We still have drivers on subway trains. When those drivers lose jobs to autonomy, maybe we can think about being on the cusp. Until then, I see it as a fantastic story that can be used to milk VCs for cash.
At <$4/hour, it's a better investment to automate a fast food restaurant like McDonald's or Burger King. They pay twice as much for labor. Pouring a coke and cooking burgers and fries should be a pretty straightforward challenge. They've already done Pizzas.
Also, subway systems are monopolies with strong drivers' unions. Subway managers have no strong financial incentive to reduce costs because the taxpayer foots the bill. In contrast, if Uber doesn't produce a driverless taxi service soon its management will be fired and will miss out on billions of dollars in bonuses.
I think we'll see driverless public taxis in Phoenix before we see driverless subway trains in New York. Self-driving trains are technically easier to develop, but self-driving cars will win thanks to the efficiencies of the free market.
In most cases the costs imposed by a wave of city-crippling strikes will far outstrip the minor cost gains from automating the rail line, so it only makes sense to actually automate and fire the drivers if the goal is actually political.
Subway drivers comprise a strong component of a country's labor power (because of their power to shut down critical infrastructure) and the alliances they typically hold with other unions and their political donations cement that. They don't just offset the power of the government they work under, they offset the power of executive/shareholder power in general.
Since labor and union power is largely what held income inequality in check until the 80s, the political goal behind crushing them is pretty clearly about increasing the wealth and income inequality chasm still further.
Would love to see actual evidence that this is true.
Here's another study (that actually cites the one you linked) covering the same time period and shows multiple other factors having greater impact. https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2015/sdn1513.pdf
"Technological progress and the resulting rise in the skill premium (positives for growth and productivity) and the decline of some labor market institutions have contributed to inequality in both advanced economies and EMDCs."
Emphasis mine.
That ^^^ was literally the first reason given in the article.
The second point it makes is about the role policy-making plays, which of course is probably as important, but is intimately connected to the presence or absence of union power because who the hell do you think lobbies for those policies?
Institutional support (donations, political support, control of voting blocs, policy research, etc.) behind those policies (e.g. raise minimum wage) comes from unions whereas the policies do the opposite (e.g. lower minimum wage) come from business lobbies and high net worth individuals - who have opposing interests.
> The second point it makes is about the role policy-making plays, which of course is probably as important, but is intimately connected to the presence or absence of union power because who the hell do you think lobbies for those policies?
Organized labor frequently advocate for policies that benefit their members at the expense of non-members (for example, licensing requirements) with ambiguous or detrimental affects on inequality. You use the example of minimum wage, but that's an ambiguous example too; we have some evidence that a high minimum wage actually decreases total low wage worker earnings[1], but a small increase (at least in the US) would probably be beneficial. To quote from the study I linked earlier
"Stronger labor market institutions could increase unemployment rates, reduce the wage differential between high skill and low-skill workers, and affect the labor share of income. The overall impact on income inequality, however, can be ambiguous: they increase unemployment, which tends to raise inequality, they can reduce wage dispersion, which tends to lower it, and they increase the wage share, which can have an ambiguous effect on inequality"
To be clear, it might be true that a decrease in labor power would be associated with policy that increases inequality but that's a non-obvious conclusion.
[1] https://evans.uw.edu/sites/default/files/NBER%20Working%20Pa...
The paper you linked was not studying that. It was not measuring the impact of union density on inequality whereas the study I linked to had a methodology for measuring the two, correlating them and teasing out a causal impact. Your paper was simply going over the various issues surrounding inequality and talking about them.
The other stuff you mentioned is a combination of wrong and not relevant to this topic.
Incidentally, that stuff about licensing requirements being "the bane of every worker's existence" that you read about can typically be traced back to lobby institutions that are linked to Charles and David Koch (e.g. CATO). They started publishing "research" and press releases about the onerousness of stuff like hairdresser regulation in the 90s and early 00s after some of the brothers' high profile fights with the EPA. Isn't it fun to learn where your propaganda comes from and why? :)
It has been in service since it was built for the 1986 World Expo.
Autonomous trains are not nearly as widespread as they could be, but this is not for technical reasons - it is for political reasons.
The new lines under construction (15, 16, 17 & 18, which will serve the greater Paris area) will also be fully automated.
The way it's configured it's basically an elevator.
You have to question the leadership of a company that's willing to throw untold billions and counting on a long-shot bet that they'll eventually have these magical cars and everything will be fine.
Once Uber can do it, soon afterwards everyone can, and what makes you think Uber will do it better when they've already had to give up so much to invent their own self-driving car solution?
Their business model is completely ridiculous.
It lowers the barrier for entry to pretty much anybody, with fleet manager taking care of car washes, interior clean-ups, refueling, parking at idle hours, ongoing maintenance and fixing occasional flat tires.
What part of Uber/Lyft business model makes them more sustainable when compared to Hertz, Avis, Budget, Alamo, Dollar, Fox Rent-a-car, ZipCar, Tesla Driving Network, any local car dealer with excess inventory, Ford- or Mercedes- or any other maker-branded service, or a small mom-and-pop operation with just a couple vehicles in their fleet?
So once either company successfully develops proprietary IP that enables fully autonomous cars they should have a clear road to profitably. They can use their existing relationships with fleet management companies to handle that part. And that is a mature industry, so the presence of a lot of capable competitors will keep costs down for Uber/Lyft. If they do need to do a bunch of hiring for new low-skill positions they can probably outsource it easily. I think the major winners will be tech companies and car makers. I don't think the fleet management industry will capture the majority of the profits, but they will probably get a minor portion.
Their venture into digital was ahead of the curb, allowing them to be even more successful and expand their business beyond distribution.
If the self-driving-taxi is right around the corner i guess that can save uber, but it's not like netflix was on a timer to like uber is to transition their business model.
And Uber...their whole point was being an annoying, even predatory middleman who shunt all their costs onto their "workforce"...you think they are going to thrive when they need to bear all the risk and expense themselves, as well as be unable to break laws?
This is similar to how the huge army of people stuffing DVDs into envelopes at Netflix is going away. It might be slow, but I don't think there will be tons of people watching DVDs from them in 2030... https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/23/netflix-dvd-business-still-a...