. The legalization of Marijuana is another example of trying to reconcile this type of thing. Everyone is better off if it is just legal.

You forgot that Uber workers don't receive the minimum benefits and wages required by law because Uber classifies its employees as "independent contractors".

You also forgot that Uber doesn't make clear the costs of insurance, maintenance, depreciation and liability (other to say that it's not on them) which is coincidentally are the most confusing and difficult accounting considerations. Uber is clearly exploiting the lack of business acumen in their drivers.

Uber would hire children if it were legal for the exact same reasons people hired children in the past and the same reasons Uber currently hires people. Their drivers lack awareness and oversight from social and government organizations.

> That does not justify using political influence to enter/gain markets

Which companies do not do this?

At those levels? Not many. And we're talking a company the is not profitable, what Uber is doing in any other market would be called dumping and it's illegal in most of them, and that without beginning with the semi slavery that promotes Uber.

Sorry, but how does that matter?

Just because everyone (theoretically) does it doesn't excuse the behavior.

$224 million was paid for California prop 22. It wasn't all Uber but not many companies at all drop cash like that.

> exploited

That's a completely subjective term that just describes that one part of the transaction does not like the deal that they entered voluntarily. That's why many people, including myself, consider the usage of this term an attempt at manipulation.

In almost any country where it operated or operates, Uber was not and is not a monopoly, neither on taxi clients, nor on labour. There are multiple taxi apps a driver can work for, and many shift between them in a span of one shift. And traditional taxi parks, although lost a significant market share, have not disappeared. Therefore, a price of a driver's labour is still dictated by an open market and not by Uber.

What changed, though, almost everywhere, is taxi apps made the market more fluid and effective, and turned over a lot of mechanisms which taxi drivers used to "exploit" clients. You just have to travel to a city that still mandates government-backed monopoly, like Istanbul, and compare the level of prices, service and reliability to what the ordinary Uber experience is like.

> Uber has essentially not just broken laws

Laws can be, and often are, immoral. And any laws that limit the ability of parties on the free market to transact with each other however they wish, including taxi medallions or similar systems, undoubtedly are.

> that one part of the transaction does not like the deal that they entered voluntarily

The choice between homelessness, starvation, and working an underpaid job is not a choice made voluntarily.

And equating the “exploitation” of slightly higher taxi rates compared with a coercive job… that’s way off the mark. An extra $20 to get from the airport or home from the bar once and a while (talk about transactions entered voluntarily), vs a grueling work environment that pays terrible that you have to do EVERY day to not starve.

> The choice between homelessness, starvation, and working an underpaid job is not a choice made voluntarily.

Homelessness and starvation (even if we accept this argument at face value for drivers in first-world countries) are natural human condition, and Uber, or any other employer, does not become magically responsible for it just because they enter the picture with their job offer.

> An extra $20 to get from the airport or home from the bar once and a while (talk about transactions entered voluntarily), vs a grueling work environment that pays terrible that you have to do EVERY day to not starve.

I believe that everyone should feel sympathy for the poor and contribute to charity. However, this moral choice should be a free choice made by the person herself and not through coercion by government or similar entities.

> Homelessness and starvation (even if we accept this argument at face value for drivers in first-world countries) are natural human condition

WTF?

The natural human condition is subsistence hunting and gathering. The natural human condition is family unit based farming. The natural human condition is feudal serfdom. The natural human condition doesn’t exist because when and where in history do you point your finger and say this is natural.

The majority of human history we would not have considered ourselves homeless, and we would only starve if there was no food. The idea of one person in the group having more than they need and another dying for lack of food was unthinkable.

Don’t look to history to justify your social-darwinian beliefs. It doesn’t have your back.

Not to mention shifting a discussion about commerce to one of charity. Forcing companies to allocate more of their funds to labour vs profit to owners is not charity, that’s worker power operating as a market force.

>The choice between homelessness, starvation, and working an underpaid job is not a choice made voluntarily.

and removing the underpaid job from the equation leaves someone with just homelessness or starvation - clearly a better position, right?

feel free to tip $20 for your uber rides if you feel that helps

False dichotomy. The choice isn’t between an underpaid job, and no job. It’s between an underpaid job, and a well paid job with less profits for shareholders and owners.

If your particular business can’t exist and pay people well, it needs to die to make room for one that can.

And I don’t tip $20 - I ride transit or my bike. And yes it does make me feel better supporting non-exploitive systems and avoiding exploitive ones.

> It’s between an underpaid job, and a well paid job with less profits for shareholders and owners

what reason you have to believe that is in fact the option? there are really quite few businesses with profit margins so high you could meaningfully raise pay purely by reducing profits.

> If your particular business can’t exist and pay people well, it needs to die to make room for one that can.

and how does that unspecified higher-margin business (if one even exists) achieve it? presumably the main way would be to be much smaller, charge higher fees & target more exclusive customers, so that only the rich get the benefits of the business, and vastly fewer people even get the opportunity for a job. sounds great.

trade-offs exist and your inability to acknowledge them is not constructive

> what reason you have to believe that is in fact the option? there are really quite few businesses with profit margins so high you could meaningfully raise pay purely by reducing profits.

What reason do you have to believe that profit margins are so slim?

My evidence for business being able to pay more is the existence of massive inequality. The superyacht seems to argue that there is more to go around than the financial statements indicate.

> That's a completely subjective term that just describes that one part of the transaction does not like the deal that they entered voluntarily.

Voluntary has some shades of gray, especially when there is a power imbalance. Or, they might enter voluntarily, and things go quite ugly, and they feel they need to continue for their lively good.

A "voluntary" contract can still be bullying and coercive.

> Laws can be, and often are, immoral.

This is true but most instances of a company breaking the law are not this. Especially when breaking regulation is key to that company's existence. You can argue that regulation is unjust but it's typically been enacted by the people's duly elected representatives in good faith, and purposefully building a business around breaking it amounts to disrespect.

>A "voluntary" contract can still be bullying and coercive.

I don't think so. The word "coerced" is an adequate replacement for the word "voluntary" in that situation. It can't be both.

I think the issue that the GP poster has (and I have as well), is that "exploitative" is so nebulous that anyone can use it to describe almost anything. Any opportunity that an employer leverages is technically exploitation. Are all low paying jobs exploitative? They will always exist, by virtue of pay scales. But the word "exploitation" implies they should not exist.

The word "exploitative" would be much more useful in conversation if there was a set of clear qualifications (agreed upon by the majority of people) for a job to be exploitative. My understanding is that these qualifications already exist in labor law though.

> The word "coerced" is an adequate replacement for the word "voluntary" in that situation. It can't be both.

Lack of imagination? Lack of life experience? People are coerced into contracts all the time. As I said before, "power imbalance" between parties is a key requirement for this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com