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Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

There's no resource destruction involved in displacing taxi drivers. Taxi medallions are a rent-seeking scheme, there's no real scarcity involved. Most other instances of "creative destruction" are like that, the capital simply gets repurposed at negligible social cost and only excess profits disappear.

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Uber misclassifies en masse the drivers it employs and shifts vehicle depreciation costs onto these "small businesses". Our taxes pay for healthcare costs which should rightfully be borne by the drivers' employer. I would say that's a non-negligible social cost.

It's weird to describe this as "employment" when many and perhaps most drivers these days are simultaneously "employed" by both Uber and Lyft, serving rides for both. This kind of informal relationship is a lot closer to contracting than traditional employment.

Is it quacking like employment? Sort of and sort of not.

Not: very flexible hours, not exclusive, driver can switch customer? driver provides tools

Is: driver cannot subcontract, has to follow set rules (maybe that makes is franchise like?)

Of course they took something that was employment and made it not employment at scale.

It’s perfectly normal to have two W-2 employers.

On the other hand, it’s odd that these “contractors” can’t set prices for their services and risk deactivation if they decline the price Uber offers.

Taxi medallions aren't a thing in lots of cities that have taxis. All Uber did was outpace regulations in many cities.

Yeah, offering an alternative free of terrible rentseeking regulation

At the expense of drivers who get paid peanuts.

I wonder how the economics comapre to the prior state, with people buying $800,000 permits from the state, or multiple drivers taking 12 hour shifts driving the same car rented from the permit holder.

Not all places with taxis required a near-million permit either.

Please look up Uber's business practices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Uber

As opposed to taxi companies, who are famously efficient, honest, and not creeps.

Just because Uber made a billion dollars by outcompeting terrible companies doesn't mean that Uber isn't also a terrible company. A crime lord is still a crime lord even if he displaced other, smaller, crime lords in getting his place.

Whataboutism is usually not a great defense.

I apologize for derailing this conversation about whether or not Uber is better than taxi companies by bringing up irrelevant topics like whether or not Uber is better than taxi companies.

It isn’t just rent seeking, it is regulation to try to compensate for the negative externalities of a private ride hail system (ie. Induced traffic).

Part of the origin story of taxi regulation is the fact that in the early 20th century unregulated cabs caused an explosion in traffic congestion. People complained and so the amount of cabs was limited. An example of the tragedy of the commons.

I expect that eventually we will see the same thing with Waymo etc but we’ll see.

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