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The Drivers Cooperative

drivers.coop

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Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#51

Post by yholio »

What keeps Uber competitive is access to a relatively cheap reservoir of labor force. They mediate this process where drivers compete against each other and extract a good rent in the process. The focus should be getting rid of the rent, not the competition.

While I wish these guys all the best and think it's a good paradigm shift, I don't think they will be successful for the same reasons most cooperatives aren't successful: the owner-workers see the business as a means to insulate themselves from market pressures. They stop growing and innovating and simply redistribute the larger than market compensations among each other. If many another drivers are willing to accept a lower pay for the same work, they will simply not accept them in the co-op.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#52

Post by vore »

gonehome wrote: post #31
tomdell wrote: post #2

It’s encouraging that initiatives like this seem to be popping up more often - co-operatives of workers looking to cut out corporate middlemen. It will be an uphill climb, but I hope this is the future. The technical moats of a lot of recently minted tech companies don’t seem to be so great that they can’t be overcome with time and open source work. The inertia and efficiency that comes with scale will be harder to c…

Do others have better experiences with co-ops than I do? I know people love REI, but whenever I go in there to buy anything that requires someone (ski boots, skis, work on skis) - it sucks. There's never anyone available, it often takes up to an hour or more to get helped or waiting in line. Sometimes I have to leave and come back later. Last time I gave up and ordered everything online. It's not like it's crazy pack…

REI is a consumers' cooperative, not a workers' cooperative. The people who work at REI don't own the business, and they would basically have the same role in any other company (which is one of the criticisms of why they're not actually good for labor).

In fact, in a consumers' cooperative would probably be better in this case since you would have more direct control over the business than with a regular corporation.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#53

Post by yellowapple »

hobofan wrote: post #26
CameronNemo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is actually an interesting point. Why would I, as a driver, fund research and development aimed at making my skills worthless?

Because you own part of the co-op, and it's value would go up if that research succeeds? I think co-ops can actually be a good way of handling technology replacing manual labor. The profits made from the technological advancements can be put in a dedicated trust of the co-op that is focused on retraining the workers for new positions. With that you could handle inevitable technological progress.

> Because you own part of the co-op, and it's value would go up if that research succeeds?

That ownership is contingent on you working for the co-op, which doesn't seem very likely if a robot took your job.

That said, there are a couple ways to work around this:

1. Flip the ownership model to a customer cooperative (or a customer/worker hybrid cooperative), thus moving the decisionmaking - and the incentives as a result - from workers to customers (which can and often do overlap). Customer cooperatives are a proven model here in the US (credit unions are probably the most widely known example).

2. Use automation to multiply labor rather than replace it. Replacing a drivers with cars at a 1:1 ratio obviously doesn't leave much room for drivers, but replacing them at a 1:10 ratio (or somesuch) can mean converting drivers into owner-operators of "squads" of cars. This depends on there being enough of a customer base to warrant this multiplication; for this to work, it's best paired with a massive expansion of that customer base (adding a bunch more cities, for example, or extending service areas, or slashing fares).

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#54

Post by beefield »

btown wrote: post #17
beefield wrote: post #8

One of the most amazing things to me is that a couple of large hotel chains can't come up with a hotel reservation coop that would compete/throw out with bookin.com et al. If you worry about competition, just found two or three competing coops and be member of them all. SEO? If most hotels are nowhere but in the coop platforms, how can google not display them at top?

This is a really good question with a frustratingly simple answer: OTAs like Booking.com have "rate parity" contracts guaranteeing them equal rates to the hotels' direct booking sites and any other channels they use: https://businessblog.trivago.com/rate-parity-hotel-industry-... - and these have de facto been upheld in the US court system. So if you're a hotel deciding whether to invest resources into your own brand…

Well, in my opinion rate parity agreements should be illegal in the first place, as they foster rent seeking behaviour as opposed to fair competition.

And if a few large chains drop out of these household names and welcome all small hotels to their coop with fair terms, I fail to see how that would be NPV negative move even if it took a couple of months to readjust for SEO. Price fixing? Just found a couple of competing coops with different seed chains.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#55

Post by lukifer »

anticristi wrote: post #48
beefield wrote: post #8

One of the most amazing things to me is that a couple of large hotel chains can't come up with a hotel reservation coop that would compete/throw out with bookin.com et al. If you worry about competition, just found two or three competing coops and be member of them all. SEO? If most hotels are nowhere but in the coop platforms, how can google not display them at top?

I always wondered why airlines are not pilot-owned.

United went through a period in the 90's where it was majority-owned by its employees, which ended when it restructured under bankruptcy in the mid-2000's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAL_Corporation#History

In general, airline employees enjoy very strong unions, not only for pilots but also flight attendants.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#56

Post by yellowapple »

rPlayer6554 wrote: post #46
fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yo, why are you broadcasting these details, how many strangers do you want to show up at her party?

Should I bring drinks? Or should I bring my C manual signed by Dennis Richie for some fun party discussion?...never mind I'll bring both. I can't wait for an engaging discussion on the pros and cons of ANSI C!!!!

Well now I'm obligated to make a cross-country flight just to crash the party and point out how C is objectively inferior to PL/1 and how the world would be a utopia if Multics caught on.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#57

Post by legulere »

throwaway2a02 wrote: post #50

> While Uber and Lyft make their money for Wall Street and Silicon Valley investors, we will be a co-operative. So any profits will go back to the drivers. Can't they set it up as a non-profit? What almost always happens in these cases is that most of shares are owned by the first few workers, and ultimately a small group will control the whole business (at which point they will obviously won't drive for the app anym…

Cooperatives (at least here in Germany) often have a maximum amount of shares that you can own and are open for people to get new shares.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#58

Post by sm4rk0 »

yholio wrote: post #51

What keeps Uber competitive is access to a relatively cheap reservoir of labor force. They mediate this process where drivers compete against each other and extract a good rent in the process. The focus should be getting rid of the rent, not the competition. While I wish these guys all the best and think it's a good paradigm shift, I don't think they will be successful for the same reasons most cooperatives aren't su…

> What keeps Uber competitive is access to a relatively cheap reservoir of labor force.

Cheap labor force means someone is underpaid. If the coop cuts the middlemen out and transfer the extra to drivers then it's a win-win: drivers get more and customers pay the same for a better service because well-paid driver => good service.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#59

Post by boomboomsubban »

throwaway2a02 wrote: post #50

> While Uber and Lyft make their money for Wall Street and Silicon Valley investors, we will be a co-operative. So any profits will go back to the drivers. Can't they set it up as a non-profit? What almost always happens in these cases is that most of shares are owned by the first few workers, and ultimately a small group will control the whole business (at which point they will obviously won't drive for the app anym…

You don't issue permanent shares, working for the company gives you shares. I don't think registering as a nonprofit is necessary to stop that problem, though I wouldn't be surprised if they did end up registering as a nonprofit.

Re: The Drivers Cooperative

#60

Post by pydry »

beefield wrote: post #54
btown wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really good question with a frustratingly simple answer: OTAs like Booking.com have "rate parity" contracts guaranteeing them equal rates to the hotels' direct booking sites and any other channels they use: https://businessblog.trivago.com/rate-parity-hotel-industry-... - and these have de facto been upheld in the US court system. So if you're a hotel deciding whether to invest resources into your own brand…

Well, in my opinion rate parity agreements should be illegal in the first place, as they foster rent seeking behaviour as opposed to fair competition. And if a few large chains drop out of these household names and welcome all small hotels to their coop with fair terms, I fail to see how that would be NPV negative move even if it took a couple of months to readjust for SEO. Price fixing? Just found a couple of compet…

This mirrors the clauses VISA/MasterCard have that say that shops can't charge different prices for credit cards and cash which also solidifies rent seeking behavior.

I wonder if you could create a similar law for both.

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