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Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

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Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#881

Post by 1MoreThing »

AlexandrB wrote: post #819
dmode wrote: post #231

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…

> AB5 was written to impose a 20th century employment model to a 21st century situation. Why should employees give up rights just because it's the 21st century? Make no mistake, that's Uber/Lyft's entire advantage over traditional taxis: skirting hard-won employment regulation to lower costs at the expense of workers.

Most traditional taxis are independent contractors as well. It's the ridematching versus dispatch system that is the advantage, not the employment model.

It's easy to see all the folks here who don't remember having to wait an hour for a taxi to show after calling, if it ever did. Pushing a button on your phone and getting a ride five minutes later is magic in comparison.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#882

Post by sangnoir »

amoitnga wrote: post #375
amoitnga wrote: post #369

They spent ton of money to get me to install their app and consider it as an option. There is really no reason for me to use one over the other. Lyft, uber, some random taxi app.. Same drives are coming in the same cars. Now they are motivating me to look for alternatives and actually give 'some random taxi app' a name. this combined with "dont attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity" leads me to doub…

P.S point being they are going to lose market share with no good reason.

It's a good reason: they are causing citizens pain so that they will vote for an AB5 carveout for Lyft/Uber on election day.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#883

Post by jmeister »

cactus2093 wrote: post #604
AgloeDreams wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Ridesharing' (Which is a hilarious term for the simple fact that the ride is not being shared, the driver is not intending to go to your favorite bar. ) isn't a 21st century situation or solution. It's not a profitable or a good force in an economy, it does not pay a reasonable wage for anyone to live on, it is not environmentally friendly unless done in large quantities of people,(which is called a bus). Ridesharin…

I agree with you on one point, "ridesharing" is a silly word. I would call it something like an "Open Car Service". The main reason I can't get on board with the rest of this line of argument is that it ultimately just comes down to paternalistic protection of the poor disenfranchised gig workers that you clearly view as being less than capable, rational adult humans. The number of gig economy workers has been growin…

Another driving factor is intra-elite competition:

http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/intra-elite-competition...

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#884

Post by manigandham »

alpha_squared wrote: post #864
manigandham wrote: post #857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not employees. What rights are missing? Do you have an issue with contractors in other industries? Why or why not?

> They're not employees. Why does this keep getting repeated? They're not contractors. They have little-to-no control over who their "clients" are. They don't develop relationships for repeat service with those clients; don't set their rates (I'd gladly pay some drivers more than others); are forced to jump through hoops to maintain 4.X ratings or they're booted. The only thing they do have control over is when to st…

Their client is Uber. They have complete control to work for them or not. No different than tech support hired on contract. They don't develop relationships with customers, they work for the company that contracted them.

Nobody is guaranteed a contract either. If you don't perform satisfactorily then the contract is terminated. No different than tech support that are rated poorly in communications.

Drivers control their rates [1], when they work, where they work, how long they work, and which rides they accept (with user, time and direction shown first). Only thing missing is destination upfront, however that can change anyway. No different than tech support dealing customer requests regardless of effort.

1. https://www.uber.com/blog/california/set-your-fares/

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#885

Post by throawayaskdjha »

ProcNetDev wrote: post #870
AlexandrB wrote: post #819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AB5 was written to impose a 20th century employment model to a 21st century situation. Why should employees give up rights just because it's the 21st century? Make no mistake, that's Uber/Lyft's entire advantage over traditional taxis: skirting hard-won employment regulation to lower costs at the expense of workers.

Everyone keeps saying the substitute for Uber/Lyft is taxis. Maybe this is HN bay-area bias but it is just wrong. The substitute for Uber/Lyft in 95% of the US is driving your own car! Driving your own car has significant externalities, eg. More need for parking, more emissions, more drunk driving. I don't live in CA but used to do a fair amount of work travel out there. If they don't have Uber/Lyft in the future, I'…

I think OP's argument is the reason why it's "driving your own car" in those markets outside of denser cities is because operating a taxi fleet is not profitable at those densities, in part because of employee protections and other regulatory hurdles, and that removing those protections (and shifting additional costs to the state) is what allows uber/lyft to create an alternative to "driving your own car" in a place where taxis have not been able to profitably operate.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#886

Post by mike00632 »

umvi wrote: post #720
vertbhrtn wrote: post #463

It's fascinating how the subsistence wage is simultaneously too low for workers and too high corporations.

Imagine creating an app called "Clean Streets" - basically people can put bounties on streets, other people can collect the bounty by picking up the litter. Sounds like a great little idea right? The app takes a 1% fee for server upkeep. Win/win, bored teenagers make some extra money and your neighborhood gets cleaned up... right? Wrong. Turns out, people aren't willing to pay that much for people to clean up their s…

Ummmmm, Uber and Lyft take a lot more than 1% from drivers. And Uber drivers are typically the polar opposite of bored teenagers. They are dedicated adults trying to make driving their profession.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#887

Post by yazaddaruvala »

seiferteric wrote: post #603
Infinitesimus wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't the better position here to create a bill that decouples health benefits from the employer and allow contractors to have better lives?

This exactly. I can't for the life of me figure out why so many people think we should keep saddling private companies with all of this stuff. We should make operating a business as simple as possible. If you want everyone to have healthcare, pass universal healthcare (in California at least).

Thinking about how to structure this:

- Drivers should get the extra funds for medical insurance. California has Medicare and Medicaid, it just needs funds.

- Uber and Lyft don't want to employ people because of fixed vs non-fixed hours, etc. Full time employees at 40 hours per week get medical insurance, so gig-work (like Uber/Lyft) should probably pay partial amounts for medical insurance based on hours worked (i.e. roughly calculated at driving time for Uber or Lyft).

- California (through Medicare/Medicaid) sets a "medical insurance target", e.g. $200 per week, and a HSA for all gig-workers. If a driver drives 4 hours a week (40 / 4 = 10%), Lyft has to contribute $20 (10% of $200) to the HSA for that driver.

- The driver can either withdraw the money from HSA as income, or use the money tax-free to pay Medicare to continue coverage. If the driver only drove 20 hours per week on average, i.e. the HSA didn't have enough funds, the driver would pay the difference out-of-pocket. Ideally, drivers would drive 40 hours per week between Lyft, Uber, etc, and get full medical coverage.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#888

Post by anticensor »

Lendal wrote: post #772
carlosdp wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this a lot, that Lyft/Uber could allow the same flexibility if they wanted to. It's not that the law dictates this shift, it's that the economics do. Requiring full employment means you can hire less drivers. If you have less drivers, you need more control over when they drive in order to make sure when customers are looking for a ride, they can find one, hence shifts.

When they talk about "shift work" they're referring to the way the taxi industry works. The reason the taxi industry works that way is because most drivers drive company cars which are owned & maintained by the company. Drivers that own their own cars can drive whenever they want to. There are no shifts. I drove a taxicab for more than a year back in the 90's. That's the way it worked then. Most drivers were shift be…

If Uber enforces "shift work", I am sure those shifts will be like city bus shifts, constantly filled by trips with minimal driver rests; than like yellow cab shifts, which are normally idle and dispatched sparsely.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#889

Post by strbean »

purple_ferret wrote: post #807
manfredo wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, except now instead of having the option of taxis and ride share companies she can only use taxis which have artificially inflated prices due to constricted supply.

The OP says they can't be profitable and you're saying they're too profitable at the rider's expense. Which is it?

The OP says ridesharing can't be profitable, parent says taxis are too expensive. These are statements are not inconsistent with one another.

Re: Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

#890

Post by 101008 »

dang wrote: post #845
101008 wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do what?

Troll. Or, if you'd like the longer version: " Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Ah, you meant the gender comment. Sorry, I didnt read it and I didnt understood what you were mentioning. Thanks.
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