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Comment by colinmhayes | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

> Uber is better than the old system

You forgot to add "in some places".

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