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

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

#591

Post by sudosysgen »

Nydhal wrote: post #532
sudosysgen wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, no, because if you are an Uber driver the vast majority of the depreciation in the value of your car comes from driving Uber. Cars depreciate in large part due to mileage. Finally, "marginal wear and tear" is a completely absurd concept. The cost of wear and tear on maintenance of a car has a positive derivative and thus has no margin, the more wear and tear the more expensive wear and tear gets. In other words…

In the real world, you can't spend an infinite amount of money on a car. There is a limit. The margin will come up at some point unless the driver is completely irrational.

Sure, but in the real world that cost is having to buy a new car, which easily increases the cost per mile by 50% and invalidates the point that "you were already driving a car".

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

#592

Post by Bootvis »

plussed_reader wrote: post #578
goostavos wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bu…

>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 At the expense of the security of the drivers serving you. You get convenience, they get a subsistence lifestyle.

A living wage and convenient cabs don't need to be mutually exclusive. Also, the adversarial nonsense was more than just a lack of convenience. Some drivers are just not nice people and managed to get away with it.

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

#593

Post by barry-cotter »

kyle_martin1 wrote: post #579
swc wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems more nuanced than implied here. It sounds as though the 'main issue' wasn't that Super Shuttle couldn't work while letting their drivers be independent, but rather that they couldn't compete on price with a service that didn't. If a business was paying their workers minimum wage and couldn't compete on price with another business that came in and didn't respect minimum wage laws, you wouldn't say the main…

No. It isn’t more nuanced than that. SuperShuttle couldn’t make changes because the drivers irrationally refused to work more for the same pay, even though they knew the company was failing. It really is that simple.

The drivers were not investors in the company; it failing was not a huge problem for them. Having a strong preference for leisure is totally ok. The drivers didn’t have enough stock and weren’t paid enough to motivate them to work the hours the company needed to be viable. The company failed. The investors lost all their money. The founders and employees got nothing. That’s capitalism. If they’d been right they’d have made massive bank and that too would have been capitalism. Workers get to play capitalism too. Everyone played. Everyone made their choices and the company failed.

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

#594

Post by barry-cotter »

plussed_reader wrote: post #578
goostavos wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bu…

>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 At the expense of the security of the drivers serving you. You get convenience, they get a subsistence lifestyle.

If they don’t want to follow the terms of the taxi license fuck them. Universal service, take every fare, don’t discriminate by race. If Uber and Lyft destroy the entire taxi industry it can’t come soon enough.

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

#595

Post by derivagral »

gwd wrote: post #535
xapata wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But that's partly because, in all likelihood, the taxi driver also couldn't set their own rates. If that taxi driver could have asked $20 instead of the $3.75 legally mandated by the meter, would you have paid it? It seems like allowing a proper market, where both riders and drivers could bid on rides, would solve both this problem and the SuperShuttle problem.

As a tourist in Shanghai/Beijing last year, this (technically illegal) practice is quite common if you don't have the right apps set up. We did frequently pay the higher fare, though the difference in currency was like $1 vs $3 iirc.

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

#596

Post by ryanisnan »

serjester wrote: post #99

Completely anecdotal but I bring this question up every time I drive in an Uber and overwhelmingly the drivers tell me they want to stay independent. No one is forcing drivers into their jobs. I really struggle to understand why we need bureaucrats imposing their idea of what a market should look like on an fairly efficient market. From my experience the drivers are perfectly aware of the costs that go into driving s…

Whether or not a group of people is aware of their exploitation should not be a factor in whether or not a society allows their exploitation.

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

#597

Post by take_a_breath »

icebraining wrote: post #540
ganafagol wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to do for people living paycheck to paycheck. Then they should refuse the job you say? Yeah right then they don't even have that little paycheck anymore. There is a power imbalance here, and that's the root issue. The employee and the employer are not on the same level in terms of negotiating power. Hard for tech people like the HN crowd to realize, but in most areas outside overpaid overdemanded software engine…

That makes sense when the fat cats are making huge profits and paying a pittance to their workers. But Uber is losing billions every year. Where is the money going to come from?

== But Uber is losing billions every year. Where is the money going to come from?==

Maybe it’s not a viable business model.

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

#598

Post by Nacdor »

ryanisnan wrote: post #596
serjester wrote: post #99

Completely anecdotal but I bring this question up every time I drive in an Uber and overwhelmingly the drivers tell me they want to stay independent. No one is forcing drivers into their jobs. I really struggle to understand why we need bureaucrats imposing their idea of what a market should look like on an fairly efficient market. From my experience the drivers are perfectly aware of the costs that go into driving s…

Whether or not a group of people is aware of their exploitation should not be a factor in whether or not a society allows their exploitation.

Yes, it's amazing that the top comment misses the point completely. Plenty of inmates become "institutionalized" and claim they would prefer to stay in prison, but no one would ever cite that as a legitimate reason to keep them there.

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

#599

Post by spsful »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #129
serjester wrote: post #99

Completely anecdotal but I bring this question up every time I drive in an Uber and overwhelmingly the drivers tell me they want to stay independent. No one is forcing drivers into their jobs. I really struggle to understand why we need bureaucrats imposing their idea of what a market should look like on an fairly efficient market. From my experience the drivers are perfectly aware of the costs that go into driving s…

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'd just like to add here that Uber is now allowing drivers to set rates.

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

#600

Post by meowface »

plussed_reader wrote: post #578
goostavos wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bu…

>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 At the expense of the security of the drivers serving you. You get convenience, they get a subsistence lifestyle.

I don't want anyone working a job to live a subsistence lifestyle, but taxis have also always been a nightmare for me (in the US and every country I've ever been in) and I never want to go back. Uber and Lyft are vastly superior and less stressful experiences for the customer in every way. I'd like them to be good experiences for the drivers, too, but the answer isn't to scrap the whole thing and go back to taxis.
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