Something that struck me is: almost half of the country would disagree with you (the more conservative half). A lot of the American public believes what Kalanick said to be very true when it comes to low-ish income people complaining about what wealthier people do to them.

In my experience, it isn't the wealthy who think the poor are lazy/irresponsible-- it's the working poor and the lower middle class. The "more conservative half" of the country isn't particularly the wealthier half of the country. Speculating as to why that is would probably overflow this comments section.

I know a lot of well off programmers who absolutely believe that the only reason anyone isn't a well off programmer is laziness and poor character. Don't know how you're making your class divisions, but I certainly wouldn't call them lower middle class or below.

Many lower-middle-class Americans look down on the poor because they see themselves on equal footing, and believe that "If I can work two jobs and make ends meet, so could s/he if s/he had the work ethic."

The most arrogant programmers I know seem to think the exact opposite: that they are among the elite few graced with the gift of true programming intuition. (Not true.) They don't think the poor are lazy, they think the poor are helpless and un-talented.

Sure, but those are just two different ways to achieving the same goal: a feeling of superiority.

It's absolutely a true statement, and it is absolutely and completely an inappropriate tone for the CEO of a company to take toward someone that just got fucked over by his company's changing policies, after his company pushed people into taking out loans they can't realistically afford.

It's like Taleb's stuff about skin in the game--Kalanick pushed the risk of his business model onto drivers like this one while keeping the upside for himself. When the driver got screwed by Kalanick's pricing changes, he comes back with technicalities and finally blames the guy for not taking responsibility. Talk about projection!

That's the reason why this is disrespectful to the driver. Kalanick minimizes his loss and refuses to take any responsibility for it himself, despite the fact that the only real mistake the driver made was trusting Uber.

So many (seemingly) intractable issues in contemporary life regress back to the question of personal responsibility.

It's a difficult thing to push back on, because even those of us most sympathetic a complex-systems based understanding of inequality don't want to completely give up on the value of personal responsibility, as to do so would be to tacitly give up the belief in free will. But if we grant that each individual does have some degree of agency and responsibility, then the libertarian side immediately points to any number of self made/rags to riches individuals and says "So? Stop complaining and do that!". But why can't they admit that it's an issue of degrees?

Sure, you have some agency in improving your situation, but if you're born less advantaged the systemic factors arrayed against you make it significantly harder to leverage your agency to improve your lot. Just because some lucky few do rise from rags to riches doesn't mean that a winner take most, predatory lottery system will create the best outcome for the most.

Is it a failure of human probabilistic intuition? Or is it a more malicious effort to control and frame the debate, pushed by those who benefit from the unequal system? Probably both.

What a useful spell they are all under then, how could the wealthy ever brainwash them to "buy into" such an exploitative system so effectively?

Dunno if you're being /s or not but there are myriad serious answers, most of them pointing back to the elevation of predatory capitalism to an quasi-religious ideology, often intermixed with judaeo-christian symbolism and messaging.

Yes, because conservative people don't complain.

In reality, it's a dismissal indicating a lack of respect and/or lack of any fucks to give. Yes, I'd say that's about half the country.

...and the "other half" (as if there are only two perspectives) scapegoat just as handily: corporations, racist people, sexist people, homophobic people, Russian hackers, Fox News, the bourgeois, disloyal white women, people who "vote against their interests", patriotic people, spiritual people, uneducated people, cherry-picked structural injustice, and pretty much anything that doesn't support their preconceived notions of the world.

I'm frankly tired of people seeing problems and immediately outgrouping others, attaching blame, and spewing hate. This will continue to be a disease in our culture until people can learn to understand and disagree and live and let live.

For many progressives I know, those things are blamed indeed, but for society's problems, not their own. There's a real difference there, deriving from the difference in political philosophy. Broadly speaking, the left believes that if you address structural social issues, individuals will eventually have paths to succeed. The right believes that if everyone focuses on the problems they themselves experience, society will eventually improve. Either ethic can be applied in the extreme with disastrous results.

> ...those things are blamed indeed, but for society's problems, not their own.

That's a good point in some cases. But in many cases that doesn't hold. Meryl Streep outgrouped popular, middle American, and "lowbrow" culture(s) when ranting about how they impact on her job. Gay marriage and abortion views are certainly personal complaints as well as social ones. Distaste for spiritual people typically stems from a personal grudge more than a dry academic philosophy about the social impact of disagreements about metaphysical reality or something. How about bikes versus cars disputes in urban areas? Or disagreements about Bay Area rent?

I can come up with more examples. I think there's a "I'm just being the rational one here" type of cognitive dissonance from basically all perspectives. Even that attitude holds the seeds for outgrouping (those irrational people!).

So maybe "some people" is actually most people.

In fact, I'd say Travis is 100% correct. Most people out there would rather blame someone else for their problems than take personal responsibility.

>Most people out there would rather blame someone else for their problems than take personal responsibility.

And why not? There are 8 billion people out there, and one of you. And tons of people who came before the person was even born and shaped the place one was born in, were responsible for their childhood, designed their education programs etc. And of course others are in power and shape policy.

Who is more likely to have created/sustain the situations affecting someone? Themselves or the tons of others?

This is balanced, to some degree, by locality and focus. I leave open the question of how it all nets out.

For a slave in ancient Rome, for example, it would be quite absurd to consider himself responsible for his fate.

A few opportunities aside, I'm not sure it's much different for a modern person.

Only, in some cases, people actually have another person to blame... Like in the case of this driver.

Out of curiousity, what do you think could have caused the driver to go bankrupt? It sounds like he bought an expensive, UberBlack-eligible car, intending to pay for it with his fares, but the fares were reduced and now he can't make the payments. How common is that scenario amongst Uber drivers?

If Uber drivers are, in fact, independent contractors, then they have some responsibility to determine whether the business they're engaged in is a profitable one, and to judge the risk involved. It seems like it would be very easy to underestimate both the costs and the risk.

it's not just the fare reduction, it's also the loss in business as customers stopped using UberBlack in favor of UberX.

Having driven for Uber and Lyft for a year and a half (even during the "good years") - the rate of new hires was most definitely a major concern and there were definitely rocky times. I was lucky to be able to mitigate this by moving to San Francisco from San Diego. While in San Diego I saw my take go down from ~$1200/wk to something like $800/wk, then back up to $1200-1600/wk when I moved to SF, and then back down to about $800 by the time I finished.

Personally I approached it as an exercise in entrepreneurship, a deep study in the dynamics of real-time economics, and an opportunity to vastly improve my "people skills" in addition to making more money than a PhD postdoc in biochemistry... So a success in all fronts, personally, but also I knew when to quit.

Recognizing that you may not have been the prototypical Uber driver, I'm curious what kind of research/ evaluation (if any) you did before/ while driving for them re: the financial prospect. How much did you "take home" after gas, repairs, taxes, etc...? Did you have an estimate of that beforehand?

My suspicion is that many people who begin driving for Uber overestimate their net earnings and underestimate their deferred expenses e.g. vehicle depreciation and maintenance. If Uber knows this and is taking advantage (with new-driver bonuses, etc...), they're essentially a multi-level marketing company.

I didn't do a formal estimate beforehand. by feeling, I underestimated my net earnings. Take home was probably somewhere in the 50/yr range. Keep in mind that I didn't "buy a new car" - I drove with my own car that I'd had since 2010. The whole thing put on about 100k miles; but the car is still running more or less fine, a year and a half later.

If something's true, does it really matter if it insults someone?

Driver buys a $97k car, goes bankrupt because as it turns out buying a super expensive car that you obviously can't afford is a dumb idea, then decides to blame someone else for his poor decision making.

I don't think it was unreasonable to consider a $97K car as a business expenditure was such a bad idea. Let's say you get a 5-year loan, liberally that's about $30k a year, which is more than covered by the cost and business that Uber (UberBlack) was generating at the time; Until of course the volume of UberBlack got eaten into by the presence of UberX on top of fare cuts.

Making the correct short-term business decision without fully understanding the long-term market forces in that domain, can still be a bad long-term decision.

It is the business owner's (investor's) responsibility to understand and plan for the long-term. Not planning for the long-term is exactly what happened here. I do not believe this man should have been disrespected, however, his decision to buy a car he could not afford, was his own and was objectively a bad decision.

Do you know the story of the grasshopper and the ants[0]? Regardless of who is controlling the weather (in our case, Uber). Its the grasshopper's fault for not storing food for the winter.

[0] http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/AntGra.shtm...

So you're saying making sound decisions regarding driving for Uber requires good economic skills, long-term planning capabilities aswell as insider information regarding Uber's policy ?

This sounds like an unrealistic expectation. One would argue Uber was either disloyal or disillusioned if they rely on such people to advance their business.

I'm saying, making sound investments[0], requires good economic skills, long-term planning capabilities, and an understanding of the risks.

Here Uber changing policy or pricing is a risk! In this case, to make a sound investment, you need to calibrate the rewards against that risk.

Only looking at the potential upside, not realizing that the risk exists, is foolish.

Faulting Uber, for being flexible to market forces, is naive. Not faulting the driver for making an uneducated investment, that is unreasonable.

[0] Either to facilitate driving for Uber, or something else

> Not faulting the driver for making an uneducated investment, that is unreasonable.

The interesting part happens when you understand that it is impossible to make an educated decision to become a Uber driver without having a relation of trust between Uber and drivers (because otherwise you would need insider information about Uber's business innovations, to get fixed pricing agreement for a given duration, which Uber will never do, etc).

Then, you don't fault Uber for being "flexible to market forces", you may fault them for engaging in deceptive business, just like you would blame a multi level marketing scheme. And when you specifically look at Uber's strategy to mislead potential drivers, there's tons of telling stuff.

In that light, you can still blame the drivers for making bad decisions (discussing the reality of Homo œconomicus would drive us out of scope). But you must also fault Uber for maliciously luring their drivers in a scheme that is not sustainable for them.

Ahh, yes! I whole heartedly agree with you that Uber is(are?) an asshole for luring drivers utilizing disingenuous information.

I'm glad they lost this case: http://www.moneylife.in/article/uber-to-pay-20-million-for-a...

Welcome to real capitalism, where only insiders can really prosper for sure.

On the other hand, the person he's complaining to had a direct role to play in the fall in his income (justified or not).

Is that true? Or did the market force Uber to lower prices?

Uber could have remained a premium cab company with a fancy app, but everything start-up is rated on growth numbers, not profit, and definitely not on profit of drivers.

If not for abusing growth, it would have not raised funding and would have likely failed.

What business incentive would they have to be a black car app, if they can make more money by expanding into UberX? Not to mention, if they had remained a black car app, they might have gone out of business.

Uber is a business, not a charity. They exist to maximize profits. If you understand that point, then you see why your point is irrelevant.

Also, what the heck does it mean to "abuse growth"?

If I had to guess, abusing growth means taking advantage of the fact that a lot of investors use growth as a core metric in their decision-making process. Thus, Uber optimising for growth over any other "more reasonable" option, just to obtain funding.

> did the market force Uber to lower prices

Even if that's true, the CEO is the right person to make a complaint to. Or do you think the cab driver should get an economics degree and acquire a fine understanding of market forces?

It is a truth; however here it is being misapplied I believe. Failure to accept responsibility for failings is a sign of neuroticism... Trump has it; so does Kalanick it would appear from these reports (and all others).

In reality it is necessary for growth (and for leadership) to accept responsibility for things. In medicine, every layer up the chain is responsible for the actions of those below; i have encountered many situations where a senior accepts and owns responsibility for a failing or mistake even though that mistake was performed by a junior doctor/nurse. Blame culture is toxic; ownership therapeutic as it leads to growth. In the situation you quote above, it is ironic.

Especially when your net worth is six billion dollars.

And you're talking to someone who works for you (though you bend over backwards to say they don't so you can avoid being responsible for them) and earns a tiny, tiny fraction of what you earn.

Note that Kalanick is in denial that he fucked the driver over. Talk about denying your responsibility for your own shit.