"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email [email protected] and we'll look at the data."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That's because, overwhelmingly, cases like this where people are convinced that something seems "totally astroturfed" turn out to simply be people disagreeing with each other. The community is divided on divisive issues like this one. To a first approximation, it really is as simple as that.

Of course there are also various kinds of manipulation, but because of what I said in the previous paragraph, the only legitimate way to address those is to look for evidence—that means something objective, which is not just based on people having opinions that seem obviously wrong or bad (i.e. sufficiently different from one's own).

This phenomenon is extremely well established and you can find many years of past explanation about it here: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... .

Edit: incidentally, perceptions like "Every single time there's an article about $topic..." are also hopelessly subject to cognitive bias. HN has had many, many threads about Uber which have been dominated by negative sentiment.

- Walter Lippman, The Basic Problem of Democracy, 1919 (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1919/11/the-bas...)

I'm not trying to have a holier than thou approach - lots of people simply need a job, and humans are only human in their actions - but I would be curious to see how opinions of folks working at small startups differ from those working at GAAFA/FAANG etc.

(To be clear, opinions are your personal subjective thought and I don't think they can just be "wrong", I'm just curious on if there's a difference in who thinks what how.)

If this was the case, why didn't workers continue what they were doing before they worked for Uber? Did they have no job before Uber, or did they view Uber as an improvement to their previous situation?

Private property doesn’t exist in nature.

To me force—including reckless regulation—is the real exploitation.

Also, Uber isn’t making a lot of money. They have been hemorrhaging VC for years and aren’t making any profits.

While Belgian road traffic victims lay on the road, the ambulances and dispatching services colluded to assign more distant ambulances for maximizing the per km driven profits. That's not a victimless crime: lives, limbs (think infections) and livelihoods (both of the victims and the typical scapegoats who shall carry all the blame, round down all liabilities and round the remaining liability up). Hurray for "socialism", money must roll.

You forgot to add "in some places".

When someone pops your bully in the nose, you don't care if it was a cheap shot.

Of course that is short sighted and today's hero can easily become tomorrow's bully.

Is Uber horrible? Probably. But at least they provide the service they claim to.

The taxi companies in my area before Uber (and frankly still, after Uber) are literally rage inducing. You can call them and confirm that a cab has been dispatched - and it will NEVER show up. Call them back and confirm again? Same thing.

Need to schedule a ride to the airport? Cab won't show.

Need someone to take you home after a house party? Cab won't show.

Literally flag down a cab on the side of the road? They will hassle you over card usage, intentionally drive out of the way (like - seriously, bitch I've lived in ATL for 33 years, I know this is the long route you fucker), and have terrible safety standards (oh, none of the seat belts in the back of your cab work? fun!).

So Uber might be horrible, and I would really, really love to see cities increase spending on public transit.

But I FUCKING HATE the cab companies. They can fucking rot for all I care. If Uber puts them all into chapter 11, I will cheer them on.

Would I still prefer to see investment in public transit instead of dealing with Uber? Of course. But we weren't seeing that with cabs, and at least Uber will god-damned show up when called.

Taxi business here is quite different.

I don't speak German and had been in Germany for only a few hours at that point, so I didn't know for certain that I was being scammed. In fact, I still don't. As far as I gather, taxis are supposed to use their meters to calculate the cost of the trip, but perhaps there are exceptions I am unaware of.

There's a lot of things I find questionable about Uber and its business practices, but the fact that they tell you the price up front is definitely a positive contribution.

(Edit: I'm Croatian and fairly well aware of how taxis work in Europe)

edit: And Uber charged me a fee to cancel the no-show ride and I had to call and argue with them to take the charge off.

Uber Pop got kicked out in a couple of months with Uber having to pay the social security costs of the employees. Now it's just an aggregator of Taxi companies, same with Bolt. The possible margin is minuscule since the drivers change apps depending on which pays the best. Often having both open.

For the companies themselves it's an extremely cutthroat business. From what I have heard the only chance to make any money is to own about 50 cars and have all maintenance in house. Otherwise it's just a fools attempt at being independent.

I don’t understand this analogy in this context. In the case of Uber, uber is also a bully, arguably a worse one. In this case you want both of them to be arrested. Even when their fighting each other, it is still disturbing everyone and you just want them to stop.

Uber is not a hero of today, nor was it the hero of yesterday. It was always a bully,

No one has a god given right to have cheap taxis in their city at any cost.

The people complaining in this thread sound like the people complaining that they can't run a restaurant without paying their workers poverty wages.

People have rights, businesses don't.

a) Uber was a crappy business model that required the exploitation of the labor force to raise money. If this fact can't be fixed for the company to be profitable, the company can shutdown or become a co-op for all I care.

b) Toronto and SF have banned sidewalk robots (until they "study" the situation i.e. until only monopoly transport companies can afford to wait around). NYC had banned scooters and e-bikes till last year, and in fact spent precious police time chasing down delivery workers who motorized their bikes to reduce the physical drudgery of their work. So when the Guardian says "Uber broke municipal law", my question is always "How stupid were these laws?". Most of these city laws consistently over-index for the opinions of the wealthy retirees who can show up at 10am on a Tuesday to yell at their council meetings. So, if VC's want to fund lobby arms to move the needle in breaking through to these councillors, I'm here for it.

But in this context, the Uber methodology would be useful for busting through the archaic city approval processes + frivolous environment lawsuits aka the prime driver of the housing shortage [1]

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1089174630/housing-shortage-n...

Of course, it does not justify exploiting workers. Protecting people from those practices is one of the reasons we have governments composed of independent powers, and entire structures with the only purpose of keeping those honest. People aren't complaining about Uber because it looks like that on their case, those safeguards are working. (As an example, this article could only be written because the safeguards are working.)

And yeah, they were some courageous people that insisted on breaking some really immoral laws and destroying a really bad local actor. If it wasn't for them, city transportation would probably be the same it was at the 2000's. Of course, they did it for their own immoral motives, using bad practices that should be punished. It just looks like they will be punished, so why bother hating them? Just use a lower priced competitors that probably treats their drivers better, and forget them.

Perhaps because "the ends justify the means" is not a sound code of morality. Lying, cheating, stealing, exploiting, lawbreaking, hiding rapes & assaults, and more are rarely justified for any ends, perhaps only fighting literal authoritarianism.

These immoral behaviors are certainly not justified to merely open a stagnant market because you want to exploit the workers even more than the entrenched entities (e.g., at least in the old system there was a path to earn a medallion worth 6-7 $figures and get a retirement, w/uber, it's only 'what are your stats last week') and steal some of the gains for yourself.

And now, after over a decade of lying, cheating, stealing, exploiting, lawbreaking, hiding rapes & assaults, and squandering $billions of investor funds, they still aren't profitable, and are shedding drivers & customers as they attempt to raise prices to anything sustainable.

We were promised flying cars and all we get is a new form of exploitation, except now driven by a smartphone app? If they put all that funds and effort into an actual honest non-exploitative effort for a flying car...

But the investors don't seem to care, they are losing the drivers, and the government seems to be acting quite well against them (at least here it is). So, again, why should I bother?

Anyway, AFAIK:

> If they put all that funds and effort into an actual honest non-exploitative effort for a flying car...

They would be squashed (literally) by the taxi mafia. That's why nobody did it before them.

(About the "hiding rapes & assaults" thing, do they still do that? They tried it here and it backfired quite strongly (as it should), so now they have a policy to help the police on those cases. If they are indeed doing that somewhere, well, maybe people should look at the other end of the problem, it's way more effective to fix it there.)

So, are you saying that just because someone has recourse that acting immorally is OK, and because that recourse exists, we shouldn't hate on them?

I have an attny friend who took a case against Uber. In a liberal US state with strong worker and consumer protections, it still had to go through multiple layers of appeal to the state's supreme court until they finally got a settlement from Uber. It would have been literally impossible unless the plaintiff was very rich, or the attny hadn't taken the case on contingency/pro bono basis (IDK which he did).

Hordes of unethical people like the Uber executives will fight everything tooth & nail, legally or not.

They do not deserve respect in a civilized society merely because they manage to make money. Any clan of asshats can make money by exploitative and illegal means.

>>They would be squashed (literally) by the taxi mafia. Just because the "taxi mafia" is bad also does not mean that it is OK to impose bad consequences on everyone else to fight them. If the taxi mafia were the only ones harmed, maybe OK, but that group has harmed a lot of people.

It's certainly not ok. But I'm certainly not losing sleep over it, because the worst case is really not that bad.

Anyway, I do encourage people to look at alternatives to work for, and I will start to lose my sleep if I see my government's attitude changing.

> Hordes of unethical people like the Uber executives will fight everything tooth & nail, legally or not.

Yeah, and if you look carefully, the root of the problem here is not inside Uber. I keep hopping some high-profile criminal acts on exactly the correct way to disrupt the Justice system and for it to change into something more democratic, but well, that's pretty unlikely. Odds are getting higher that my country will get a plain old revolution to change that, what is a much worse option.

I'd agree that this is extremely unlikely in any country, and even conceiving & detailing such a plan, nevermind executing it perfectly to obtain a desired effect seems impossible in that the possible actions do not overlap with any solutions.

>> Odds are getting higher that my country will get a plain old revolution to change that

What country is that? It may be necessary. That said, just because most of an elite is unethical doesn't give some sub-group license to be so, at least in my book.

Yes I'm certain the folks at Uber were feeling the pressure every day at their Bay Area office with its foosball tables.

Good grief.

Out of curiosity, what coercive power does Uber wield that allows them to exploit workers all while non-exploitative employers have struggled to find anyone to hire? We've been living through what has been possibly the best job market in history for most of Uber's existence. Locally, we've been at full employment for nearly a decade now (less a few months during the height of COVID). It's certainly not a matter of "They have no other choice".

“Full employment” doesn’t accurately describe the last decade. Worker power was maybe never lower than it was between 2008 and 2020.

Hiring during a recession is not in and of it self any more exploitative then hiring during an economic up swing. However, during a recession you can easier get away exploitation which you wouldn’t have gotten away with if the labor conditions were better and the jobs were plenty. This is what Uber exploited.

I will add to that that Uber also played with the psychology of their workers, exploited addictive behavior by “gamifying” the work. This creates a cognitive dissonance among the worker which “tricks” workers into accepting conditions they otherwise wouldn’t have.

That doesn't make sense though. A worker can choose not to work and do nothing, same as if the "exploitative" job wasn't offered at all. Are you saying the existence of the choice is immoral, and that someone else should decide whether or not a job is a good use of their time?

Second, the logic you just used could easily justify feudal serfdom. Does the existence of the choice to become a serf make the lord immoral? If your line of reasoning can be used to justify modes of living that we all agree are bad, perhaps it’s a flawed line of reasoning?

Yes, because a larger number individuals choose to work for them instead of not work. If everyone (or even just a simple majority) decided not to work for them, then the company would likely die.

But to your point, I don't agree that the existence of Uber warps the labor landscape in such a way that it removes previously available jobs in other sectors. It would make them more available (and employers more desperate), if other workers moved from those jobs to work for Uber.

>Second, the logic you just used could easily justify feudal serfdom.

I don't know enough about feudal serfdom to comment on that, but I would point out that you haven't shown where my logic is wrong/flawed. Only that you think it justifies something bad. I would ask that you point out the flaw in the logic instead.

That it can justify something bad is the flaw. For example, racism isn’t bad because it’s logically flawed. Depending on your core beliefs, something I’m not going to be able to change, it may be the logical conclusion of them. The reason it’s bad is because it is used to justify mistreatment of others.

You’re on your own dissecting if you believe in something that can justify feudalism because of bad core beliefs or because of bad logic.

You are putting the horse before the cart by saying that something is bad first, regardless of whether or not it is logical. If you are saying feudalism is bad (again, I don't know enough on the subject to speak about it), but it is consistent with my logic, then you have to explain how the logic is flawed, which you have already asserted in your previous post.

That's exactly what was describing as a "core belief". I share that belief, but plenty of people don't. If you hold the opposite core belief "individual behavior can be inferred from a person's group membership" bam you've got a logical chain that leads to however far down the racism spiral you want to go.

There is no logic that can prove or disprove which of those two is "correct". Empirical evidence, maybe? But that involves changing a core belief - you can show me mountains of evidence, but like anyone I'll discount the evidence that disagrees and overvalue the stuff that does. It's a long road, far too long for the HN comments section.

> You are putting the horse before the cart by saying that something is bad first, regardless of whether or not it is logical.

I'm not. As best as any human can do I am attempting to put my core beliefs first (examining them for faults and prejudices), and following logical chains to end up at my morality. Within this conversation I'm saying that I can dismiss an idea without tracing it's logic back to first principal because there is a logical chain between it and a different idea (feudalism) that I have dismissed already.

In the extreme case of this, we end up in a world where quick trip buys up all available fuel during a hurricane...

There's a lot of moving parts... the good of everyone vs the good of the individual vs the good of the present vs the good of the future. All of that is clouded by people with poor reasoning or malicious reasoning, and the fact that nobody can predict the future, and nobody wants to be held accountable if something fails.

Wages blew inflation out of the water through the later half of that period, so I'm not sure that tracks. Wages struggle to keep up with inflation, let alone beat it, when workers don't have much power. The reality is that the job market was very strong from the mid-2010s onward, save the COVID shutdown period. Although, obviously, not uniformly so.

It is true that the job market was difficult at the beginning of Uber's existence, which is why I said "most of" not "all of". I suppose what you're saying is that the exploitation was short-lived during their early days or limited to certain local markets?

Not at all what I’m saying.

I’m saying 2008-2020 was a bi-modal situation. Just like the COVID shutdown was: recall how for many workers, it meant working from home and a buildup of funds because there was nowhere to spend it. For another group it meant struggling, gig work, moving back in with parents, and draining your savings - because their entire industry was just GONE. Depending on what numbers you look at, and at what resolution, you see the first group, the second group, or both.

So wages went up during the 2010-2020 period, but for who? Minimum wage didn’t keep up with inflation in most places during that period. More lower paying jobs, less overall power. What are you going to do, quit this $10/hour job and go work at another $10/hour job? Why bother

Locally, minimum wage increased 50% over that period. Inflation was 17% over the same period. Like I asked before, maybe they only exploited workers in certain markets? There is no evidence of the bi-modal situation that you refer to locally. Obviously not all locales are equal, but the remark is presented without local information, hence wanting to know more about what it means. Does Uber treat workers like gold in some markets?

> What are you going to do, quit this $10/hour job and go work at another $10/hour job? Why bother

The reason you'd go to the other $10/hr job is to not face the same exploitation found at Uber. If all jobs on the market are seen as being equally fair, you're not being exploited... You might not be worth what you wish you were, but that's not what exploitation is.

That’s one interpretation of the data. Another would be that a lack of worker power is preventing wage increases. How does your interpretation of the data handle the fact that people on the capital side of the economy - i.e. uber ceos and shareholders - are getting rich off all those $10 hour jobs? There is clearly lots of money in the system… it’s just not going to the workers

On the main point - first in most US states minimum wage has not kept up with inflation.

Second - does minimum wage apply to gig workers in your location? Because in most places they have successfully classified their employees as “contractors”.

As to your point, uber is in many many places in the world - and the degree at which they have exploited their workers is variable. Where I am, uber costs about the same as a regular taxi did before uber arrived. But taxis drivers made and do make more than uber drivers. That sounds like a middle man got in and lowered wages. The same work, less money for workers, more for middle men? That is exploitation.

I appreciate your attempt to find some kind of reply, but, locally, minimum wage is up 1,567% since the first year it was in effect. Inflation is up only 810% over the same period. That's a substantial real gain.

> Second - does minimum wage apply to gig workers in your location?

As of a couple of months ago, yes. But, really, was anyone turning on their car for less than minimum wage before? You'd be losing money hand over fist doing that. There is no purpose in driving for Uber if you are losing money. Doing nothing at all is the clear winner in that scenario.

> Because in most places they have successfully classified their employees as “contractors”.

Which is fair. It's clearly a contractor position by every measure, and remains a contractor position here even with the recent laws surrounding those contracted services. As you can see, contractor doesn't have to mean a free-for-all. Contractors can be given worker rights too.

> But taxis drivers made and do make more than uber drivers. That sounds like a middle man got in and lowered wages.

Taxis, in many jurisdictions, have historically held a monopoly/oligopoly. That sounds more like new competition has increased competitiveness, which doesn't come as any surprise. A lowered price isn't the same as exploitation, though.

Yet people were. That’s literally what we’re talking about here. Because starvation was the other option. Burning your capital (i.e. your car) to the ground was a sensible choice given the other options.

> A lowered price isn't the same as exploitation

See my other comment. It isn’t exploitation, unless someone else is getting rich off it. Which they were.

But that brings us back to the top. If you're going to burn your car to the ground, why not burn it by driving it to an employer? The farmer at the edge of the city has been paying $25-30 per hour (even pre-pandemic), sometimes more, to anyone willing to show up – and still, nobody shows up.

It might not be the most desirable work, and maybe you're not quitting your developer job over it, but compared to losing money driving for Uber because you're in a crunch? You're not losing money making $25-30 per hour in an employment situation, even with some commute required to get there.

As we have discussed multiple times, not all locations are the same, but the question: "Does Uber treat its drivers like gold in some markets?" remains outstanding. There is an implication that Uber is exploitative everywhere (perhaps to varying degrees), and if that's the case, why so where the job market seeks workers elsewhere?

> It isn’t exploitation, unless someone else is getting rich off it.

That's not in line with the common definition of exploitation, and even if you want to use your pet definition, saying that all client-worker relationships are exploitative isn't particularly useful.

What’s that definition?

I’m using exploitation in the common sense of “treating someone unfairly” or “making use of someone for your own gain”.

Work relationships are not always exploitive. Ideally they are mutually beneficial. Sometimes they’re slightly skewed where one party profits a little more than they other. None of that is what we’re talking about.

I imagine they wish they could profit. Uber isn't profitable. They lose stupid amounts of money. It subsists on investments made by capitalists looking to metaphorically burn up their car. Given your definition, if the workers were making more than nothing they would be the ones exploiting Uber.

While your definitions are correct, your interpretation is not. "Fair" in economics isn't some moral position. It simply refers to where people generally agree. If Uber isn't meeting its agreements with the workers then there may be a case for exploitation, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Your point, if I interpret correctly, seems to be that the workers are making agreements that you wouldn't agree to.

And you forgot immigrants, the other large group working minimum wage jobs.

To me, those statements don't eschew accountability, it just acknowledges sometimes we send companies/people to the gallows that did both good and bad things. Gallows here being a metaphor, I doubt the political elite that were recruited to Uber (and other companies) will be held accountable or mentioned any more than in passing in the press. That said, I do expect to see policy changes and regulations in the future regarding mixing lobbying, recruiting highly connected staffers, etc

To be clear, I don't think there's some conspiratorial undercurrent of former Uber engineers here acting in coordinated fashion to cover up the story of what they're affiliated with on a place as relatively small as HN. For as popular as this forum is with nerds, the only thing we're really reknown for is the contrarian nature of the forum and how that contrarian nature sometimes (most of the time?) picks big winners. HN doesn't decide the future of hacker culture, it's just a voice in observing and dissecting it.

However, as I dreaded calling a taxi service - I never knew, which taxi service is good/had good prices, it was frequent, that taxi driver would take you long way just so you would pay more, and of course old mercedes which smelled awful was a norm here where I live. Some people talked about how taxis are awful but nothing could be changed.

Just then Uber was introduced here, few months later we have multiple Taxi application, where you see how much you will pay in advance, you can call taxi with ease for exact time. Thanks Uber, you can go now ;)

>Uber has essentially not just broken laws, but outright exploited workers/drivers... and people comment "Aah but the local taxi mafia was bad"...??!? I'm sorry but that does not justify exploiting workers. That does not justify using political influence to enter/gain markets. This isn't some messiah coming to save us all from the "horridness of local transport".

Except this isn't a david against goliath story like you're implying.

The fact is that those laws are not just practically wrong, but they are also morally wrong, and serve primarily to protect entrenched interests, both from the taxi companies, and of the workers who you claim incorrectly are being "exploited".

The fact is, if anyone is "using political influence to enter/gain markets" it's the established interests. The taxi companies, the workers, etc... Those very regulations that you are complaining are being broken by Uber, are the the problem!

I don't like Uber. I think it's a bad business. But its effects on muscling in on the taxi industry, and its blatant breaking of these immoral and economically ruinous laws are quite frankly commendable.

Would that we had more companies like this in other areas of the economy with entrenched interests.

The latter two are also a concern given the total disregard and emphasis on private profit over public good. Where I come from there are pretty restrictive drug laws which public health officials have frequently pointed out are harmful for people with a substance abuse disorder. In response a non profit organization took a direct action and illegally provided safe use shelters for harm reduction with on-site medical professionals to observe safety. This is an example of somebody braking the laws for a public good.

What Uber did was for their own profit, and profit alone, irregardless of any public benefits. In fact there are examples of cities divesting in their public transit systems using ride hailing as an excuse. This is an example of Uber resulting in net harm, regardless of the effect they had on the traditional taxi companies.

I also don't buy that Uber is any worse to its workers than the cab cartel was. And "exploit" is a nebulous term. If you want to say that Uber "exploits" its workers, you have to say how. I don't see providing a platform where drivers can choose when they want to drive as exploitative. I don't see the pricing system as exploitative, as they can quit at any time. I don't see employment systems where you are paid for the amount of work you do, rather than time spent, as exploitative.

You're making the point well, that they're not necessarily worse than the system(s) they disrupted.

- - - -

> If you want to say that Uber "exploits" its workers, you have to say how.

Here is one answer from "The Market Fairy Will Not Solve the Problems of Uber and Lyft" (2016):

> They don’t pay the cost of their capital.

> The wages they pay to their drivers are less than the depreciation of the cars and the expense of keeping the drivers fed, housed, and healthy. They pay less than minimum wage in most markets, and, in most markets, that is not enough to pay the costs of a car plus a human.

> These [sharing economy] business models are ways of draining capital from the economy and putting them into the hands of a few investors and executives. They prey on desperate people who need money now, even if the money is insufficient to pay their total costs. Drivers are draining their own reserves to get cash now, but, hey, they gotta eat and pay the bills.

https://www.ianwelsh.net/the-market-fairy-will-not-solve-the...

If so Uber will eventually cease to exist, and this is not an ethical issue

> The wages they pay to their drivers are less than the depreciation of the cars and the expense of keeping the drivers fed, housed, and healthy. They pay less than minimum wage in most markets, and, in most markets, that is not enough to pay the costs of a car plus a human.

The depreciation and operating cost of a car and the living expenses of a driver are variable by the choices of the driver. I have taken Uber rides in new SUV's and in old Priuses that have little depreciation value left in them. Is Uber supposed to pay more for drivers with less efficient / more expensive / newer cars? Is Uber supposed to pay you more when you move into a more expensive apartment? Is Uber supposed to pay you more if you are married or have kids to feed (which would be illegal). Decisions on what car to drive and where to live are economic decisions made by the individual driver, and if they lose money by deciding wrong, that is not Uber's fault.

> Drivers are draining their own reserves to get cash now, but, hey, they gotta eat and pay the bills.

So basically this is like the economic profile of taking a loan. You get cash now in exchange for additional costs paid later. If Uber's deal was similar to a payday loan in its cost/benefit ration, I would say you have a point here. But if it's more similar to a regular loan, then no. But this gets back to my point that it is variable by driver, and it doesn't make sense for Uber to offer higher rates to some drivers based on their choices. So basically I assume what you want here is for Uber to refuse to take on a driver that they calculate will lose money based on their vehicle expenses. I don't think this is entirely unreasonable, but IMO it's on the driver to make that decision, and Uber is not ethically responsible.

Say you lose your job and your pension and all the things that make your life comfortable tomorrow. You have a choice to wait it out, maybe take some time to learn an advanced skill and find a new line of work. However, you need money now to take care of a sick family member. So you start driving Uber...

Yes the mechanics of the rideshare platforms are such that you can start earning money now, but the cost is as you pointed out, to you in the future. So then the question is this like a regular loan, or is it more exploitative like payday loan. I think the lack of transparency and the circumstances one has to be in to even consider these choices are such that make it appear, at least to me, more like the latter than the former.

I think what the person responding to you wants, I know what I would want, is for Uber/Lyft to pay a bit more to take these costs into account. However this would raise the cost to riders, which have already been artificially subsidized for some time [0]. Uber won't do this because it would, to your first point, cause the company to become insolvent.

The assumption that poor people are not making rational choices is just plain wrong. I think the reality is closer to - people are trying to make the best choice they can, but often have a limited number of really bad choices to chose from. Sure some drivers drive an SUV instead of a Prius, but that may have been a function of the incentives presented by the app itself (i.e. qualifying for more exclusive rides, the appearance of making more money from this vehicle, its the only car you have now, etc. etc.).

A company that takes advantage of limited choices, and then offers you an option that appears to temporarily solve your problem now, at great personal expense to you later is in my view acting in bad faith because they are to some effect misrepresenting the service they are providing to their drivers. it is this point, in my view, that makes it look more like the payday loan than a "regular" loan.

[0] https://slate.com/business/2022/05/uber-subsidy-lyft-cheap-r...

So asking if Uber behaved ethically is indeed a useful question (even more so if the answer is obvious) because if they did, and if their behavior is indeed common in the industry, it provides a pretty solid justification for the government to jump in and improve things, where the free market isn’t.

People are asking for general labor laws which prohibits companies from misusing contractor status as a way of bypassing benefits and reasonable work hours.

People are asking the for a public alternative to taxi service, including more frequent buses that service wider areas, longer into the night so they won’t have to use the taxis so much.

Note that better labor laws will also fix the situation for the traditional taxi companies, as they won’t be able to exploit their workers either by e.g. a weird medallion system. You’ll probably have to pay more then previously for your cab ride (as the driver needs fair wages for their work), but that’s where the public alternative to cab rides comes in.

A lot of the conversation here is based on anecdata (interactions with uber drivers or cabs) or people projecting what its like to be a driver on uber and they are unwittingly being exploited.

I worked at a company that provided products to uber, lyft and doordash drivers, and personally interviewed well over 200 drivers, (along with having access to detailed data on a much larger dataset). The vast majority of drivers we talked to did not feel like they were being 'exploited' and generally liked the flexibility of the gig economy. Most workers were part time, working to supplement income from other jobs or in between other gigs, in fact when i was there, most drivers worked less than 6 months before stopping. I would say these people have a much better sense of whether they are being exploited than people who are not in their shoes.

There was a small but important minority (we called them 'professionals') for whom driving had become their full time profession (most were not cab drivers before) who were perpetually annoyed by uber and their main gripes tended to be the changing promotions systems, and algorithmic changes that reduced/limited profitable rides (like airport pickups) and just general loss of control.

Unless you can show me someone forced to drive for uber, any claims of worker exploitation are incredibly suspect.

Some people claim that every employer is exploiting their workers

It is a separate but related issue then the law-breaking. They need to be discussed separately.

Most people recognize that there are bad laws that should be broken, and bad laws that should be changed.

If Uber broke a bad law, the most important solution is to fix the law. If Uber broke a good law, the most important solution is to stop them.

I think the most charitable interpretation of them is legal duct tape over other bad laws. The most obvious examples are tax laws and incentives that tie Healthcare to employers.

Now the situation has flipped. When most people think back to taxis before Uber existed, they'll unfortunately rather accept poor working conditions for the drivers than going back to the taxi hellhole they still remember.

My main point was that customers aren't being treated badly like with taxis anymore, and they'll accept a lot of exploitation due to that.

Re: (A) If you really zoom out to the history of labor, it is a huge stretch to say Uber drivers are "exploited". They have almost perfect clarity on what they are being paid to do, they do it and it matches VERY closely the expectations, and they get paid in a timely fashion on the agreed-upon timeline. They have no lock-in, and can quit on a moment's notice. There are so many drivers globally who use Uber and vote with their labor. Frankly, it's generally very easy work too, compared to almost every other job (I'm sure it has its moments).

If I were to try and make the Steelman argument for why workers are "exploited", I can come up with basically 2 things: 1) Workers are incapable of deciding what is the right work for their situation. 2) No worker should earn below $x for any reason, and it is better that they be unemployed. In my experience, I have found that people are very savvy about money when it comes to earnings. Where people have issues is long term planning, but short-term, I have found people are very good at "this hack makes my job easier/make me earn more". So I don't buy either of these arguments, I believe it is generally a pessimistic and paternalistic view of workers.

I don't believe using the term "exploited" is generally helpful here, as it is an emotional term and not specific enough to address. If you were to break it down, we could have a real discussion.

Re: (B) You can't really look at the laws for moral guidance, There are many bad laws out there, that many many people disregard (e.g. the average US commits 3 felonies a day https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...). It is totally possible in many cases to break laws justly and comply with laws unjustly. You can look at the "illegal" actions of Rosa Parks and Gandhi for extreme examples of just lawbreaking. There are laws that are absurd, for example in New York during COVID, it was both illegal to wear a mask and illegal to not wear a mask. But there are many other smaller examples in people's lives where they think breaking the law is the right moral thing. And the reason most people support Uber's "law breaking" is that it was NET better for everyone than the old system, both drivers AND passengers. This passes a moral "smell test" for me. If one action is illegal, and the other legal, but everyone is better off doing the illegal thing, then the law is the problem. The legalization of Marijuana is another example of trying to reconcile this type of thing. Everyone is better off if it is just legal.

You also forgot that Uber doesn't make clear the costs of insurance, maintenance, depreciation and liability (other to say that it's not on them) which is coincidentally are the most confusing and difficult accounting considerations. Uber is clearly exploiting the lack of business acumen in their drivers.

Uber would hire children if it were legal for the exact same reasons people hired children in the past and the same reasons Uber currently hires people. Their drivers lack awareness and oversight from social and government organizations.

Which companies do not do this?

Just because everyone (theoretically) does it doesn't excuse the behavior.

That's a completely subjective term that just describes that one part of the transaction does not like the deal that they entered voluntarily. That's why many people, including myself, consider the usage of this term an attempt at manipulation.

In almost any country where it operated or operates, Uber was not and is not a monopoly, neither on taxi clients, nor on labour. There are multiple taxi apps a driver can work for, and many shift between them in a span of one shift. And traditional taxi parks, although lost a significant market share, have not disappeared. Therefore, a price of a driver's labour is still dictated by an open market and not by Uber.

What changed, though, almost everywhere, is taxi apps made the market more fluid and effective, and turned over a lot of mechanisms which taxi drivers used to "exploit" clients. You just have to travel to a city that still mandates government-backed monopoly, like Istanbul, and compare the level of prices, service and reliability to what the ordinary Uber experience is like.

> Uber has essentially not just broken laws

Laws can be, and often are, immoral. And any laws that limit the ability of parties on the free market to transact with each other however they wish, including taxi medallions or similar systems, undoubtedly are.

The choice between homelessness, starvation, and working an underpaid job is not a choice made voluntarily.

And equating the “exploitation” of slightly higher taxi rates compared with a coercive job… that’s way off the mark. An extra $20 to get from the airport or home from the bar once and a while (talk about transactions entered voluntarily), vs a grueling work environment that pays terrible that you have to do EVERY day to not starve.

Homelessness and starvation (even if we accept this argument at face value for drivers in first-world countries) are natural human condition, and Uber, or any other employer, does not become magically responsible for it just because they enter the picture with their job offer.

> An extra $20 to get from the airport or home from the bar once and a while (talk about transactions entered voluntarily), vs a grueling work environment that pays terrible that you have to do EVERY day to not starve.

I believe that everyone should feel sympathy for the poor and contribute to charity. However, this moral choice should be a free choice made by the person herself and not through coercion by government or similar entities.

WTF?

The natural human condition is subsistence hunting and gathering. The natural human condition is family unit based farming. The natural human condition is feudal serfdom. The natural human condition doesn’t exist because when and where in history do you point your finger and say this is natural.

The majority of human history we would not have considered ourselves homeless, and we would only starve if there was no food. The idea of one person in the group having more than they need and another dying for lack of food was unthinkable.

Don’t look to history to justify your social-darwinian beliefs. It doesn’t have your back.

Not to mention shifting a discussion about commerce to one of charity. Forcing companies to allocate more of their funds to labour vs profit to owners is not charity, that’s worker power operating as a market force.

and removing the underpaid job from the equation leaves someone with just homelessness or starvation - clearly a better position, right?

feel free to tip $20 for your uber rides if you feel that helps

If your particular business can’t exist and pay people well, it needs to die to make room for one that can.

And I don’t tip $20 - I ride transit or my bike. And yes it does make me feel better supporting non-exploitive systems and avoiding exploitive ones.

what reason you have to believe that is in fact the option? there are really quite few businesses with profit margins so high you could meaningfully raise pay purely by reducing profits.

> If your particular business can’t exist and pay people well, it needs to die to make room for one that can.

and how does that unspecified higher-margin business (if one even exists) achieve it? presumably the main way would be to be much smaller, charge higher fees & target more exclusive customers, so that only the rich get the benefits of the business, and vastly fewer people even get the opportunity for a job. sounds great.

trade-offs exist and your inability to acknowledge them is not constructive

What reason do you have to believe that profit margins are so slim?

My evidence for business being able to pay more is the existence of massive inequality. The superyacht seems to argue that there is more to go around than the financial statements indicate.

Voluntary has some shades of gray, especially when there is a power imbalance. Or, they might enter voluntarily, and things go quite ugly, and they feel they need to continue for their lively good.

A "voluntary" contract can still be bullying and coercive.

> Laws can be, and often are, immoral.

This is true but most instances of a company breaking the law are not this. Especially when breaking regulation is key to that company's existence. You can argue that regulation is unjust but it's typically been enacted by the people's duly elected representatives in good faith, and purposefully building a business around breaking it amounts to disrespect.

I don't think so. The word "coerced" is an adequate replacement for the word "voluntary" in that situation. It can't be both.

I think the issue that the GP poster has (and I have as well), is that "exploitative" is so nebulous that anyone can use it to describe almost anything. Any opportunity that an employer leverages is technically exploitation. Are all low paying jobs exploitative? They will always exist, by virtue of pay scales. But the word "exploitation" implies they should not exist.

The word "exploitative" would be much more useful in conversation if there was a set of clear qualifications (agreed upon by the majority of people) for a job to be exploitative. My understanding is that these qualifications already exist in labor law though.

Lack of imagination? Lack of life experience? People are coerced into contracts all the time. As I said before, "power imbalance" between parties is a key requirement for this.