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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

#101

Post by HarryHirsch »

aetherson wrote: post #94
Balgair wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find the post, but there was a 'UBER finance guy' (self-claimed) on HN a few weeks back that 'spilled the beans' and quit on what Uber is actually: a sub-prime auto loan company. Again, this is my recollection, take it with salt. It goes like: Driver (D): I want to drive for Uber! Uber (U): Sure! Do you have a car that is safe and less than 5 years old? (I have no idea what the car reqs. are) D: No U: Ok, wel…

I'm as negative as the next guy on Uber, and that's a great narrative, but they are losing vast quantities of money. Any dastardly deed that they do has to square itself with the fact that they are losing vast quantities of money. A predatory auto-loan company is not a $70B business.

No, but the loan sideline allows to classify the drivers as contractors.

And there's externalities. No properly run bank would issue a car loan to an Uber driver, they'd run the math for the applicant and find it isn't going to work out. But Uber with its infinite pockets does not have to consider profitability, and eventually the driver has to declare bankruptcy and becomes a burden on the public pocket. It's a disgrace.

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

#104

Post by lr4444lr »

Balgair wrote: post #92
aetherson wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be clear that "they're buying market share and betting that they can pull self-driving cars into their fleets" thing is revisionist history. Nobody who invested billions in Uber years ago was told, "Our plan is to burn your money and win driverless cars." They didn't even have a driverless car program until about two years ago. Uber thought that they had a viable business model based on human drivers, and that…

I can't find the post, but there was a 'UBER finance guy' (self-claimed) on HN a few weeks back that 'spilled the beans' and quit on what Uber is actually: a sub-prime auto loan company. Again, this is my recollection, take it with salt. It goes like: Driver (D): I want to drive for Uber! Uber (U): Sure! Do you have a car that is safe and less than 5 years old? (I have no idea what the car reqs. are) D: No U: Ok, wel…

Why not just lease... Are the drivers really falling for this en masse?

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

#105

Post by TeMPOraL »

hasbroslasher wrote: post #98
wnevets wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To be clear, I find this entire concept incredibly abhorrent why?

Some people have moral frameworks that always make seeking profits immoral. I'm not sure if that's what OP is saying, or merely that showing the driver and the passenger different rates and subtracting the difference (this is an approximation, not exactly what the post said) is shady and bad.

From previous HN discussions my impression is that the primary issue is with this charge being implicit. Uber already takes its money from drivers, and both drivers and users are participating in the program based on the assumption that what user is charged = what driver gets, minus Uber fee. But then it turns out that what user is charged more than Uber tells the driver (and from what it subtracts its fee), while the company also pockets the difference. This feels wrong.

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

#106

Post by Balgair »

aetherson wrote: post #94
Balgair wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find the post, but there was a 'UBER finance guy' (self-claimed) on HN a few weeks back that 'spilled the beans' and quit on what Uber is actually: a sub-prime auto loan company. Again, this is my recollection, take it with salt. It goes like: Driver (D): I want to drive for Uber! Uber (U): Sure! Do you have a car that is safe and less than 5 years old? (I have no idea what the car reqs. are) D: No U: Ok, wel…

I'm as negative as the next guy on Uber, and that's a great narrative, but they are losing vast quantities of money. Any dastardly deed that they do has to square itself with the fact that they are losing vast quantities of money. A predatory auto-loan company is not a $70B business.

True, but you can make a ton of money when you design a system where you have no labor costs (drivers make no net income). It's not $70 billion, but it is on the order of billions carried out for a decade. Perhaps that is why Uber is so ... nasty. Even with their scummy tactics and greyball and whatnot, they still can't make ends meet.

Also, what is stopping them, or anyone else, from running the same scam with other large capital expenditures? AirBnB could do this with houses, DoorDash could do this with heavy industrial kitchen equipment, etc. It's evil as hell, but Wall Street backed VCs have no issues finding people to do it.

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

#107

Post by Frondo »

nradov wrote: post #74
smt88 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't strike without a union, and Uber is fighting hard against drivers unionizing.

The drivers are vendors, not employees, so there's no way for them to form a union or go on strike. But there's also nothing stopping a group of drivers from getting together and collectively agreeing to stop driving for Uber.

Whether they are vendors or employees is still an open question:

https://www.google.com/#q=are+uber+drivers+employees

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

#108

Post by norgie »

pgwhalen wrote: post #88
jrs95 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think surge pricing would probably prevent that from happening in practice.

Yeah, unless you get the riders involved as well. Which is of course a lot tougher.

If Uber prices increased because of fewer drivers, customers would probably also leave.

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

#109

Post by oppositelock »

surds wrote: post #102

The valuation argument always leads to 'driverless' cars. Makes me wonder - if all cars can be 'driverless', why would you prefer to call for an Uber and not use your own?

Because the car can be heavily utilized by many users, each paying only for the share they use. It's cheaper.

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

#110

Post by unholythree »

Scarblac wrote: post #50
Jabanga wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In general yes, but can you really argue that taxi licenses are immoral?

I suppose you could argue that certain taxi laws were enacted to achieve immoral ends. That being the case, if Uber was really fighting for "truth justice and the American way" they could have imposed the socially beneficial aspects of taxi laws on themselves without all the shady stuff they keep getting called out for.
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