Comment by golergka | Hacker News Reader

Comment by golergka | Hacker News Reader

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> 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.

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