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Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

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Re: Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

#481

Post by ajamesm »

Udik wrote: post #261
Heliosmaster wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always disable the service. Then you will get angry drivers that cannot earn money because of a choice you made, but you can participate to the strike.

That would have meant forcing other people (their drivers) to strike, and share the economic loss for it as well. Not very fair, don't you think? Being on strike with other people's money?

Yup, that's the short-term drawback. You correctly identified it. Now, contrast it with the long-term drawbacks of not organizing at all.

Re: Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

#483

Post by selectodude »

tomp wrote: post #300
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except they left out the countries with the most known terrorist activities in the us, that happened to be countries with major trump investments, that would be Saudia Arabia and Egypt.

US has military bases in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, so that might have happened for strategic (for the US, not for Trump) reasons.

They have quite a few bases in Iraq, too. But no trump holdings.

Re: Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

#484

Post by sumeno »

jaynos wrote: post #449
Udik wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way Uber could have participated in the strike would have been by paying its drivers for the time they didn't work if they decided not to. Uber, as a taxi drivers employer, cannot just decide on its own that its workers are striking and won't get paid.

Uber could have participated by changing the surge pricing to 20X, 100X or some similarly high number. That's not to say that they should have. A lot of the anger at Uber is also due to their CEO being an economic advisor to Trump. Meanwhile, Lyft played this perfectly. Stayed out of the fray and then donated $1MM to the ACLU.

If Uber increased surge pricing they would be accused of trying to make more money off of the protest. It would probably be a worse PR disaster than removing surge pricing

Re: Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

#485

Post by ajamesm »

hueving wrote: post #213
SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally I would agree, because that's true in most cases. But we're past that here. The Germans went with it, and I'm sure some thought at the start that going along would let them do some good. Look how that turned out. No, it's not okay to just do business as usual here and try to nudge things a bit with policy suggestions. It's time for much more active responses.

Ah, Godwin's Law. I hope when you reflect back on these times in a year or so you realize how childish it was to compare stopping some Muslims from some unstable countries (not even the big Muslim countries) with literally exterminating Jewish people and blaming them for all of the country's problems.

What 'Godwin' himself had to say: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/14/...

  First, let me get this Donald Trump issue out of the way: If you’re thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler or Nazis when you talk about Trump. Or any other politician.
The Holocaust wasn't a sudden event. It was preceded by a steady breakdown of protections and social norms -- see Night and Fog laws, Kristallnacht, etc. There's a lot of history before it came down to concentration camps, and it started with things like attacking the press and clamping down on visas.

Re: Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

#486

Post by gregshap »

alphonsegaston wrote: post #29
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #3

Dan Primack summarised this well; Uber failed on messaging: "Uber has done a lot of questionable things over the years, but its actions this past weekend vis-a-vis Trump's immigration ban weren't among them. An actual timeline from Saturday, which may differ from what you saw on social media: • 4:20pm ET: CEO Travis Kalanick sent email to employees. It stopped short of explicitly opposing the ban, but did say: (1) Th…

Uber broke the strike by breaking the strike. This absurd focus on whether surge pricing was a multiplier or disincentive is a complete distraction. The taxi drivers reached out and asked Uber for solidarity. They dispatched drivers to break the strike. They made their bed in the court of public opinion, now they can lie in it.

It's nice when company owners support labor solidarity, but I think it's silly to say that uber scabbed or broke the strike. Uber is a multi hundred billion dollar capitalist entity, with a stated goal of automating away all of the drivers. Uber drivers broke the strike. Lyft drivers also broke the strike.

It's one thing to expect labor solidarity from workers, but I don't see how it's rational to expect labor solidarity from a massive store of private wealth.

What uber did was make it less profitable for uber drivers to scab, which is moderately pro strike if anything. Lyft fares undoubtedly went up in that time, but Lyft doesn't profit as much from surge pricing, rather their model allowed scabbing drivers to keep those extra wages.

Re: Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

#488

Post by KirinDave »

sangnoir wrote: post #294
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing. Another perspective is that Christian and Muslim employees of those companies were told that the management's official policy is that certain aspects of their religious beliefs are wrong. Can you imagine those employees weighing speaking up for themselves vs. their need to keep their jobs? I've seen employees in that situation, and their morale was definitely not…

> Another perspective is that Christian and Muslim employees of those companies were told that the management's official policy is that certain aspects of their religious beliefs are wrong. How so? To my knowledge, the modern "Christian" marriage (and marriage rites) are dogmatic and have no basis in the either the old nor the new testament. Those whose sensibilities were offended were creating, to use your words "fa…

Attempting to disentangle modern faiths from their culture and social controls is a fundamentally flawed idea and gives no one pause. Everyone is primed by even decades of training to dismiss one aspect of holy text for another. And even if you could win that argument, a "personal" relationship with their deity (actually: their status within their religious community) will still reinforce their position until their rationalizations can be drafted.

Trust me on this. I spent years learning how to call Catholics hypocrites while dismissing every book in the new testament. We were very good at it, and they were very good at pressing us.

Re: Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

#489

Post by [deleted] »

sangnoir wrote: post #294
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing. Another perspective is that Christian and Muslim employees of those companies were told that the management's official policy is that certain aspects of their religious beliefs are wrong. Can you imagine those employees weighing speaking up for themselves vs. their need to keep their jobs? I've seen employees in that situation, and their morale was definitely not…

> Another perspective is that Christian and Muslim employees of those companies were told that the management's official policy is that certain aspects of their religious beliefs are wrong. How so? To my knowledge, the modern "Christian" marriage (and marriage rites) are dogmatic and have no basis in the either the old nor the new testament. Those whose sensibilities were offended were creating, to use your words "fa…

[deleted]

Re: Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign

#490

Post by PhasmaFelis »

titanix2 wrote: post #423
masklinn wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This wasn't a strike, it was a political protest. The taxis started a strike action (in support of the protest, but a strike nonetheless). > By not participating strike-breaking. > I'm not taking sides here Of course you are.

If the taxis are doing a strike, you can speak of strike breaking only for taxis not participating in it. Uber are not taxis per se, so there is no way they can break a strike they aren't doing in the first place. Also there seems to be a confusion made on strike and strike consequences or demonstration. Being on strike only means stop working, not directly blocking access or service (although it is often done in con…

> Uber are not taxis per se

Of course Uber (and Lyft) are taxis. It's a service that you call to have a guy in a car come pick you up and take you directly to your destination. It's a different kind of taxi, certainly, but it's still a taxi.

It's very fashionable right now for startups to pretend that they're really a completely different industry than the one they're trying to disrupt, to distance themselves from the stodgy image, but marketing rhetoric doesn't make it so.

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