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Secret to the Uber Economy Is Wealth Inequality

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Re: Secret to the Uber Economy Is Wealth Inequality

#11

Post by filipecalasans »

bko wrote: post #4

> With nothing more technologically advanced than a phone, you can arrange to have delivered to your doorstep, often in less than an hour, takeaway food, your weekly groceries, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs (over-the-counter, prescription, proscribed), books, newspapers, a dozen eggs, half a dozen eggs, a single egg. I once had a single bottle of Coke sent to my home at the same price I would have paid had I gone to sho…

Those arguments is pretty similar to the candle industry extinction. Some may argue that electricity has killed thousands of jobs in the candle industry, including those who had to light the candles every night in the streets.

In Sao Paulo, the largest city in Brazil, is facing a boom in the Uber offer. Many people who used to drive particular car are selling them and using Uber has main transportation. This is particular good for the traffic and a good alternative in a city where there is a lack of Subway lines.

Re: Secret to the Uber Economy Is Wealth Inequality

#12

Post by jaxn »

What Uber did is reduce the overhead of being the middleman. Which is what lets these services expand to smaller markets.

The people who get screwed are the previous middlemen, not the worker bees. If anything, the job of middleman will be a race to the bottom where the next Uber find a way to do it a little cheaper (or take a little less profit to hit a larger scale).

Re: Secret to the Uber Economy Is Wealth Inequality

#13

Post by erikpukinskis »

The way in which this Uber stuff is about wealth inequality is that there is no "Uber for getting on your feet after serving time for a felony" or an "Uber for teaching high school kids how to get on a path to a good job" but there are three "Uber for cupcakes"'s.

There's nothing wrong with Uber for cupcakes[1], and people can argue that we should start there because it's just easier to make money off of rich people. But what's the plan for Uberizing the stuff poor people need? Is there one? I don't accept that it's just too hard. Margins are margins.

[1] I have no idea whether there is an Uber for cupcakes

Re: Secret to the Uber Economy Is Wealth Inequality

#15

Post by badminton1 »

At least it is another work option. Flexible enough for students and people with a day job that want to supplement their main income.

That's the reality we live in. Some people have multiple jobs, some people have no benefits, some people work on a 100% commission basis and in slow months they need to continue to function. "Uber-style" jobs can help you work in a more flexible schedule.

But to be honest, I do not think that being an Uber driver full-time is a very good option. Then, I do not see Uber at the moment being at the same evil scale than Walmart, for instance... a company that has a anti-union training, anti-union team and standard operating procedures, and makes billions of dollars in revenue while having their entire workforce on welfare.

Re: Secret to the Uber Economy Is Wealth Inequality

#16

Post by yummyfajitas »

According to the graphic linked in the article, Mumbai has a Gini of 35. That's not very high - it's comparable to Italy, Spain or Sierra Leone - and only marginally higher than India, France or Bosnia (33) as a whole.

It contradicts the author's thesis to note that a country with so little inequality as India was (and still is) way ahead of the US (Gini 41) in terms of providing domestic services.

Re: Secret to the Uber Economy Is Wealth Inequality

#17

Post by fieryeagle »

badminton1 wrote: post #15

At least it is another work option. Flexible enough for students and people with a day job that want to supplement their main income. That's the reality we live in. Some people have multiple jobs, some people have no benefits, some people work on a 100% commission basis and in slow months they need to continue to function. "Uber-style" jobs can help you work in a more flexible schedule. But to be honest, I do not thi…

Their drivers (majority of the workforce) have no welfare to speak of. Wait until Uber becomes really big like 90s' Microsoft then you'd see the rest of the Walmart deeds. It's the expected inherent big Corp SOP, nothing new.

Re: Secret to the Uber Economy Is Wealth Inequality

#18

Post by ariwilson »

hkmurakami wrote: post #10
bko wrote: post #4

> With nothing more technologically advanced than a phone, you can arrange to have delivered to your doorstep, often in less than an hour, takeaway food, your weekly groceries, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs (over-the-counter, prescription, proscribed), books, newspapers, a dozen eggs, half a dozen eggs, a single egg. I once had a single bottle of Coke sent to my home at the same price I would have paid had I gone to sho…

My NYC friends like to point out that they've had all these on demand services available for decades. The key is having enough people who value their time more than their money at some ratio where the service had enough volume to support itself. NYC naturally had a high concentration of such people. Sf bay area has Leveraged phones to make things work with a lower density of such people.

To be honest, I think LA, a historically car-obsessed city, has been utterly transformed by Uber/Lyft.
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