4 ms·

Uber, Airbnb (and more of those modern "community feel good" services) are a slap in the face to all the workers who fought for workers rights and unions.

by tdkl 10y ago

aykutcan 10y ago
And that is a bad thing ?
- regularjack 10y ago
  Are you implying that workers losing rights is a good thing?
  - pjscott 10y ago
    This conversation badly needs concrete examples. "Workers rights" sounds like a nice thing -- but what, exactly, does it mean? What specific policies are we talking about? For example, you can have an interesting argument about minimum wages. You can have a different interesting argument about workplace safety standards. But you can't have an interesting argument about both of them at once.
mjolk 10y ago
I don't think it's fair to categorize it as a slap in the face. If people want to offer up their cars/home (or, in my experience of using AirBNB, their non-residence rental properties) to take part in a nascent/risky employer agreement, that's external to people that benefit from longer-stanging workplace regulations. It's not either/or and the success of Uber/AirBNB suggest that something was broken or missing in the taxi and hotel industries.
curun1r 10y ago
On the other hand, the taxi industry is a slap in the face to anyone needing to safely get to a destination beyond walking distance. I used Uber a bunch while I was traveling around Southeast Asia. There were also times I had to take taxis. The taxis would routinely try to rip me off, refuse to run the meters, inflate the price at the destination and threaten to bring in police if I didn't pay the new amount that was 2-3 times the agreed upon rate. When running the meters, the taxis would routinely take long, roundabout routes to inflate the fare. And in cities without Uber, taxi fares were routinely as much as 5 times higher than in cities with Uber. Meanwhile, Uber would tell me, in advance, the price I would pay, have a car show up without me having to flag it down and the drivers would use GPS to take me exactly where I wanted to go as fast a possible. People like to focus on how Uber is exploiting their drivers and charging below-cost prices, but they ignore all the other ways that Uber is better than the taxi industry and all the ways that the taxi industry has needed to change for a long time now. I can respect Stallman's opinion, but when Uber is not only the cheaper option but also the safer option, I'm not going to choose to compromise my safety to make a principled point.

Uber, Airbnb (and more of those modern "community feel good" services) are a slap in the face to all the workers who fought for workers rights and unions.

by tdkl 10y ago

Uber, Airbnb (and more of those modern "community feel good" services) are a slap in the face to all the workers who fought for workers rights and unions.

aykutcan 10y ago

And that is a bad thing ?

regularjack 10y ago
Are you implying that workers losing rights is a good thing?
- pjscott 10y ago
  This conversation badly needs concrete examples. "Workers rights" sounds like a nice thing -- but what, exactly, does it mean? What specific policies are we talking about? For example, you can have an interesting argument about minimum wages. You can have a different interesting argument about workplace safety standards. But you can't have an interesting argument about both of them at once.

mjolk 10y ago

I don't think it's fair to categorize it as a slap in the face. If people want to offer up their cars/home (or, in my experience of using AirBNB, their non-residence rental properties) to take part in a nascent/risky employer agreement, that's external to people that benefit from longer-stanging workplace regulations. It's not either/or and the success of Uber/AirBNB suggest that something was broken or missing in the taxi and hotel industries.

curun1r 10y ago

On the other hand, the taxi industry is a slap in the face to anyone needing to safely get to a destination beyond walking distance. I used Uber a bunch while I was traveling around Southeast Asia. There were also times I had to take taxis. The taxis would routinely try to rip me off, refuse to run the meters, inflate the price at the destination and threaten to bring in police if I didn't pay the new amount that was 2-3 times the agreed upon rate. When running the meters, the taxis would routinely take long, roundabout routes to inflate the fare. And in cities without Uber, taxi fares were routinely as much as 5 times higher than in cities with Uber. Meanwhile, Uber would tell me, in advance, the price I would pay, have a car show up without me having to flag it down and the drivers would use GPS to take me exactly where I wanted to go as fast a possible. People like to focus on how Uber is exploiting their drivers and charging below-cost prices, but they ignore all the other ways that Uber is better than the taxi industry and all the ways that the taxi industry has needed to change for a long time now. I can respect Stallman's opinion, but when Uber is not only the cheaper option but also the safer option, I'm not going to choose to compromise my safety to make a principled point.