> just to provide users a little bit better service than what taxi companies already did for us.

I'm not saying I'm a fan of all their business practices, but (at least in Boston) Uber has been a massive improvement over what taxi companies provided.

In Denver the taxi's are horrible - half the time you smell puke or some horrible odor, the other half you have to wait an hour to just get a ride. I'm not saying I like Uber as a company, nor what they did to drivers, but they (as well as others like Lyft) have created a fresh fast way to get around and it costs the same as a taxi most of the time. It's hard to not flock to that.

The only reason for this better experience is because you're riding in a car that Uber doesn't have to maintain. There's a lot of Uber drivers who go out of their way to create a pleasant ride, which is what makes it great. If the drivers aren't getting compensated appropriately for this, then that's a huge problem in my opinion.

Then they will stop driving for Uber and find something else to do that pays them better.

I'm generally more concerned about the precedent Uber sets riding roughshod on legal regulations, but fairness of compensation is very much an emergent market phenomenon and people are free to not drive for Uber if they find themselves inadequately compensated.

The argument that people can just "not drive Uber" would be a fine one. Except that Uber has a history of drastically changing their compensation structure overnight.

This fall in Toronto, they reduced their UberEat compensation by half, overnight. People have rent, invoices, bills, and have car payment and comes to expect a certain amount of money to come in after week, and when you do those kind of changes overnight without warning people, this is just pure evil capitalism.

They use the same tactic when they open a new market, they advertise certain rate, people buy a car or rent a car to start working for Uber, and then few months down the line they reduce the price, and again, and again, and again, and then people are stuck with a car where they have to drive twice as much to bring back the same income.

I've talked to a number of drivers in India where Uber changes compensation structures every couple of months and everyone has got in knowing Uber can/will do these things - no one seems to be as credulous as you claim. They limit their risk exposures accordingly - many choose to drive for other car owners vs. invest in their own car.

I guess that's what I'm saying, these people should stop driving for Uber.

Uber created an incentive structure for drivers to give you a good experience.

Bostonian here. Literally the only thing most cities need to do to get taxi service as good as Uber is to stop hard capping taxi numbers, or at least stop selling perpetual, tradable licenses and replace them with annual auctions. Uber might be greedy rent-seeking assholes, but they're far nicer than, say, Eddie Tuntunjian.

You also need a penalty for accepting a ride and never actually showing up. That's how useless the SF taxi system was when Uber started its more expensive offering.

>You also need a penalty for accepting a ride and never actually showing up.

A legitimately competitive market would solve that quickly.

There are still some taxis in my city that don't take a card. (Of course, they wait until after the ride to tell you that.) Uber or Lyft wins for me on convenience of booking and payment.

Just claim you don't have cash and would be unable to pay. A card reader will magically appear.

Same in the Netherlands. You can expect to pay ~€5 per KM on short drives, the drivers are all foreigners who purely taxi because they get a huge tax cut on the Mercedes they buy and they are always extremely rude. And if they notice you're in a pinch, they'll try to completely price gouge you. Drunk guys want to get home? That's 50 bucks (100/2) for 30km..

Where can you ride an Uber here? I thought it was illegal/outlawed, and have avoided using it.

You are correct, mostly. UberPOP (which directly competed with taxi's) has been outlawed. The more expensive UberX has not. There's also UberBLACK, but that's more for business people.

What's really sorely needed is Uber outside of the Randstand region though. Taxi's are even more of a monopoly there so for consumers it's either pay up or get fucked, which results in horrible customer experiences.

Depends where you are. Here in Friesland, the local public transportation company has made deals with taxis in the area to reduce/eliminate inaccessible places by offering cheap connections between (e.g. your house) to the nearest bus station. I use this service frequently if I don't want to drive, and it costs 1.50eu - the same trip if I were to just call a taxi would run 20eu.

I've been scammed by taxis on multiple occasions. Never been scammed by an Uber driver, and I know exactly what I'm paying before I get in.

It's zero sum, that's why Uber is able to do what they do. The drivers get shafted so you can have a cheap ride and Uber can be a billion dollar company.

Lol, you have cheap rides because Uber pays a part of it for you. If a ride is worth $10 to a driver then the driver still get $10 no matter if you pay $5 for the ride. Without Uber, a lot of people will be unemployed. Tell me how the drivers are getting shafted?

This is not any better. Burning investor money to undercut competition isn't a sustainable strategy - they'll eventually have to raise their prices, which I predict - given their history of integrity and high moral standards - will utterly fuck the taxi market up, to the levels unseen even in the old "taxi mafia" age.

Doesn't matter. If Uber doesn't work, Lyft will be happy to provide.

Really? Do any research whatsoever and you'll find that drivers are the ones footing the bill. Car purchasing and maintenance essentially equates to a sub minimum wage job.

If that's the case, it should theoretically easy for taxi companies to eat Uber's lunch by providing that same marginal benefit that consumers want and drivers will flock to them; that is, unless the taxi companies aren't treating their drivers any better.