Tangential to OP: How does HN feel about the "evilness" of Uber?
At my school the general feel is that Uber is pretty evil, notably for its attitudes towards its drivers as well as towards Lyft.
At my school the general feel is that Uber is pretty evil, notably for its attitudes towards its drivers as well as towards Lyft.
For me it's more the accumulation of awfulness. They started out as a scheme to time-share limos among young entitled dudebros. They entered the market with the black cars, exploiting a status-good dynamic. They've shifted all of the capital cost and risk of the taxi business to drivers, surely screwing many of them in the process. Their "we're too important to comply with mere laws" routine strikes me as arrogant horseshit. They've had assorted scandals, including inviting a bunch of journalists to an off-the-record dinner and then "joking" about plans to spend lots of money to destroy the career of a prominent journalist they didn't like. I've lost count of how many places have arrested or issued arrest warrants for their people.
Throughout all of this, they sing a song of "entrepreneurship" and "worker independence" while providing low-quality, low-stability jobs and making long-term plans to put every one of their drivers out of work. They couldn't give a shit about their workers, and are even willing to threaten their jobs (which aren't jobs, of course, but independent contractor positions) if they are politically active.
On top of all of that, I believe they're a great example of the shift back to a new gilded age, where the main function of the poor is to directly serve the wealthy. But instead of a Victorian model where employees are part of the household, in the Uber model we'll get paid only during the instants we are directly useful to somebody with money.
That's just some highlights off the top of my head; the list goes on. They may not be the very worst, but they have an awful lot of people rooting for their fall. I expect they won't go totally bust. But I am looking forward to a Groupon-style outcome once their investor-fueled growth becomes untenable.
I'm sorry, but that sounds more like the efficiency that capitalism optimizes towards.
The CEO doesn't stop being paid when she walks to the bathroom, and a cashier doesn't stop being paid when he's waiting for a customer to show up. wpietri is talking about a shift in the granularity of trading your labor for money, so that you aren't paid for a day or an hour of work, but for the exact number of minutes you performed useful work.
The shift is away from paying an employee for 8 hours of work--knowing that he will only be performing useful work for some fraction of that time--towards paying the same employee only for the time spent being productive.
Since most people aren't able to work productively for an entire 8 hour shift, this change probably means a net decrease in wages.
We've already started to see this with computer scheduling in retail. Assigning split shifts, irregular shifts, and scheduling the bare minimum number of employees required to minimize employee downtime.
As somebody who was a self-employed consultant for years, I get that being one's own boss has upsides. But I always maintained a large buffer of cash and could price in all the time I spent looking for work. Things like Uber and the new retail scheduling trend don't allow for that, and as far as I'm concerned amount to calculated exploitation of desperate people.
In some sense, that's nothing new in labor history; we've always had exploitation of desperate people. But that's no excuse for increasing it, and in particular I despise Uber's "we're just helping people be independent entrepreneurs" spin to cover up that exploitation, especially when their whole plan is to kick those supposed entrepreneurs out into the snow the moment they have self-driving cars.
So, of the people I know working for Uber... it seems that compared to other unskiled labor jobs open to them? By all accounts, Uber is worlds better than foodservice, unless you count both the lack of disability insurance (workers comp functions as a sort of disability insurance for most people) and massively increased danger (driving a car is one of the more dangerous jobs available) - but certainly for the right now? the people I know who work for uber? they are so happy to not have to work foodservice. And the schedule control? the schedule control is unheard of for unskilled labor jobs. If you don't know anyone who works retail, it's not like being an engineer, where so long as I show up between 8:00 and 11:30AM, the boss is cool. No, not only do they have to stick to a schedule, but that schedule changes from week to week and even day to day. Uber lets these people have, if not full schedule flexibility, at least more schedule flexibility than I get.
I... don't think I could handle an unskilled job for more than a month. I'd get fired for showing up late, or quit after one too many customers laid in to me because they were having a bad day.
So... yeah, even without the disability insurance, I think I'd choose an uber driving job over a fast food job. And if uber loses the appeal? (what happened with that, anyhow?) and is forced to pay on a W2 basis and cover worker's comp? That problem will be solved, too.
(oh yeah, as an aside, if I ran uber? I'd tell my lawyer to take a fall; to make damn sure we "lost" that case. Uber is far better placed to absorb the extra costs associated with paying drivers as employees than any of the other ride-sharing companies.)
>On top of all of that, I believe they're a great example of the shift back to a new gilded age, where the main function of the poor is to directly serve the wealthy. But instead of a Victorian model where employees are part of the household, in the Uber model we'll get paid only during the instants we are directly useful to somebody with money.
Now, I'm not defending uber on any of the other counts; or this one, really; you aren't wrong. Especially on the bit about wanting the convenience of having servants without wanting to deal with the relationship -
You could make the argument that the new arrangement is more respectful to the workers; when the uber driver is off shift, she is my social equal, and that wasn't true of the Victorian model. It's certainly a hell of a lot less paternalistic.
Of course, you certainly have a point that the new model is less stable. (I return again to the worker's comp issue)
But the truth of the matter is that it sucks to be poor. It always has, really, and it probably always will.
I'm just saying, when you compare working for Uber to the other choices an "unskilled" person has, it doesn't look so bad. Being poor sucks, sure. but I think being poor and driving for Uber is probably better than being poor and working at McDonalds or target or what have you. (minus, of course, that disability insurance thing, which, I guess, could actually be a pretty big deal, considering the increased chance of disability that comes from driving all day)
I think that if the disability insurance problem was solved (say, by Uber losing that court case) then if Uber or similar services increases the demand for professional drivers, that might be a win-win for both the poor, who get slightly better jobs, and the upper middle, who don't have to drive as much.
(I need a better word than "unskilled" - I highly doubt I could maintain a minimum uber driver rating. I'm a below-average driver, and while I could maintain that level of social function for eight hours, I'd find it pretty draining; just that level of social interaction, for me? I'd be able to pull it off two, maybe three days a week.)
Also, after you deduct vehicle depreciation, insurance, gas, and time driving without a fare, uber doesn't pay all that well per hour.
As far as actual driver statistics go, Uber isn't a good employment alternative for the poor, it's a stopgap measure for the unemployed middle class--more than half of drivers have a college degree and more than half work for less than a year.
Which doesn't stop people from buying nice cars. Don't get me wrong, the whole recent model car thing is a barrier, you need credit; but have you seen how easy it is to get a car loan lately? It's like subprime mortgages back in the day.
And uber will even give you one of those 'merchant account advance loans' to buy the car where they take their payment out of your earnings; I imagine the income requirements on those are even lower than on a conventional car loan. (though, I imagine if your credit is terrible, you are screwed either way.)
Also, a 2005 model year car is... not a high bar.
Remember, in most parts of America, you need a reliable car for that job at Burger King, too. And once you factor in maintenance and gas, a 2000 model year really isn't all that much cheaper than a 2005
>Also, after you deduct vehicle depreciation, insurance, gas, and time driving without a fare, uber doesn't pay all that well per hour.
I'm comparing it to foodservice; and compared to burger king, from what I hear, it does pay pretty well. And the cost of operating the car (that you are gonna need for that burger king job, too) can (well, it's complicated) be paid for out of pre-FICA (well, pre-tax, but FICA is most of the tax that poor people pay) money, which is a nice benefit you don't get from burger king.
But Yes, I think we're in agreement that it's not very good compared to a middle-class job.
My point is just that it's pretty nice compared to a lower-class job.
>As far as actual driver statistics go, Uber isn't a good employment alternative for the poor, it's a stopgap measure for the unemployed middle class--more than half of drivers have a college degree and more than half work for less than a year.
40% of working-aged Americans, from what I read, have college degrees; I don't think that's an indicator of "not poor" anymore.
You do realize that subprime mortgages turned out terribly for a lot of low-income people, right? Because when the economic circumstances changed, their debt was suddenly unaffordable, ruining credit and ruining lives? And that many of those sub-prime mortgages were basically designed from the start to take money from unsophisticated borrowers, saddling them up with debt they probably couldn't afford.
I think we have a different definition of poor. I'm not talking about someone who make $40k a year and lives paycheck to paycheck because they spend above their means. I'm talking about people making $15k a year (or less) at near minimum wage job. The kind of people who work in fast food.
>Also, a 2005 model year car is... not a high bar
For a person working 30 hours a week at a fast food restaurant that's a very high bar. And you're forgetting that Uber inspects the car as well, so the clunky beaters that nearly everyone drove when I worked retail during college aren't going to pass inspection.
>Remember, in most parts of America, you need a reliable car for that job at Burger King, too.
Most people working at Burger King don't have reliable cars. If they live outside of a mass transit area, they rely on friends and family when they have breakdowns. If you've ever managed retail employees (I was a geek squad supervisor in college), you'll know just how frequently workers rely on other people to drop them off, or how often they call out because their car broke down.
> And once you factor in maintenance and gas, a 2000 model year really isn't all that much cheaper than a 2005
That's true. But this is a common problem that poor people face. They don't have the money up front, so they take the cheaper up front option even though it's more expensive over the long term.
>I'm comparing it to foodservice; and compared to burger king, from what I hear, it does pay pretty well.
Definitely, but for the average burger king worker buying a car to work for Uber isn't a realistic goal. They don't have the cash and they don't have the credit to get a loan.
My point is, that there is no point comparing Uber to burger king because there is a very small intersection between people who are forced to work at burger king and people who can afford to work for Uber.
>My point is just that it's pretty nice compared to a lower-class job.
Yes,but it has barriers to entry that keeps it from being an option for the working poor, so again there is no point in your comparison.
>40% of working-aged Americans, from what I read, have college degrees
If we're talking about the same statistic, the 40% number was pretty inflated because it considered 2 year and professional degrees.
Also only 2.1% of people with a bachelor's degree are classified as working poor (under the poverty level and working) while over 21% of people with no college degree are classified as working poor.
Since a college degree decreases your chance of being working poor by 10 times, I'd say it's a a good discriminator.
And these are all very temporary jobs. The only reason Uber has such a high valuation is that they plan to fuck those people over. "Kalanick has said that he can't wait for the moment when he can get rid of 'the other dude in the car,'" writes Vice [1]. They just spent a shit-ton of money on robot car research, destroying an AI lab in the process. [2]
[1] http://www.vice.com/read/all-the-reasons-why-uber-is-the-wor... [2] http://www.theverge.com/transportation/2015/5/19/8622831/ube...
At some point, computer usage might have been sufficient for crossing the threshold from unskilled to skilled labour. Now we expect everyone to have a basic understanding. (And even earlier, literacy alone was a `skill'.)
But it turns out there were historical reasons the supply of taxis was artificially limited. An argument like this, which conflates "good" with "whatever the market does" is a terrible argument because it is only sidestepping the point. If you want to say the supply restrictions are bad, then you either need to find a different solution that solves the problem or to make an argument that the harm done by supply restrictions is worse than any other possible solution, so we should just let the market ride.
Markets can sometimes magically self-correct. But market failure [1] is a thing, and even when it isn't, market optimum is not always a human optimum. And markets are not our masters, but tools we use to serve humans.
Or just point out that the problem that was ostensibly solved wasn't.
Taxi drivers were already mostly contractors, who had to pay to work (renting a medallion from one of the rich guys who owned them, renting the car, paying for gas) and then got paid per ride.
I dislike Uber as a company in general, but I don't get this idea that they represent some worsening of the work conditions, as if previous workers were employed with benefits.
That said, my take: Taxi drivers were mostly contractors, and they did have to rent the cab. But I think that's way better than having to buy the whole goddamn car and then hope that they make it back. Plus paying all of the maintenance and being out of work if a car broke. They also had to pay the medallion fee, but most of them liked that system, because a) it restricted the number of cabs such that they could make decent money if they worked hard, and b) they saw the medallion system as their version of retirement planning. Specifically, here in SF medallions could be bought only by working taxi drivers, and in order on a waiting list. So the ones that talked about it to me were pretty comfortable with the system.
So along those axes, I think Uber is actually worse, and I think that mainly because cabbies say so. I agree that the previous condition still wasn't great, though.
There are already multiple companies renting cars for driving for Uber/Lyft/etc.
Specifically, here in SF medallions could be bought only by working taxi drivers, and in order on a waiting list. So the ones that talked about it to me were pretty comfortable with the system.
Yeah, no shit, they got in. It's like measuring the average outcome of a lottery by only surveying the winners. What about everyone who didn't? How do you measure the loss inflicted on everyone who remained unemployed when could they have been working?
And what percentage of the total fleet are those? What percentage of the markets are they in? My guess: vanishingly small. And it's also not clear whether those businesses would survive; there's a reason Uber dodged that end of the business.
> How do you measure the loss inflicted on everyone who remained unemployed when could they have been working?
So your notion here is that there are some number of people who were saying, "Gosh, I wish I could be a taxi driver" but are otherwise sitting around idle because of medallion restrictions limiting supply? What's your evidence that number is greater than zero?
As far as I know, taxi companies have pretty much always been hiring in SF. And that's despite the fact that the medallion system artificially boosts individual income through supply restrictions.
Also, given that taxi drivers are on the order of 1/1000th of the American labor force, I suspect the medallion system caused exactly zero unemployment, but instead, if it had any effect at all, created an infinitesimal decrease in the labor price.
What percentage of the total fleet are those? What percentage of the markets are they in? My guess: vanishingly small. It's also not clear whether those businesses would survive; there's a reason Uber dodged that end of the business.
> How do you measure the loss inflicted on everyone who remained unemployed when could they have been working?
So your notion here is that there are some number of people who were saying, "Gosh, I wish I could be a taxi driver" but are otherwise sitting around idle because of medallion restrictions limiting job supply? What's your evidence that number is greater than zero?
As far as I know, taxi companies have pretty much always been hiring in SF. And that's despite the fact that the medallion system artificially boosts individual income through supply restrictions.
Given that taxi drivers are on the order of 1/1000th of the American labor force, I suspect the medallion system caused exactly zero unemployment, but instead created an infinitesimal decrease in the general-pool labor price through a tiny supply increase.
And just because the cab regulations overshot in many places it does not mean no regulations is the answer. Also, while civil disobedience is laudable the same can't be said from a company. Problem is, what if next time a company finds another set of regulations / laws it doesn't like? This sort of behavior should be killed with fire because it weakens the very rule of law. I know this is not a popular opinion but the French arresting the leaders of Uber in France are going the right direction and more of the same is (badly) needed.
With that in mind, what do you think the right approach is?
The way Uber treats its employees? Pretty evil.
The way Uber competes against existing taxi services? Not evil at all in my opinion.
I'm using duck typing here.
If you were a taxi driver you wouldn't be happy that you are abiding by the law and a US company comes waltzing in, flouts your countries's laws actively trying to ruin your lifelihood.
Note on Uber: I think Uber is a great business and has a significantly net-positive impact on society, and I reserve judgment w/r/t whether TK and the other Uber execs are good or bad people - I can't conclude they are good because they run a good business, and I can't conclude they are bad because they say stupid things in public.
Note on Nietzche: In Thus Spake Zarathrusa, the "uberman" concept is (maybe) considered a positive that humanity should work towards in the absence of belief in God, and I think it can still be understood as such. The fact that history has attributed some very negative actions to the belief in this concept (Hitler, Leopold & Loeb's murder, etc.) is, in my opinion, not definitive but at the same time not entirely insignificant, but I'm also a Christian that believes in capital-M Morality so I'm biased against nihilism in general.
here's a thought I had a few months ago: how have there not been more thought pieces relating Uber-the-business's recent/relentless PR-debacles to Nietzsche's Ubermensch concept? I guess I'll give it a go.
Uber/Travis and his execs seem to demonstrate the belief that they are "overmen" in that they seem to believe that they transcend the rules of society and are destined to shape society and its values rather than the other way around (probably something not too uncommonly shared with HN readers…).
A few fun/funny/serious examples (in no particular order): 1. They outrightly express resistance to laws-as-is, and regularly threaten to ignore and sometimes do break those regs as necessary to conduct their business / benefit themselves and their consumers.
2. They hire lobbyists and other high-level political actors to change the laws they don't like and/or influence lawmakers - not atypical for a large company, but they did this earlier than most companies at their stage, with much more specific agendas in place and with a lot more PR surrounding it (the last may or may not have been their doing, hard to say). They have a belief (probably well-founded) that they can use the political process to make the law bend to their will. “Creating New Values” as any good uberman should.
3. They call their central system “Godmode” which implies that they, the viewers, are like God (a bit of a stretch I know…couldn’t resist)
4. They are proud that using the data in Godmode they can track, predict and identify specifics of other human being’s behavior.
5. The whole “we’ll pay our own researchers to smear journalists” thing - another good example of Creating New Values and constructing narratives.
6. The general feeling that Uber (perhaps correctly) operates against “states” and “sovereigns” and “systems” more than corporate competitors (who even writes about Lyft anymore these days…)
The funny thing is that after thinking this through, all (good?) CEOs of major corporations basically operate like this (and so do many other tech-leaders - it is often associated with libertarian-leaning individuals like P. Thiel, etc.) - the difference is that Uber (1) has a name that calls it out and (2) seems to be especially prone to doing this in public and (3) sometimes appears to relishes their “overlord-iness” a little too much. You can call it being crass or being honest. In any case, they seem to be getting hip to the system and playing nice which of course can be viewed as just another level of the game, etc. - still, glad to see them do it because I overall think that playing nice is best (especially when you can afford to do it) and with a $50b val. and a couple billion raised, I think they can spare some good behavior, at least for now =)
Riiiiiiight.
The only evil here is whatever it was that made it take so long for this change to come about.
And let's be clear in many countries taxi drivers are far more rigorously screened and of course have security cameras. Both of which Uber has been a bit lax at.
Über is inherently safe. The drivers are licenced. The cars are modern. And most importantly, the drivers have skin in the game. If you spend any time on the road at all it's frankly irrational to worry about driver safety.
Complaining about Uber, a company that operates entirely through mutual consent, being 'evil' is ridiculous, against the backdrop of a deeply corrupt industry.