Not a bad investigation of Uber-like companies from an economics perspective, Michael Munger on the Sharing Economy: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/07/michael_munger.html
I was an undercover Uber driver
61–70 of 170 posts
Re: I was an undercover Uber driver
#62offtopic, but that website kept refreshing over and over, it was hard to read on mobile
Re: I was an undercover Uber driver
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I drove for Uber in Baltimore last spring for a few months during weekends just for fun and I agree this article's assessment is _dead_ on. I've since stopped using Uber even as a rider. The way they treat the drivers is pretty horrendous and I don't want to be an enabler to that. Lyft is a bit better because at least I can leave the driver a reasonable tip through the app.
>The way they treat the drivers is pretty horrendous I keep hearing this, and it's ... confusing. I mean maybe Uber's really nasty to drivers, I guess, but if it is, then what are all these Uber drivers doing ? It takes all of ... what, like 45 seconds to download Lyft? If Uber is so bad, why don't all the drivers just switch? I don't know enough about the economics of any particular driver's situation to know how ma…
requires us to believe some rather surprising things about the subjective mental states of the many, many Uber drivers
Only if you believe that humans are the sort of simplified perfectly-informed stimulus-response mechanoids (and operating in a simplified-rules environment) that game theory requires. There's nothing surprising here; it's actually pretty mundane.
Re: I was an undercover Uber driver
#64This site refreshed itself 6 times as I read it on my mobile device. Each time it lost my location on the page. Quite a frustrating experience.
Re: I was an undercover Uber driver
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
The entire economic system is built around people trying to get the best deal possible for themselves. You can try and paint that as inhumane and abusive if you're commited to emotionalising economic dynamics, but it really doesn't make any sense. At the end of the day as long as the transactions are consensual, there's no need for this rhetoric of abuse. Uber drivers know the deal and they can take it or leave it. N…
The entire economic system is built around people trying to get the best deal possible for themselves. You can try and paint that as inhumane and abusive... Wow -- you're so damn close to the moment of insight, and yet so far.
And the irony is that people like yourself, chasing phantoms of unfairness in the free market, support the extension and entrenchment of coercive governments, an institution which is and always will be eminently corruptible, an institution whose history is a litany of abuse and overreach.
Re: I was an undercover Uber driver
#66Off-topic, but what the hell is wrong with the website? It kept refreshing every minute or so for some reason.
Yeah, had the same issue here. It refreshed like almost 10 times before I manged to finish the article. Incredibly annoying.
Re: I was an undercover Uber driver
#67This site refreshed itself 6 times as I read it on my mobile device. Each time it lost my location on the page. Quite a frustrating experience.
Same here on desktop.
Re: I was an undercover Uber driver
#68Human labor is not a commodity. This was the common sense amongst all working people for most of the 20th century. Samuel Gompers, maybe the most conservative labor leader of his time, said "You cannot weigh the human soul on the same scales as piece of pork." And working people, along with the management class for the most part, understood this to be an undeniable truth. In fact, this piece of common sense was enshr…
That labor is a commodity is not an "idea", but in the case of Uber drivers and the Foxconn workers who assemble iPhones, a fact. It is a fact because that's how those jobs and service/production processes have been designed. The work has been broken down into their smallest parts, so that it will require no special skill or intelligence to perform them. As anyone can do those jobs, they have been de facto commoditized.
For someone who cares for the wellbeing of people at the bottom of the enterprise pyramids, the goal should be to design new organizations, with jobs that have latitude for learning and development, that is multi-disciplinary and creative. And many of the worst jobs today should be automated because they are not fit for human beings.
Re: I was an undercover Uber driver
#69I also drove for Uber in DC for a few months while I was between jobs. I thought it would be a fun and easy way to get a few dollars for beer. My experience mirrors that of the reporter. Towards the end, I would only drive during surge pricing hours, as that was the only way to make a reasonable net hourly wage. I have no problem hailing an Uber - they are really, really cheap. However, it's a raw deal for drivers. U…
maybe the insurance industry could innovate and solve this problem
Re: I was an undercover Uber driver
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
How magnanimous of you, to award imaginary points instead of enough money to support somebody. I think Uber is great for a certain subset of people. While most people who frequent HN on six figure tech salaries would definitely struggle to live on an Uber salary Seriously? I guess it's good for you guys so you only have to spend half of what it costs. Oh, and for the Uber owners of course. A certain subset of people,…
The entire economic system is built around people trying to get the best deal possible for themselves. You can try and paint that as inhumane and abusive if you're commited to emotionalising economic dynamics, but it really doesn't make any sense. At the end of the day as long as the transactions are consensual, there's no need for this rhetoric of abuse. Uber drivers know the deal and they can take it or leave it. N…
> At the end of the day as long as the transactions are consensual, there's no need for this rhetoric of abuse.
That's one of the biggest singular pieces of bullshit I see regurgitated in the discussions about market economy.
For most of the people on this planet, a lot of Uber drivers included, there's little choice. They either have a job, or go hungry and homeless. The power asymmetry between an employer and employee is so big that you may as well enforce that "consent" at gunpoint. There's little practical difference.