91–100 of 170 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
maybe the insurance industry could innovate and solve this problem
Why would they? If they don't have to pay out money to people who get screwed by Uber, they profit.
I'm pretty sure they do provide this insurance, Uber drivers just don't pay for it.
Human 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…
> Why did working people understand this truth in 1915 but not today? I don't know. Because of Ayn Rand. You think I'm joking, but she's the only intellectually serious defender of capitalism in the 20th century, and her influence is snowballing. When Rand was alive, members of her circle would rejoice at the extremely occasional mention of her name in print. Now, you can't turn on the TV or go anywhere online withou…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 commoditiz…
In that regard, it's been a fact since the division of labor was first outlined (and then fetishized) in the late 18th century. In terms of breaking down the tasks needed to build the final product, early Ford factories were just as efficient as modern Foxconn assembly plants. I'm not arguing whether it's a fact or not. Culturally, in 2015 America it's a fact. In 1915 America, the same "fact" would have been handily…
I agree, but the problem is not a moral problem but a business problem. How do you design a product, and then the process of making that product, so that you can afford to treat employees well in a competitive, global market? I'd even put it like this: How can you turn paying employees more into a competitive advantage?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the whole idea behind regulatory arbitrage. Find an industry that has built up "inefficiencies" due the law and then undercut by deliberately breaking the law. The only thing that amazes me about uber (apart from its current valuation) is that the taxi industry is powerful enough to prevent the issuing of more taxi medallions, but not powerful enough to get the current laws enforced against uber. Assuming ube…
"Taxi lobby" makes it sound like Uber is disrupting some megacorporate industry who control government in smokey back alleys. Taxi corps are small, many are essentially sole proprietorships. The drivers are essentially all running their own business, but the medallion owners tend not to be huge corporations. Medallions are required because cities regulate taxis prices and policies. Doing so distorts normal market for…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Taxi lobby" makes it sound like Uber is disrupting some megacorporate industry who control government in smokey back alleys. Taxi corps are small, many are essentially sole proprietorships. The drivers are essentially all running their own business, but the medallion owners tend not to be huge corporations. Medallions are required because cities regulate taxis prices and policies. Doing so distorts normal market for…
Uber is nearing $10 billion in bookings, or about 50-100x as much as the largest cab companies. The need of some people to see every tech company is the underdog is ridiculous. By and large the whole point of tech entering these traditional markets is to use capital and technology to achieve scale and efficiency the small businesses playing in those spaces can't hope to match.
I have a mental questionnaire I go through with 90% of the drivers and here is what I have learnt:
Uber vs Lyft: Drivers make more money with Uber, but rules of engagement are more relaxed in Lyft.
Uber & Ola (not vs): The drivers in India hone in on these three points:
1. They make 3-4 times the money they would if they were employed as a driver in a upper-middle class household (very common in India).
2. They feel respected and think of themselves as "Business owners" now. It is heartening to see how much the "feeling respected" theme repeats itself.
3. They know the good times won't last.
Unlike US, in India, Uber and Ola are do not take a cut from the ride. In fact it is the opposite - They keep the per kilometre cost to the end consumer lower than Auto Rickshaws and compensate the drivers the difference. In fact Uber has taken a "not-for-profit" model in India (and in Beijing).
Citation for not-for-profit: http://blog.uber.com/the-government-way
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why did working people understand this truth in 1915 but not today? I don't know. Because of Ayn Rand. You think I'm joking, but she's the only intellectually serious defender of capitalism in the 20th century, and her influence is snowballing. When Rand was alive, members of her circle would rejoice at the extremely occasional mention of her name in print. Now, you can't turn on the TV or go anywhere online withou…
the neoliberal project as organized by the various branches that sprouted from the mont pelerin society have had much more concrete impact on policy for the last 30 years than rand's acolytes alone. they're from the same tradition as many of rand's beliefs but they're the apparatus that engineered the neoliberal order.
On Mount Pelerin:
> Its founders included Friedrich Hayek, Karl Popper, Ludwig von Mises, George Stigler, and Milton Friedman.
How many of those guys come up on TV and in politics today? None of them.
Earlier 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…
A few months ago when I was in Seattle for work, I caught Uber everywhere. I had so many conversations with Uber drivers about why they drove for Uber, how much money they made and why they weren't doing something else. Needless to say, unless I felt legitimately fearful for my life (which rarely ever happened) I would always rate 5 stars. I realised a lot of these Uber drivers (usually migrants with broken English)…
> Aside: Anyone else find the article sporadically refresh? Made it very difficult to read the article. Yes. It did for me in Firefox on the desktop, but not on mobile safari. I thought I was crazy when it did it the first time but the second time, I knew it was the citypaper site.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uber is nearing $10 billion in bookings, or about 50-100x as much as the largest cab companies. The need of some people to see every tech company is the underdog is ridiculous. By and large the whole point of tech entering these traditional markets is to use capital and technology to achieve scale and efficiency the small businesses playing in those spaces can't hope to match.
You need to look at market size to make that statistic anywhere near interesting.
