Gig Companies Violate Workers Rights
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OR could it be that the scheduling, summoning, and advertising infrastructure is actually close to 60% of the cost, and the added convenience of the app is in fact worth the difference in price?
Not same this is the case, but there's more than convenience embedded in markets.
That's ridiculous. "because you didn't end the story by saying you called a cab company and got a big discount by doing it the old fashioned way." is just bad-faith weaseling. Uber is worse in every way than the taxi stands that used to be at airports; now you hail a car via an expensive app and have to wait for them to all jockey to where you are if they don't bail on the way.
Taxi stands still make the most sense at events and leaving mass transit and that's even before considering the ridiculous cost. Visiting europe felt like a breath of fresh air in comparison—technically they have uber, but there was no point in using it because taxis were so prevalent, reliable, and cheap.
However last time I was as Dulles I wanted straight into a taxi, having been burnt the previous time when I ordered uber while going through customs and had to wait for ages.
At Singapore Changi taxi queues can take ages, or no time at all.
In Kenya I waited for an uber for 40 minutes to have it cancelled by the driver as I saw him get close to the airport, with a message saying he had “been arrested”.
I don’t bother with uber in the U.K. any more - very rarely works. Used to be nice and reliable in cities It was in, about 10 years ago.
You can’t draw a conclusion based on personal annecdotes.
Taxis in Shanghai have been largely replaced by app-related taxis. I have no particular knowledge of whether this moved prices up or down.
But there are two obvious changes:
1. It's now possible to get a taxi when it's raining.
2. The app drivers feel free to smoke.
Point 2 is a negative, but point 1 is a huge positive. How do European taxis respond to the rain?
> Taxis in Shanghai have been largely replaced by app-related taxis.
The APP itself isn't the issue, it's the pricing. But it sounds like China has a much healthier market than we have.
> 1. It's now possible to get a taxi when it's raining.
Why would this make so much of a difference? I'm very curious.
> Why would this make so much of a difference? I'm very curious.
I have no idea.† But the fact remains that traditional taxis in Shanghai (1) leave the streets when it's raining; (2) won't stop for you when it's raining if you do see one that hasn't pulled its disappearing act yet; and (3) won't let you in even if they have stopped for you and learned where you want to go. And believe me, getting stranded in the rain sucks.
Rain is common in Shanghai at all times of the year, by the way.
† That is, I have no idea why taxi drivers refuse to take passengers when it's raining. It's obvious why taxi apps will still do so - the app allows you to contact them at all times.
What do you mean? What happens with cabs when it rains where you live.
> scheduling, summoning, and advertising infrastructure is actually close to 60% of the cost
Funny story about that - "pre-booking" an Uber for a future date costs something like an additional 20% on top of the actual fare. Made that mistake once and never again.
Addendum from my funny story: It doesn't even really guarantee there will be a driver for you. A few years ago I "pre-booked" a car for an airport ride at an inconvenient time, only to have it cancelled as the driver was meant to show up. Luckily driver were more available than I expected they would be and I had another within a few minutes, but I could have been really screwed over.
I highly doubt the scheduling, summoning, and advertising infra is close to 60% of the cost. I like Uber, I've been a customer for a long time. It's invaluable when visiting a new place imo. I also think they can and should pay their drivers more.
OC has something they must do: get from point A to point B. If your choices for doing so have been restricted by anticompetitive behavior on the part of a market player, you will have to do so by a less consumer-friendly set of rules.
More info: https://www.senatedems.co/newsroom/icymi-bill-to-improve-gig...
My nephew used to commute to work via rideshare, and would usually work outside deals with regular drivers. Knowing how much each person in the rideshare might save would definitely incentivize out-of-network rides.
So the enshittification has come full circle - Uber is now priced basically the same as traditional taxis and takes a possibly bigger cut for themselves without any of the overhead or capex of a traditional taxi company. Filing this away under: don't ever believe tech company hype.
What they never were, was "the underdog fighting taxi mafia". That's just propaganda. They beat "taxi mafias", plural, with divide-and-conquer, market after market, and they did that as a multinational corporation with ~infinite money supply thanks to VC funding.
Uber is a story of the Goliath going from town to town and beating everyone's Davids.
I don't trust those companies with important stuff anymore, I either go straight for public transport, or in some cases (airport) I pre-book an early enough departure to still be able to catch a bus to airport if the driver doesn't show.
On the other hand, Waymo has never scammed me; I've never had a conflict with a shitty Waymo driver; and in fact I'm rather happy to participate in their testing phase and give generous feedback about minor things that could be better after each trip.
Here they all are required by law to have their cost stayed up front, printed on a sticker in the window.
Most of them have had apps for booking, with geolocation, ETA, and mobile payments for >10 years now.
Never had a single refusal, or complaint, or incorrect drop-off. Even in places which are lower class run-down areas.
They have always sent a wheelchair-compatible car when requested.
Uber was able to offer "reliable pickups, not complaining about your destination, and not having 'broken' credit card readers" for a competitive price by a combination of:
- Not servicing people with mobility issues
- Not servicing unprofitable areas in the city
- Subsidizing fares with their ~infinite VC money supply to a degree that didn't even pretend to be sustainable
- Offering unsustainably favorable conditions to drivers to create the initial impression of premium, high-quality service
- Blatantly breaking the local laws, and using their ~infinite VC money supply to avoid law enforcement and tie up any cases against them
The last three points being a plain and obvious bait&switch. The business was based on hoping they'll destroy local transportation businesses and gain reputation with people to make regulators face public backlash faster than they run out of money.
Market by market, they succeeded to a greater or lesser degree, and then perfectly predictably, they behaved like the paragons of honesty and virtue they always were: the drivers got shafted, service went to shit, and all good it did was to replace local businesses with multinational franchise of shit pseudo-taxi.
A McDonald'ification of the taxi market, if you like, except McDonald's doesn't suck as much.
But once that was dead and all taxi competitors no longer have to pay medallion-holding gentry for the right to do business? Uber is just a massive pile of debt and some slick marketing that adds very little value. Now that my local taxi companies have mobile software basically as good as Uber plus decades of established good name in my community? I've no reason to use Uber.
The only people who ever fight mafias, are up-and-coming crime syndicates themselves.
I wonder if a state could cap their cut of the fare to say, $1. Index it to CPI every 3 years, so they don't have future legislators itching to bump that number up so often. Would this be fought out in courts, by secret meeting lobbyists, or would they just add a bunch of fees to it in such a way that it becomes opaque again (the fees could be paid by the driver, for instance, so it's totally under the radar of any customers/passengers)?
It's incomparable. I talked local taxi drivers and they told me they just paid a flat monthly rate like €200-€300/month.
And as for Colorado, I’ve had my share of Uber bills there. It’s 30% tolls, 40% Uber, 30% Driver in my experience.
Mysteriously I’m having trouble finding much reference to it now, although I remember it being discussed at the time… the only real discussion I can find now is recent and vaguely agenda-flavored [0]. Complete with extra-weaselly non-denial denials from Uber’s PR.
> In 2024, American media non-profit More Perfect Union conducted an experiment to discover whether Uber’s algorithms facilitate wage discrimination. It gathered seven experienced Uber drivers together in a high-traffic area in Los Angeles and asked each of them to open up the app and place their phones on a table next to each other. It found that Uber offered the same rides 46 times to multiple drivers, and that there was discrepancy between fares for 63% of those trips. Uber refuted that this was discrimination, saying in a blog post that differing pay was due to GPS discrepancies.
So the drivers bid each other down, while the riders bid each other up through “surge pricing” (even as they’re individually priced according to their willingness to pay). Nice market position if you can get it…
It’s a good party trick if they’ve clocked you, like they apparently have me, as a total cheapskate. As a rider I routinely see prices 50%-70% of those Uber offers to my richer and less price-sensitive friends when we call for the exact same ride from the same place at the same time, whether I call first or second…
[0] https://novaramedia.com/2025/03/06/taken-for-a-ride-inside-u...
Yea, natural monopolies that are somehow allowed to exist will do that.
That competitors exist does not make them not a natural monopoly. Even the fact that the are not a current monopoly does not mean they are not a natural monopoly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
>Specifically, an industry is a natural monopoly if the total cost of one firm, producing the total output, is lower than the total cost of two or more firms producing the entire production.
The industry of operating a network connecting independent taxi service providers to taxi service clients is the natural monopoly, simple because the cost to operate the service is wildly scalable, and become more useful as more people use them, as all network-based industries are.
Ebay fees are upwards of 10-15%. Amazon fees can be as high as 45% Apple's app store fee can be 15 to 30%
Uber wants to get you coming and going by charging a Sub on the front end and splitting fees on the backend... it's like the worst of capitalism
The issue with gig economy is that, the provider side is either doing it for some extra cash for as a short stint is fine, but people relying on it for survival do not want to shake the boat as they are desperate and have bills to pay and food to put on the table.
Consultants and contractors charge a fixed rate dictated by the work and contract. Gig economy pushes all liabilities on the consultants minus paying for that privilege. The bargaining power is heavily skewed in favor of then platform, hence nothing will change.
There is some pushback happening. A significant US grocery chain has recently launched its in-house grocery delivery where I live, and they have been astonishingly good. They have actual customer service, employees driving liveried vehicles. It's a weird throwback and it works.
This seems like the low hanging fruit that should be resolved immediately.
Though Uber does show how much someone will make before taking a ride, I'm not sure how one would legislate forcing a user to only accept a ride if it's profitable for them after taking gas+depreciation of the vehicle into account. And if someone wants to trade life of the vehicle for income now (pretty much no one takes their car to it's manufactured limit, it's usually age that kills it), shouldn't we allow that?
I think the problem was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_mileage I took an Uber from Newark Airport an hour south to Princeton NJ -- the Uber driver, which being compensated nicely for that ride, now has to get back an hour north, and no rides are "guaranteed" for this trip, so they go back uncompensated. Traditional Taxi services built in the cost of that return trip, but Uber does not from what I can see.
Yes, but one of the problems with these gig platforms is that workers do not consider all the costs and end up seeing the top line instead of bottom line. Many people are unaware of hidden costs such as mileage, wear-and-tear, insurance impacts, etc. Further, some gig workers are so desperate for money that the top line is the only thing that matters at the moment, I empathize with this and it hurts me to think so many fellow citizens get into this spot.
In that case however, drivers would need to have the tools to accurately estimate their costs, such as knowing the time and mileage from where they are to where the rider is and then to where the rider wants to go, just as a contractor needs to know how much lumber he'll need before he bids on framing an addition to a house. And if he's wrong, he generally needs to eat the cost of his mistake.
This would allow drivers to set fees on things like base fare or cancelation fee. And make clear list of penalties like cleaning the car and damages. And possibly any suitable small print legalese too.
None of this happens or will happen, which means that Uber drivers are (or should be) employees not contractors.
In fact, I'm pretty sure you can find this exact same scene of desperate workers bidding on how little they'd take to do a job in Bioshock, as a jab against Objectivism.
The main idea is that you need help right now and shouldn't be obstructed with pensions and healthcare puzzles. I just want you to mow my lawn. Maybe mow it at all my 700 properties. What is the difference?
Honestly, my twentysomething brain thought I was making $bigtime$, when in reality I was whoring my life away underbidding even the least-sane of co-giggers. The company consistently sided against its 1099 contractors, often ending arrangements without justification nor input from its workers.
To this day, I do not use gig platforms, and despise when family rents in AirBNB neighborhoods (I think quite possibly the worst for humanity Y-Combinator-funded idea). After my couple years scrapping by the bayarea, I eventually completed an IBEW apprenticeship and became a full-time electrician (the antithesis of gig work).
Although I still hope things have improved for current gig-workers, I know they likely have not.
Benefits? No, you're an independent contractor.
Oh, you want to set your own prices and performance standards, like a contractor does? Nope!