I was just thinking about the people they consider employees. But yeah.
There’s also the subsidies that the drivers themselves unintentionally give to Uber, the externalized costs of running the operation that erode driver pay to below livable wages.
I keep reading about people who bought new cars to drive for Uber (after Uber told them to do so, feeding them wildly inflated promises of income), discovered the lie, but ended up driving for Uber just to pay off the debts they had taken on, not to actually pay for their time. (i.e. “I’ll quit driving for Uber as soon as I break even…”)
As a driver for both companies, Uber and Lyft are delirious if they think getting rid of drivers is a path to profitability . Right now U and L maintain an app…that’s it. Every piece of maintenance is part of the drivers expense of doing business with these scammers. U is using these fancy Volvo SUV’s with 20inch tires…which cost oh I would say $300 a piece to replace. Brakes, tires, oil changes, windshields, body damage…all on me. U and L pay for nothing. I’m just riding the storm until both these companies sink and then I guess it’s back to answering 300 emails a day and babysitting spoiled salespeople with a “sales manager” title.
Self driving car? Puhlease…let me see this thing navigate NYC traffic at 5pm. Let’s see how quickly it can react to some idiot crossing the street in his cellphone at the same exact time I’m crossing the intersection. Or another on a bike that decides to cut me off at 20mph. Hey they did say NYC is overcrowded…maybe this the govt way of cutting down the population.
I cannot say for whom I did this, but I have machined parts for Uber cars.
There is a lot of modification and machining done for them local to me and this will probably hurt some small shops that they contract with.
Personally I am not a fan of uber, the dickish bro culture they are known for is really all I remember about them on a day-to-day basis, but they put food on the table for a while.
Absolutely do. Name and popularity varies much by location. There’s nothing like this out by me, and last time I tried one out in NYC there were like 5 cars for the whole of Manhattan (though that was years ago, I’m generally fine with the subway and Yellow or Green cabs). But apparently small and midsize cities tend to have a fairly healthy market for them, particularly places without much in the way of medallion/street hail cabs.
If one looks at the taxi/medallion system, there’s a barrier and monopoly on this. People can take a bus, or drive themselves or use a bike. If prices of a service are too high surrogates will become interesting. Especially if you aren’t selling a status symbol.
I wonder how the economcs of Uber differ in cities with or without medallion systems? In places that have them, there is some economic benefit to be gleaned by ignoring those laws and avoiding the capital costs of a medallion as well as by increasing the supply of cars for hire and paying the drivers less. But in cities like DC without a government enforced scarcity of supply, taxi drivers were already barely making it. There just wasn’t that much profit to be made by ignoring the law.
That’s just speculation. I’d be very surprised if that’s how they presented it.
On the other hand, if they were going to replace public transportation systems, that’s believable. It might even be a good thing depending on how it’s organized.
It might be instructive to examine the system in the UK, which effectively splits “hackney carriages” - taxis you can flag down on the street, and “minicabs” or “private hire cars” which can only be booked in advance. (Uber works on this basis in the UK)
I have no idea what such an examination would indicate, though.
Hmmm…I love biking as much or more than the next guy but I’m not so sure it’s usually just as fast to ride a bike from one side of most cities to another, or to go from a suburb to an airport, particularly in northern cities that have several months of weather that makes biking less than optimal.
Similar situation in Italy, with NCC(private hire cabs) ad taxi services. NCC initially used uber, and this in turn made a stricter regulation for NCC enforcing some rules that were more lax. The price for an NCC ride was a bit cheaper compared to a taxi ride, but sometimes was higher. Getting a taxi in the countryside isn’t cheap here.
(obligstory joke: not to mention that NCC could be way faster than a regular taxi and boldly go where no man has gone before)
As part of its HQ2 beauty contest that had cities bending over for Amazon, access to mass transit was just an important requirement as were tax breaks. Most of the contestant cities during the first round were quick to offer the latter, but either didn’t have a robust mass transit system in place or didn’t want to promise investments in one.
People keep declaring it a monopoly. Its a regulatory licensing system. The “monopoly” the city that issues the license.
In that sense policing is a monopoly. The post office is a monopoly. Lets privatise both! It worked so well with prisons!
What happened with only happened in a few places, primarily NYC. As most parts of the country including many cities don’t use the medallion system or have street hail specific cabs. Was that not enough were issued, and those already issued were transferable. So a secondary market developed for street taxi licenses (which all a medallion is), where prices began to move up. As the cost of that secondary sale moved upwards. Independent owner-drivers were pushed out. Causing larger taxi companies to consolidate the medallions. And eventually investors to purchase blocks of medallions and lease them to the larger taxi companies for use.
The exact same thing happened with liquor licenses in NY and many other states (and its still happening in Jersey). The solution there was to issue licenses more freely, and make them less transferable. Removing the secondary market and upward price pressure. Not a single massive company stepping in, ignoring licensing and regulatory requirements in potentially illegal fashion and tanking the entire alcohol market.
Describing this situation as a “monopoly” is a standard laundering technique for neo-liberal, free market, privatise it ecconomic ideas. The only actual monopolies involved were regional monopolies in some smaller cities with medallion street can systems where a single company was able to capture most of the medallions.
And Uber is not seeking to reform licensing systems with those issues, its seeking to build a true, national monopoly in the taxi market by side stepping those licensing systems.
Fuck their drivers don’t even have chauffeur class drivers licenses, which should prevent them from operating entirely bar the “independent contractor” fiction.
Many such places did not have street hail cabs yo begin with, so Uber and Lyft were introducing a service that barely existed at all. Livery cabs (where you have to call for a pickup, essentially booking the cab) were fairly expensive. Living in a place like that the major impact is basically that there are a few more cars available a little more conveniently, prices are around the same as the cabs were. But apparently an increase in the number of Ubers and Lyfts just tanks the market for the the Ubers and Lyfts, dropping driver pay without impacting tje cab companies. Not sure what it looks like in a small City or a place like DC.
And that’s why medallion systems often include price controls similar to fares on public transport. Medallion systems aren’t meant to control the market via introduced scarcity, and that leads to speculation bubbles and consolidation. Fares are fixed to make sure they don’t drop below a certain point, to prevent gouging, and in a way that ensures the bulk of the fare goes to the driver whether they own th cab or not. Places without that sort of regulation in fares tend to end up like DC, or like where I’m at where a cab ride of a couple blocks can cost $40. Uber selling rides at well less than the cost to provide them basically just throws regulated taxis into that pricing spiral. I would imagine where that already exists Uber rachets it up heavily.
This is exactly how the medallion system works in the NYC and many other cities. Where the distinction doesn’t exist the approach varies. Where I’m at street hails are not allowed, all cabs are livery cabs (the term here for private hire). You have to call them have them pick you up. In other places any licensed private car or taxi can service street hails.
