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”.
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)