Will Uber be reimbursing the drivers for expenses since they apparently told the drivers it was legal?
"We fully stand behind our partners and will cover all costs associated with this deplorable charade."
Because abandoning Uber operators at a time of transition, or industry revolution as it could be called, would in many ways undermine its expansion if potential operators have abandonment to fear.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/johanabhuiyan/uber-drivers-are-prote...
http://uberpeople.net/threads/deactivated-3rd-time-in-5-week...
"In a week of driving (24 rides), you'll only make $312 once Uber's taken its cut" - http://la.curbed.com/archives/2014/02/8_secrets_you_learn_be...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/07/uber-s-batt...
http://www.thewire.com/business/2014/06/uber-drivers-protest...
http://www.businessinsider.com/undercover-uber-driver-short-...
Except the one you quoted, which really confuses me. It's not uber's fault if demand is low in a particular location. Heck, that's actually a pretty good rate, full-time minimum wage for only doing a ride every two hours.
Basically, you end up an indentured servant, getting pennies on the dollar.
"Deplorable charade." Are they referring to their own actions? I mean "charade (n.) something that is done in order to pretend something is true when it is not really true." The PPA regulations are true, are they not? It's the legality of driving an UberX which is the charade, no?
I don't much care for Uber's practices, but I agree with the argument that taxi medallions are rent-seeking and all efforts to break down senseless regulation of the taxi industry should take place. Note I said "senseless" regulation. You should still require insurance, background checks/driver's license verification or drivers, and so forth.
It looks like Uber set up the situation so that these drivers could be martyrs in Uber's PR cause. Uber can now say "look, how terrible the PPA is, we shall defend our drivers from this injustice!". They score some PR points at the cost of massively affecting the drivers' lives.
The non-shitty way to accomplish their goal would have been for them to organize the people who wanted the laws to change and to actually participate in the political process, rather than trying to end-run the system by just moving in to town and setting up shop.
Unfortunately, Uber's process is much more likely to evoke change than "participating in the political process". Consumers are much more interested in the interests than your average voter.
I'm not sure I'm fully a fan of derailing this thread into a discussion of the disconnect between progress and true democracy, but if we allow the minority of the population to override the majority's decision because we "know better" than them, are we still being democratic?
Furthermore, there is absolutely no indication that the status quo is the "majority's decision". These days, which regulatory capture, the revolving door and pork barreling, it's pretty much impossible to tell what laws were passed because it's the majority decision and which were favors traded among members congress to support the interests of their biggest donors.
We have at best a quasi-democratic system; i.e. just enough democracy to maintain an illusion of a functioning democracy.
There aren't great social injustices at work here, overheated rhetoric aside.
At worst there's run of the mill corruption. The concepts of what these kinds of regulation do are well-founded and something society has clearly wanted. The exact implementations may well have been corrupted, but the stated intent of the laws and regulations are in the public interest, and the public has been happy-ish with them.
Does that then mean the fix is to throw out the whole regimen of rules? For example, someone mentioned Seattle hasn't issued new medallions in decades. So the solution is to do away with medallions? Why not just issue more?
What about county level food safety inspectors? Many of those regulatory agencies are also corrupt. And don't even start with alcohol licensing. But should we "disrupt" those too? Just ignore them because there's some corruption in the system?
When you get down to it, none of these companies want to increase consumer choice. In their perfect world, they'd be the only choice. So it's hard to accept they're really out for the public good.
And that makes it really difficult for me to cheer them on as they pick and choose which laws they accept as valid expressions of the people's will.
The people aren't really being given a vote here. Well, actually, they have been given a vote, and these companies are choosing to ignore it for their own benefit.
As I said, it's not some great social injustice at stake. Civil Rights leaders broke the law with greater purposes in mind than "So my company can be valued in the billions".
The majority of the population (I speak US-centric here, as I'm a US citizen) wasn't for same-sex marriage nor healthcare reform, yet we "knew better" to enact both.
> If the average voter doesn't want the system to change, should it?
Yes. We should never cater to the lowest common denominator.
Historically, there haven't been many vocal groups who thought they were on the wrong side of the cause they were championing.
How does society tell the difference between non-majority groups who are actually right and non-majority groups who just think they are?
That doesn't sound like a good description. The largest group doesn't care one way or the other, and should probably be excluded from the decision.
If some arbitrary issue has 80% uncaring, 15% for, 5% against, I would say it should definitely happen.
There's a democratic process in place in our country that allows you to help decide who is in power, if you're unhappy with who is in power become more involved in elections.
I disagree with and resent both your claim that my question is stupid and your claim that the recourse for a broken political system is becoming more involved in elections.
I wonder if HN would benefit from a guideline like, "If someone asks a question whose answer seems obvious, try to answer it in a straightforward way. For example, 'You really don't know what 2+2 is?' can be shortened to '2+2 is 4.'"
There are interesting followup questions on this topic, too. If Uber won't reimburse them, why not? On the other hand, would it even be legal for Uber to reimburse them, since Uber is doing so with the intent of "transferring" the penalty of the law from the driver to Uber? One reason to have laws is so that their penalties act as a deterrent. If Uber is preventing the deterrent from having an effect, then perhaps the legal system might take a dim view of this. Whether that'd be punishable, I have no idea; the point is simply that there are many interesting questions that can be derived from the starting point of "Will Uber be reimbursing the drivers?"