7 ms·

As much as I can see the need for disruption in the taxi industry, I can't help but feel like we're going to relearn some lesson from a hundred years ago as to

by panzagl 11y ago

As much as I can see the need for disruption in the taxi industry, I can't help but feel like we're going to relearn some lesson from a hundred years ago as to why the regulations formed in the first place.

mseebach 11y ago
Perhaps the world is sufficiently different from a hundred years ago that we don't need the regulations anymore.
- kuschku 11y ago
  It took Uber 2 years to acknowledge the fact that, yes, you need insurance when you drive a car commercially. It will take another few until they’ll acknowledge that their drivers are employees, not contractors, and can demand medical insurance, retirement funds, etc. All these things used to be provided thanks to regulation, and we’re seeing now how removing the regulation leads to uninsured cars on the roads driven by people earning below minimum wage without any social security.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    All these things used to be provided thanks to regulation No, most taxi drivers were already contractors, those things were not being provided before Uber came around.
  - SilasX 11y ago
    I agree that Uber is flouting some reasonable, still-relevant regulations[1]. However, the insistence on "Uber needs to provide medical insurance, retirement funds, etc" is ... well, it comes off as a bit quixotic. If you did "lay down the law" one day, does that mean workers magically have all kinds of freebies? No, it would be paid for out of the same revenues that Ubers drivers are currently being paid with. Instead of "$1/mile", it'll be "$0.30/mile, minimum mile requirement, and you get health insurance". Out of one pocket, into the other. [1] "If someone is driving for your service, you must verify, not just trust, that they're insured, whether or not you provide that insurance yourself."
    - kuschku 11y ago
      Well, how does it work for taxi drivers employed at taxi companies in Germany then? Mandatory minimum wage, mandatory health insurance, mandatory retirement funds, mandatory unemployment insurance, etc. Yes, in the end they usually get nothing for doing extra work (just their wage, plus 0€/mile), but that’s most definitely better: The risk is gone – you don’t have to worry about medical stuff, or anything anymore, even as McDonalds fastfood drone you still have insurance, etc guaranteed.
      - SilasX 11y ago
        I get the benefits of having benefits. But even in Germany, independent contractors are "a thing", and there are at least some workers who don't have their employer/main client directly paying for their benefits. And for (at least some of) those cases, we can recognize that it's pointless to make that main client pay for their benefits. Some workers believe they are better of by having contractor status and buying their own benefits, and you would need to find a compelling reason not to let this happen; that's why I'm asking for the logic behind the mandate against it. When you think someone is flouting a reasonable law, that should directly translate into "here's a collective action problem whose solution they're disrupting". "X should not be allowed to pollute at Y levels." -> "There is a collective action problem of preventing damage to the environment, which requires that everyone pollute less than Y, even though people privately benefit from doing more." "Hans should not be allowed to pickpocket the wallets of passersby." -> "There is a collective action problem of ensuring stable property rights, which requires that people respect others' possessions, even though they privately benefit from stealing." "Uber should buy health insurance for drivers." -> "There is a collective action problem of ????, which requires that Uber buy health insurance for drivers, even though they privately benefit from paying them cash instead." Note 1: your answer to ???? must not be so broad that it proves you should buy health insurance for every person you buy a service from, including e.g. the independent courier that delivered your package. Note 2: I made an honest attempt to unravel the logic of "what is the law accomplishing with the employer/contractor boundary", in an attempt to answer that question, in this post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10717768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10717768 If you have a better answer, I'm very interested in learning from it.
- 27182818284 11y ago
  I think it also varies from city to city. I get the feeling from Hacker News that in bigger cities there are far, far more people doing Uber full-time-ish than in smaller, population-1-million cities. For those doing it 40 hours a week as their livelihood, I can understand the call for more regulation, etc. However, by far most of the folks I know doing Uber or Lyft are a lot closer to a contractor in definition. * They use their own car they've already had before Uber (I.e., they didn't buy it just for Uber as some Uber forum posts talk about) * They do it part time * Most are doing it for "something new," when I ask them about it. For example I knew one driver who in her fifties just tried it to be out of the house more.
  - jdmichal 11y ago
    All those points can apply to pizza delivery drivers. Are they contractors?
  - morgante 11y ago
    > * They use their own car they've already had before Uber (I.e., they didn't buy it just for Uber as some Uber forum posts talk about) Interestingly, buying a car specifically to drive for ridesharing apps would actually be a point in favor of them being a contractor (they're making an investment in their "business")
    - 27182818284 11y ago
      I didn't think of it that way, but you're right. I think that would be more like a contractor's own tools they bring now that I re-think it.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  Great powers are rattling sabers, electric cars are in their infancy, Russia and France are allies, Turkey is sliding into civil war, Japan is on the road of re militarization ...
asift 11y ago
Or maybe we'll learn that governmental regulation isn't the only form of regulation. Uber is better than yellow taxis by a wide margin because of market regulatory forces (reputation, repeat business, competitors, etc.) which are far stronger than governmental regulations. By shielding yellow taxis from competition (remember what these taxis were like 10 years ago?), the government actually harmed consumers and subjected yellow taxis to less effective regulatory standards.
- kuschku 11y ago
  The claim that the market forces are more effective are plain wrong. Because uber is not operating in a free market. Uber actively destroys competition to gain a new monopoly. We’ll be exchanging one monopoly with another. How well monopolies work can be seen with Comcast, etc. In other markets, where sometimes yellow cabs have been governmentally regulated, but in better ways (for example, anyone can drive a cab if they have insurance + drivers license, but only N cabs can use the cab parking), uber is not an improvement, but actually making the market worse, because they reduce competition. Your argument is like saying "Instead of Comcast, ATT, etc we should all use Google Fiber". Great, replace one monopoly with another, and for some people – take Romanian cities, which have better internet than Google Fiber – the new monopoly would be worse. We need an open market, not another monopoly. And we need safe, competition-friendly regulation by the government, not private regulation, not governmentally-enforced monopolies.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    In my opinion, any regulatory scheme which starts with "anyone can drive a cab if they have insurance + driver's license" is going to be worse than Uber. One of the major advantages of Uber is the rating system. A bad Uber driver typically won't last long in the job. There isn't much that will get a bad taxi driver to stop driving. Eventually complaints might filter up to their boss or regulators, but it's a much weaker mechanism. I think the existing regulations were mostly put in place to compensate for information asymmetry. People get into a taxi unfamiliar with the driver, the car, reasonable costs, and the area. To ensure a minimum level of competence, drivers are regulated. To ensure people don't get ripped off, fares are regulated. To ensure people don't get driven on artificially expensive routes... well, that doesn't seem to have been regulated very well. Smartphones solve this better, though. Rather than some broad regulatory regime to ensure minimum competence from a random unknown driver, you can use an app to find out about your specific driver. To ensure you don't get ripped off, you can use an app to get a fare estimate to your destination before you book. To ensure you don't get driven on artificially expensive routes, you can just compare the route you take with the route your phone thinks you should take. I wholeheartedly agree that we need an open market, not just another monopoly. But in doing so, we should take the lessons from Uber, not just the lessons from the past. The present looks a lot different. Any system which looks like traditional taxis and doesn't take advantage of the easy flow of information is going to be inferior.
dave_sullivan 11y ago
Possibly. But it's good to check assumptions periodically, and I find the assumption that the taxi industry before uber was remotely efficient to be dubious. Very few industries merit protection from open competition (in fact, I can't think of one off the top of my head). So far, as a consumer, I prefer uber (or lyft etc, experience is undifferentiated hence why I'm bearish on uber specifically) over literally every other transport-for-hire service I've ever used. The contractor debate should be seen as a first step by the IRS (and soon enough, other countries' taxmen) to take more from an economy that is moving to being self employed at greater numbers (and in growing, valuable fields). Uber and everyone should fight this tooth and nail, both in courts and through lobbying. As it stands, there are strong legal arguments on both sides. As to the ultimate fate of Uber: even if they win this, they will lose. Other competitors will steal their network effect and grow by competing on the spread between pay to company and pay to driver. In 6-10 years, self driving cars will replace human drivers, but margins will keep shrinking and competition will stay fierce. It will remain a huge industry in dollar terms, but not exceptional from a gross margin perspective.
- sbov 11y ago
  I strongly disagree. Companies have abused contractor status for a long time. This is simply more of the same - another company wishing to have their cake and eat it too. It ultimately lets them pay at least some of their employees under minimum wage. Which puts more money in their pocketbook, and takes more money out of ours (the taxpayer's) through the form of extra government assistance.
  - rw2 11y ago
    People can choose where to work. If people thought that Uber didn't offer them a good deal for employment, they can just go work somewhere else. All this does is force Uber to offer benefits which would only make them take a higher cut in the long run. Drivers will suffer in terms of their income. This entire thing is pretty dumb.
    - danielki 11y ago
Symmetry 11y ago
There was a good reason those regulations we created left an exception for contractors and those reasons very much apply to Uber. If some driver is taking hails from both Lyft and Uber should both Lyft and Uber have to provide him or her with health insurance? It is often the case that employees are listed as contractors when they shouldn't be but Uber's drivers are very much not an example of this.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  Except they very much are. Uber drivers get punished if they refuse too many fares, which means they do not get to choose what they work on, and they do not get to negotiate their own prices.
icebraining 11y ago
And maybe we'll relearn why taxi drivers were already an exception to those regulations.

by panzagl 11y ago

mseebach 11y ago

Perhaps the world is sufficiently different from a hundred years ago that we don't need the regulations anymore.

kuschku 11y ago
It took Uber 2 years to acknowledge the fact that, yes, you need insurance when you drive a car commercially. It will take another few until they’ll acknowledge that their drivers are employees, not contractors, and can demand medical insurance, retirement funds, etc. All these things used to be provided thanks to regulation, and we’re seeing now how removing the regulation leads to uninsured cars on the roads driven by people earning below minimum wage without any social security.
- icebraining 11y ago
  All these things used to be provided thanks to regulation No, most taxi drivers were already contractors, those things were not being provided before Uber came around.
- SilasX 11y ago
  I agree that Uber is flouting some reasonable, still-relevant regulations[1]. However, the insistence on "Uber needs to provide medical insurance, retirement funds, etc" is ... well, it comes off as a bit quixotic. If you did "lay down the law" one day, does that mean workers magically have all kinds of freebies? No, it would be paid for out of the same revenues that Ubers drivers are currently being paid with. Instead of "$1/mile", it'll be "$0.30/mile, minimum mile requirement, and you get health insurance". Out of one pocket, into the other. [1] "If someone is driving for your service, you must verify, not just trust, that they're insured, whether or not you provide that insurance yourself."
  - kuschku 11y ago
    Well, how does it work for taxi drivers employed at taxi companies in Germany then? Mandatory minimum wage, mandatory health insurance, mandatory retirement funds, mandatory unemployment insurance, etc. Yes, in the end they usually get nothing for doing extra work (just their wage, plus 0€/mile), but that’s most definitely better: The risk is gone – you don’t have to worry about medical stuff, or anything anymore, even as McDonalds fastfood drone you still have insurance, etc guaranteed.
    - SilasX 11y ago
      I get the benefits of having benefits. But even in Germany, independent contractors are "a thing", and there are at least some workers who don't have their employer/main client directly paying for their benefits. And for (at least some of) those cases, we can recognize that it's pointless to make that main client pay for their benefits. Some workers believe they are better of by having contractor status and buying their own benefits, and you would need to find a compelling reason not to let this happen; that's why I'm asking for the logic behind the mandate against it. When you think someone is flouting a reasonable law, that should directly translate into "here's a collective action problem whose solution they're disrupting". "X should not be allowed to pollute at Y levels." -> "There is a collective action problem of preventing damage to the environment, which requires that everyone pollute less than Y, even though people privately benefit from doing more." "Hans should not be allowed to pickpocket the wallets of passersby." -> "There is a collective action problem of ensuring stable property rights, which requires that people respect others' possessions, even though they privately benefit from stealing." "Uber should buy health insurance for drivers." -> "There is a collective action problem of ????, which requires that Uber buy health insurance for drivers, even though they privately benefit from paying them cash instead." Note 1: your answer to ???? must not be so broad that it proves you should buy health insurance for every person you buy a service from, including e.g. the independent courier that delivered your package. Note 2: I made an honest attempt to unravel the logic of "what is the law accomplishing with the employer/contractor boundary", in an attempt to answer that question, in this post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10717768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10717768 If you have a better answer, I'm very interested in learning from it.
27182818284 11y ago
I think it also varies from city to city. I get the feeling from Hacker News that in bigger cities there are far, far more people doing Uber full-time-ish than in smaller, population-1-million cities. For those doing it 40 hours a week as their livelihood, I can understand the call for more regulation, etc. However, by far most of the folks I know doing Uber or Lyft are a lot closer to a contractor in definition. * They use their own car they've already had before Uber (I.e., they didn't buy it just for Uber as some Uber forum posts talk about) * They do it part time * Most are doing it for "something new," when I ask them about it. For example I knew one driver who in her fifties just tried it to be out of the house more.
- jdmichal 11y ago
  All those points can apply to pizza delivery drivers. Are they contractors?
- morgante 11y ago
  > * They use their own car they've already had before Uber (I.e., they didn't buy it just for Uber as some Uber forum posts talk about) Interestingly, buying a car specifically to drive for ridesharing apps would actually be a point in favor of them being a contractor (they're making an investment in their "business")
  - 27182818284 11y ago
    I didn't think of it that way, but you're right. I think that would be more like a contractor's own tools they bring now that I re-think it.
venomsnake 11y ago
Great powers are rattling sabers, electric cars are in their infancy, Russia and France are allies, Turkey is sliding into civil war, Japan is on the road of re militarization ...

asift 11y ago

Or maybe we'll learn that governmental regulation isn't the only form of regulation. Uber is better than yellow taxis by a wide margin because of market regulatory forces (reputation, repeat business, competitors, etc.) which are far stronger than governmental regulations. By shielding yellow taxis from competition (remember what these taxis were like 10 years ago?), the government actually harmed consumers and subjected yellow taxis to less effective regulatory standards.

kuschku 11y ago
The claim that the market forces are more effective are plain wrong. Because uber is not operating in a free market. Uber actively destroys competition to gain a new monopoly. We’ll be exchanging one monopoly with another. How well monopolies work can be seen with Comcast, etc. In other markets, where sometimes yellow cabs have been governmentally regulated, but in better ways (for example, anyone can drive a cab if they have insurance + drivers license, but only N cabs can use the cab parking), uber is not an improvement, but actually making the market worse, because they reduce competition. Your argument is like saying "Instead of Comcast, ATT, etc we should all use Google Fiber". Great, replace one monopoly with another, and for some people – take Romanian cities, which have better internet than Google Fiber – the new monopoly would be worse. We need an open market, not another monopoly. And we need safe, competition-friendly regulation by the government, not private regulation, not governmentally-enforced monopolies.
- mikeash 11y ago
  In my opinion, any regulatory scheme which starts with "anyone can drive a cab if they have insurance + driver's license" is going to be worse than Uber. One of the major advantages of Uber is the rating system. A bad Uber driver typically won't last long in the job. There isn't much that will get a bad taxi driver to stop driving. Eventually complaints might filter up to their boss or regulators, but it's a much weaker mechanism. I think the existing regulations were mostly put in place to compensate for information asymmetry. People get into a taxi unfamiliar with the driver, the car, reasonable costs, and the area. To ensure a minimum level of competence, drivers are regulated. To ensure people don't get ripped off, fares are regulated. To ensure people don't get driven on artificially expensive routes... well, that doesn't seem to have been regulated very well. Smartphones solve this better, though. Rather than some broad regulatory regime to ensure minimum competence from a random unknown driver, you can use an app to find out about your specific driver. To ensure you don't get ripped off, you can use an app to get a fare estimate to your destination before you book. To ensure you don't get driven on artificially expensive routes, you can just compare the route you take with the route your phone thinks you should take. I wholeheartedly agree that we need an open market, not just another monopoly. But in doing so, we should take the lessons from Uber, not just the lessons from the past. The present looks a lot different. Any system which looks like traditional taxis and doesn't take advantage of the easy flow of information is going to be inferior.

dave_sullivan 11y ago

Possibly. But it's good to check assumptions periodically, and I find the assumption that the taxi industry before uber was remotely efficient to be dubious. Very few industries merit protection from open competition (in fact, I can't think of one off the top of my head). So far, as a consumer, I prefer uber (or lyft etc, experience is undifferentiated hence why I'm bearish on uber specifically) over literally every other transport-for-hire service I've ever used. The contractor debate should be seen as a first step by the IRS (and soon enough, other countries' taxmen) to take more from an economy that is moving to being self employed at greater numbers (and in growing, valuable fields). Uber and everyone should fight this tooth and nail, both in courts and through lobbying. As it stands, there are strong legal arguments on both sides. As to the ultimate fate of Uber: even if they win this, they will lose. Other competitors will steal their network effect and grow by competing on the spread between pay to company and pay to driver. In 6-10 years, self driving cars will replace human drivers, but margins will keep shrinking and competition will stay fierce. It will remain a huge industry in dollar terms, but not exceptional from a gross margin perspective.

sbov 11y ago
I strongly disagree. Companies have abused contractor status for a long time. This is simply more of the same - another company wishing to have their cake and eat it too. It ultimately lets them pay at least some of their employees under minimum wage. Which puts more money in their pocketbook, and takes more money out of ours (the taxpayer's) through the form of extra government assistance.
- rw2 11y ago
  People can choose where to work. If people thought that Uber didn't offer them a good deal for employment, they can just go work somewhere else. All this does is force Uber to offer benefits which would only make them take a higher cut in the long run. Drivers will suffer in terms of their income. This entire thing is pretty dumb.
  - danielki 11y ago

Symmetry 11y ago

There was a good reason those regulations we created left an exception for contractors and those reasons very much apply to Uber. If some driver is taking hails from both Lyft and Uber should both Lyft and Uber have to provide him or her with health insurance? It is often the case that employees are listed as contractors when they shouldn't be but Uber's drivers are very much not an example of this.

s73v3r 11y ago
Except they very much are. Uber drivers get punished if they refuse too many fares, which means they do not get to choose what they work on, and they do not get to negotiate their own prices.

icebraining 11y ago

And maybe we'll relearn why taxi drivers were already an exception to those regulations.