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How is Uber in any way different in terms of "job security" and "getting paid only when they are useful" than taxis?

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.

The cab drivers I talk to (which is a fair number, since I still take cabs) by and large hate Uber and are quite happy to talk about it, so if you're really curious, drop $20 and ask.

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.

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.

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?

> There already multiple companies renting cars for driving for Uber/Lyft/etc.

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.

> There already multiple companies renting cars for driving for Uber/Lyft/etc.

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.

'In the Uber model we'll get paid only during the instants we are directly useful to somebody with money.'

I'm sorry, but that sounds more like the efficiency that capitalism optimizes towards.

...which doesn't make it morally right.

My problem with that statement is that it describes every single job you could possibly have, even the very well paying ones. You are always trading your labor to somebody with money, whether it's an Uber driver or the CEO of a major corporation. It's not the "Uber model", it's the money represents an agreed upon denomination to trade goods and services with model.

The important part of wpietri's critique is "during the instants we are directly useful".

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.

But Uber doesn't represent that shift, since taxi drivers were already considered contractors and paid by the ride.

And I'd add that for me the biggest issue is the extent to which it treats workers as disposable. In a salaried position, everybody understands and behaves as if people are people. E.g., sick days.

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.

Yes. But we as citizens get to decide how much we want to let our society be determined by raw capitalism. Freedom to starve in the gutter is one kind of freedom, but not the only one.

Sometimes local laws are not worth complying. Taxi medallions are one example - they artificially limit supply and break the market. The argument that a limit on taxis is needed to prevent congestion ignores the whole concept of 'supply and demand'. Too many taxis? The market will correct itself, just like what's happening with Uber drivers (I know many are quitting due to the excess supply).

I understand that many people have substituted a faith in "the market" for a faith in god, so forgive me if I offend somebody's religious sensibilities here.

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure

> If you want to say the supply restrictions are bad, then you either need to find a different solution that solves the problem [...]

Or just point out that the problem that was ostensibly solved wasn't.

One could do that, assuming one demonstrated it. Were you planning to do that?

Also, taxis are only a small fraction of all traffic. Restricting the number of taxis will even worsen congestion (and definitely parking), if people are substituting with their own cars.

Can you demonstrate that? I've had taxi drivers say the exact opposite: in times when there are too many medallions available, they believe that cabs spend a lot more time either looking for fares or stopped waiting for fares. That's because the incentive for each individual cab driver is to keep driving during the slow times hoping to get lucky, and hoping to make things up during the peaks.

>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.

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.)

Uber isn't really a job open to the poor. First, you need to be able to afford a decent car, which is right out for the for a lot of people. Second, if you're poor and living paycheck to paycheck, you're unlikely to have the cash to cover any major repairs.

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.

> Uber isn't really a job open to the poor. First, you need to be able to afford a decent car, which is right out for the for a lot of people. Second, if you're poor and living paycheck to paycheck, you're unlikely to have the cash to cover any major repairs.

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.

> 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.

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.

>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?

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.

Sure, I get that some people are happy with the Uber work. But that doesn't make Uber good. Because Uber is just exploiting that population, shifting their capital costs and risks to people without a lot of options.

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...

Is driving really unskilled? Most people take a course to learn and you have to be tested and regularly licensed to legally operate a vehicle on public roads.

I think `unskilled' might be a technical term for how fast a member of the general population could pick up the job?

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'.)