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Uber and Lyft shutdown in California averted as judge grants emergency stay

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Re: Uber and Lyft shutdown in California averted as judge grants emergency stay

#541

Post by gridlockd »

ganafagol wrote: post #509
perryizgr8 wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should have a solution for independent contractors being put out of work. We have one age old solution for this problem. It's called savings.

Hard to do for people living paycheck to paycheck. Then they should refuse the job you say? Yeah right then they don't even have that little paycheck anymore. There is a power imbalance here, and that's the root issue. The employee and the employer are not on the same level in terms of negotiating power. Hard for tech people like the HN crowd to realize, but in most areas outside overpaid overdemanded software engine…

It's called a buyer's market. It's normal that there's an oversupply of unskilled labor, so the buyers of that labor have more power.

However, don't forget that it's usually the same for a business and its customers: Ride-hailing itself is a buyer's market. Lyft and Uber are unprofitable. The only way for them to stay "in business" is to constantly burn money.

Supply and demand is not a free market ideal, it's a law of nature. Worker's rights or unions can't raise market prices above demand by fiat, all they can do is limit supply so that prices naturally rise. That means more people are out of a job, but those that are in the job might make a little bit more, if the overhead of running the union doesn't eat up the difference.

You can make the argument that limiting supply is justified, just like forcing people into pension or health care systems may be justified because people are fundamentally irrational. You just have to be able to phrase it that way and acknowledge the trade-off, otherwise you're just fooling yourself.

Re: Uber and Lyft shutdown in California averted as judge grants emergency stay

#542

Post by [deleted] »

pembrook wrote: post #522
URSpider94 wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Becoming an employee doesn’t necessarily mean you have to work a rigid schedule. There are plenty of employees, like flight attendants, who bid on shifts on a periodic basis, and who have the opportunity to trade or add shifts freely.

I see you’ve never worked minimum wage jobs before. There are not “plenty” of unskilled jobs that allow you to set your own hours. In fact, all of jobs I had accessible to me before I had a degree had ZERO flexibility on hours. You were scheduled (rarely ever during standard 9 to 5 hours), and if you didn’t show up, you were fired. I would have happily taken a few bucks less than minimum wage for the ability to set m…

[deleted]

Re: Uber and Lyft shutdown in California averted as judge grants emergency stay

#543

Post by CPLX »

neosat wrote: post #500
URSpider94 wrote: post #491

We have long ago decided that we don’t let people give away certain rights, even if they do it freely, even if they want to. I can’t work for a business for free, or for below minimum wage, even if I call myself an “unpaid intern”. I can’t work for a business as a child (below working age). I can’t ask a business not to withhold income tax from my paycheck, or to not pay their half of the social security tax, or with…

> other than when the drivers choose to work. That's not true. What about who else they can work for? That's not enforced either. Which other businesses commonly allow people to work when they want, work for whatever competition they want, take any amount of 'vacation' in between? You're fitting something new into an existing category by handwaving away lot of important nuance, when it is exactly this nuance that mak…

The agricultural business. If you live in California and eat fruit you’re one degree away from it.

Piecework is neither uncommon or novel. There are a million other examples.

Silicon Valley sure likes to resurrect depression era business models (piecework, SRO’s, renting out spare rooms, housekeeping and errand services for the wealthy) and call it innovation.

Re: Uber and Lyft shutdown in California averted as judge grants emergency stay

#544

Post by chrischen »

Retric wrote: post #239
bsimpson wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We expect eBay/Amazon/Etsy to enforce standards on their platforms, but no one would argue that their sellers are employees. I'm not convinced that having price and ride quality standards invalidates the contractor relationship.

Quality is debatable but none of eBay, Amazon, or Etsy enforce prices. Fundamentally choosing prices is what defines markets, trying to set them is the actions of an employer.

If you let people set prices some will set absurdly high prices. For good user experience those get filtered out. What gets left is the system that we currently have which is in fact price that is set by drivers—just not explicitly. When there's more drivers in the area, prices drop, when there are few drivers, prices go up. That's how it works and it makes little sense to revise the UI to present nonsensical prices (we'd always pick the lowest price of a certain threshold of driver rating) for the user to choose from in a list just to fit some arbitrary definition of contractor drafted by some dumb politician or lawmaker.

Re: Uber and Lyft shutdown in California averted as judge grants emergency stay

#545

Post by icebraining »

icebraining wrote: post #540
ganafagol wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to do for people living paycheck to paycheck. Then they should refuse the job you say? Yeah right then they don't even have that little paycheck anymore. There is a power imbalance here, and that's the root issue. The employee and the employer are not on the same level in terms of negotiating power. Hard for tech people like the HN crowd to realize, but in most areas outside overpaid overdemanded software engine…

That makes sense when the fat cats are making huge profits and paying a pittance to their workers. But Uber is losing billions every year. Where is the money going to come from?

Well, I know where it's coming from: a massive number of unemployed drivers, as rates are raised, reducing trips to the few that are profitable enough to pay for that (therefore also excluding lower-income users).

Maybe that's an acceptable trade-off, but we should be clear about it, not pretend we can just pump money from an empty well.

Re: Uber and Lyft shutdown in California averted as judge grants emergency stay

#546

Post by EliRivers »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #449
strbean wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the whole declining rides thing... Wouldn't most companies keep performance stats for their contractors, and if one started refusing lots of jobs, stop giving them work? Seems like Uber is just automating what is a normal part of working with a contractor. With regards to unemployment insurance, this is really a hole in our safety net. Regardless of whether Uber drivers should be considered independent cont…

> we should have a solution for independent contractors being put out of work. We have one age old solution for this problem. It's called savings.

Solution found not to work.

Cost of living found to render savings unrealistic for many. Single accident, equipment failure, medical emergency or other such unforseeable found to wipe out meagre savings without warning. Precarious nature of employment market and inadequacy of social protections found to eradicate savings at horrific rate upon losing job, such that they become a countdown to destitution rather than a bridge.

Solution rejected; cannot be broadly implemented without other changes to the system. What else you got?

Re: Uber and Lyft shutdown in California averted as judge grants emergency stay

#547

Post by swc »

kyle_martin1 wrote: post #426
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want to stay independent, fine. Then actually treat them like independent contractors. Let them set rates. Let them decline rides without facing penalties by the platform. Make the changes necessary to fit the independent contractor model. And not just the rideshare company, but the state too: these workers need unemployment insurance, as Covid has shown, and somebody needs to pay for it: be it the workers or th…

I worked for SuperShuttle developing their driver mobile app. I can tell you for a fact that a big reason SuperShuttle failed is because the drivers were independent. They would consistently reject low cost trips and wait it out until they got one "mega" trip so that they only need to actually work for about 3 hours/day. Some days they wouldn't take any trips, just hang out in the van playing Flappy Bird. This was a…

This seems more nuanced than implied here. It sounds as though the 'main issue' wasn't that Super Shuttle couldn't work while letting their drivers be independent, but rather that they couldn't compete on price with a service that didn't.

If a business was paying their workers minimum wage and couldn't compete on price with another business that came in and didn't respect minimum wage laws, you wouldn't say the main issue was paying minimum wage. You would say it was the business that didn't respect minimum wage laws.

It seems like if all companies treat drivers as independent contractors, then the market will naturally work itself out. Drivers will compete amongst themselves and determine what they are willing to work for, and prices will adapt as needed to support that. However, if some companies don't, then obviously it isn't a level playing field. That will only be exacerbated if the company that doesn't then also further depresses ride prices to the point of operating at a loss.

Whether the current legislation actually achieves the goal remains to be seen, but the whole point is to level the playing field. I don't think anyone actually thinks that the way forward is to treat drivers as employees. Instead, I think having to treat drivers as employees is a deterrent to the current way contractor laws are being skirted, with the intent of pushing all companies to treat their drivers as independent contractors in order to level the playing field.

Re: Uber and Lyft shutdown in California averted as judge grants emergency stay

#548

Post by chrischen »

throwawaygh wrote: post #205
chrischen wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually what happens is we get lower Uber/Lyft rates for consumers... consumers that may depend on it in low infrastructure areas such as other low income workers. In a competitive market there is no such thing as “free profit” for companies. Most savings that apply to all market competition across the board transfer to lower prices in the general market. Uber would only net the profit if for some reason it was the…

And, if those other people did it, then I would be saying this about them. “That’s how the world works” is the oldest justification for injustice. If capitalism really is just a spreadsheet feudalism that deprives even the yacht owners of human moral autonomy, then maybe it’s time to burn down the system. NB: I don’t buy it, and I think markets can function alongside patriotic responsibility.

I'm not saying the way thing works is bad... it is how it works and it's the way it should be because it's good.

Re: Uber and Lyft shutdown in California averted as judge grants emergency stay

#549

Post by chriskanan »

thesimon wrote: post #523
xapata wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had taxi drivers yell at me for how close I lived to the airport. Angrily banging the steering wheel. "I waited in line for 2 hours and I get this fucking fare!?" Then they drive maniacally fast, weaving through traffic hoping to catch the tail end of passengers disembarking my flight. Mildly terrifying. Uber and Lyft were so welcome.

> Uber and Lyft were so welcome Then you are lucky. I can't count the times the drivers called me before picking me up, asking me where I want to go and then cancelling if it was nearby (or no answer at all). I never cancel, but they do. And when they don't do that, they are extremly annoyed when it's something close to the airport.

I've used both hundreds of times in the US, and that has never happened to me. They would only call to sync our positions to find each other, which happened very rarely.

Re: Uber and Lyft shutdown in California averted as judge grants emergency stay

#550

Post by [deleted] »

gwd wrote: post #535
xapata wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had taxi drivers yell at me for how close I lived to the airport. Angrily banging the steering wheel. "I waited in line for 2 hours and I get this fucking fare!?" Then they drive maniacally fast, weaving through traffic hoping to catch the tail end of passengers disembarking my flight. Mildly terrifying. Uber and Lyft were so welcome.

But that's partly because, in all likelihood, the taxi driver also couldn't set their own rates. If that taxi driver could have asked $20 instead of the $3.75 legally mandated by the meter, would you have paid it? It seems like allowing a proper market, where both riders and drivers could bid on rides, would solve both this problem and the SuperShuttle problem.

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