Rideshare operations are being suspended in California • Hacker News Board

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#191

Post by georgeecollins » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #84

kaesar14 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not many states are in the position California is. No matter how poorly run the state might be, people are unlikely to leave due to existing business and weather. Hard to compare.

This. It's basically a hostage situation. With the exception of not enforcing non-competes, I can't think of a single thing that makes California great that is the result of government. Hollywood is there because of the weather. The central valley is there because of the weather and the soil. The tech industry is there because of the defense industry in WWII and the importance of the west coast to the war effort in t…

I could not disagree more. I work for a film company and believe me Hollywood has had nothing to do with the weather for fifty years. Very little is actually shot on location in Los Angeles, yet it remains a center.

Silicon Valley is because of the defense industry in WW2? OK sure, but then why not Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia etc. The aerospace industry was in Los Angeles, but that moved, so why couldn't tech move?

Here is my alternate hypothesis: California has always been relatively welcoming to people from all around the world. Places like San Francisco (in particular) and Los Angeles have a very long history of being accepting of new ideas, religions, different ethnicity. Not completely, just more than a lot of other places in the US. So it has been a place where people with new ideas come.

As far as the state government-- yeah it could be better. But so could a lot of states. It is not clear to me that California is a worse run state than many others. Still we all should expect improvement.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#192

Post by JMTQp8lwXL » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

rsweeney21 wrote: post #147

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who forced Lyft to shut down? Was it the state, or did they freely choose to cease operations? Obviously, spin will characterize this in any way that's advantageous. But nobody 'forced' Lyft to close.

Their business model is on-demand transportation. The business model doesn't work if the workforce is not also on-demand. I don't think that's spin, but maybe society decides that we don't like on-demand businesses.

> The business model doesn't work if the workforce is not also on-demand.

Have they tried it to confirm it 'doesn't work'? Maybe rideshare companies need to reduce their cut, and start putting more of that money into the driver's pocket. Doesn't mean it can't be a profitable business, though possibly low-margin. Have they tried paring back development costs, marketing costs, etc?

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#193

Post by goodluckchuck » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

raziel2701 wrote: post #21

kaesar14 wrote: post #13

Why can't we have a new worker classification that allows gig workers to have both the flexibility the job entails + better benefits/protections?

Better yet would be to have universal healthcare to decouple access to healthcare from being employed.

Health insurance and healthcare are very far from the same thing. In my work I am constantly dealing with people who have "great" insurance, but who are going without medical attention.

Sometimes claims are denied. Others spent all their money buying the insurance and now can't afford their co-pay (when they would have been able to easily afford the treatment if not for the cost of the insurance). More often, the system works just as its designed. There's no official denials. No refusals. Just a Kafkaesque runaround that inconveniences and delays treatment so that people get less of it, at a lower quality, and a lower cost for the insurer.

Of course, there's a lot of people who make good livings off the insurance industry (myself included). So there's a lot of vested interests trying to prevent people from being able (or accustomed) to buy medical care with cash, credit, etc.

They should simply decouple health insurance from employment by taxing it as income.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#194

Post by toast0 » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

ItMayWorkTryIt wrote: post #20

rodiger wrote: post #2

Will be interesting to see how this plays out. Doesn't seem like it would be feasible to maintain all drivers as employees.

Definitely not feasible to keep drivers on as employees legally. Some issues that come to mind that seem incredibly hard for uber/lyft to enforce but are mandatory for California employees: * Meal & rest breaks * Callback pay * Split Shift premiums * Reporting premium (if you show up to work, but less work to do than half your scheduled shift) The only way I see this working is somebody started some "Driver Pool" com…

Meal and rest breaks would be easy-ish. Have a button in the driver app to take a rest break available every so often. If it's been too long, force it and don't show rides. Same for meals.

Callback, split shift, and reporting premiums only apply to my knowledge if the shifts are scheduled. I guess it depends if they go towards scheduled shifts over show up whenever, and/or if they can make it 'i'd like to work: yes/no'

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#195

Post by smallgovt » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

mqus wrote: post #179

smallgovt wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without scheduled shifts, drivers will purposefully all sign up for the same shift to induce supply overflow. In this situation, drivers can game the flexibility of the system to collect a paycheck while sitting in their cars doing nothing. Even if drivers don't game the system, there will always be natural imbalance between supply and demand. Surge bonuses can mitigate this imbalance, but scheduling shifts is the mo…

Then put some kind of system in place to have on-call duty, where you get a small share of the normal payment for being available and then getting the normal rate while you are driving to the customer and driving them to their destination. All of this is already practiced in some place in the world. Sure, it's not as easy as creating an account on the app and off you go, but the driver flexibility of choosing when to…

Drivers will still take advantage of such a system. Whenever a market is over-supplied, drivers will sign in to collect their free "on-call duty" checks for doing nothing.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#196

Post by theplague42 » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

spanhandler wrote: post #121

savanaly wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I read the post before it had any responses and based on how it read to me then I'd say milofeynman's post is responding to the strongest plausible interpretation, as that's one of the HNest posts I've ever seen, which is really saying something as that's a field full of strong contenders.

this whole thread is a travesty

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#197

Post by Daishiman » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

saas_sam wrote: post #145

georgeecollins wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is why the California economy is collapsing. /s Everybody likes to complain about California. When I was born here it was about 15m people. Now its 40m. If you are unhappy, please leave to a lower cost, lower tax state. People have been predicting California's decline my entire life and the real problem is it can't handle the growth. Also, California has been sucking up employing the young and of mid-west and so…

Do you have a similar "love it or leave it" attitude when people complain about America? Not very Californian of you.

Unlike international immigration, US inter-state immigration is comparatively quite simple and built-in as a feature.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#198

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

roseway4 wrote: post #34

meritt wrote: post #15

When Tesla/Waymo/Uber/Lyft roll out actual self-driving technology in the future and people complain "robots are taking our jobs!" we can point to this legislation and say "actually, no, it was the politicians"

Well, actually it was the margins that did it, but finance can be a little abstract when you're populist.

[deleted]

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#199

Post by opportune » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

Maybe we should have actually listened to the the uber and Lyft drivers (most of whom did not support this change, and I don’t think it’s because they are stupid and duped) and see why they wanted to stay part-time, work-as-you-want contractors, rather than just decide for them. Yes Uber and Lyft share some of the blame for cutting services completely rather than giving it a try with higher prices. But it’s also yet another example of CA attempting to “help” people in a totally self defeating way (and more cynically, a huge handout to taxi companies, and a kick in the ribs of Uber and Lyft while they’re struggling). Nobody wanted this except a vocal group of self righteous individuals and taxi companies

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#200

Post by theplague42 » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

rsweeney21 wrote: post #147

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who forced Lyft to shut down? Was it the state, or did they freely choose to cease operations? Obviously, spin will characterize this in any way that's advantageous. But nobody 'forced' Lyft to close.

Their business model is on-demand transportation. The business model doesn't work if the workforce is not also on-demand. I don't think that's spin, but maybe society decides that we don't like on-demand businesses.

Does the cab model not work?