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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

#661

Post by xapata »

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.

It was a $20-something fare. It'd vary between $22 and $26 based on traffic. I'm not sure how much of that was airport fees. For pleasant drivers, I'd bump it to $30 with tip.

Yeah, $20 and about 1 in 3 were visibly angry and not shy about letting me know it.

Context: I took this route almost weekly for a few years.

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

#662

Post by kyle_martin1 »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #650
kyle_martin1 wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you don't take trips then you don't make any money. They felt entitled and refused to adapt when the market demanded it. That's irrational.

In discussions like these I like to start from a basic premise: people aren't stupid. It's obvious to the drivers that if they don't take trips, then they don't make money. Clearly then, they've decided that below a certain dollar amount, it make more sense to them to play computer games than take a fare. How they arrived at that conclusion, I don't know. But I have faith that it made sense to them. I do very small s…

You can be smart and be irrational. You can be dumb and be irrational. So it’s sort of a moot point.

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

#663

Post by bryan_w »

ksec wrote: post #533
serjester wrote: post #99

Completely anecdotal but I bring this question up every time I drive in an Uber and overwhelmingly the drivers tell me they want to stay independent. No one is forcing drivers into their jobs. I really struggle to understand why we need bureaucrats imposing their idea of what a market should look like on an fairly efficient market. From my experience the drivers are perfectly aware of the costs that go into driving s…

But you also have people like DHH claiming otherwise. To those of us not living in US, America just feels like a nation that constantly shout at each other, and now it is amplify by its a dominant media platform; Twitter. Considering lots of news media quote, find new information and use Twitter. And no one wants to compromise.

I promise you, real life in America is nothing like Twitter.

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

#664

Post by Skunkleton »

ccktlmazeltov wrote: post #636
dannyw wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No but I’d leave a good review and maybe write a card.

I'll do that at the restaurant next time

Do you want spit in your burger? Because that is how you get spit in your burger.

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

#665

Post by Skunkleton »

sudosysgen wrote: post #394
Skunkleton wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...Uber drivers reported earning $13.47 per hour, which means that on average, drivers report that their car is costing them over $6 per hour to operate. If you were to drive full time, that would get you about 27k/year, which is about the average income that a taxi driver makes. Rideshare companies are asking you to take more personal financial risk than you might as a taxi driver, but giving you more flexibility.…

It's also important to note that the 13.47$ an hour is heavily biased towards expensive cities, where it really isn't much, and is actually often under the minimum salary.

Its probably also worth noting that it is $13/hour while working. Your income will fluctuate heavily with demand, which further increases your risk. This of course is also true of taxi drivers.

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

#666

Post by [deleted] »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #650
kyle_martin1 wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you don't take trips then you don't make any money. They felt entitled and refused to adapt when the market demanded it. That's irrational.

In discussions like these I like to start from a basic premise: people aren't stupid. It's obvious to the drivers that if they don't take trips, then they don't make money. Clearly then, they've decided that below a certain dollar amount, it make more sense to them to play computer games than take a fare. How they arrived at that conclusion, I don't know. But I have faith that it made sense to them. I do very small s…

[deleted]

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

#667

Post by chillwaves »

logicchains wrote: post #432
chillwaves wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those industrialist were doing a great job of putting children in factories!

Before that, children (and their families) were doing backbreaking labour on farms. At least the factories paid better.

Yes, and they were also being exploited under feudal lords. I would hope we can make some kind of progress as a society beyond fuedal times.

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

#668

Post by kortilla »

orclev wrote: post #588
kortilla wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mode is meaningless with such a huge continuous range. A huge chunk of people are right at that income level because of minimum wage. 50% of the people still make more than 50k. Look at a distribution graph to help visualize it: https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2015/demo/dist...

That chart is s great example of exactly what I'm talking about. Look at that 95th percentile line. It's LEFT of the center. 95% of the population is making less than HALF of the top earners.

Do you even know what point you’re trying to make? Because I don’t think this chart is saying what you’re trying to imply. All this chart shows is that there is a long tail of possible incomes to the right.

It doesn’t tell you how much that 5 percent is making in aggregate compared to the 95 percent. Put another way, you could stuff everyone on the right into a single >250k column and it wouldn’t be as tall as that 90th percentile column.

This chart doesn’t really say anything about wealth inequality (which is what “point” I think you were trying to make) and neither does the mode of the incomes.

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

#669

Post by Skunkleton »

ccktlmazeltov wrote: post #631
Skunkleton wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> instead of expecting customers to foot the bill. Either way, the customer will be paying this bill.

OP's point is that you don't have to tip right now, but if tip goes away then the tip will be included in the price and mandatory

I've not tipped a few times, usually in anger, and one shameful time when had less money than I thought I did. Still, this is just a few instances out of probably thousands. I'm certain that I am not saving money because of tipping.

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

#670

Post by kortilla »

orclev wrote: post #587
anonunivgrad wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mode is a preposterous and arbitrary measurement to use. Median is what you’re looking for, but it doesn’t support your narrative as well.

Median is just the arbitrary mid point between the two extremes, that doesn't actually mean anything useful to the average person. If you picked someone at random from the subset of the US population that reports an income (presumably the working population) and asked them what their income is, the most likely answer is the mode value, or in 2014 about $22,000. That's reality. That's why that is important. The median…

>and asked them what their income is, the most likely answer is the mode value, or in 2014 about $22,000. That's reality. That's why that is important.

FFS no. That’s not what the mode means. Mode does not imply that’s the majority probability, it’s just the single highest probability out of the possible outcomes.

Statistically speaking, if you asked random people what their income was, the majority would not have an income of $22k. Let that sink in. Your whole mental model of this is deeply flawed. “Mode” != “majority”.

Consider this distribution:

1,2,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16

What is the mode? Do you see why the mode is meaningless shit when discussing what the distribution looks like?

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