Most people still have the same rough, basic needs. A "supplementary" income is not enough to do this. Every single Uber driver I've ever asked does it as a full-time job, but doesn't get the pay or protections of a full-time worker.
Especially in the UK and other more regulated countries than the US, becoming an Uber driver takes time and money as you require a licence. People aren't doing it as a side-gig. It's their job. And Uber knows it.
There's an interesting statistical effect here.
Let's say there are 50 Uber drivers. 10 of them are doing it full-time; the others are doing it 5 hours a week for some additional income. That's 10 * 40 + 40 * 5 = 600 hours of driving per week, of which 400 is by the full-time drivers. So if you ask your driver whether they are full-time, they will say "yes" with about 2/3 probability, but the number of part-time drivers greatly exceeds the number of full-time drivers.
This effect is even stronger if you typically take Uber at times when part-time drivers are less likely to drive.
To your last point, location does matter a great deal here. Anecdotally, in my suburban area, I know a fair number of stay-at-home parents who do some driving on the side, esp. while the kids are in school. They most emphatically do not want to be driving full-time, or doing anything else full-time: if they wanted a full-time job they would not be stay-at-home parents. I am quite certain that this dynamic does not hold across all Uber markets, by any means.
For as long as I have been taking Uber (which is ~5 years), I almost always make small talk with the driver. In almost every single case, they have mentioned the flexibility as a key factor as to why they drive for Uber (and yes, they also do complain about falling incomes as time has gone by).
Some folks pick their social justice topic and blow it up 100x. Anyone who disagrees is a monster.
I definitely find the experience much better than taxis, especially in NYC, on average.
Next time you ride with one, ask them about what they have to do to become a rideshare driver in NY and if the burden of regulations and costs paid to the state would be worth if it they were not doing the work full time.
Of course, I've also seen people who were current or ex taxi drivers, working fulltime on several services.
People need dependable employment to survive and thrive.
This is absurdly regional. Do you live in the region considering the legal change and take uber regularly enough to know if it's their fte?
This is like saying that libraries should ban unpaid volunteers in order to justify the hiring of more librarians.
The "right" you mention doesn't exist in e.g. countries with minimum wage laws.
Say I use Uber to take advantage of HOV lanes going to and from work (and make a little extra cash). Now because desperate people have commandeered the platform as their sole source of income, I should not be able to do that anymore?
Seems like you can't have nice things at all because of this. If I make an app called "Clean Streets" that pays a dime per piece of litter picked up from local streets, desperate people would try to turn it into a full time living and I would be sued for abusing people, not paying living wage, not giving full benefits, etc. (even though I just wanted to incentivize passively cleaning up of litter, geez)
People loved these ride-hailing apps because of how lousy the typical taxi cab experience was for most people.
~ Most of the drivers were not native English speakers and would not put any effort into conducting their business genially.
~ They would refuse to take credit cards despite having card readers or would disable them to take cash.
~ At late hours you were at the mercy of the dispatcher (from the central office) if they would send a taxi at all or if the driver would take your business instead of ditching you to pickup passengers for longer (and more profitable) trips.
~ There was zero accountability in a whole host of areas like that.
[1]: http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittVenkates...
It sure seems like a lot of people will have to continue to work , e.g. for less than minimum wage, and without almost any legal protections, until better options are made available to them.
I'm more inclined to welcome incremental improvements, no matter how modest, than to bemoan everything short of some kind of ideal possibly-possible future.
For one, does "everyone", for you, include every person in the world? Should everyone making a living with less than "better" options be forced to stop working as they are now and wait for those better options to materialize? It seems pretty obvious to me that accepting something less than perfect is better than refusing to accept anything that falls short in the interim.
lol
Nobody is intentionally exploiting anybody; desperate people exploit themselves.
So the solution is either gatekeeping or rate limiting.
a) only allow people that meet a minimum economic status to make money from the app.
b) limit the amount of money/time that can be spent on the app so it is clear the intent is not to provide full-benefits careers.
What a perfect distillation of the empathy-deficient and contemptuous attitude that a large fraction of rich, fortunate techies have towards everyone else. Qu'ils mangent de la brioche.
Do you think governments should turn away all such recyclables that the homeless bring in on the grounds that they're not making a living wage? If not, you see the legit problem the GP described.
They were doing no better illegally sub-contracting with illegal sub-lessees of taxi medallions who themselves illegally forked out hundreds of thousands of dollars to wealthy medallion owners who hoarded them and prevented anyone else from legally procuring them.
The previous taxi system ( prior to the arrival of ride-hailing apps ) was thoroughly corrupt at every level. I hope thats not up for debate.
Immigrant new-arrival drivers would pay daily fixed amounts to illegally "lease" these cabs (on the daily) to those at the bottom of the chain of operators described above.
They were already "part-time" (well before the arrival of Uber and Lyft) and weren't afforded many of the protections the medallion issuing body put in place.
It was a thoroughly corrupt sham that the governing bodies paid little attention to and hand waived the illegal practices because they were (and are) themselves corrupt rent-seekers who were in bed with those interests they truly protected.
The officials knew it.
The medallion owners knew it.
The sub-vendors knew it.
The immigrant daily-wage-slaves knew it.
This is why Uber, Lyft and others were such life savers when they arrived. Everyone hated taxi cabs.
Slugging might be an option.[1] Doesn't help with additional income, or work very well for suburb-to-suburb commutes, but at least in DC, it's a very popular option, especially coming from the south on the I-95 corridor.
Or maybe we're starting to expect that people building things have responsibility to foresee potential harms arising from their use, whether or not part of the intended use case, and to build in an equitable way?
After all, if "inadvertently deepens abject poverty" is a possible outcome of a tool you're building, maybe the problem is with the design and not the people using it.
There are tens of millions of people in the U.S. that are not legally permitted to reside here, let alone work. Are you also in favor of actually enforcing those laws and either preventing them from working or deporting them?
> It's almost as though...we as a society continually assess whether the harm from some activity exceeds benefit, and react accordingly?
I do not think that U.S. society, or any country really, could be even approximately described like this, accurately. As just one example, minimum wage laws were originally introduced to prevent minorities (e.g. black people) from undercutting the wages of ethnic-majority workers (i.e. 'white' people). As another, a large number of U.S. states require certification or licensing for people to cut or style other's hair. I am extremely skeptical that such laws or regulations were enacted because a fair cost-benefit analysis implied that such were reasonable.
No one does this. This argument exists in a fantasy land.
Picking up someone on your way to work could be ideal or a challenge if you need to get to work early. I’m not sure what your point is - it should have zero opportunity cost or it’s a bad deal? Does your current job have any opportunity cost?
This is due to people (non-consciously or not-explicitly) holding or believing something like 'The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics'.
In a nutshell, it's often better to ignore a problem than attempt to improve it in any way less than perfect, at least in terms of other third parties' reactions.
Someone posts a trash bounty for their neighborhood. Another person accepts the bounty. They exchange messages, the acceptance criteria is agreed upon, and the transaction is completed after the bounty poster has verified the trash is gone.
I think such an app would work great for cleaning up public places, but would break down as soon as people started tried to turn it into a career.
“I know it’s bad for you, but it will be better for others. And because we think that’s more important, you have no choice.”
An objectively free society is always better than your subjectively “healthy” society.
This sounds cliche, and it is, but for whatever reason I feel kind of forced to reemphasize the obvious in response to your self-centered-universe-outlook comment.
In a human society, the alternative to government is rule of the strongest. That's how we got nobles and kings, later the great capitalist tycoons and their private police and armies.
> An objectively free society
That does not mean anything. Well, it means you are trying to shove your world-view down everybody else's throat while shutting out any discussion and arguments that you dislike.
If you feel that that's the case then you must realize that what stopped this status quoue wasn't legislation but industrialization and guns. Legislation is always after the fact.
Also, of note, is that guns were invented in China thousands of years ago and it has been a monarchy or dictatorship since then.
Which brings me back to my point, the current status of civilization is due much less to legislation than people say it is.
But if you say that the systematic codification of rules (i.e., laws) matters less than people say it does, we disagree completely. Laws literally defined every major civilization back to the dawn of recorded human history.
For more modern examples, CA's employee rights laws are the reason that SV happened in SV rather than New York, Boston, Chicago, or Detroit--all cities with larger scientific and industrial bases than SF or LA. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act literally made the internet as it exists today possible; without it Youtube, Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, and even Amazon and Google couldn't exist as they do today.
How many people do you think go through the process of signing up for Uber simply to arbitrage the 5-10 minutes gained on HOV lanes?
Compare vs. Uber/Lyfts actual use case - to displace taxis and public transport while under-paying it's drivers.
Free enough I can employ anyone at any wage, to do any job?
Free enough I can employ children and send them down mines?
Free enough I can just come around and take your house?
If you don't like this logic, why do you support the OPs use of the inverse proposition:
"I know it’s bad for all of you, but it will be better for me. And because I think that’s more important, I'd like everyone to agree without directly justifying it.”
Even if you believe in a society of objective freedom, there are multiple senses of freedom. There are "freedoms from" as well as "freedoms to", and you seem to be carefully and convexly limiting the definition of "objectively free society" fits exactly cognitive cognitive volume you want, without regard to how other people might define that concept.
It's really simple, because the inverse doesn't involve legislation, where an individual is forced to do something at risk of life and limb.
Legislation is there either way. It is involved in each case. And as employment (often dangerous) is required for living in the US, it seems pretty weird to view this structural change that only mildly inconvenienced some of the most egregious users of the very broad "contractor" status in existing law, I can't quite work out why this is important.
If one takes issue, plenty of other states to choose from to better experience one’s personal idea of “freedom”.
That's odd, because all my Uber drivers are doing it part time. A vast majority work in fields with either odd hours (vet techs, nursing) or with breaks (teachers) and use Lyft/Uber to fill in the gaps and make extra cash. The only driver I've had in the past few months who was full time was a recent immigrant who implied he was missing some documents to be able to get a regular job.
It would be hilarious if they stopped having Uber drivers in California and just paid Nevada Uber drivers to make the trips instead
Do you mean trips that begin in California and end in California? If Uber systematically does this, I'd hope to see a new law that is a "bug fix" that makes Uber CEO eligible for life in prison with no opportunity for parole for doing this.
EDIT: Also, remember that neither Lyft or Uber have ever been profitable
I've taken Uber/Lyft in many parts of the US, and side-gig drivers are quite common. Often drivers are students, working around their schedule, part-time parents, semi-retired, or otherwise genuinely looking to supplement income.
I wouldn't be surprised if barriers to entry like licenses kept these folks at bay. I also wouldn't be surprised if a stronger social safety obviated the need for supplemental income.
I only want to get in a taxi when the driver has been carefully vetted which the licensing system provides. Uber cannot be trusted to vet drivers properly as it has no incentive to do so.
Consider NYC taxi drivers. They have 4am to 4pm shifts. This creates many problems (eg getting a cab between 3pm and 4pm due to the shift change such that they had to have a special regime for those who still needed to go to the airport).
What if you wanted or needed to pick up your kids after school at 3pm? That's a problem for a taxi driver. But an Uber or Lyft driver has the flexibility to simply stop accepting fares.
So doing it full-time does not make these situations equivalent I guess is my point.
Not to mention that almost all Uber drivers I've seen have both Uber and Lyft signs in their windows so obviously they work with both. That's a good thing, gives them more choices and helps keep those companies honest and even if you argue that in practice Uber/Lyft don't seem to provide drivers the benefits of such competition (they may be colluding) then I ask you, isn't the solution to that to promote more competition? So be very careful with enacting laws if you want to create real competition to help the drivers.
In fact, many regional ride-hailing app companies already are.
There aren't anywhere near enough flexible part time jobs that stay at home mums and dads can do while their kids are in school.
If we're polling for anecdata, my experience has been quite the opposite. But I suspect this is very dependent on what time you ride - in evenings, I often encountered people driving for a couple hours after work.
Especially in the UK and other more regulated countries
than the US, becoming an Uber driver takes time and
money as you require a licence. People aren't doing it
as a side-gig.
I know black cab drivers need to be able to memorize maps of various neighborhoods but isnt that rather antiquated in the age of advanced GPS & traffic apps that do the same job better?
I'm all for thorough and deep background checks (and regulation to mandate them), to weed out sketchy drivers or those with criminal pasts, who drive for Uber & Lyft but anything beyond that is just bureaucratic over-reach & rent-seeking by the government.
> I know black cab drivers need to be able to memorize maps of various neighborhoods.
I assume you're referring to what we call "The Knowledge" and it's an exam that takes literally years to pass. You have to be able to name every single road, junction and corner in the entirety of Greater London from memory. The fact that people still use black cabs (and often pay a premium to do so) shows the value in local knowledge over the Google Maps hive-mind.
The Knowledge is archaic. It exists only because regulation is ossifying and because existing black cab drivers feel "I had to do it, so should they". It's literally hardly changed since the 1800s and doesn't even cover all of London, just a six mile radius from Charing Cross.
Google Maps can do it better, more reliably and faster than any person, without the massive costs and overheads involved in the entire licensing and examination regime required. The amount of labour hours required for these cabbies to memorise the layout of central London alone is a staggering cost and there's no reason for it.
Being an employee DOES NOT require (1) only full-time work, (2) fixed schedules, or (3) exclusivity with one company.
Being an employee DOES require employers to compensate for all work an employee performs. Drivers shouldn't have spend 20 minutes of every hour off the clock while driving to pick up riders. Drivers shouldn't have to spend 45 minutes off the clock in the airport cell phone lot waiting for their turn at the top of the queue.
If the business model only works by making people work for free, then it's necessary for the state to set minimum standards.
> Drivers shouldn't have to spend 45 minutes off the clock in the airport cell phone lot waiting for their turn at the top of the queue.
If the driver is driving for more than one company, who pays for that cell phone lot time?
The worst part of the medallion system were the title transfers. Quotas and a fair lottery system can be ok, and can even be in the public interest to reduce traffic. However, letting the medallions go to auction for hundreds of thousands of dollars creates perverse incentives that squeezes small players out of the market or force them into crippling debt.
Likewise, the proposed congestion pricing schemes in Manhattan should be punitively taxing private vehicle ownership, not taxis of the equivalent.
As a thought exercise, what should we do about land ownership? Should we have quotas and a lottery system as you suggest is appropriate in such scenarios of fixed inventory and high prices?
You can be available to drive for more than one company at a time, but that's generally true of W-2 on call temporary work, so I don't see how it is inconsistent with them being employees.
It would require changes to how Uber/Lyft operate, becausethey would have to distinguish between available-but-not-yet-on-shift and on-shift workers within the app, and presumably would direct (not “offer”) new rides to available on-shift drivers and only offer shifts to available off-shift drivers if there was unmet demand (not just for a ride, but sufficient projected need to justify the shift.)
Those two things do not compute. How does the amount being paid determine where a person can/cannot work? I can hold two jobs now if I wanted (even though I'm being paid way more than minimum wage), and that's as long as I honor the contract I have with my current employer.
>- I don't want drivers to lose the flexibility to do this on a casual or flexible basis. Quotas and the like will mean the only option is to drive full-time. I'm all for people being able to supplement income. I feel like this is useful to a lot of people.
This one too. I get that companies will start to prefer full time drivers, but just like in other industries, there will be temp workers and part time workers.
And depending on how the laws are written, there will also be "contracting" companies that lyft and uber could use to fill up their drivers. Kind of like how Via is doing in NYC - from what I can tell very few drivers actually work for Via, instead they work for all these other car companies, and Via delegates rides down to those companies who then dispatch the vehicle.
These regulations will cause a sea change in how this industry works. Whether it is for the better or not is something time will tell.
If I can collect 8 minimum wages concurrently from 8 gig companies by being logged to their 8 apps, their business models become unsustainable, and the gig economy dies.
I guess this is the intention of this legislation, but I can't rule out the proponents simply not understanding what they're doing.
As for driving for multiple companies, under conditions devoid of government interference, you being able to "life hack" your way around low pay in either of the companies you drive for means there's no pressure preventing them from lowering the pay even further.
For most other jobs, you do two jobs sequentially. So I'm paid minimum wage working 4 hours for Home Depot, then minimum wage working 2 hours for Home Hardware.
But drivers will be logged in to Uber & Lyft etc in parallel. How do you count, calculate, and enforce minimum wage? There's potential for double-dipping here. Or, if you only calculate minimum wage based on actual driving times, I think that's basically already effectively the case.
If they only have to pay while you have a fare or are driving to pick up a fare, a driver may accept a fare on one app while finishing up the other.
Problem of idling on multiple accounts can be solved by only paying out idle time by the company the driver ends up picking up a customer for or when the 2 or 4 hour shift ends. If you see driver idling on your time a lot and never picking up rides even though they are available, fire them like you would do with any employee.
Paying out idle time by the company that provides a fare makes sense, but requires cooperation between the employers.
I'm sure the devil is in detail though and we might end up with drivers occupied by route juggling when they should focus on safely driving...
And what, in your opinion, is the way to do this?
The market has a giant moat, via the mind blowing amounts of VC and IPO cash that they used to buy market share.
The “risk” of regulation stopping new entrants seems so laughably minor compared to this that it makes one question the impartiality of the whole argument.
> the flexibility to drive for multiple companies at once
A point of clarification: Lyft effectively prevents XL drivers from dual-platforming. They "keep you busy"* with regular and shared rides which you're not supposed to turn down. Accepting these rides renders you unavailable for UberXL rides when Lyft has no XL rides to offer.
* - https://help.lyft.com/hc/en-us/articles/115012926367-How-to-...
For example in the Bay Area Uber could start five shell companies for the East Bay, SF, Peninsula, South Bay and North Bay. Then each driver is restricted or algorithmically encouraged to work in a different zone for each 10-hour segment.
The TNCs already (or at least used to) operate different companies for different markets. This scenario doesn't seem to far fetched.
A reasonable court could easily spot this scheme, the law shouldn't be enforced by a series of if statements.
Also, a minimum wage per hour is going to probably be much better than driving for both companies in practice, since you'll still be getting paid even if Lyft alone dispatches fewer rides. You're even saving money there since that idle time isn't burning up gas.
This is a non-point. People often have more than one job, and they're considered employees at each of their employers.
If you drive more than 30 hours per week or 120 per month for one company and meet the 5 criteria, you should get benefits and be taxed as an employee for that period from that company, unless you are already receiving benefits from another company.
There is no reason to prevent them from logging in and out when they want.
The reality isn't because of Uber and Lyft, it's because of Pizza Companies. When a company like Papa John's spins off itself and makes a company called "Red Delivery Guy" which they claim you're an independent contractor for, and then uses that company to rip off its employees (this actually happened with the Papa John's on Chicago Ave in Riverside, CA, illegally taking employee tips, classifying them as IC when they're in fact employees, etc.)
Ubar and Lyft are just following that particular scam started by pizza companies. Hit the pizza companies instead of Uber and Lyft and you would see this practice disappear almost overnight.
Here's what I don't want:
- I don't want quotas as NYC is doing. This is just recreating the taxi medallion system.
- I don't want each company to be forced to pay a minimum wage per hour that then means a driver loses the flexibility to drive for multiple companies at once.
- I don't want regulations to keep smaller competitors out of the market. There's a real risk of this.
- I don't want drivers to lose the flexibility to do this on a casual or flexible basis. Quotas and the like will mean the only option is to drive full-time. I'm all for people being able to supplement income. I feel like this is useful to a lot of people.
Note: I do want drivers to earn a sufficient income from this. It's just that quotas and company minimum wages aren't the way to do this.