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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

#131

Post by kykeonaut »

Nextgrid wrote: post #108
kykeonaut wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cryp…

> Proof of work, while extremely wasteful, does the job.

True, yet you could even have Proof of Work without cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is used to incentivize PoW which attracts more people to the blockchain and strengthens the network and so on.

However, one could have Proof of Work without cryptocurrency, for example, one could reward the PoW with participation in the blockchain, or in this case, have drivers PoW to be able to take rides.

> Centralization doesn't require a profit motive

Yes, I also agree that centralization doesn't require a profit motive, and a centralized solution is deal for 99% of the cases.

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

#132

Post by gleenn »

Sai_ wrote: post #90
gleenn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being NP-hard doesn't mean it's unsolvable at all. It means it's not solvable quickly. Google maps does this millions of times per day... the number of points on the trip are few enough that you can brute force it perfectly or use a heuristic to solve it faster but less optimally. Very solvable just not optimizable algorithmicly.

My answer that you are replying to ends with “…with current technology” which contains what you said.

The technology doesn't matter unless you're going to make a far-fetched quantum computer argument. This is pure math.

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

#133

Post by WWLink »

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…

If every city has an app, you also lower the trust of the drivers because you don't have a way to know if the passengers are behaving well (good reviews) or not.

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

#134

Post by _yid9 »

matt3210 wrote: post #47

Über is gonna sue you out of existence just like municipal broadband.. this is by design

This is why we need Unenclosable Carriers, and decentralized/distributed "apps" that cannot be de-platformed, and ...

There is a reason that Holochain was invented, and this entire conversation re-validates it.

The primary marker of Mercantilism (what we erroneously call capitalism, here in the west) is the erection of barriers to competition by entrenched players, via their purchased politicians.

When their control of the money supply, artificial barriers to competition, etc. is made much more expensive and difficult, their hand will be revealed. They will have to expend increasingly expensive (and obvious) force against ever more independent and smaller adversaries (their fellow citizens), to maintain their ill-gotten market positions.

It's gonna get fun!

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

#135

Post by throwaway892238 »

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…

"Bitter enemies" work together all the time without open source. Competing companies partner on initiatives, join the same boards, help each other pass new standards. Companies do not have emotions. They have profits and losses, marketing, products, coalitions, industry associations, etc. They are fine with working with competitors if it has no downside. Often they have to work with competitors, if only because their parent conglomerates are so large that they each depend on some product or service the other provides, or their customers use some product of the customer's and supporting it keeps their customers around. It's just part of doing business.

There is no magic to FOSS. It's just a weird quirk in the global capitalist market. It has no real bearing on business, unless your business is catering to the tiny minority of people who care only about FOSS.

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

#136

Post by throwaway892238 »

kdmccormick wrote: post #99
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…

I'd like you to imagine a world where GNU and Linux never took off, where we'd probably all be paying for Windows Server licenses in order to run websites. One where you need to pay to download a compiler, and all you get is the binary. That's hard to imagine, given the freedoms we enjoy now. I can download a world-class OS for free and distribute changes to it without any hinderance other than my own skill barriers.…

MINIX and BSD were already free. More free tools would crop up, just like free Windows tools abounded since their inception, like the hobbyist software that was traded for free before that. Nerds who just like making software would always have kept giving it away for free, because they just like the fact that they can and it's fun to do.

It didn't change the world that much. Nearly every company that makes internal software refuses to release it for free. They'll happily use whatever you give them for free, of course. But even if it weren't around for free, they'd just pay for something else. Most people would probably use Android as the example of the "revolution" paying off, but before Android everyone just paid to license mobile OSes, and they will again when Android eventually dies. Business does not care about the morality of a license, nor sharing code. You pay for what you need when you need to, don't pay for what you don't need to, and pass the cost on to the customer. Simple as that.

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

#137

Post by mecha_ghidorah »

pydry wrote: post #125
2143 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

I like the idea of that but the issue is software that people have to use with no alternative end up having no real motivation to be user friendly or stable or anything like that. They own the market and nobody can ever leave it

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