Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

701–710 of 887 posts

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#701

Post by fastball »

olyjohn wrote: post #581
raducu wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that different from a regular taxi driver? Where's the "sharing" in the "ride share" if the driver is forced to take any ride?

This is the thing that really chafes my testes. People need to get real and start calling it what it is. It's a taxi service. This is not ride sharing. The driver was not already going somewhere. The driver was waiting around for a call to pick someone up, and was going to take them where they wanted to go. Nothing is being shared. This is a Taxi service and the Uber app is the dispatcher. If I was already going to w…

What about UberPOOL?

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#702

Post by s1artibartfast »

komali2 wrote: post #41

Why would they bank on voters? Do they really think people are going to vote against driver protections in california?

Sure, I will vote against it. Hopefully it will be the first step in scrapping AB5 entirely.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#703

Post by fastball »

raducu wrote: post #519
novok wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people argue that those kinds of contractors are employees. Often your an employee of the contracting firm AFAIK too, so you have to follow the implicit orders of the contracting firm.

I am a "contractor", but yeah, if you only work for one company for X months, you should be an employee. If all your money comes via a single company, even if you phisically work at a different place each day, you should be an employee of that company.

That's kinda the problem with ride-sharing though. Many (most) drivers are driving with multiple apps.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#704

Post by Jommi »

olyjohn wrote: post #581
raducu wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that different from a regular taxi driver? Where's the "sharing" in the "ride share" if the driver is forced to take any ride?

This is the thing that really chafes my testes. People need to get real and start calling it what it is. It's a taxi service. This is not ride sharing. The driver was not already going somewhere. The driver was waiting around for a call to pick someone up, and was going to take them where they wanted to go. Nothing is being shared. This is a Taxi service and the Uber app is the dispatcher. If I was already going to w…

Only misguided journalists use ridesharing anymore. Its been "ridehailing" the best past 3-4 years now.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#705

Post by anchpop »

olyjohn wrote: post #567
sneak wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is forced to drive for Uber. If they are, presumably they feel Uber’s existence is better than Uber’s nonexistence, otherwise they would be doing something else. The fact that Uber was their #1 choice means Uber driving was an upgrade for their options.

Or Uber doesn't tell you the whole story of what you're actually going to make after gas, maintenance, repairs and insurance. There is a reason that 60% of their drivers leave after 6 months. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/uber-statistics/ More likely people don't find out the true costs of being an Uber driver until they wear out their cars, and have to start paying for repairs and maintenance. When your car is…

> If Uber was so great, people would be sticking around

I agree that Uber is not so great but I'm not sure about this logic. I can imagine other reasons for people not sticking around than them being duped, perhaps that many people just start Ubering when they're temporarily between other jobs, or students doing it during the summer.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#706

Post by Slartie »

valuearb wrote: post #671
Slartie wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An individual taxi driver owning a cab, a license if necessary, paying for his insurance and getting the money from his passengers is an individual contractor, yes. It's just that he contracts with the individual riders, not any higher-up monopolistic business entity that sets arbitrary business-driven rules that all taxi drivers have to follow.

Very few drivers own their cars (or more importantly their monopoly medallion). Those are owned by investors like the presidents former lawyer, Michael Cohen. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/08/23/tax...

Isn't that only the case in certain metropolitan areas? It is a huge problem indeed, but the problem there is the medallion system having degraded to become a shady get-rich-quick investment scheme. This is unrelated to the way in which the drivers are operating.

They just lease their car and medallion from someone, paying that guy a fixed rate per day for that lease, but that does make them neither a contractor nor an employee of the guy who owns car and medallion.

If they also were to lease the clothes they wear while working from a tailor instead of buying them, that wouldn't make the drivers in any way into contractors or employees of that tailor.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#707

Post by Jommi »

WrongThinkerNo5 wrote: post #598
kingnothing wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work at Uber. I'll focus on one particular point: allowing drivers to see where riders are going before they accept the trip. Uber, at least when I worked there, was heavily against this functionality as it allows drivers to discriminate against riders who are going to poor neighborhoods or from cities to suburbs where they may have difficulty in getting another rider. That feature is bad for the overall ec…

It does not strike me as a legitimate case to strip people of their human right to free agency and will by forcing people to do things they don't want to or may even be dangerous to their health and safety. It should be anyone's right to refuse going to dangerous neighborhoods, just like forcing drivers to drive out into nowhere where they have to spend their own money/resources to get back to the network, should be…

You realize its OK to decline trips, and also to stop using a ridehailing service that mandates a policy like this?

>should be compensated by Uber if they want that feature. Do you really think Uber has not gone through these thoughts millions of time in the past? I can personally tell you that these are things that are constantly discussed and evluated, with the primer driver of everything being the growth of the service.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#708

Post by fastball »

WrongThinkerNo5 wrote: post #598
kingnothing wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work at Uber. I'll focus on one particular point: allowing drivers to see where riders are going before they accept the trip. Uber, at least when I worked there, was heavily against this functionality as it allows drivers to discriminate against riders who are going to poor neighborhoods or from cities to suburbs where they may have difficulty in getting another rider. That feature is bad for the overall ec…

It does not strike me as a legitimate case to strip people of their human right to free agency and will by forcing people to do things they don't want to or may even be dangerous to their health and safety. It should be anyone's right to refuse going to dangerous neighborhoods, just like forcing drivers to drive out into nowhere where they have to spend their own money/resources to get back to the network, should be…

You still have free agency. As an Uber driver, you can accept a ride, pick up the rider, get the destination, decide you don't want to go there, and then kick the rider out of your car.

Then, Uber can decide that they no longer want you to be a driver on their platform.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#709

Post by eddieplan9 »

julianozen wrote: post #694
rrrazdan wrote: post #375

Well this just sucks. As a frequent SF visitor, Uber/Lyft used to be my primary way of moving around. I don't drive. I also don't see who benefits from this. You had a well functioning service for the users that will be disrupted. You had a flexible way to earn for drivers that will be disrupted. I chat with drivers a lot (to practise my English) and lots of drivers really like chatting too ( A lot of them were recen…

A lot of drivers were sure forced to drive for Uber for lack of other alternatives but that is not Uber's problem. They did not add to the problem. Society failed there. This law helps no one and is a clear example of no skin in the game virtue signalling trumping common sense. I think this is a good point and is correct. But if society has failed the drivers, shouldn't new regulation be the solution?

If the new regulation targets the root of the problem - which is lack of economic opportunities - then yes. Regulation targeting patchwork solution, then it's the definition of virtual signaling.

Re: Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California

#710

Post by manfredo »

gamblor956 wrote: post #698
manfredo wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now Craigslist needs to be regulated as an automobile dealer because it hooks up people selling cars to each other? Is Apple in the business of recording music because it runs iTunes? Does DoorDash need to have their offices inspected for food safety because they run a market for food delivery. No. Craigslist operates a platform for selling cars, it doesn't actually sell cars itself. Apple doesn't actually make mu…

No, not sure how you even got there with Craigslist, and even if AB5 was relevant there's an exception for direct sales that would exempt craiglist and similar sites like ebay. AB5 doesn't apply outside of the worker classification context, so your rambling about Doordash and food safety regulations is just bizarre. You're right that DoorDash is in the food delivery business and so its delivery drivers would be its e…

You're applying double standards here. If Expedia is not an airline, then Uber and Lyft aren't taxi companies. Uber and Lyft buy the services of independent drivers and resells them to customers. If the ultimate commercial relationship is between you and the hotel or airline when you book through Expedia, then it's just as fair to say that the ultimate commercial relationship is between the passenger and Uber/Lyft driver. Just like how Expedia's role is connect a customer with an airline and handle the payment transaction, Uber/Lyft's role is to connect a passenger with a driver and handle the payment transaction.

Crucially, your statement that the commercial relationship only exists through Uber is patently false. Drivers can, and do, driver for different ride sharing companies. A passenger could hire a driver through Uber on one day, and hire the same driver through Lyft on the next.

Post reply on HN