End of the line for Uber
August 16, 2021 3:54 PM   Subscribe

Uber is a bezzle ("the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it"). Every bezzle ends.
posted by panglos (109 comments total) 26 users marked this as a favorite
 
Uber was never going to be profitable. Never. It lured drivers and riders into cars by subsidizing rides with billions and billions of dollars from the Saudi royal family, keeping up the con-artist's ever-shifting patter about how all of this would some day stand on its own.
I know I'm supposed to see Uber as the bad guy here, but this has some strong The Sting vibes to it.
posted by Kadin2048 at 4:25 PM on August 16, 2021 [6 favorites]


Except for all the poor "contractors" who got/are getting screwed over while working for them in good faith (or desperation).
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:27 PM on August 16, 2021 [21 favorites]


So is that where the word "embezzle" comes from? There are times when I have been tempted to use Uber for the convenience, but the more I find out about the company the less I want to do so.
posted by TedW at 4:29 PM on August 16, 2021 [9 favorites]


For all the shit that Uber gets, they did one thing right: they made taking a car feel safer. Before uber, cab rides were often sketchy. They were gross and you never knew if they were ripping you off, not to mention whether it was safe. And don't even get me started with cab drivers just straight-up refusing to take you somewhere because it's not where they want to go. Uber helped to ensure riders knew who was driving, and that everybody was on the same page w/r/t routes. And plus you can ensure that a friend/family member gets pinged when you get into a car, and can check up on you to ensure you're safe.

I know uber's an exploitative company, and I know terrible things have happened on uber rides. But as the article says, if the goddamned cab companies could just put out an app that hails a cab, and shows me who the driver is, and the route we'll take/cost of ride, then I'd switch in a heartbeat. I suspect many others would as well. The fact that they don't do it just sticks in my craw.
posted by nushustu at 4:38 PM on August 16, 2021 [110 favorites]


It's apparently a backformation by John Kenneth Galbraith.
posted by tavella at 4:40 PM on August 16, 2021 [9 favorites]


I don't know where you are, nushustu, but Curb is in a couple dozen cities now. And in NYC, there's The Driver's Co-op.
posted by minervous at 4:47 PM on August 16, 2021 [23 favorites]


But as the article says, if the goddamned cab companies could just put out an app that hails a cab

They did? I haven't used it in forever due to COVID, so I don't remember if it does everything you asked for or not.
posted by thefoxgod at 4:48 PM on August 16, 2021 [2 favorites]


Uber may have made hailing a ride feel safer, but did it actually make it so? Apparently there's no data with which to answer the question.

The Atlantic: Are Taxis Safer than Uber?

From the article:
In other words, Boston doesn't track assaults by where they happen—in a taxi, in an Uber, or in someone's home—so there's no data to compare reports against Uber drivers versus taxi drivers or limo drivers. That's true in other cities, too.
Given Uber's whole... vibe?, I expect there are a lot of incidents that haven't been widely reported.
posted by dbx at 4:54 PM on August 16, 2021 [15 favorites]


Uber forced 13CABS in Melbourne to develop an app, and it works great. I never use Uber.
posted by awfurby at 4:59 PM on August 16, 2021 [7 favorites]


I know Hubert Horan is mentioned in the OP, but it's really worth digging into the stuff he wrote for Naked Capitalism on the economics of Uber which I first read back in 2017 and were convincing to me even then. (n.b no need to read all 40 parts, 1-10 have everything and the rest is mostly updates.).

Fundamentally, the reality is this:

The unit economics of taxis are pretty well understood. The costs are the capital and maintenance for the car, fuel and other variable costs, and driver wages. Virtually everywhere, what happens is that driver wages are pretty low except when they're regulated in which case they're only slightly low. These costs have been modeled and understood for many years. They leave little room for investor profit and there is little scope for scale efficiency. Most operations are hyper local and often owner-operated (there isn't enough money in the gig to support both drivers and investors and the startup capital is low).

Now Uber's model and what they sold to investors was this:

They would use computer aided routing to chain journeys together which they called the "infinite trip", this minimises non-fare time and theoretically could support the high driver income *and* high returns for the company that they were promising. They made the case that it was perfectly sensible to inject money into early markets in order to create liquidity - basically nobody will use it if there's no drivers and nobody will drive if there's no fares. This means that you would expect to see a pattern where they come into a market, lose money first as they use incentives to build a local market, and then phase them out as volume ramps up and the routing algorithm starts to work its magic.

However this doesn't work and with a little modeling you can show that it cannot work. Why? Simple. It has to do with the fact that potential journeys are not equally distributed in time and space through an area like little random vectors. If they were, then Uber's model might work - their algorithm might really create enough additional value to make the economics work. Actual journey demand is highly correlated though - there are loads of people who want to come out of the city centre on a Friday night at 2AM and nobody who either wants to come into the 45 minutes late when those cabs reach their destinations outside the city. Most demand is like that - inherently bursty - which means that no algorithm can chain journeys together. Not only that, but drivers already had a pretty robust understanding of where likely demand would be, so the algorithm has to be really good to actually justify any value addition.

So that doesn't work. What did they try and convince investors of next?

We're going to get rid of the need for drivers completely. Lead in self-driving and own all the cars. If you can actually make self-driving cars work, then sure, you can make loads of money. Turns out that this is a much harder problem than the sales-pitch team thought. Unlike the image classification tasks at which deep learning got so good so fast, combining image classification with decision making and going fully driverless is really, really hard.

Even then though - this would only work if Uber owned the the IP. Otherwise GM or Ford will own all the self driving cars. Which leads us to their next problem: no moat. They have no way of preventing competitors undercutting them. Sure, the size of their network helps but it's low friction for people to install another app, low friction for drivers to get work through more than one app, and low friction to duplicate. Also, it's a local business so anyone who can push them out of a local market can win. It's not like Facebook where you'd need to displace their network in many places at once.

The one advantage they did have was being able to book through an app and using the built in GNSS of the phone. It really is an improvement over being somewhere you don't know well and having to find a cab company and then explaining where you are and where you want to go. Great. Except that anyone can and does copy that. Not just Lyft. I've been in modest cities in England and Wales where the local cab company has a white-label app, probably they license it for a few thousand a year, that is basically like a slightly clunkier Uber. Yeah fine it means I need a few extra apps, but I'm someone who travels all the time. If you live in Cardiff then it's no big deal keeping app for the local big cab company around.

Lots of other places this has happened. So... thanks for that Uber. Hope that was worth all that investor money.

So what's left? Regulatory arbitrage. Getting around the limited regulations that exist to protect driver pay and conditions. Except that in many places around the world, they have been forced to follow those rules and in the US the rules aren't sufficiently onerous almost anywhere that they can build a profitable business by circumventing them. Obviously it doesn't hurt them to try but at the end of the day the economic logic is clear: "winning" on their gig economy bullshit is not enough for them to build a viable business on.

The game is over.
posted by atrazine at 5:07 PM on August 16, 2021 [124 favorites]


It lured drivers and riders into cars by subsidizing rides with billions and billions of dollars from the Saudi royal family, keeping up the con-artist's ever-shifting patter about how all of this would some day stand on its own.

I wrote Wooden Shoes As A Service back in 2017:
If you put your black hat on for a minute, though, and think of commerce and trade agreements as extensions of state policy: another way to put that might be, how do you subject a services-based economy to the same risks that dumping poses to a goods-based economy?

Unfortunately, I think software has given us a pretty good answer to that: you dig into deep pockets and fund aggressively growing, otherwise-unsustainable service companies. [...] In other words: given enough subsidy, a software startup can become an attack vector on a services-based economy. A growing gig economy is a sign of extreme economic vulnerability being actively exploited.
A few billion dollars a year on an enterprise that can kneecap the economy of the most powerful country the world and position you to buy up the scraps at pennies on the dollar? That's not a bezzle, that's a bargain. Why bother with an army when a few greedy assholes and an app will help you buy a country's economy out from under it for a song?
posted by mhoye at 5:10 PM on August 16, 2021 [30 favorites]


This all sounds logical, and I have a hate/love/hate/hate/hate relationship with Uber, but every time I see someone bashing a publicly traded company like this it makes me wonder if short selling hedge funds are behind this. Is Daniel Loeb short Uber?
posted by caddis at 5:11 PM on August 16, 2021 [2 favorites]


The "no moat" thing is really the ultimate killer. Sure, Uber could kill most of the cab companies in an area, but once they then tried to jack up prices, anyone with a tiny bit of cash could paint some cars and license a cheapo app. And in that case Uber's network effect might even hurt them, because it would make it harder to depress prices just for that particular town and still get drivers.
posted by tavella at 5:16 PM on August 16, 2021 [6 favorites]


Then again, this was written by Cory so ignore my previous comment.
posted by caddis at 5:17 PM on August 16, 2021 [1 favorite]


Maybe it feels better to be manipulated by people telling you the stock will go up forever as opposed to those telling you it can't, but it's more embarrassing.

And don't even get me started with cab drivers just straight-up refusing to take you somewhere because it's not where they want to go.

This is still a thing. It just happens earlier in the process.

I was very irritated to need to take an Uber this week because of the decimation of the active NYC cab ranks.
posted by praemunire at 5:20 PM on August 16, 2021 [8 favorites]


For all the shit that Uber gets, they did one thing right: they made taking a car feel safer.

Really? I’ve seen way more stories of Uber drivers assaulting customers than cab drivers assaulting customers in my city…..
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:38 PM on August 16, 2021 [22 favorites]


I've noticed that pretty much always people who think that Uber will fail also think that Uber should fail.
posted by kickingtheground at 5:49 PM on August 16, 2021 [6 favorites]


So, tangentially related, when Uber Eats first tried to break into my city they offered all kinds of deals. Special timed deliveries for five bucks, huge discounts, unreasonable coupons. I got delivery like 3-4 times a day for about two weeks figuring it was my civic duty to suck up as much venture capital as I possibly could. Anyway, Uber Eats no longer delivers here. I like to think I did my part.

Edit: Apparently they are completely gone from Korea as a whole.
posted by Literaryhero at 5:54 PM on August 16, 2021 [26 favorites]


I've noticed that pretty much always people who think that Uber will fail also think that Uber should fail.

Why shouldn't that be?

If I see a bowling ball dropped, I think it'll fall, and I also think it should fall. For it to not fall is to invite a serious re-examination of everything I understand about physics.

So too, my understanding of economics dictates both that I believe Uber will, and should fail.

Uber succeeding in the long run is about as fucked up as a bowling ball hovering in mid air.
posted by explosion at 6:14 PM on August 16, 2021 [32 favorites]


figuring it was my civic duty to suck up as much venture capital as I possibly could.

Yeah, I only ever use Uber Eats when they send me a 30+ percent coupon. I like to think of it as being treated to lunch by a venture capitalist.
posted by nonasuch at 6:17 PM on August 16, 2021 [6 favorites]


I don't know where you are, nushustu, but Curb is in a couple dozen cities now. And in NYC, there's The Driver's Co-op.

I live were Curb is available, and I have found it impossible to use. And when I say impossible I mean actually impossible. I was in a bind and frantically installed Curb and set it up, only to have them unceremoniously and without explanation cancel my account minutes later. I went through the whole process two more times only to have the same thing happen. When I reached out to them to find out why my account, which was brand new and therefore had never been used, was being cancelled minutes after being set up, they never got back to me. I would love to switch my business over to them and away from Uber, but their app is absolutely terrible. At least on the Android platform.
posted by UltraMorgnus at 6:26 PM on August 16, 2021 [13 favorites]


Yeah, I only ever use Uber Eats when they send me a 30+ percent coupon. I like to think of it as being treated to lunch by a venture capitalist.

Think of it as being treated to lunch by a desperate restaurateur who is selling food at a near loss.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 6:36 PM on August 16, 2021 [44 favorites]


For all the shit that Uber gets, they did one thing right: they made taking a car feel safer. Before uber, cab rides were often sketchy. They were gross and you never knew if they were ripping you off, not to mention whether it was safe...
posted by nushustu


I don't know where you are - but in my city, licensed taxis are much, MUCH safer than any ride-share. For 20 years or more, all drivers have to be registered, they have their photo id on a big sheet in the back (which also lists all of the regulations in the city), and the fare must be on a meter that you can see and the prices are all standardized by kilometre and waiting time. The cabs were always clean and had lots of room - and you knew they were legit because they had the roof sign. (I was always warned never to get into an unmarked cab).

The big company here eventually got an app - but then again, an app is useless for someone like my mom who still does not have a smartphone. In fact, most poor and older people don't have smart phones, or (if they do) don't have data. But she's always been able to call a cab by the magical technology of placing an audio call to a human being, letting them know where she'd like to go and where to pick her up. At this point, the cab company knows her so well, we just call from her (still dumb) mobile and they answer, "Yes, a cab for [first name]? at [address]?"

In the big city where I grew up, there was always a cab when you called - partly because I lived in a poor/working class neighbourhood and a lot of the drivers were my neighbours and had their regular waiting spot near my house. When I lived in a smaller city where there weren't enough cabs to ensure one was available, the local company was happy to pre-book a car for times when you had to make a train or a bus -- all you had to do was call (for me, from a landline) and ask, "May I have a taxi for Tuesday at 6pm, please?"

Every time I hear someone say that "Uber is better than a taxi", what they mean is Uber is better for them (because they have a credit card and a smart phone), and maybe that their local taxi service isn't very good -- and/or they don't realize that Uber rides are being heavily subsidized. But I've never felt safe calling a rideshare - I don't know who the driver is, I don't have a real company that I can telephone to confirm they are legit, the cars are unmarked - and the fares are not at all predictable. When I'm in a real taxi, I can see the meter ticking away and there are no surprises.

Of all the people I know, the only people who ever use Uber are young, middle or upper-middle class people - and all my working class and/or disabled family still use taxis. As far as I can tell, Uber has been a great way to transfer money from venture capitalists to bourgeois young adults - and the rest of the world, we keep using that solid taxi service staffed by (in my city) primarily middle-aged new Canadians of colour working their butts off to support their families, and most of them still live in my old neighbourhood.
posted by jb at 6:42 PM on August 16, 2021 [58 favorites]


Oh, and I never make regular purchases with a credit card. Credit spending is for people with high and steady incomes and/or expense accounts. Until recently, I happily paid cash for every cab I took, and only recently switched to debit (with cash for the tip).
posted by jb at 6:48 PM on August 16, 2021 [4 favorites]


At least in Boston, Uber/Lyft made the taxis step their game up.

In 2014 or thereabouts, you could call a taxi dispatch and they'd tell you someone would be there in "15 minutes", and it wasn't really a guarantee. Rideshare apps got there in 5 minutes, you could see the driver on the app, and the estimated fare was accurate within a dollar.

I held out for a long time. I knew it was basically scab work and exploiting loopholes from day one. But the taxi companies made it so fucking hard. I even called a taxi company the *day before* to make sure I had a ride to the airport, and they missed that appointment. The number of medallions was limited, and they just didn't have incentive to innovate or step it up.

It's definitely a "two wrongs" situation, though.
posted by explosion at 6:49 PM on August 16, 2021 [35 favorites]


And it's worth noting two things with regards to Uber's safety theater:

* One, the policies that Uber put in place to make you feel safe - things like posting the driver's photo (which, alongside being no assurance of safety also enables discrimination against minority drivers) and the "safety" fee that turned out to just be a way to make extra money - actually did nothing for safety, as we saw when Uber put their standards in the ground when they got desperate for drivers. Which is important because...

* Two, when municipalities pushed for policies that actually do work to improve safety - things like background checks - Uber fought them tooth and nail, because they would cut into their potential driver pool right when they needed to expand it.
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:58 PM on August 16, 2021 [14 favorites]



I've noticed that pretty much always people who think that Uber will fail also think that Uber should fail.

yup. similar to Donald Trump for me.
posted by philip-random at 7:12 PM on August 16, 2021 [2 favorites]


the fares are not at all predictable

Living in a city where traffic is highly unpredictable (tourism sucks sometimes, what can I say), guaranteed fares are one of the biggest advantages of Uber and Lyft. The driver gets paid per mile/per minute, but you pay the quoted fare even if you end up unexpectedly sitting in traffic for an hour or take an alternate route to avoid a jam. The company has to eat the difference so long as your trip starts and ends at (or actually just very near to) the originally specified pickup and dropoff locations.

As noted by others, the reason why Uber and Lyft remain popular despite the price increases is because someone will actually show up approximately when they say they will. Taxis, not so much in many places. They'll get there when they get there..probably.

There was a time a couple of years ago when riders and drivers both were major beneficiaries of the VC cash. Drivers could lease a car at a good rate, subsidized by the company, and not even have to pay for it at all if they were in a position to work 20ish hours a week in a busy area, and got paid the normal rate (plus bonuses) on top of that. Riders were getting rides at 50-75% of what the driver was getting paid outside of surge pricing, too.

And it wasn't just benefitting the banked, as some seem to think. Uber, and later Lyft, have had "gift cards" you could buy at just about any chain store for years. Get one of those, no credit card, debit card, or PayPal account required. Still needed the smartphone, though. With that barrier overcome, you could actually get a car at well under the cost of a taxi and know exactly what you're going to pay before you request the car.

So yeah, there's plenty of exploitation there that is worthy of complaint, but acting like it's been a 100% terrible thing for all involved is simply not accurate. I suspect many people who believe that own cars and have never had to rely on public transportation and taxi's/car services to get around. If your only experience with them is trying to get home from the bar at closing time because you got too drunk to drive back home, you aren't getting the full picture. But your driver was probably making plenty of money on that 4x surge fare, so don't feel bad for them unless you puked in the car and didn't bother to tip.

All that said, I recognize that the economics and overall viability are quite different in areas where there aren't (almost) always a boat load of tourists keeping any number of drivers who are willing to work busy at all hours of the day and night. (And it ain't like the taxis are hurting for business either, at least when pandemic problems aren't rearing their ugly head!)
posted by wierdo at 7:24 PM on August 16, 2021 [16 favorites]


Some of these comments have a weird moralizing tone. It's possible for Uber to be bad and for Uber to have changed a lot of the industry for the better at the same time.

At least here taxis have standardized fares and that doesn't help when they take advantage of people that don't know the city and end up taking extremely long routes. At least ride-sharing apps show you where you're going, the route the car is going to take and how much it'll be before you even enter the car.
posted by simmering octagon at 7:35 PM on August 16, 2021 [10 favorites]


I don't think its that weird --- Uber has made a business out of trying to weaken employment laws and protections in a way that hurts almost everyone (first by simply flouting rules, then bullying cities into changing them, then sinking huge money into things like Prop 22 in California). It's hard to feel anything but negative towards them. Their strategy from day 1 has been inherently destructive.
posted by thefoxgod at 7:41 PM on August 16, 2021 [37 favorites]


Unfortunately for me, Uber/Lyft and the pandemic have put every single cab company out of business. It's been at least a year since I saw a cab on the street. I choose Lyft because a driver once told me they pay better, but I'm not completely sure about that. In any case, I don't have a choice any more.
posted by jwest at 7:53 PM on August 16, 2021 [3 favorites]


made a business out of trying to weaken employment laws and protections in a way that hurts almost everyone (first by simply flouting rules, then bullying cities into changing them, then sinking huge money into things like

honestly, this sounds like Business in general to me -- certainly my experience of it. The bigger the dollars involved, the harder and dirtier they play. What makes Uber notable is:

A. their "success" and,

B. they did it all in the public's face, given the very much public facing business they were invested in disrupting.
posted by philip-random at 7:54 PM on August 16, 2021 [2 favorites]


There was a time a couple of years ago when riders and drivers both were major beneficiaries of the VC cash. Drivers could lease a car at a good rate, subsidized by the company, and not even have to pay for it at all if they were in a position to work 20ish hours a week in a busy area, and got paid the normal rate (plus bonuses) on top of that. Riders were getting rides at 50-75% of what the driver was getting paid outside of surge pricing, too.

Which sounds great, except that a) it was completely unsustainable and funded by the companies burning VC cash like it was going out of style, because b) the companies were engaged in a classic loss leader strategy similar to the ones that culled the American aviation market in the 80s and 90s, and c) as a result of these policies needed changes to infrastructure list support as online livery was pushed as an alternative to mass transit.

And for drivers, those salad days didn't last long. It wasn't too long before the companies started balancing the books on their backs. So no, even the "good" had a lot of bad baked in.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:01 PM on August 16, 2021 [6 favorites]


I don’t need to use a taxi often (there aren’t many options in my small city, though there’s a public option for dial-a-ride I haven’t yet tried) but once in Austin TX I was with a younger friend who automatically called an Uber when we were going to dinner. After dinner we walked to her hotel and I called a cab. While I never want to install the Uber app I was sad to find the Uber car was clean and comfortable and the cab …. wasn’t. The seat was broken, to boot. I’m not sure what the dynamics for cab companies are in Austin but it made me wonder whether it was a sign Uber had won. Or maybe I was just unlucky that evening.

The city bus service had a nice app, though, which I used to get to and from the airport.
posted by zenzenobia at 8:10 PM on August 16, 2021 [1 favorite]


Uber safer than cabs? That is a strange assertion.

But neither would come to my house, so whatever
posted by eustatic at 8:22 PM on August 16, 2021 [2 favorites]


for drivers, those salad days didn't last long. It wasn't too long before the companies started balancing the books on their backs.

They stopped giving away cars and cut back on the insane driver bonuses for working a small number of rides some weekends, but in my market the base pay hasn't changed since. Rider pricing has gone up, though. I haven't checked the per mile/per minute recently, though. It might be cheaper when you aren't getting the fare guarantee.
posted by wierdo at 8:29 PM on August 16, 2021


Also, it's capitalism without sufficient regulation, the will always be negative externalities. I can still be happy about the massive transfer of VC cash to people much farther down the income ladder.
posted by wierdo at 8:34 PM on August 16, 2021 [1 favorite]



For all the shit that Uber gets, they did one thing right: they made taking a car feel safer. Before uber, cab rides were often sketchy


For the driver as well as the rider. In Boston, taxi medallions were themselves a racket, and a particularly dangerous one, because police officers were buying them as a retirement investment, in place, of, well, anything you could buy for a retirement investment. Drivers renting those medallions were barely scraping by. Basically, everything you could say about Uber was just as true of the medallion owner clique. Uber popped the bubble and exposed the bezel there.
posted by ocschwar at 8:40 PM on August 16, 2021 [15 favorites]


The stupid thing was 1 driver to 1 ride private car shtick. Obviously Uber wanted to keep all costs it could non-external though so they're pretty much stuck with it. The tech however is capable of a lot more.

My dream would be to package and license the tech to states and counties to work out a more dynamic public transport system. Instead of sending empty buses up routes at random times, they can take all the requested rides and optimize a custom route between 12-25 people. As soon as a bus can be filled, dispatch from a strategically placed depot. You can even have SLAs to ensure people aren't waiting too long for transport like dispatching a half-filled bus after 7 minutes or something similar.

We could make public transport way more sustainable, more useful, and more attractive compared to now using Uber's tech.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 8:50 PM on August 16, 2021 [5 favorites]


There was a startup that tried to do exactly that: merge trips and use minibuses (Bridj ) .

It just didn't make a profit, and unwound without trying a bezzle. Boston is boring like that some times.
posted by ocschwar at 8:53 PM on August 16, 2021 [11 favorites]


Looks like I've touched a few nerves.

FWIW, I used to live north of Austin, and needed to fly a lot. As recently as six years ago I would call cabs, be told they'd be there in time to get me on a plane, and about 50% of the time they just wouldn't show up. And it's not like I didn't know they weren't going to show up. I'd have to wait until 10-15 mins after their planned arrival time to call them again to find out that "oh, we couldn't get anyone out there."

So yeah, fuck that. With Uber, I could see if someone was coming or not. I could ping the driver before they showed, not that I needed to. I never had a problem.

After a few years, Austin shut down Uber and Lyft for their lack of background checks, and other rideshare apps popped up. I used them, they were just as good, and the drivers got a better deal. But eventually Uber and Lyft came back.

Meanwhile Taxi Magic was fucking. Terrible. Unusable, unreliable. As bad as calling the cab company. Now Taxi Magic has transformed into Curb, which some people here are touting. I'll def try it out if I have to start traveling again. But I still think that as bad as Uber is, the taxi industry went out of their way to help them.
posted by nushustu at 9:00 PM on August 16, 2021 [25 favorites]


My dream would be to package and license the tech to states and counties to work out a more dynamic public transport system. Instead of sending empty buses up routes at random times, they can take all the requested rides and optimize a custom route between 12-25 people.

This has been rolling out around here, called I-MOD. It is just beginning to come to my neighborhood and I personally don't have any reason to use it but I get excited whenever I see one cruising around. It just recently started around here, so no idea how successful it will be.
posted by Literaryhero at 9:44 PM on August 16, 2021 [1 favorite]


The average Uber/Lyft ride is so much more pleasant than the average taxi experience, not because of the mints and water and chargers sometimes on offer, but thanks to vehicle cleanliness and lack of sour smells. Having a reciprocal review system helps ensure a trouble-free encounter and motivates considerate behavior by both drivers and passengers. Someone driving for Uber has to take breaks and put the car into a state that comports with their tidiness standards for personal use. Meanwhile, many taxis are placed into service 24/7, so they deteriorate rapidly.
posted by carmicha at 9:54 PM on August 16, 2021 [6 favorites]


Having a reciprocal review system helps ensure a trouble-free encounter and motivates considerate behavior by both drivers and passengers.

You mean the system where drivers have to keep near spotless records or face being fired, while customers are not kept to nearly that standard? Yeah, that's more a system meant to hold a metaphorical knife to the throats of drivers to force them to do the support work that the gig companies don't pay them for. And again, it's worth remembering that gig companies like Uber put the onus on the driver to maintain their vehicle without providing any support for it - that's part of their "secret sauce" that was supposed to be how they would make money. Of course online livery rides are "nicer" - the companies running them force their drivvers to pay out of pocket to do so, or face dismissal.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:32 PM on August 16, 2021 [28 favorites]


It tickles me how much people really want to stick up for taxi companies. And really want to paint Uber/Lyft drivers as not very intelligent. Or even violent.

I don't think its that weird --- Uber has made a business out of trying to weaken employment laws and protections in a way that hurts almost everyone (first by simply flouting rules, then bullying cities into changing them, then sinking huge money into things like Prop 22 in California). It's hard to feel anything but negative towards them. Their strategy from day 1 has been inherently destructive.

I don't buy this. They created a market that really didn't exist before: a non cartel driven taxi service. This is a good thing. The alternative to taxis took off like crazy, for people who need something other than buses/trains, and found medallion taxi companies not even worth the effort. Because medallion taxi companies are far, far shittier than Uber/Lyft almost everywhere. That they did this by flouting the rules is a huge plus, indicating the rules were clearly unsuited to reality, and written to benefit a small number of people. There's no way they could have spread the way they did without being tremendously popular with its customers. That is how they were able to bully cities. It was destructive, all right... to a fucked up status quo.

I don't know where you are - but in my city, licensed taxis are much, MUCH safer than any ride-share.

I'm curious if this is actually true, the rate of harms per ride. It seems that there are far more rideshare rides than taxi rides as far as I can tell, which would indicate more incidents in rideshares. Though not necessarily rate of incidents.


Every time I hear someone say that "Uber is better than a taxi", what they mean is Uber is better for them (because they have a credit card and a smart phone), and maybe that their local taxi service isn't very good -- and/or they don't realize that Uber rides are being heavily subsidized.


Well... yeah. If Uber is better for them, then it's better. And really, does anybody really give a fuck if Uber is heavily subsidized? Does anybody here care if the local public transportaion is subsidized? Are subsidies bad if they come from the private sector?

Of all the people I know, the only people who ever use Uber are young, middle or upper-middle class people - and all my working class and/or disabled family still use taxis. As far as I can tell, Uber has been a great way to transfer money from venture capitalists to bourgeois young adults - and the rest of the world, we keep using that solid taxi service staffed by (in my city) primarily middle-aged new Canadians of colour working their butts off to support their families, and most of them still live in my old neighbourhood.

Maybe you should get out more. The rideshare users I know are overwhelmingly working class. I was working for Kroger for a few years, and both employees and customers seemed to find it quite useful. I felt sorry for the holdout old lady who had us call a taxi regularly. Every. Sunday. Evening. Poor woman would sometimes wait for hours outside with her groceries, and we'd repeatedly call. Sure they'd eventually show up. After way more time and phone calls than should have been needed.

But maybe I just don't know a lot of young middle or upper class people. Maybe Uber/Lyft is pretty popular across the board. Imagine that!

You mean the system where drivers have to keep near spotless records or face being fired, while customers are not kept to nearly that standard? Yeah, that's more a system meant to hold a metaphorical knife to the throats of drivers to force them to do the support work that the gig companies don't pay them for. And again, it's worth remembering that gig companies like Uber put the onus on the driver to maintain their vehicle without providing any support for it - that's part of their "secret sauce" that was supposed to be how they would make money. Of course online livery rides are "nicer" - the companies running them force their drivvers to pay out of pocket to do so, or face dismissal.

I always get the sense that rideshare haters are just licking their lips in anticipation of this employment opportunity drying up as fast as it arose, allowing the drivers to enjoy the freedom of not having to pick people up for money.
posted by 2N2222 at 11:16 PM on August 16, 2021 [13 favorites]


I've literally known people who got banned for puking in a car one too many times (and were charged a hefty fee that gets paid to the driver). I completely agree that there are many problematic aspects to the system, some of which make me feel a bit sketchy, but it's not the complete hellhole you seem to believe.

Ask a driver sometime. At least around here, they're more than happy to tell you all about what they don't like, and what they like enough to keep driving for them, even while they're in the middle of driving you somewhere.

Again, speaking only for where I live, it ain't like the people who actually own the cabs are paying for cleaning supplies. And they certainly don't get $80 when some drunk asshat pukes in/on the car so they can take the time to clean it up.

The much bigger issue revolves around the lack of unemployment benefits, the complete farce of airport pickups that make them even more of a scam for TNC drivers than it already is for people driving taxis, and the intentionally misleading advertising regarding the pay structure. Given one reads the fine print, however, nobody is getting less than they were promised. Enough so that people do it for years. Presumably someone doing it that long has been at it long enough that reality would have set in if they were literally losing money at it.

I'm not at all happy about how Uber and Lyft both waltzed in and completely ignored perfectly reasonable requirements like background checks for drivers, but around here they are complying with that and some other reasonable requirements now. And they're saving the county transit authority money by allowing them to not run buses in the middle of the night that may see one passenger per hour. It's not a solution I support in general, but for that specific use case, it benefits everyone. Well, everyone who can make a phone call or use an app. If the night service had ever run on time to begin with, I'd be more concerned with that caveat. User pays the normal bus fare, driver gets normal pay, transit system pays Uber/Lyft a discount rate, all parties are happy, even the union drivers who hated having to work those shifts anyway.
posted by wierdo at 11:46 PM on August 16, 2021 [6 favorites]


allowing the drivers to enjoy the freedom of not having to pick people up for money.

I think you're conflating criticism of the centralized big tech apps with the concept of ride hailing in general.

Because people paid for rides (and not from taxis) before Uber and even before the existence of the Internet. I think even if Uber/Lyft dies, people are used to these services and they will continue in some form.
posted by FJT at 12:38 AM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]


I can still be happy about the massive transfer of VC cash to people much farther down the income ladder.

I mean, this is similar to the billionaires doing charity argument and the reply is the same: the money should have been taxed and spent on something like actual public transportation.
posted by FJT at 12:45 AM on August 17, 2021 [27 favorites]


Well... yeah. If Uber is better for them, then it's better. And really, does anybody really give a fuck if Uber is heavily subsidized? Does anybody here care if the local public transportaion is subsidized? Are subsidies bad if they come from the private sector?

Yeah, actually - the point with the heavy private "subsidization" was to corner the livery market, and then be able to set the rates to allow them to recoup their money - the problem being that, as the article points out, that they don't have a "moat" to protect them from new entrants, so that strategy doesn't work. And they also were using this "subsidization" to undercut pushes for improving mass transit, arguing that online livery would reduce traffic and congestion even though they were putting more cars on the road. Turns out that putting more cars on the road means more congestion and more fumes.

But, you've argued in past threads that using mass transit is "slumming" and that people should be displaced from living in the communities they've called home for years for the sake of short term rentals, so the argument that we should ignore externalities isn't too surprising.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:55 AM on August 17, 2021 [27 favorites]


Public transportation has its place and I use it when I can, but it doesn't provide for everyone's needs, and it seems silly if not short-sighted to push it to exclude rideshare services.

Where I live, for example, it will take at least two decades and many billions of dollars to provide what is marginal expansion of light rail service that will remain inaccessible to my neighborhood. In the meantime, what bus line service is here now remains under constant threat of reduction.

It can be possible for a public transportation system to receive considerable funding, relative to other urban areas in the country, and still be mismanaged. Simply throwing more money at it does not solve core allocation problems and tediously slow construction progress. We have tried that; we are trying that. In my experience, it hasn't been working out too well for us.

As someone with experiences with taxis in major East Coast cities, I'd further agree with those who observe that Uber and Lyft are infinitely better than taxis, even with all their problems. To that I would probably only add that Uber doesn't need to be the final point at which improvements stop, and that we should not only absolutely leave taxis in our past, but always push for a better form of what Uber-like services provide to help meet people's broader transportation needs.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:05 AM on August 17, 2021 [5 favorites]


Wondering if I should take an Uber for the first time now, so if I live to an old age I can bore young people with How We Used To Do It before all these newfangled blimpdrones came along.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:16 AM on August 17, 2021 [4 favorites]


Public transportation has its place and I use it when I can, but it doesn't provide for everyone's needs, and it seems silly if not short-sighted to push it to exclude rideshare services.

Livery (and let me note that the term "rideshare" is an outright lie meant to disguise what business these companies are in) is part of the planning for the transportation needs of a city or other such region,, specifically because public transportation cannot meet 100% of the needs of the community. But at the same time, this also means regulation of livery, both to protect consumers and drivers. Uber has never thought it should be governed, and literally wrote tools to frustrate governments from actually holding them accountable. There's also the issue that services like Uber pitched themselves as a replacement for mass transit, which is....both wrong and problematic.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:32 AM on August 17, 2021 [20 favorites]


I mean, this is similar to the billionaires doing charity argument and the reply is the same: the money should have been taxed and spent on something like actual public transportation.

Is there anyone posting or commenting here at MeFi who doesn't think billionaires are paying far too little in tax?

Speaking only for my own locality, there is no shortage of tax money that could go towards better transit, though. The entire problem is one of will. Despite big talk and occasionally raising taxes to pay for better transit, the money always seems to end up going to pay for roads instead. We voted ourselves a pretty large dedicated transit tax a while back and what we got was an extra mile and a half of rail, a half used terminal station at the airport, and better pay for transit workers. Everything above what ended up being needed to pay for the bonds that financed the capex and the salary increases has been reappropriated year after year. We've voted mayors and council members out over the issue, selecting people who claim they will deliver on better transit, yet the money still flows out of the transit budget and into the road budget.

Part of the problem is the shitty state department of transportation that refuses to help fund transit and is always offering new roads, bridges, and other car-based infrastructure if only we can put in a tiny local match. It's hard to turn down much needed reconstruction when the money needed for matching funds is sitting right there, after all. Even I, a person who is all in on better transit, can understand that thought process and even sympathize with it a little.

Of course, now I live in a condo way out in the suburbs where there is a bus that runs every hour on a good day and has nearly worthless connections to other lines rather than within walking distance to a road I could catch a bus every 15 minutes 16 hours a day, so it means a lot less to me than it did last month. There's room for improvement to be sure, but it can only do so much. This is the kind of place where ride share and transit could actually work together, if only anyone would bother improving frequency on trunk routes and scheduling so that transfers between them don't involve waiting half an hour or more.

When your transit system is useless and taxis aren't reliable in your part of town, TNCs are the only real alternative for people who can't or don't want to drive. Believe me, if it had been possible to stay in the area I used to live without my rent literally doubling when it was already barely affordable, I'd have stayed somewhere I could just take the bus. Come the end of rainy season, I'm hoping that a bike or maybe an e-scooter will keep me from having to get my driver's license back and buying a fucking car. I hate being part of the system that builds places where more land is dedicated to parking than actual buildings, but the recent unpleasantness has priced me the fuck out of the urban core or even early, walkable, suburbia.
posted by wierdo at 2:40 AM on August 17, 2021 [7 favorites]


I would love if I could take public transportation to work.... But under the very best of circumstances, it doubles my travel time, with triple or quadruple being infinitely more likely. And I literally live in a straight line from work alongside a major toll road, I am nowhere near out in the sticks or anything. And even with that said, apparently the bus only goes like 70% of the route? Sigh.

Anyway, I watched my handicapped girlfriend pretty routinely take Uber for the past 3 years. She had horror stories about taxi companies as well, and especially pre-pandemic Uber has generally treated her quite well. There were the occasional issues with somebody not wanting to deal with her wheelchair, or presumably take the risk of driving with someone handicapped at all. Sometimes they were difficulties communicating, with little to no English, typically not a problem on the main routes, but stuff like our labyrinthian
apartment complex can be confusing.

In the past 6 months however, there seems to be a noticeable decline in the number of drivers and the service. Things like hospital trips jumped in price, presumably a combination of lack of drivers and over the barrel pricing. She's had more drivers accept pickups only to immediately cancel them, citing BS like distance and attempting to scam a user cancellation fee out of her. Still better than a taxi service though, as far as we could tell.

Uber eats on the other hand I think has gotten our order correct maybe like one or two tenth of the time? There's always been issues ranging from minor to literally half our food is missing or they somehow ordered smaller portions than what we requested.
posted by Jacen at 2:55 AM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]


From what I've read, taxi medallions in NYC went from affordable and a good deal for the driver, to owned by consortiums who offered very bad deals to drivers-- long hours for little pay. Uber hasn't made things worse.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:51 AM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]


It seems strange to be having a discussion about how rideshare services compare to taxis when the article is about how a specific business manipulated the market to make billions of dollars for its investors in what was essentially a money laundering scheme. They might just as well have done it by cornering the wheat market, and we'd be here arguing over whether sourdough was good.
posted by Nothing at 4:53 AM on August 17, 2021 [30 favorites]


In spite of what Nothing writes, which makes sense, it would be interesting to see a mapping of sorts of where taxis are good, where Uber is better, and how access to public transportation works.
When we had Uber in this country, it was definitely not as safe as taxi services, and the taxi services have apps that can do everything Uber did. Eventually Uber had to pay a huge fine for transgressing the livery laws and they withdrew from the entire country.
I never tried them, but my kids did, because it was cheaper when you were going home from a night out. I tried to make them stop doing it when a young passenger was killed in a busy crossing. To be fair, it wasn't the Uber-driver's fault, but in this country, taxis have to be of a certain minimum weight-class, and wouldn't have been damaged as badly.
posted by mumimor at 4:59 AM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]


"There is really only one person you need to read to understand Uber: Hubert Horan, a senior transportation analyst who has been dissecting Uber's public claims, financial statements, and regulatory battles since 2016."

This is not a repeat of 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:18 AM on August 17, 2021


Totally agree on not using the term "rideshare" which was always dumb. These guys are just running a taxi service. The local name for a taxi that has to be booked will vary but that's always been the basic business. In London, that's also how they're regulated.

It seems strange to be having a discussion about how rideshare services compare to taxis when the article is about how a specific business manipulated the market to make billions of dollars for its investors in what was essentially a money laundering scheme. They might just as well have done it by cornering the wheat market, and we'd be here arguing over whether sourdough was good.

If this was fundamentally [going to be] a profitable business, there would be no need for any of these shenanigans. The economic fundamentals which kill Uber leave two options for them and for any other business trying to extract large amounts of surplus value from the taxi business: either bamboozle investors to keep the game going or give up. Uber defenders would probably say, "well, yes it's a little dodgy promoting these non-GAAP numbers but the GAAP numbers are there as well and investors are sophisticated enough to form their own analysis. Uber will eventually be profitable". If it is the case, and I think it is, that the most it could ever be long-term is a business with a very small margin, then that's pretty fundamental.

I also don't see any evidence that what is going on here is money laundering so much as dumb investors chasing a rainbow.

I will say that I never understood the complaints about taxis... because I was used to UK (London black cab), Dutch, and German taxis which while expensive are also clean, well maintained, and well driven by professional drivers. On a number of trips to the US, I have had absolute horrors experiences with street-hail taxis in LA and Seattle. No idea whether those cities are representative and it's usually been fine in NYC.

I've also had many sub-optimal experiences with English minicabs/livery services where late at night I have to call multiple operators with dodgy websites in places I don't know well in order to find someone who I then have to give directions to pick me up from an area I can't give effective directions in. The thing is though that this was years ago, all these same operators now have their own apps which do all the useful things that Uber does. There is also an app for getting black cabs in London which works very well. So even if Uber triggered some genuinely beneficial changes for customers, that doesn't have any bearing on whether the company is worth a lot of money.
posted by atrazine at 5:21 AM on August 17, 2021 [4 favorites]


Also the idea that they were planning to use their VC money to put all other cab companies out of business before increasing prices doesn't make economic sense.

Same reason. Low barriers to entry. They could spend tens of millions to dominate a local market but it is really easy to start a taxi company and as soon as their VC money stops flowing into that market, that's exactly what will happen. There is nothing durable that they are buying. Meanwhile of course it sucks for the existing drivers of taxis who see their income go down as part of this game.
posted by atrazine at 5:30 AM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]


Re: the which is better debate: It’s almost as if, as originally mentioned earlier in this thread, livery/taxi service is a hyper-local business and thus quality, comfort, safety, usefulnesss, and similar issues vary quite a lot by locality.
posted by eviemath at 5:34 AM on August 17, 2021 [5 favorites]


My dream would be to package and license the tech to states and counties to work out a more dynamic public transport system. Instead of sending empty buses up routes at random times, they can take all the requested rides and optimize a custom route between 12-25 people. As soon as a bus can be filled, dispatch from a strategically placed depot. You can even have SLAs to ensure people aren't waiting too long for transport like dispatching a half-filled bus after 7 minutes or something similar.

It's been mentioned that someone tried this (Bridj) and they failed spectacularly because it's just a fundamental misunderstanding of scaling (the average city bus carries between 40-60 people or even 100 with articulated buses) and what makes public transit work (consistency, reliability, the ability to hop on a bus an go somewhere without having to use a goddamned app to plan a trip)

Remember that XKCD strip about traffic lights? A similar argument can be made about the planning that goes into creating bus routes that maximize their catchment basins while balancing the destinations of riders. It's not always pretty and it doesn't always work perfectly, but it's also not like they're just drawing lines at random on a map, and no one is going to do any better with some fancy real-time algorithm.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:46 AM on August 17, 2021 [13 favorites]


(Side note:

Oh, and I never make regular purchases with a credit card. Credit spending is for people with high and steady incomes and/or expense accounts.

Credit card use, sure. The lower income folks you described don’t have access to credit via credit cards at only moderately usurious rates of interest, and thus have to make use of payday loan companies, which are often twice the interest rate and much more harmful terms of use.

An overall systemic critique of the role of credit spending in our modern economies can definitely be made, but one should be very cautious about getting into moralizing about individuals’ personal choices in this respect. I’m happy for you that you never had to use a payday loan company. I’m certainly happy that I had family or friends who could spot me a small short-term loan at no interest the couple times I was truly short back when I was living paycheck to paycheck and had neither savings nor credit. I view the fact that I had such an option, along with my being able to meet my basic needs or successfully negotiate delays in major expenses until I had the money to pay for them at all points in my life since I’ve been living on my own despite a low income at times as due to luck - in not having major emergencies that cost money, in having parents who had the knowledge and ability to teach me about both budgeting and the various economies that folks on low income have to make, and in having social connections who I could rely on for help (with luck in having parents who were able to teach me the relevant community-building skills being a part of that, as well).)
posted by eviemath at 5:50 AM on August 17, 2021 [5 favorites]


I’m happy for you that you never had to use a payday loan company. I’m certainly happy that I had family or friends who could spot me a small short-term loan at no interest the couple times I was truly short back when I was living paycheck to paycheck and had neither savings nor credit.

This is my childhood financial history in a nutshell. Payday loan companies, don't answer the phone it might be a debt collector, and here we can spot you $75 bucks for groceries until your next paycheque but please don't make this a habit.
posted by Kitteh at 7:15 AM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]


Are subsidies bad if they come from the private sector?

Considering everything we know about how "private sector" subsidies are often if not usually used to create monopolies and/or industry dominance by eliminating competition, and said monopolies then feel free to charge whatever they want, and since they're not paid for with our citizen tax dollars there is little to nothing that can be done about that via laws, regulations, or voting . . . yeah, I'm gonna say at the very least private sector subsidies should be viewed with great suspicion.
posted by soundguy99 at 7:22 AM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]


But as the article says, if the goddamned cab companies could just put out an app that hails a cab

They have had sooo many years (Uber has been around for 12, so... 10-years lets say).

Heck, they could have formed a consortium and banded together to share the cost of app development across different geo regions. (As typically one company in one geo region wouldn't be competing with another region)

But - in some places they have built apps... If a taxi company can do it in Iqaluit (population ~8,000), I am pretty sure it worth doing in a larger market. Anecdotally - it works well (1,000 times better than a phone call) - the map updates and you can choose to stay inside until your cab is close - important during the winter. Of course, the only times I had an issue were during the winter, when there was a storm and/or issues with cellular service in general.
posted by rozcakj at 7:39 AM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]


Every bit of the gig economy seems to have begun with a techbro musing, "Can't we just pay a pleb a few bucks to do it?"
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:57 AM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]


I've noticed that pretty much always people who think that Uber will fail also think that Uber should fail.

What have you noticed about the people who don't think Uber will fail?
posted by MattWPBS at 8:12 AM on August 17, 2021 [4 favorites]


"Can't we just pay a pleb a few bucks to do it?"

That is, after all, the difference between a 'gig' and a 'job.'

Formalizing and replacing what used to be locally constituted informal or grey labor markets (i.e. pirate taxis or unlicensed transport companies for Uber) with venture-funded contracting platforms is how the idea that disruption is just dodging regulation plays out on the ground.

That hiring someone for a momentary 'gig' comes with less social obligation than 'giving them a job' is a baked in connotation and part of the frictionless appeal. Mostly for the consumers and investors, sometimes for the workers. Or at least some think so.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:16 AM on August 17, 2021 [5 favorites]


I've noticed that pretty much always people who think that Uber will fail also think that Uber should fail.

What have you noticed about the people who don't think Uber will fail?


They did poorly in math class?
posted by Lyme Drop at 8:40 AM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]


Uber, Lyft et al have always been illegal here (Ireland) and I'm glad they are.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 8:44 AM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]


Uber Eats kept sending a $25 off email. Finally tried it and before checkout the total with 'charges' was double any takeout I'd ever ordered prior. Did not complete that transaction.
posted by sammyo at 9:12 AM on August 17, 2021 [1 favorite]


It's weird that people are so immersed into the rideshare system, they forget cabs exist. People will post "I took an Uber/Lyft home from the airport and it was $175!!!?!" I get that cabs take like 40-60 minutes in some places, but I'd still wait rather than pay the cost of a short US flight to get the last 8-10 miles.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:19 AM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]


My subjective experience with Uber/Lyft drivers has been very poor. I don't take Uber anymore after a driver started jerking off during the ride. Other memorable experiences include a driver my friend and had to refuse because they looked high, and another time someone was literally driving on the wrong side of the road.

A taxi driver is heavily invested in maintaining their medallion/registration. Anyone can sign up and start giving rides for Uber/Lyft/etc...

In NYC I've been using the Curb app for official NYC taxis which has been great, but cabs are hard to come by in outer areas of Brooklyn and Queens.
posted by joeyjoejoejr at 9:22 AM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]


While we are on the subject of rideshare, allow me to remind you that it is important you understand that the 1-5 star rating system does not work the way you might imagine it does.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:30 AM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]


I am surprised no one has mentioned Flywheel. It did take the creation of Uber and Lyft to force the cab companies to do it, but now at least in some cities it's easy to order a licensed taxi via a decent app.
posted by PhineasGage at 10:17 AM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]


Livery (and let me note that the term "rideshare" is an outright lie meant to disguise what business these companies are in) is part of the planning for the transportation needs of a city or other such region,, specifically because public transportation cannot meet 100% of the needs of the community. But at the same time, this also means regulation of livery, both to protect consumers and drivers.

I'm deliberately using the term rideshare to clarify the generally accepted difference between taxis and what Uber and Lyft do. I agree with you in general terms, but Uber and Lyft are not really considered taxis and are definitely not operated or regulated like taxis. So having separate words matters, even if that separation is also partially a marketing term that bothers some.

I'm all for intelligent and rational regulations for Uber and Lyft. My problem with most people's opposition to these services is that no one ever seems to call for taxis to be regulated. In most cities in the US, taxis are not well regulated, at least not in the interest of providing a safe, clean ride for passengers. They are usually regulated in order to generate steady revenue for city budgets, though.

And that's the root of the problem and why Uber and Lyft have been able to make inroads. I think it is important to recognize the push for regulations of Uber and Lyft coming from the taxicab industry, which wants those regulations in place to protect its waning business, as opposed to making the tangible and expensive safety and quality improvements it needs to stay relevant. At least as the US goes, taxis need to be in our rearview mirror, if they can't improve.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:31 AM on August 17, 2021 [4 favorites]


An overall systemic critique of the role of credit spending in our modern economies can definitely be made, but one should be very cautious about getting into moralizing about individuals’ personal choices in this respect.

Sorry - I was specifically talking about credit card spending. You have to have a credit card to use any of the app-based services. There are people in my family who have neither credit cards nor smart phones - and, since they are also disabled and can't drive, rely on taxis when public transit isn't possible.

As for overall credit-spending: I am fully aware of the lack of personal choices, especially since I recently helped a close relative get out from a predatory payday loan cycle. The solution there is banning payday loans and replacing them with low/no interest non-profit lenders.
posted by jb at 11:41 AM on August 17, 2021


It's weird that people are so immersed into the rideshare system, they forget cabs exist. People will post "I took an Uber/Lyft home from the airport and it was $175!!!?!" I get that cabs take like 40-60 minutes in some places, but I'd still wait rather than pay the cost of a short US flight to get the last 8-10 miles.

The last time I needed a ride, I tried two local cab companies. Both said they couldn't send anyone. I've been in situations (like after brain surgery) where I've relied on cabs a lot, but effectively, because of Uber and Lyft, cab companies don't exist in my city anymore.
posted by FencingGal at 11:42 AM on August 17, 2021 [4 favorites]


In most cities in the US, taxis are not well regulated, at least not in the interest of providing a safe, clean ride for passengers. They are usually regulated in order to generate steady revenue for city budgets, though.

Well, that's the US. In my Canadian city, taxis are closely regulated and all the regulations must be posted in the taxi, just in case you wanted to see what they are. As I noted above, I've also never had to wait long for a cab and if they say it will be 15 minutes, it's 15 minutes. Yes, we do have a medallion system (with all the problems that has), but Uber isn't fixing that either.

The problem is that US venture capital - from Uber, from AirBnB - has been muscling their way in and is now lobbying to eliminate what regulations we had, including how we define employees and stopping our city from regulating short-term rentals.

So of course we are pissed off at these companies - and I'll never use them. I hate the medallion system, but that's changeable by law. The US-based apps don't give a shit about our laws.
posted by jb at 11:48 AM on August 17, 2021 [8 favorites]


I'm deliberately using the term rideshare to clarify the generally accepted difference between taxis and what Uber and Lyft do. I agree with you in general terms, but Uber and Lyft are not really considered taxis and are definitely not operated or regulated like taxis. So having separate words matters, even if that separation is also partially a marketing term that bothers some.

And I deliberately refuse to use it because that "generally accepted difference" is, to be frank, marketing bullshit foisted on the public by companies like Uber specifically to engender the reaction that you are having - to say that "livery, but with an app" somehow makes these companies fundamentally different. The reason you don't think that Uber is not livery is because Uber literally ran a campaign to convince you so, and part of that was to create "special" terms for their service to make them appear to be something different, when they are nothing more than a livery service. That's why we shouldn't have separate words - because the intent is to manipulate people into treating Uber different when there is no reason to.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:08 PM on August 17, 2021 [12 favorites]


I'm all for intelligent and rational regulations for Uber and Lyft. My problem with most people's opposition to these services is that no one ever seems to call for taxis to be regulated. In most cities in the US, taxis are not well regulated, at least not in the interest of providing a safe, clean ride for passengers. They are usually regulated in order to generate steady revenue for city budgets, though.

That's because taxicabs are regulated, in ways that aren't visible to the public but do increase security - things like required mechanical inspections to make sure the vehicles are not only in safe working order, but also have emissions within acceptable limits. Of course, there are more visible requirements, such as the dividers many locales mandate for taxis which have helped to protect both riders and drivers. Meanwhile, Uber engages in security theater such as a "safe rider" surcharge that turned out to be a cash grab, and showing the driver's picture (which not only does nothing to help with safety but enables discrimination against minority drivers) while fighting against actual safety policies like background checks. And then there's the fact that their investigation unit is designed to hide criminal activity that could make the company look bad, as well as the fact that Uber implemented several systems designed to prevent regulators from actually regulating them.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:36 PM on August 17, 2021 [8 favorites]


The “ridesharing” canard, that Uber/Lyft are a thin brokerage layer between people who are going in a direction and their neighbours who wish to catch a ride, is like the canard about AirBnb being for people making a bit of pocket money renting out their spare rooms to holidaymakers, not least of all that, once money comes into it, it has the half-life of one of those novel atomic elements created in a supercollider, because the little people can't compete against cartels of predators. Ordinary people making a bit of pocket money giving people lifts can't compete against drivers forced to drive 80-hour weeks to pay the loanshark for the car they're renting which they need to commute to their day job, and Mr. and Mrs. Bloggs and their spare room get crowded out by landlords who kick out their less profitable long-term tenants and turn their flats into regulation-free hotels, or companies that exist to buy up (or sublease) flats and run them as virtual hotels.
posted by acb at 2:32 PM on August 17, 2021 [12 favorites]


My guess is in much of the U.S. there wasn't enough demand to create an efficient, reliable taxicab industry, but in NYC — for all its problems and inconveniences — there was a long history of taxi driving as a real job that allowed immigrants a first step up the economic ladder and artists and others in low-paying fields to earn a living wage. The disappearance of dependable wages and, yes, the cost of medallions that some were still paying off, has led to a rash of suicides and talk of protective legislation.

Uber was also one of the first tech companies exposed for rampant sexual harassment. It made such big news at the time, and was so pernicious, researchers have published numerous case studies about it.
posted by Violet Blue at 2:38 PM on August 17, 2021 [3 favorites]


From Violet Blue's link:
Prior to the pandemic, the taxi industry was already in freefall. The resale price of city-issued taxi medallion permits zoomed to over $1 million, only to plummet as Uber and other ride-hailing services zipped in.

Risky lending saddled drivers with huge debts eclipsing the medallion’s worth, and cab drivers — mostly immigrants — found themselves caught between debt bills and dwindling business, a crisis highlighted in a Pulitzer-winning New York Times series. At least nine drivers have committed suicide.

[...]

Not every driver owns one of the more than 13,000 medallions, but those who do often carry staggering debt – more than $500,000 on average, according to the Taxi Workers Alliance.
Uber is awful and exploitative, but I don't think NYC's system should be held up as some emulation-worthy alternative.
posted by Pyry at 4:30 PM on August 17, 2021 [5 favorites]


Rideshare services like Uber and Lyft have a lot of problems to fix. But it isn't their responsibility to fix what is wrong with livery services, including a medallion system that creates an effective monopoly that carves out revenue for the cities that implement it and profits for the exploitive financiers that sell loans for it.

That system also creates an artificial shortage on taxi supply and limits the ability of people to get around. Ignoring the problem of racist cabbies deliberately skipping over picking up PoC in cities, one can rationally draw a line from that artificial scarcity to the creation of rideshare services that solve that specific problem and all the knock on effects it causes people.

Yet very few issue much concern for this system or its effects, relative to what we hear about rideshare systems. Ultimately, in the long run, taxis gotta go. Taxi operations have been given decades to monopolize personal transit, and regardless of what problems rideshare setups have, taxis should no longer have that monopoly.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:53 PM on August 17, 2021 [2 favorites]


Because there's a few reasons for limiting the number of cabs on the street - increased congestion, environmental impact, and sales cannibalization (turns out that if you have too many cabs on the street, you get a situation where nobody is doing enough business to be sustainable as a means of employment) being some of the biggest. And part of the problem with online livery is that they sold a lie about the first, saying that their services would reduce traffic while putting more cars on the streets - a counterintuitive argument that has since been shown to be false. As for the issue of cannibalization, the online livery "solution" is to make sure they're getting a cut from all the drivers, so that they're making money no matter who gets the fare - a system that works out great for the companies, but doesn't exactly help the drivers (hence why there have been proposals to introduce utilization fees that would force online livery services to pay drivers when there are too many on the streets, thus incentivizing them to control driver numbers.)

Online livery services sold themselves on the idea that they would be better than traditional livery services - but as it turns out, they weren't, and brought in their own problems - both from the fact that the problems with livery as a whole are hard to solve, as well as the fact that they believe that they should not be regulated at all. Don't get me wrong - the regulatory capture of medallion systems is a problem and needs to be fixed - but just because that problem exists doesn't mean that online livery throwing the floodgates wide isn't a problem as well. Also, it's worth pointing out that the whole anti-regulation narrative was one pushed by the industry in order to shortcircuit thinking about the actual impact and feasibility of the industry's plans and sett up a villain the industry could attack.

Or to put it simply, "but what about taxis" is not a counter to the very real questions and arguments against online livery companies - it's simply a dodge.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:12 PM on August 17, 2021 [4 favorites]


"Uber is awful and exploitative, but I don't think NYC's system should be held up as some emulation-worthy alternative."

My point wasn't that the NYC taxi system was better. It was that real jobs are better, and like a lot of disruptive gig economy companies, Uber as a replacement pays so badly it only made them more scarce.
posted by Violet Blue at 10:42 PM on August 17, 2021 [6 favorites]


I lived in the CBD of Sydney in Australia and spent $50 a week easily on taxis. I was catching a taxi and my friend had booked an Uber, so to be polite I waited until her Uber arrived. She was told a white Toyota - and tried twice to get in the wrong car as it stopped at the traffic light.

Taxis are regulated by state legislation in Australia and all of the good taxi drivers will give you their card and number and tell you that you can book with them if you send them a text with reasonable notice. Because I was in the CBD, I didn't really bother as a taxi was always nearby.

I have had others book Uber fares for me - and the driver inexperience around some of the parts of Sydney, means I still prefer a taxi. Sydney is an awful city to drive around anyway - nothing like topography to get in the way of sensible layouts - and even GPS systems are not that useful if you don't know that you avoid the tunnel in peak hour, or that if you cut through the back way around the park you avoid the speed bumps.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 12:05 AM on August 18, 2021 [1 favorite]


Uber and Lyft are not really considered taxis and are definitely not operated or regulated like taxis

They effectively are taxis, regardless of how they're regulated; their existence is nothing more than backdoor deregulation (and for locales where cab drivers are likely to belong to a union, union-busting).
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 3:37 AM on August 18, 2021 [1 favorite]


I would like to know where this magical place (in the US, anyway) where taxi drivers are paid a wage rather than renting their car, buying gas, and hoping they have enough left over from their cut of the fares that goes to the meter or medallion owner to make a profit today.

Actually, I do know of a few small cities where drivers do get paid a wage to drive someone else's car and isn't the one taking the risk because otherwise nobody would do it since there's so much down time, but it ain't the norm.
posted by wierdo at 3:49 AM on August 18, 2021 [2 favorites]


the problems with livery as a whole are hard to solve

The problems of taxi operators are "hard to solve" because operators are using decades-long political and financial relationships between operators and local governments to maintain their monopoly. Rideshare problems are something else altogether, agreed entirely. But rideshare only exists in the first place, because the "hard to solve" taxi problems rarely if ever get resolved in a way that helps people get from point A to point B.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:24 AM on August 18, 2021 [2 favorites]


Yeah, actually - the point with the heavy private "subsidization" was to corner the livery market, and then be able to set the rates to allow them to recoup their money - the problem being that, as the article points out, that they don't have a "moat" to protect them from new entrants, so that strategy doesn't work.

Wait, they're trying to corner the market. But they can't. That's a problem?

And they also were using this "subsidization" to undercut pushes for improving mass transit, arguing that online livery would reduce traffic and congestion even though they were putting more cars on the road. Turns out that putting more cars on the road means more congestion and more fumes.


The same can be said of taxi services. That they offer so much utility is because they offer what mass transit will not likely ever offer.

But, you've argued in past threads that using mass transit is "slumming" and that people should be displaced from living in the communities they've called home for years for the sake of short term rentals, so the argument that we should ignore externalities isn't too surprising.

OK, now you're talking completely out of your ass. I suppose I'm a little flattered that someone is keeping tabs on my activity, even if they're being dishonest in accounting it.
posted by 2N2222 at 5:06 AM on August 18, 2021


It's been mentioned that someone tried this (Bridj) and they failed spectacularly because it's just a fundamental misunderstanding of scaling (the average city bus carries between 40-60 people or even 100 with articulated buses) and what makes public transit work (consistency, reliability, the ability to hop on a bus an go somewhere without having to use a goddamned app to plan a trip)

The problem is not just scaling but also routing. Like Uber's Infinite Trip idea it sounds seductive as a thought experiment - replace large buses on fixed routes with smaller but more buses on dynamic routes. The problem is that the places where buses are challenging to run because of density challenge these small buses in the same way. Also, they are slow because people having booked them will not accept "missing" them so they end up loitering outside houses while people come out.

When you've got a low-density suburban cul-de-sac mess that looks like it was designed by a space filling algorithm, you cannot efficiently route any kind of shared transit through it because there are no through roads which are a minimum distance away from everyone. Making the vehicle smaller or more responsive doesn't help that if you're trying to move a large number of people regularly as part of a commute cycle.

Ok, so one could decide not to build any more of that kind of development but physical infrastructure last a long time so we're stuck with most of the stock we already have for many decades.

I would like to know where this magical place (in the US, anyway) where taxi drivers are paid a wage rather than renting their car, buying gas, and hoping they have enough left over from their cut of the fares that goes to the meter or medallion owner to make a profit today.

Actually, I do know of a few small cities where drivers do get paid a wage to drive someone else's car and isn't the one taking the risk because otherwise nobody would do it since there's so much down time, but it ain't the norm.


One way or another, someone in the transaction has to bear the cost of down-time. That's true of any infrastructure that is sized for peaks - including buses and metro rail which have to be sized for peak traffic and recover all their costs (or as much as they get from the farebox anyway) during those peaks as well but also roads in general. The peakier demand is, the more expensive it will be to run per person. Anything that spreads peaks will make infrastructure cheaper but humans are naturally diurnal so good luck with that!
posted by atrazine at 9:54 AM on August 18, 2021




The problems of taxi operators are "hard to solve" because operators are using decades-long political and financial relationships between operators and local governments to maintain their monopoly.

True, but the power of these monopolies was kind of like a paper tiger. As a comparison, Uber is pretty much a niche thing in Japan and it's mostly banned in Germany. And maybe someone else can provide a more expert opinion, but it appears to me that they were able to fend off Uber from a combination of stronger regulations and actually having better transportation services. So, comparatively the interests are stronger than their US counterparts, but they also seem better at their jobs.

I think there's some kind of lesson in there about being penny wise and pound foolish.
posted by FJT at 2:22 PM on August 18, 2021 [2 favorites]


Yeah, I only ever use Uber Eats when they send me a 30+ percent coupon. I like to think of it as being treated to lunch by a venture capitalist.

Think of it as being treated to lunch by a desperate restaurateur who is selling food at a near loss.


I want to re-emphasize this. When I was riding for Postmates back when it was still really new they were constantly offering coupons, free delivery and even spend-it-anywhere cash credits.

In practice on the streets and on my end of the exchange I got paid less for those deliveries as per the terms on my end of the contract, and what people seemed to mainly do with it was order random treats they wouldn't have normally bought for delivery and then almost always not tip at all because they wanted to take advantage of the freebie and get some free stuff.

I remember it took me about a week or two to figure out what was going on and why people were placing such small orders for things like just coffee or snacks and then tipping nothing at all.

I remember one promotional order was for several really fancy hot chocolates from a relatively famous Seattle chocolatier which I then had to try to deliver on a bicycle up a majorly steep hill in winter with a fair amount of ice and snow on the ground.

Delivering hot drinks on a bicycle in winter is a pain in the ass and not a good idea for basically everyone involved except for Postmates. There's basically no way for the drinks to show up still hot, they make a huge mess to deliver and it pretty much guarantees I'm not going to get a tip because they'd show up late and cold.

Keep in mind that Postmates had or still has an abusive and non-consensual practice of adding menus to their platform from places that never asked to take part in it and sometimes doesn't even know that they were being included and listed in Postmates app and platform at all.

For the hot chocolate order I'm mentioning above, the place they ordered from also was obviously not into filling the order and was really unaccustomed to packaging their upscale chocolate products for to go orders. They took forever and it was pretty obvious to me that it was on purpose because they left the finished hot chocolates on a back counter and then the front of house staff vanished into the back for over 15 minutes pointedly ignoring me in a mostly empty lobby and dining room while I'm pacing around and waiting to just pay and leave.

I started to be able to pay attention to the order cost totals and mentally estimating them and notice when the value of an order was just under the value of a current promotion and coupon. Because the orders would always be something ridiculously small like a couple of cookies and a drink, and it was often totally weird and nonsensical cross town deliveries where it would have made more sense to order from somewhere closer or just walk down to the corner store or something.

And I learned to never accept or jump on those orders because they basically never, ever tipped and it wasn't ever worth it. And even when people did tip it was usually much less than normal because of the decreased total cost of the order, which I was already getting paid less for due to it being a promotional order on Postmate's fucked up sliding scale for delivery fee payouts.

If you care about workers or the restaurants or stores you're ordering from I would strongly recommend not taking advantage of these kinds of promotions and coupons, because you're not actually sticking it to venture capitalists. You're mainly sticking it to some poor schmuck trying to make a living.

Sure, use those coupons if you were planning to order through a platform anyway, but maybe keep this in mind to tip extra well to make up for the worker usually losing money or making much less on promotional orders.
posted by loquacious at 8:42 PM on August 18, 2021 [11 favorites]


"My problem with most people's opposition to these services is that no one ever seems to call for taxis to be regulated. In most cities in the US, taxis are not well regulated, at least not in the interest of providing a safe, clean ride for passengers."


I was going to make a big long comment about the history of taxi regulation in Chicago (spoiler: the city had to wrest the industry away from organized crime, unregulated taxis are terrifying), but I think the most telling piece of information is this:

School districts in Illinois, as in many states, contract with local livery companies to provide unusual forms of school transit -- a child who attends a program for the Deaf that's only offered at a particular school in the county, or a child who attends a therapeutic day school, or children in foster care whose may be temporarily out of their home district. The taxis have to pass fairly stringent routine safety checks; the drivers have to pass not just regular taxi background checks, but the same background checks as bus drivers. Most larger taxi companies have a "school transportation" department, and it's good money for the taxi companies (and for the individual drivers who pass the background check).

Uber has been unable to break into this (lucrative) market. They cannot pass the car safety checks, they are WILDLY inadequately insured, and their background checks are ... non-existent.

You can put your elementary school student in a taxi with every assurance they'll arrive safely at school. It's against the law to put them in an Uber, and Uber works VERY HARD to ensure minors don't ride alone in their cars, and to disclaim liability if it happens, even though they're protected by their "contractor" relationship with drivers, where they're "just the app." Why do you think that is? Could it be because the liability of having a child ride in a questionably safe, underinsured car with an un-background-checked driver is too high even for Uber? Why should any of the rest of us get in one, then?* The risks of Uber are way too high for the actuaries who make school transit decisions for my state, and they're definitely better at making transit risk calculations than I am.

(*At least if we live in places with decently-dense, adequately-regulated cab services.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:33 PM on August 18, 2021 [13 favorites]


As for whether one can make a living as a taxi driver: it depends on where you are and how the local market is regulated.

In Toronto, where we have a usurious medallion system like NYC, taxi drivers really struggle. But in London, one of the subjects of the 7up series, Tony, worked as a black cab driver and made enough money to buy a house and live a quite middle class lifestyle - in a more expensive country. He did this without a high school diploma.

It's been a while since I saw the most recent (and last) film (63up), but I remember that one of his kids had gone into taxi driving, but because of Uber and the other ride-apps, they weren't making as good a living as he had - he felt that what was once a good job wasn't anymore because of Uber, etc.

Interestingly, the number of of taxicabs (specifically hackney carriages that can be hailed) is not limited in London, but obviously this didn't lead to a glut of drivers prior to Uber. The testing and licensing of the drivers lead to a natural limit on the number of cabs - and kept service at a very high quality.
posted by jb at 12:39 PM on August 19, 2021 [1 favorite]


Except that prior to Uber (and the licensing of private car services generally) one of the Things You Needed to Know about visiting London was the difference between the very expensive licensed 'black cabs' and unlicensed 'minicabs' (also known by less sensitive names) that met the rest of the demand. (As that wiki entry notes.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:15 PM on August 19, 2021 [1 favorite]


Minicabs are licensed in London and have been for decades, Uber is regulated as a minicab operator. What is dangerous is illegal and unlicensed minicabs trawling around outside clubs.
posted by atrazine at 3:18 AM on August 20, 2021 [3 favorites]


decades

After when I was there, at least as far as cars you didn't have to book in advance as part of travel arrangements.

Point being that there has always been at least a two-tier system for London's cabs (and carriages), with the lower tier including some amount of grey market. So looking at only the number of Black Cab drivers with The Knowledge has never been a complete picture.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:28 AM on August 20, 2021


A three-tier system, then - Black cabs, minicabs (licensed and operated from central dispatchers) and rogue operators. The rogue operators aren't technically part of the system, though, hence the "rogue" bit. And companies like Addison Lee, come to think of it - fancier and more expensive than minicabs but not black cabs per se.

There've been minicabs since long before you visited, honest. I took them in the 1980s, and they weren't new then - Carry On Cabby (not an advert for the industry, true, but evidence that it existed) came out in 1963.

It is good advice not to let dodgy blokes hanging around outside clubs to drive you home, though, yes.
posted by Grangousier at 10:05 AM on August 20, 2021 [1 favorite]


I have all kinds of beef with Uber, but y'all . . . let me talk to you about trying to order up a car in virtually any city of any size in the southeast prior to Uber/Lyft.

I have literally waited 1.5 hours for a taxi to pick me up at a garage (where my car was being worked on) in a college town. And then the cab bailed. One of the mechanics drove back by the garage (which had closed by that point) on the way to pick his kid up, happened to notice that I was still standing outside and offered to give me a ride home.

That was a better solution than the time I tried to (safely) get a cab ride home a bar and ended up stranded at 3am when I was 22. Eventually, I managed to rouse a friend who unlocked his door so sleep on his sofa because that seemed safer than walking the 3 miles home.

And this is in a college town with a pretty decent public transportation system.
posted by thivaia at 11:34 AM on August 20, 2021 [1 favorite]


I've had a few experiences like that.

One was riding in a cab to the airport in the rain, on a busy highway during rush hour, and the windshield wipers were missing. If I drove a car registered to my name, doing that wouldn't be legal, and it would be very dangerous — it was dangerous. If I get the driver to stop, how do I get another cab, when my plane leaves in 2-3 hours? I'm being put in a terribly dangerous situation against my will.

Another was where I had a broken leg from being hit by a car, and I needed to take a 10 minute cab ride downtown, instead of a 60 minute walk and subway ride on crutches. I needed to keep receipts because of a lawsuit against the driver that hit me. The city T&C printed on the dividing glass behind the driver specified to ask up front for a receipt, so that the driver can set that up at the start of the ride. I asked, and the driver refused. So I asked again, in case he misunderstood my request. He then got irate and pulled me and my crutches from the back seat. Fuck that guy, but mostly fuck the cab operator and the city that takes money to let that business continue to operate.

Rideshare systems didn't exist then, but it would have been great if they did. Having safer options would have been useful, at those times.

Taxi drivers don't even follow their own rules. I have less interest for demands for Uber etc. to be regulated, when many of those demands come from cab companies that don't follow the laws of the city in which they operate. Whatever problems Uber etc. have, letting taxis continue to operate in ways like this seems like gangsterism, to me. YMMV.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:01 PM on August 20, 2021




Trial court ruling. It will be appealed, but given the balance of the CA Supreme Court will likely stand at the end of the process.

(Note that the ruling is that it is unconstitutional at the state level.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:44 PM on August 20, 2021


Yay! So great to see that ruling.
posted by PhineasGage at 8:52 PM on August 20, 2021


I don't have a view on the viability of Uber as a business. Time will tell.

The author is telling us that uber is losing boatloads of money while ruthlessly exploiting workers and raising prices for riders. Honest question, if this is true, where is the money for benefits going to come from?
posted by clark at 10:35 PM on August 20, 2021


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