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Comment by yedava | Hacker News Reader

The primary "innovation" of Uber is political, not technological. They've managed to circumvent labor protections and at the same time position themselves as the middleman between drivers and riders.

In another Universe, a technology company would develop software that taxi companies can use to provide the same services that Uber does. But that wouldn't be as profitable as there wouldn't be scope for labor exploitation.

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In this other universe, would the entrenched taxi operators willingly embrace new technology such as this, rather than continuing to provide a sub-par experience enabled by their entrenched position & political lobbying? Because that certainly didn't happen in this universe.

Taxi "companies" were also political innovations, where the medallion system kept supply far below demand and prevented any kind of meaningful competition, allowing drivers free reign to play games like "my cc machine is broken" or "i don't take rides to that destination"

Uber drivers themselves never seem to complain about this. It's almost like those labor protections come with a bunch of other baggage that makes the tradeoff not worth it to them. Of course, it's easy to explain away any perceived 'tradeoffs' with them just being too stupid to know better, but I don't think that's accurate.

There's a lot of Uber drivers in NZ who did complain about this. It's the reason for the court case that the article is about

Concretely, "a lot" in this court case is "4".

Do we have a strong reason to believe that the number of disgruntled drivers is significantly higher in NZ than in other countries? This wouldn't be the first time a few disgruntled people got a government to "fix" a system that the vast majority felt was working fine for them.

> Uber drivers themselves never seem to complain about this

why would they? uber takes more money from the customers than taxis got in the past, pay less to the drivers and less taxes. Everybody pays for uber benefit

Most people don't like being underpaid.

Obviously nobody wants to be underpaid, but not everyone wants to be employee-level on the clock for uber the entire time they're logged in and taking offers.

Moderate disagree. It connects drives with riders much better than before, making taxis viable outside urban cores. There are numerous stories of "try hailing/calling a cab in X scenario" where cabs just wouldn't show up.

The innovation you mention also varies by jurisdiction. In some places, Uber's are licensed taxis, so clearly there's more than just breaking the medallion monopoly.

Sort of like this?: https://drivers.coop/

"We are a driver-owned cooperative in New York City specializing in paratransit and Non-Emergency Medical Transportation."

Like Curb and the numerous taxi specific apps?

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