I drove cabs for nine years but fully admit I’m no expert so lay down your wisdom.
Yeah I thought so.
You’re the one who claims to know what they’re talking about yet make zero effort to support your claims.
Honestly, I’ve never heard anyone claim taxi drivers were getting rich but can tell you they weren’t universally getting exploited like the pro-rideshare propaganda was telling you. Back before Uber/Lyft I could work less than half the time, have a roof over my head and food in my belly plus got to spend time doing things I enjoyed like shaving yaks. After, not so much, all the “excess income” got siphoned off and went nowhere because VC money was subsidizing the push to bankrupt the competition.
Only job in my life where I had my income cut (to keep the insurance contracts which were the only thing making us money) and I’m not exactly a young pup.
Walmart (supposedly, no real evidence) does the same thing and everyone complains but some Silicon Valley companies do it and we’re supposed to cheer them on?
Yada, yada, predatory pricing, horay!!!
We read the same articles dude. Don’t act smarter than you are because you have Twitter.
It literally was…
Maybe not on the scale of “I’m gonna make a wrapper on top of this chatGPT API and be a billionaire” but you could survive with very little effort if that’s your jam.
In places like, IDK, Phoenix all you needed to be a taxi was a certified meter, rates posted on the side of your car, a sticker which they gave you when you fulfilled all these requirements and, here’s the big one which allowed Uber/Lyft to undercut everyone, commercial insurance.
If your drivers don’t have to pay for expensive insurance and you can sell your product for under the actual cost it’s no big surprise you can gain a large foothold against the “taxi monopoly”.
Whenever I get back to Phoenix and take a Lyft I always talk to the drivers to see how things are working out for them after the “monopoly” was broken and, from what I can gather, they’re getting paid fewer peanuts than I did driving a cab and have to maintain their vehicles at their own expense. Sure, tell me how “the warranty covers all that”, they aren’t killing their resale value by putting in a million miles and the $0.50 fuel surcharge for a 23 mile trip helps out when gas prices are over $4/gal.
Only on HN…