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India considers commissions cap for Uber, Ola, unsettling industry

reuters.com

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Re: India considers commissions cap for Uber, Ola, unsettling industry

#71

Post by sumgame »

thrwe4234safd wrote: post #46
grwthckrmstr wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunate truth. For those who say drivers can just quit, try quitting your job when you are an unskilled labourer from a low income background without any significant savings, burdened with loans, you are the only income earner in your family of 4-5 and you have to cover food, rent, kid's education etc. Please, have some empathy.

Plus, these people have likely had to sell off inherited agricultural land in pursuit of the glamourous life promised by the taxi aggregators. I imagine once all this money-printing madness (VC money is often from places with lots of "funny money") gets over a lot of people will move back to their rural lives - which I've to say has a lot more quality compared to the city (modulo the power cuts/sanitation/ general la…

Interestingly a lot of them I’ve spoken have said that they just want to give it all up and move back to their village and farm.

The more time they spend in cities , the more they realise how much freedom and happiness they have

They’ve realised that even if they don’t make as much money in a farm, it keeps them happy and it gives them food.

Re: India considers commissions cap for Uber, Ola, unsettling industry

#72

Post by sumgame »

rrrazdan wrote: post #47
biased_coin wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not easy for drivers to quit given the debt that they've taken on. It is tougher to operate as an independent taxi driver than to be on a platform. Many of the drivers I have spoken to have migrated from smaller cities and I doubt it would be easy for them to operate independently.

It's auto debt. The car will be taken by the bank. What else can the bank do? The truth is that cab drivers are making a livelihood, in fact a much better livelihood than they were making without Uber and Ola.

So let’s say you’ve paid 20% of it as advance, plus you’ve spent a year figuring out Uber and Ola are fleecing you. In that year you’ve put down another 10% into instalments.

What then ? You’ll give up 30% of the money just because you don’t like Uber and Ola anymore. If the bank takes the car back, the driver loses all the money he’s toiled to make.

If you speak to a lot of them, they’ll tell you that once they clear the car debt and sell the car, they’d most probably head back home to their villages and just go back to farming.

They work a few hours a day and make 100-200$ a month. Vs making almost the same by toiling 12 hours a day in a car and in some of the worst traffic conditions.

Re: India considers commissions cap for Uber, Ola, unsettling industry

#73

Post by xenocyon »

throwGuardian wrote: post #19
sumgame wrote: post #11

If you do the math in India, the drivers were basically not earning any money last year. They spend about 30% of their income of debt. Another 30-40% on fuel and maintenance cost. Then 20% charged by Ola and Uber. There’s other miscellaneous fees that creep up plus insurance every year which atleast takes another 10%. So they take home around 10%. That 10% has to pay for food, rent, children’s education, etc. The arg…

If this were true, drives would quit en-mass. This is entirely an at-will engagement, any party can back out at any time if things don't work out

En masse actions don't usually happen unless laborers are organized (aka unionized), which isn't the case here. Note that the other side - the corporation - is organized. Your comment makes a good case for unionization, though I suspect that wasn't your intent.

Re: India considers commissions cap for Uber, Ola, unsettling industry

#74

Post by theflyinghorse »

grwthckrmstr wrote: post #44
sumgame wrote: post #11

If you do the math in India, the drivers were basically not earning any money last year. They spend about 30% of their income of debt. Another 30-40% on fuel and maintenance cost. Then 20% charged by Ola and Uber. There’s other miscellaneous fees that creep up plus insurance every year which atleast takes another 10%. So they take home around 10%. That 10% has to pay for food, rent, children’s education, etc. The arg…

Unfortunate truth. For those who say drivers can just quit, try quitting your job when you are an unskilled labourer from a low income background without any significant savings, burdened with loans, you are the only income earner in your family of 4-5 and you have to cover food, rent, kid's education etc. Please, have some empathy.

Of course we should have empathy. That being said why do you have 4-5 kids if you know you can't properly support them? That seems incredibly irresponsible.

Re: India considers commissions cap for Uber, Ola, unsettling industry

#75

Post by pishpash »

markdown wrote: post #40
throwGuardian wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this were true, drives would quit en-mass. This is entirely an at-will engagement, any party can back out at any time if things don't work out

Did you not read to the end of his comment? Here you go: > They’ve already committed to the debt, and if they stopped paying it, they’ll loose the car, which is all they have as assets.

So why isn't the problem the car loan rather than the work? Sounds like the loan is what's predatory.

Re: India considers commissions cap for Uber, Ola, unsettling industry

#76

Post by markdown »

pishpash wrote: post #75
markdown wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you not read to the end of his comment? Here you go: > They’ve already committed to the debt, and if they stopped paying it, they’ll loose the car, which is all they have as assets.

So why isn't the problem the car loan rather than the work? Sounds like the loan is what's predatory.

The bank/financier and the driver were both drawn in by Uber's promise of riches. But when the promise isn't delivered on, the driver is screwed. The bank wins either way.

Re: India considers commissions cap for Uber, Ola, unsettling industry

#77

Post by wavefunction »

theflyinghorse wrote: post #74
grwthckrmstr wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunate truth. For those who say drivers can just quit, try quitting your job when you are an unskilled labourer from a low income background without any significant savings, burdened with loans, you are the only income earner in your family of 4-5 and you have to cover food, rent, kid's education etc. Please, have some empathy.

Of course we should have empathy. That being said why do you have 4-5 kids if you know you can't properly support them? That seems incredibly irresponsible.

Family size may be a holdover or maintenance of a tradition that was once needed due to infant or child mortality and agricultural practices that require manual labor.

Re: India considers commissions cap for Uber, Ola, unsettling industry

#78

Post by aianus »

sumgame wrote: post #72
rrrazdan wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's auto debt. The car will be taken by the bank. What else can the bank do? The truth is that cab drivers are making a livelihood, in fact a much better livelihood than they were making without Uber and Ola.

So let’s say you’ve paid 20% of it as advance, plus you’ve spent a year figuring out Uber and Ola are fleecing you. In that year you’ve put down another 10% into instalments. What then ? You’ll give up 30% of the money just because you don’t like Uber and Ola anymore. If the bank takes the car back, the driver loses all the money he’s toiled to make. If you speak to a lot of them, they’ll tell you that once they clea…

Maybe it’s different in India but can you not sell the car and use the proceeds to pay off the lien to the bank and keep the difference?

Or are you saying they’re underwater on the loans? If so, what can the bank do about it besides repossess the car? How exactly are they stuck in the city working for Uber?

Re: India considers commissions cap for Uber, Ola, unsettling industry

#79

Post by foogazi »

dpiers wrote: post #68
TeMPOraL wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing the regular people in the city were very happy that they didn't experience sudden shortage of taxis, coupled with an extreme surge in price. Meanwhile, the spectators from the sport event were incentivized to choose the more efficient means of transport. Looking at it from the systems level, I'm not at all convinced that when a mass event spikes the demand for taxis, having drivers go to that event chasi…

That’s not exactly how it works. The primary function of surge isn’t to redistribute a fixed pool of drivers - it’s to incentivize additional drivers to go online in an area with excess demand. For example, it used to be that surge would spike insanely high on big days like Halloween and New Years Eve because demand was drastically higher than supply. Once drivers saw other people making 8-10x surge, more people star…

Yes that was part of my thought too

In response to a pricing surge I expected more drivers to be incentivized to get out of bed at 11PM and make more money

But if that hour of work at 11pm is worth the same as waking up 8 the next day then they lose out on thousands of people willing to pay surge pricing

Re: India considers commissions cap for Uber, Ola, unsettling industry

#80

Post by foogazi »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #7
foogazi wrote: post #5

Just experienced what the lack of app based surge pricing does. After exiting a major sporting event I expected the streets to be swarmed by taxis - easy money for them But there was no incentive, nothing to tell the city’s drivers to show up en-masse. They would just earn the same city base fare Thousands of people either had to walk or wait in line at the crowded metro station

I'm guessing the regular people in the city were very happy that they didn't experience sudden shortage of taxis, coupled with an extreme surge in price. Meanwhile, the spectators from the sport event were incentivized to choose the more efficient means of transport. Looking at it from the systems level, I'm not at all convinced that when a mass event spikes the demand for taxis, having drivers go to that event chasi…

Yes, that is a good point - there is a ceiling on price

But when demand spikes in their area they are also hurt because the taxi fleet won’t respond

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