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Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

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Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#31

Post by cgag »

gaius wrote: post #29
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're both right and wrong. Uber is better than taxis for riders, and worse than taxis (in some ways) for drivers. Also consider that some Uber drivers couldn't realistically become taxi drivers in their spare time, and perhaps some of them would prefer to be underpaid by Uber rather than not working at all.

worse than taxis (in some ways) for drivers ... and taxpayers. Someone else pays for the upkeep of those roads, without which their business could not exist. In the UK, someone else pays for the healthcare of their drivers, as they dodge Employer's NI. Etc etc. The entire business model of "disruption" is pocketing what everyone else pays for the dependencies and externalities.

what about uber/lyft is worse for the roads than taxis?

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#32

Post by joering2 »

funkyy wrote: post #25

Uber, with its history of fraud, will get huge bills in near future. While the company was acting as not caring about anyone, will get bitten by governments and unions soon for it. You cannot disturb the whole world like that. You need to obey laws and try to change/lobby them, rather than break them.

It continues to boggle my mind, day by day, who really Travis know or is related to?? Is he family of Clinton, Bush, Trump himself??

I mean any one of us deciding to provide a framework for any workers, take it taxi riders, that are very tightly regulated by something called US Government (that has a law on books to not only jail you but take your life away from you [capital punishment] and do it legally) and many US gov branches, and said: "screw rules, regulations, tax law, insurance law, safety laws, screw them all - download app, provide service, make money" would long time ago be jailed without parole, all accounts frozen, passport withhold, house raided by FBI/SWAT and all relatives cross-questioned.

Who the heck is this guy.. or who/what does he know????

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#33

Post by self-diversity »

joering2 wrote: post #32
funkyy wrote: post #25

Uber, with its history of fraud, will get huge bills in near future. While the company was acting as not caring about anyone, will get bitten by governments and unions soon for it. You cannot disturb the whole world like that. You need to obey laws and try to change/lobby them, rather than break them.

It continues to boggle my mind, day by day, who really Travis know or is related to?? Is he family of Clinton, Bush, Trump himself?? I mean any one of us deciding to provide a framework for any workers, take it taxi riders, that are very tightly regulated by something called US Government (that has a law on books to not only jail you but take your life away from you [capital punishment] and do it legally) and many US…

I wonder how hard it would be to determine the reliability of using extraneous punctuation as a signal of unhinged prose.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#34

Post by cozzyd »

cgag wrote: post #31
gaius wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

worse than taxis (in some ways) for drivers ... and taxpayers. Someone else pays for the upkeep of those roads, without which their business could not exist. In the UK, someone else pays for the healthcare of their drivers, as they dodge Employer's NI. Etc etc. The entire business model of "disruption" is pocketing what everyone else pays for the dependencies and externalities.

what about uber/lyft is worse for the roads than taxis?

Taxis often have extra taxes/fees/tolls that theoretically go into maintenance (though I'm sure they may not in practice).

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#35

Post by dragonwriter »

bdrool wrote: post #26
iamdave wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is extremely disappointing that Uber is considered a crown jewel of Silicon Valley The common refrain I hear is "they're better than taxis" and more and more evidence is mounting against them (at the corporate level) that suggests: no, they really aren't.

Uber did the world a favor by breaking the back of the taxi monopoly. But now they need to either clean up their act or go away.

> Uber did the world a favor by breaking the back of the taxi monopoly.

In much the same way that the capitalist class "did the world a favor" by breaking the politico-economic power monopoly of the nobility.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#36

Post by dragonwriter »

Jabanga wrote: post #22
burkaman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon? Spotify? Square? Grubhub? Robinhood? And probably lots more. You can have respect for people and laws and still succeed.

One could argue not all laws are moral and that following immoral laws is emphasising your own interests over those of humanity. If abiding by the law was people's only priority, there would be no widespread usage of public key cryptography (it was extremely illegal in the early 1990s, and only gained legal acceptance after cypherpunks pushed back against the laws and proliferated its use), which would have prevented…

> Also worth noting that Amazon didn't charge a sales tax for a long time.

Amazon actively and vigorously sought to make sure it stayed within the previously-established exceptions to the requirement to collect a sales tax for quite a long time, which is different thing than flouting the law.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#37

Post by gaius »

cgag wrote: post #31
gaius wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

worse than taxis (in some ways) for drivers ... and taxpayers. Someone else pays for the upkeep of those roads, without which their business could not exist. In the UK, someone else pays for the healthcare of their drivers, as they dodge Employer's NI. Etc etc. The entire business model of "disruption" is pocketing what everyone else pays for the dependencies and externalities.

what about uber/lyft is worse for the roads than taxis?

The fact that they contribute so little to the public purse: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/29/londons-b...

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#38

Post by BoiledCabbage »

Jabanga wrote: post #22
burkaman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon? Spotify? Square? Grubhub? Robinhood? And probably lots more. You can have respect for people and laws and still succeed.

One could argue not all laws are moral and that following immoral laws is emphasising your own interests over those of humanity. If abiding by the law was people's only priority, there would be no widespread usage of public key cryptography (it was extremely illegal in the early 1990s, and only gained legal acceptance after cypherpunks pushed back against the laws and proliferated its use), which would have prevented…

> One could argue not all laws are moral and that following immoral laws is emphasising your own interests over those of humanity.

This here is one of my all time favorite false-equivalences.

People performing sit-ins during the Civil Rights era, or women standing up for their right to vote are equivalent to a corporation that wants to run without paying for its drivers health-insurance.

It's another example of the common trope in the news media of "we must cover both sides of the issue". Yes a cashier skimping you on one penny in your change is technically a moral issue - but it's really not.

It's absurd how much our country is going to profit models that consist of nothing more than "make the same revenue, and externalize the costs onto society."

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#40

Post by mrbabbage »

cgag wrote: post #31
gaius wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

worse than taxis (in some ways) for drivers ... and taxpayers. Someone else pays for the upkeep of those roads, without which their business could not exist. In the UK, someone else pays for the healthcare of their drivers, as they dodge Employer's NI. Etc etc. The entire business model of "disruption" is pocketing what everyone else pays for the dependencies and externalities.

what about uber/lyft is worse for the roads than taxis?

At least in San Francisco, there's far more of them. The extra wear and tear on the roads ends up as a road repair bill that taxpayers pick up.

If the TNCs were a 1:1 replacement for traditional taxis, this wouldn't be a legitimate argument, but the evidence out there suggests that TNCs have grown the size of the car hail market at the expense of off-peak transit, so the TNCs really are putting more cars on the streets.

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