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The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

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Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#101

Post by nologic01 »

TotalCrackpot wrote: post #88
nologic01 wrote: post #67

"Digital" cooperatives using (optionally) open source platforms is an idea that should be much more explored imho. The concept applies to so many verticals involving small companies or individual operators (from taxis, to hotels, to restaurants, to real estate agents, local bookstores, cinemas, to game developers etc. etc.) The inability of large numbers of small entities to coordinate and cooperate in the digital er…

> The autocracy of a top-down corporate structure is more effective than a democratic collective. If that was the case then Soviet Union's central planning would be more efficient than Liberal democracy's market capitalism. The efficiency of corporations stems from unfair advantages states gives them like intellectual property rights or from socialising their losses and privatising their gains from public budget.

Not sure this a good counterexample. In fact we have plenty of proof that loose collectives dont perform well under rapid change conditions.

There is no reason why the ubers and bookings etc should not have been actually platforms developed and owned by the respective sectors using more or less the same technologies. In fact there are some examples.

The lag in responding to a risk of opportunity is intrinsic to a consensus system. The long term fitness is an entirely different matter.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#102

Post by nologic01 »

TylerE wrote: post #75
usrusr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much "this!". The hotel/booking is the most blatant example, because the bar for "good enough" wouldn't really be that far up. The only moat they have is worldwide discoverability (a regional cooperative just won't reach people who visit once, cooperatives would have to start global, or at least be really, really good at federating) and that the threshold for critical mass in that market is winner takes all: at le…

Depends on the vertical. I would not be real comfortable booking lodging on some random portal, especially if we're talking more of an AirBnB thing vs hotels.

Not sure where the "random portal" creeps in. A portal underwritten by all the hoteliers in a country / region is abouy as much assurance you can get.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#103

Post by viraptor »

master-lincoln wrote: post #98
mft_ wrote: post #81

Ignoring the details of this particular initiative, from a high-level view this is wonderful. Similarly to how Tesla's future failure or success is irrelevant as they've already succeeded in the most important task of proving that EVs can work and thus driving the industry to produce them en masse, Uber and Lyft have driven a revolution. They've shown that the old model for running a taxi service was horrendously out…

Uber and Lyft seem like a step back: less safety for drivers and passengers as cars are not company owned and inspected and there are no checks on drivers that a taxi company would do. Also the gig economy is overall probably a negative for society as working people do not have the safety of employment along with benefits. What risk or investment does e.g. Uber have that justifies taking a 20% cut? From a consumers p…

> Also the gig economy is overall probably a negative for society as working people do not have the safety of employment along with benefits.

This is not exactly new with Uber/Lyft. I remember a ride with the local taxi company (before they came on the market) where the driver was actually boasting how some previous customer was complaining about him to the dispatch, but he's a contractor so he's safe from any repercussions.

In that situation, at least the 1-star review at Uber/Lyft has a measurable effect.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#104

Post by post-it »

master-lincoln wrote: post #98
mft_ wrote: post #81

Ignoring the details of this particular initiative, from a high-level view this is wonderful. Similarly to how Tesla's future failure or success is irrelevant as they've already succeeded in the most important task of proving that EVs can work and thus driving the industry to produce them en masse, Uber and Lyft have driven a revolution. They've shown that the old model for running a taxi service was horrendously out…

Uber and Lyft seem like a step back: less safety for drivers and passengers as cars are not company owned and inspected and there are no checks on drivers that a taxi company would do. Also the gig economy is overall probably a negative for society as working people do not have the safety of employment along with benefits. What risk or investment does e.g. Uber have that justifies taking a 20% cut? From a consumers p…

In my city, Uber has very much

> shown that the old model for running a taxi service was horrendously outdated and customer-unfriendly

Prior to Uber, you had to pick a taxi company, call them, wait between twenty minutes and the heat death of the universe for the taxi to show up, and then maybe have the driver claim that his POS machine is broken and please pay cash.

After Uber showed up, suddenly the largest taxi service came out with an app where you could order a cab, watch it approach in real time, and pay through the app.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#105

Post by mft_ »

master-lincoln wrote: post #98
mft_ wrote: post #81

Ignoring the details of this particular initiative, from a high-level view this is wonderful. Similarly to how Tesla's future failure or success is irrelevant as they've already succeeded in the most important task of proving that EVs can work and thus driving the industry to produce them en masse, Uber and Lyft have driven a revolution. They've shown that the old model for running a taxi service was horrendously out…

Uber and Lyft seem like a step back: less safety for drivers and passengers as cars are not company owned and inspected and there are no checks on drivers that a taxi company would do. Also the gig economy is overall probably a negative for society as working people do not have the safety of employment along with benefits. What risk or investment does e.g. Uber have that justifies taking a 20% cut? From a consumers p…

Indeed - and these may be some of the areas that U/L can't or won't improve further, but new competition (like that in the article) can and might.

--

But U&L showed how awfully customer-unfriendly and antiquated the existing industry was. Introducing an app which can call a taxi in seconds to your GPS location, offering easy destination selection, seamless electronic payment, and a feedback system, were the innovations that the incumbent taxi and mini-cab industry was unable or unwilling to introduce, until competition forced them to. These innovations aren't linked to the employment model - that is something that U&L chose.

(Just like Tesla with the Model S, anyone could have done this first, but no-one did, until someone else did.)

Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#106

Post by peoplefromibiza »

TotalCrackpot wrote: post #88
nologic01 wrote: post #67

"Digital" cooperatives using (optionally) open source platforms is an idea that should be much more explored imho. The concept applies to so many verticals involving small companies or individual operators (from taxis, to hotels, to restaurants, to real estate agents, local bookstores, cinemas, to game developers etc. etc.) The inability of large numbers of small entities to coordinate and cooperate in the digital er…

> The autocracy of a top-down corporate structure is more effective than a democratic collective. If that was the case then Soviet Union's central planning would be more efficient than Liberal democracy's market capitalism. The efficiency of corporations stems from unfair advantages states gives them like intellectual property rights or from socialising their losses and privatising their gains from public budget.

That's assuming that the Soviet Union central planning was an authocratic top-down system that worked straight from decision makers to execution.

It wasn't.

It was layered in the same way a democracy is, just under different pre conditions and internal rules.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#107

Post by Zach_the_Lizard »

master-lincoln wrote: post #98
mft_ wrote: post #81

Ignoring the details of this particular initiative, from a high-level view this is wonderful. Similarly to how Tesla's future failure or success is irrelevant as they've already succeeded in the most important task of proving that EVs can work and thus driving the industry to produce them en masse, Uber and Lyft have driven a revolution. They've shown that the old model for running a taxi service was horrendously out…

Uber and Lyft seem like a step back: less safety for drivers and passengers as cars are not company owned and inspected and there are no checks on drivers that a taxi company would do. Also the gig economy is overall probably a negative for society as working people do not have the safety of employment along with benefits. What risk or investment does e.g. Uber have that justifies taking a 20% cut? From a consumers p…

> as cars are not company owned and inspected

The worst taxi I've been in had a completely broken suspension that bottomed out on every bump and threw the car all over the road. My wife got car sick, and we were both afraid we'd crash due to how out of control it was.

The cigarette smell and broken AC were obligatory, of course. Don't forget the check engine light and squeaky brakes.

The taxi owners did not care about car quality whatsoever.

I've never been in an Uber or Lyft that was as bad.

> Also the gig economy is overall probably a negative for society as working people do not have the safety of employment along with benefits.

A lot of drivers paid to rent both cars and taxi medallions and started the day off in the red. Many were contractors and didn't get benefits.

Not sure if it's still there, but in Queens, NY you'd see lots of these taxi medallion and rental places in Long Island City.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#108

Post by Nextgrid »

kykeonaut wrote: post #100
Nextgrid wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is that web3 tries to tie everything to a cryptocurrency token, not willing to accept the fact that as soon as something happens off-chain and in the real world, most/all advantages of using cryptocurrencies and blockchains go away.

It really is a shame that all blockchains (AFAIK) are tied to cryptocurrency as reward for participating in their consensus mechanism when it is not necessary the only way to do things. In fact, I believe blockchain will never be decentralized as long as there is a means of accumulation of power over the blockchain, in many cases the accumulation of PoW computing power, or in PoS the accumulation of the cryptocurrenc…

The whole concept of decentralized trust-less environments requires some way to prevent malicious attackers from taking over the network. Proof of work, while extremely wasteful, does that job.

The main problem is that trust-lessness and decentralization isn't actually necessary, especially for most things that exist in the real world and are at the mercy of the legal systems they operate within (this applies to cryptocurrencies as well - the government doesn't need to break crypto, it can just make interacting/transacting with it illegal).

For a lot of real-world projects, the legal system is an adequate protection. Centralization doesn't require a profit motive - the central party could be set up as a non-profit and then have all the advantages of a centralized system while avoiding a lot of the drawbacks we see in for-profit operations.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#109

Post by capableweb »

pabs3 wrote: post #78
djbusby wrote: post #16

Oh man, a friend and I were thinking of building out a FOSS Uber clone for this exact purpose. Would allow a bunch of smaller regional Ubers to exist. Couldn't get funding and I don't have free time to write that much code. Hope these folks are able to succeed. FOSS is a great path for workers to seize the means of production.

There is LibreTaxi for that: https://libretaxi.org/

Unfortunately, seems like it hasn't been maintained for quite a while (https://github.com/ro31337/libretaxi/graphs/contributors), doesn't support credit/debit cards (cash only) and also doesn't seem to offer any safety features (any driver can sign up at any time without any sort of verification)

Re: The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app

#110

Post by 2143 »

nologic01 wrote: post #67

"Digital" cooperatives using (optionally) open source platforms is an idea that should be much more explored imho. The concept applies to so many verticals involving small companies or individual operators (from taxis, to hotels, to restaurants, to real estate agents, local bookstores, cinemas, to game developers etc. etc.) The inability of large numbers of small entities to coordinate and cooperate in the digital er…

Agreed.

If there's a 3rd party aggregator (for taxis, restaurants or whatever), the final price that the customer pays would include both the aggregator's profits + the individual service provider's profits.

If the individual service providers all came together and made an app themselves, the aggregator-profits can be eliminated, resulting in potentially reduced prices for the customers.

I think (probably wrongly) one of the reasons they don't usually come together is because by making such an app they would effectively be helping their competitor(s), which they may not necessarily want to (because they don't see the bigger picture?).

In my city (in Asia) a subset of taxi drivers realized this and even made an app, but it didn't really work well due to poor marketing and because visitors to the city didn't want to set-up a new app just for 2 days etc.

On the other hand, if all the service-providers do co-operatively make an app for their services, what prevents a cartel from developing? The government?

I guess there should be a high baseline level of trust to make it work.

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