Rideshare operations are being suspended in California • Hacker News Board

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#231

Post by dmode » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

I dislike Uber and Lyft's practices as much as the next guy. But I also believe AB5 is a terrible bill and will be voting in November to exempt Uber and Lyft from AB5. AB5 was written to impose a 20th century employment model to a 21st century situation. As such, the bill is distorted that it carve out hundreds of exemptions to musicians, freelancers, journalists, doctors, hair stylists and so on and so forth. A bill that has to rely primarily on exemptions is no bill at all.

A much better bill could have written that could have created a healthcare and unemployment fund of gig economy workers by taxing Gig companies, without trying box everyone into the employment model

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#232

Post by Johnny555 » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #72

Yes, voters in the US want to give people education, healthcare, and unemployment (or basic income-ish) benefits. Voters in the US also don’t want to pay for any of this. Hence, the politicians that get elected are ones that give people education via student loans, and healthcare/unemployment benefits tied to employer/employment status. Those politicians get to claim they helped people, and they get to claim they kep…

Yes, voters in the US want to give people education, healthcare, and unemployment (or basic income-ish) benefited

Voters in the US are already paying for healthcare for all, plus they are paying extra to support an entire healthcare insurance industry.

The USA doesn't (generally) let people die if they can't afford healthcare (people may be driven into bankruptcy, but they won't be left to die), so those costs are all getting paid by the public. And it'd be cheaper to pay for preventative care than to wait and pay for care for those that are so sick that they have no choice but to see an expensive doctor.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#233

Post by gizmo686 » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #80

tyrust wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great idea, but in the meantime these workers need healthcare.

And when Uber and Lyft shut down they get neither healthcare nor this income. Unless they find another job. Which they were free to do anyway. But that's not always so simple... So what problem did we just solve?

The taxi market shifts back to companies that are willing to pay for benefits.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#234

Post by theplague42 » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

spanhandler wrote: post #225

theplague42 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this whole thread is a travesty

This thread is a prime example of how one can troll or shitpost on HN, no problem, so long as the trolling and shitposting is sufficiently HN-flavored. By which I don't mean to imply that the moderation or community are systemically or broadly broken, certainly no more so than most communities online, but simply that there are definite gaps in the armor and when they're found you see a kind of mis-targeted immune res…

Yeah this entire post is filled with comments misrepresenting (intentionally or unintentionally) the dynamics at play here, and it's all fine and good because "California state government bad."

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#235

Post by opportune » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #152

manigandham wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People freely working is not exploitation. Full time driving jobs already exist if you wanted that instead of freelance rideshare driving.

At that point it's full blown Stockholm syndrome, they somehow managed to make people believe it's in their own interest to be denied basic worker rights. Make them believe they are "their own boss" and they'll accept everything, even if they're just a tiny cog in the giant money printing machine (money they'll never see the color of)

Personally I don’t think Uber drivers are as stupid as you think they are. They legitimately want to be able to drive flexibly. Also they keep about 75% of receipts for their driving (average gross margin for Uber is under 25%).

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#236

Post by mqus » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

smallgovt wrote: post #195

mqus wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's what contracts are for. Let's say that you can only pass on some small amount of rides or your on-call duty is terminated. Or go further and state in your contract that you have to take rides if you're on on-call duty. If you have too many drivers, don't 'hire' more. If you have too few riders on the important times, increase the bonus.

There are all kinds of adjustments you can make.

Another thing: you don't get paid for "doing nothing", you are getting paid for dropping everything when needed. On these conditions you're limited in all kinds of ways, e.g.

Taking care of a small kid alone? - not possible. Going shopping? - not really possible.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#237

Post by Johnny555 » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #112

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average person's response to being told they'd have to take another driver's test isn't to replace driving with Uber/Lyft. You're in a unique position to be able to afford to replace all driving with ridesharing, since gas+insurance+maintenance costs are much lower than say, a month of commuting to an office via rideshare.

In San Francisco, owning your own car and using it for regular driving is a luxury. Lyft/Uber is cheaper and more convenient, all costs considered.

The problem in SF is that Uber/Lyft has become some convenient that its been diverting people from transit and putting them into single occupant cars (the driver doens't count). Much of the traffic congestion is coming from Uber/Lyft

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#238

Post by AnimalMuppet » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

theplague42 wrote: post #228

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason that Uber and Lyft were eating the taxi business's lunch: Less cost and better service.

In part by ignoring city and state laws!

Sure. That wasn't the point of this conversation, though. The point of this conversation was why one would use Lyft and Uber, and still not want to use the regular taxi companies.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#239

Post by mqus » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

LatteLazy wrote: post #207

mqus wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I mentioned bonuses. You are getting paid more if no one wants to drive, but there is some kind of base payment you can expect to get.

I mean, what you're describing without realizing it is just a cab company except you pay everyone a 30+ hours a week for doing nothing on top of what you pay them for actually working... This is why cab companies don't already let drivers pick their own hours (assuming they don't use the uber-lite approach of people just hiring the cab\medallion).

Whoa, uber/lyft are just cab companies with more flexible work-schemes? Tell me something new.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#240

Post by koeng » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

Androider wrote: post #214

lotsofpulp wrote: post #72

Yes, voters in the US want to give people education, healthcare, and unemployment (or basic income-ish) benefits. Voters in the US also don’t want to pay for any of this. Hence, the politicians that get elected are ones that give people education via student loans, and healthcare/unemployment benefits tied to employer/employment status. Those politicians get to claim they helped people, and they get to claim they kep…

In the US we pay hundreds of dollars in monthly medical premiums, thousands in deductibles per year, and still need to live in fear of surprise bankruptcy-level bills arriving if god forbid you collapse and need an emergency procedure at the closest out-of-network facility. Absolute insanity. Yet changing this at a fundamental level is somehow considered radical, nothing we can do etc., except what every other wester…

The entire pharma system is extremely complicated and there are a ton of weird incentives in its structure. Those incentive structures are really powerful, and since it is about human health, much harder to change.

Good paper on the topic - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/biosoc.2010.40