Uber and Lyft shutdown in California averted as judge grants emergency stay • Hacker News Board

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

#511

Post by chmod600 » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 6:30 AM UTC

kyle_martin1 wrote: post #426

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want to stay independent, fine. Then actually treat them like independent contractors. Let them set rates. Let them decline rides without facing penalties by the platform. Make the changes necessary to fit the independent contractor model. And not just the rideshare company, but the state too: these workers need unemployment insurance, as Covid has shown, and somebody needs to pay for it: be it the workers or th…

I worked for SuperShuttle developing their driver mobile app. I can tell you for a fact that a big reason SuperShuttle failed is because the drivers were independent. They would consistently reject low cost trips and wait it out until they got one "mega" trip so that they only need to actually work for about 3 hours/day. Some days they wouldn't take any trips, just hang out in the van playing Flappy Bird. This was a…

So lower the price of big trips and raise the price of small trips until thing balance out?

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

#512

Post by Negitivefrags » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 6:32 AM UTC

Supermancho wrote: post #395

dahfizz wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Solely from the perspective of the person running the platform, it makes lots of sense to factor in "likelihood of accepting" into your driver selection algorithm. If I know driver X rejects all rides from a certain area, I'm going to stop showing them rides in that area. That way the user gets their driver faster.

> That way the user gets their driver faster. How is that relevant? If you are an agency, you are advertising availability both ways. If you filter on behavior, you are no longer acting as an independent agency but as an agent for one side. Disclosing pattern behavior (has rejected 12 rides this hour) is the correct way to provide value-add, not silently making decisions for parties.

If you went to a recruitment agency, would you expect them to send you to interview at every single company regardless of if they think that the company would be interested in hiring you?

Clearly agencies do discriminate who they match with each other. I would say that is the entire point of agencies infact.

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

#513

Post by xmprt » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 6:33 AM UTC

hammock wrote: post #42

blakesterz wrote: post #6

"Uber and Lyft say drivers prefer the flexibility of working as freelancers, while labor unions and elected officials contend this deprives them of traditional benefits like health insurance and workers’ compensation." I was curious about what drivers think. I guess they're not happy [1] but want to be independent contractors still [2]. 1. https://therideshareguy.com/uber-driver-survey/ 2. (In a May online survey dra…

>I was curious about what drivers think. I guess they're not happy [1] but want to be independent contractors still [2]. If the employers don't want the change... and the employees don't want the change... and the customers don't want the change... and the shareholders don't want the change... and the residents of California don't want the change (exhibited by the threads yesterday with outcry over the decision to sh…

Supposedly driver's unions lobbied the state government to make this change. So it's a vocal minority that's speaking on behalf of the majority that didn't want to join a union in the first place.

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

#514

Post by sails » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 6:33 AM UTC

xapata wrote: post #488

lathiat wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a problem with Taxi drivers as well. Have had friends too close to the airport miss flights because drivers keep rejecting the fare because it goes to drivers near the airport who want a long trip.

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.

I had the same thing, but the driver dropped his phone off with a friend that was still "within the airport" as we drove out the airpot so that he didn't lose his virtual place. He was pretty upset with me.

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

#515

Post by jluxenberg » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 6:34 AM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #503

jluxenberg wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the IRS number might be spot on. Quick math: ($25,000 cost to buy car new - $4,000 residual value at end-of-life ) / 100,000 miles usable lifetime = $0.21/mi depreciation of value $3.22 / gallon * (1 / (17 mi / gal fuel efficiency)) = $0.19/mi for fuel Maintenance: $40 per oil change / 8,000 miles = $0.01 / mi $600 tire change / 60,000 miles = $0.01 / mi $1,186 average yearly repair / 16,000 average miles dri…

It's an exceptionally poor strategy to drop $25k on a new car that only gets 17mpg when your intention is to be a rideshare driver. A purely internal-combustion Civic or Corolla gets twice that. A Prius more than 3x. So do the ones that are 3-4 years old already. And the Prius will probably last closer to 200k miles. I would guess that the ridesharing companies will buy fleets before they'll pay Chevy Tahoe rates for…

Huh; I had no idea that the newer Prius models can get 50 mi/gallon or more in city driving. That does change the equation quite a bit, I think.

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

#516

Post by lovich » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 6:35 AM UTC

cltby wrote: post #173

lovich wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can want a social safety net and also be upset at the free rider problem

What exactly are Uber and Lyft free-riding off of? What public service are they abusing by operating a ride-sharing marketplace? In what way are they avoiding their "fair share" when their employees and investors already shoulder a massive and disproportionate part of the state's tax burden?

We do not let people in the united states die on the street from medical problems. If someone gets ill or is in a catastrophic accident they are brought to an emergency room and cared for. Despite said hospital sending a bill to the impoverished person, they cannot get blood from a stone. The hospitals are supported by the federal government via various programs like the VA, medicare, and medicaid who increase their prices as hospitals need as the government cannot handle them closing.

The free rider issue here is that company's are not paying their employees enough to handle basic maintenance of their bodies, and so public tax dollars are covering their catastrophic care.

Eventually everyone will get sick and need to see a doctor. If a company does not pay enough to their employees to get doctor visits than they are paying the basic maintenance costs, in the same way as a corporate fleet of cars not paying for oil changes is not paying for maintenance.

The difference here is that when a corporate fleet seizes up we let them fail. When citizens get sick and start dieing we, as a society, have decided its unethical to let them die for lack of funds and cover their health care.

Any company who relies on this is a free rider who is making our society pay for their basic maintenance costs

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

#517

Post by dang » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 6:38 AM UTC

node-bayarea wrote: post #234

vmchale wrote: post #142

Damn. Too big to regulate!

Lets regulate it to death!

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to Hacker News? It's not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#518

Post by dang » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 6:39 AM UTC

eitherisarb99 wrote: post #267

kreutz wrote: post #25

Why not let the market decide? If drivers are so unhappy why not just seek some alternative form of work? Uber/Lyft do not force anyone to hop online.

The market is just people and they decided not to openly revolt against government, tacitly approving it doing the work it’s long done of lifting up the bottom of society no one else wants to invest in. The majority is not high tech types, nor does it need to aspire to be. How do you separate this all from physical reality so easily? Economics is not physics. The math is defined by biologically biased humans. Physica…

Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

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

#519

Post by goostavos » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 6:44 AM UTC

xapata wrote: post #488

lathiat wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a problem with Taxi drivers as well. Have had friends too close to the airport miss flights because drivers keep rejecting the fare because it goes to drivers near the airport who want a long trip.

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.

Things I don't miss about cabs:

1. them complaining about short fair or straight up driving off before I could get in because I wasn't going far enough (lesson learned in Vegas: get in before answering questions) 2. The constant, relentless dance about their "credit card machine being broken" "you can pay cash!" "there's an ATM machine inside"

Uber and Lyft were god sends when I was traveling a lot for work. click button, get in car, arrive at place. None of the adversarial nonsense.

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

#520

Post by sixstringtheory » Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 6:53 AM UTC

sida wrote: post #506

URSpider94 wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in California, an employer has virtually no say about who you work for in your off hours. If you want to work for McDonald’s 9-5 and Wendy’s 6-midnight, it’s nobody’s business but yours.

But while you are working at macdonalds you cannot simultaneously be working for KFC. That’s what a uber/lyft drivers do

I don’t believe a driver viewing the available riders is “working” any more than someone looking at prices in the apps to ride are “riding” until they accept a fare. People interview at many jobs simultaneously, bid on multiple contracts simultaneously, but they are not _working_ them simultaneously until an agreement is made.

So unless a driver has a rider from lyft and a rider from uber in the car at the same time, they are not simultaneously working for both.

That being said I don’t know if there is some employment or contract law that makes me wrong, or even just terms laid out by uber or lyft.