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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

#121

Post by MSFT_Edging »

healthyusa wrote: post #112
Zach_the_Lizard wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 abou…

Gone. It’s all Uber now. A few green cabs. Odds of finding a yellow cab outside of Manhattan are slim.

The whole point of the green cabs was that Yellow cabs mostly stayed in Manhattan.

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

#122

Post by MSFT_Edging »

safety1st wrote: post #58
throwaway892238 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FOSS is a great path for workers to seize the means of production. It's... not. Open Source is not a business model, nor a collective organizing principle, bargaining process, etc. It's just source code a couple of people have commit access to. I'm all in favor of everybody sharing source code too, but let's not pretend it's magic. Building and sustaining any kind of organization takes work , and has nothing to do…

FOSS absolutely does have an effect on how your movement is organized and if you depend on it it can be an accelerator. But FOSS doesn't create some kind of socialist utopia as some people seem to believe. It does something much more mundane yet infinitely more valuable in our fractured modern world: it unites bitter enemies and gets them to collaborate. Look at the contributors to the Linux kernel, which even includ…

Thank you for writing this out, I never worded it like this to myself but it makes so much sense.

I love the FOSS movement's use of the legal system, mixed with ease of adoption, to force big players to contribute.

FOSS, while not being a socialist utopia, is one of the few truly cooperative systems in our society, and it also goes to show you cannot trust people(corporations) to contribute out of the good of their heart, you have to force their hand through the very tools(ip law) that these people and corporations use to wield their own power.

This may stray past your original point, but whenever I hear someone complain about something being "authoritarian", I find it hard to take seriously because the profit motive almost always goes against a general common good. ie covid lockdowns, lives saved vs dollars earned, where do your priorities lie?

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

#123

Post by jjfoooo4 »

runeks wrote: post #97
cortesoft wrote: post #20

This is an interesting startup filling a need, but I don't think it is really competing with Uber and Lyft, because they are only doing prescheduled rides. The killer feature for Uber/Lyft is being able to get a ride at any time on demand in a matter of minutes. It doesn't seem like this will be able to get there. I have wondered if a pure market making app would work... let drivers and riders place bids... a driver…

> I have wondered if a pure market making app would work... let drivers and riders place bids... a driver can lower their bid to get hired faster and a rider can increase their bid to get picked up faster. The app would just take a fixed cut. This is a good idea. But it's important to note that price is not the only relevant parameter here (as opposed to e.g. buying company shares, where two shares are exactly the sa…

And for an informative, trustworthy driver rating, you’ll need staff to adjudicate disputes

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

#124

Post by TotalCrackpot »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #106
TotalCrackpot wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Elaborate on this please, after all even in "autocratic" corporations we have internal power struggles etc. So are they democratic too? Suddenly everything is like democracy?

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

#125

Post by pydry »

2143 wrote: post #110
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) on…

Maybe it would work better if the local government runs the app (contracted out obvs) and bans all the others.

I dont really mind installing a new app for a new city provided the onboarding is easy.

The part that bugs me the most is researching what app to use in what place. It's not straightforward.

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

#126

Post by marisnom »

Zach_the_Lizard wrote: post #107
master-lincoln wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abou…

In Mexico it's even a matter a safety, there's rampant pirate taxis in Mexico City that if you get on one they might try to rob or kidnap you. Most women avoid taxis at all costs throughout Mexico, Uber and Didi are just so much safer

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

#127

Post by peoplefromibiza »

TotalCrackpot wrote: post #124
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Elaborate on this please, after all even in "autocratic" corporations we have internal power struggles etc. So are they democratic too? Suddenly everything is like democracy?

USSR, with the exception of the elections, wasn't much different from what we recognize as democracies.

i.e. a local bureaucrat notices something, he contacts his bureaucrat supervisor, let's call him the city manager, who then decide to command the bureaucrat to investigate further or ignore the issue.

Once it is established that the issue actually exists, the local bureaucrat supervisor contacts his bureaucrat supervisor, let's call him the area manager who once again analyzes the report, or more probably gives it to his subordinates to analyze it, because he has a lot of more important work to do, he's a manager!, and then decides what to do next.

Once it is established that the issue actually exists, the area manager contacts his supervisor, let's call him the regional manager, who once again analyzes the report, or more probably give it to his subordinates to analyze it, because he has a lot of more important work to do, he's a manager of managers for god's sake!, and then decides what to do next.

Rinse and repeat a dozen times in a system deeply nested (full employment was a primary goal in USSR, meaning that the machine was slow and inefficient but provided job security to almost everybody) and it is clear that what Stalin said or commanded was the result of an information gathering process that wasn't so swift and to deploy the solutions that the central committee deliberated they had to face some slowdown and a lot of friction.

To understand how fragile the system was, imagine that the fall of the Berlin wall was caused by a trivial communication mistake made by Guenter Schabowski during a momentary inability to contact the bureaucrat who knew the correct answer to the journalists questions.

Democracy simply means that we vote and have many different parties to chose from (not so many in the US, for example), a parliament made by one, two or more "houses" where elected representatives discuss matters, etc. etc., but what we call "the machinery of government" it's not very different from system to system.

Take China for example, yes, they have only one party, but the CCP ha almost 100 million members, with many different political currents, that constantly discuss different point of views and try to find a compromise, making it one of the largest, if not the largest, political institution in the World and in human history.

We do not call it a democracy, but it is still humans discussing politics that have real life impact on over a billion people that form their community.

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

#129

Post by JamisonM »

asah wrote: post #94
JamisonM wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite understand the logic here.. the 5.2MM wasn't fixed costs, that was costs of goods sold because they needed to provide the service to earn in income. So as far as I can tell they lost 318K, but they don't need to grow gross revenue by very much to close the profitability gap.

Exactly: if they double total revenue then NET revenue (after driver payouts) only grows to $1.4M Sounds awesome but currently the net revenue was 700k which means they spent ~$1mm on other stuff besides driver payouts. Some of that will grow with the business (e.g. customer service, server hosting costs), some is fixed (e.g. you only need one CEO). If they can grow the revenue without also growing expenses then they…

They developed a new app and essentially built the business in 2022, I am going to expect that the vast majority of the $1MM is fixed and one-time costs. (Obviously they are amortizing the app cost.. but nonetheless.)

But regardless of that if you are launching a new service business and you've got $5MM is sales and you need to hit $8MM in your second full year of operation to become profitable, I'll call that almost profitable!

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

#130

Post by mr-pink »

grandmczeb wrote: post #64
mr-pink wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's funny the person is upset about some taxi driver cheating them, but okay with paying tribute to some app developer middleman with every trip

The wise man solemnly bowed his head and said “there’s actually zero difference between free exchange of currency for service and fraud.”

if you're going to cheat a man do it honestly
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