8 ms·

"Silicon Valley innovation now is directly aimed at oppressing the underclass, and everybody knows it and can see it. They hate Uber. People hate Uber. It means

• Anderkent 9y ago
  How does Uber 'oppress the underclass'? Puhlease.
  • mrgordon 9y ago
    In the medium term, they get public transit systems shut down or reduced in service by pricing fares artificially low for a period of time. This enables them to then exercise monopoly pricing power on the market (or oligopoly with Lyft or whatever local competitor) and ultimately harms the lower classes. Thus the $5 splurge for an Uber instead of the $2 bus hypothetically becomes the $10 Uber with no alternative short of driving yourself. I'm not super convinced by this argument but it is a reasonable argument. Especially given that Uber wields billions in venture capital specifically to systematically underprice both regular taxis and public transit options.
    • eric_the_read 9y ago
      I haven't seen this actually happen, though. In Denver, at least, RTD has been expanding routes and light rail service (albeit slowly, but that is most definitely NOT Uber's fault), even as Uber, Lyft, etc. have become more popular.
      • mrgordon 9y ago
        Well Denver won best transit in America recently to be fair. This article points at what I'm saying: http://fortune.com/2017/10/13/uber-lyft-public-transit-ridership/ http://fortune.com/2017/10/13/uber-lyft-public-transit-rider... Fewer people ride public transit when ridesharing is available. Ridesharing actually substitutes more for public transit than for driving, which means it puts more people into small vehicles and creates more pollution and congestion. Whether you see it in growing Denver or not, less riders ultimately means less fares, less funding, and less service.
        • eric_the_read 9y ago
          Thanks, that was the sort of article I was hoping for. I am surprised to see Denver winning best transit in America, though; it still takes me 2-3x the time to travel light rail or bus than driving. Sometimes the convenience is worth it, but usually not.
          • mrgordon 9y ago
            Yeah I think ultimately NYC still has the most usable transit network. I am not sure the details of the award without searching but they had it plastered up inside the buses when I was there. It probably gets good user ratings because its been improving as opposed to NYC which is overwhelmed with riders and maintenance. I did notice Denver had a lot of buses compared to most places in America, but it is still a car culture after all.
    • geezerjay 9y ago
      > In the medium term, they get public transit systems shut down This sounds like grade-A bullshit. At best rideshare services reduce the use of personal cars and compete with taxi services, but they can't or won't compete with mass transit. Moreover the upper or even middle class aren't exactly the target market of public transportation services. If anyone was switching from public transportation to rideshare services, that would be the class you assert is being oppressed, which makes absolurely no sense.
      • mrgordon 9y ago
        First of all, I don't think your tone is very kind or conducive to a productive conversation. You state with no evidence whatsoever that rideshare services "can't or won't compete with mass transit" while the truth is that millions of people decide between the two on a daily basis. In places like NYC and SF where transit is viable, it is widely used by the lower, middle, even upper middle classes. It has become much more prevalent to simply take Lyft to work every day (some employers just pay for it) which leaves less people on MTA or BART. That hurts funding for maintaining extremely expensive public transit systems which often leads to cutbacks in service during tough times as "we can't support the long hours with so few passengers" Yes some of the lower class benefits from ridesharing (in the short term at least) and I acknowledged there were two sides to the argument. But ultimately if people get some cheap rides for a few years but then have to choose between expensive rides or degraded public transit, then they've almost certainly lost out unless driverless cars or some other innovation saves the day.
        • mrgordon 9y ago
          Here is a recent article about how people are switching from public transit to ridesharing and not from driving as many people expect: http://fortune.com/2017/10/13/uber-lyft-public-transit-ridership/ http://fortune.com/2017/10/13/uber-lyft-public-transit-rider... It doesn't make sense to say ridesharing "can't or won't compete with mass transit" when its literally the main thing it competes with.
        • IWeldMelons 9y ago
          I do not understand how it is possible. Public transit is soo much cheaper. In many cases, it is just unaffordable for someone to switch from taking the bus to Uber.
  • DenisM 9y ago
    Commoditizing labor is very disruptive and stuff, yet it drives down the price to commodity levels - right above subsistence. The entire gig economy is like this. And not just them either.
    • Anderkent 9y ago
      If there were better options available, people would work there. Folks drive ubers not because they want to contribute to the 'gig economy', but because that's the best option they have. Removing someone's best option never helps them.
      • DenisM 9y ago
        Same argument can be applied to labor conditions in the factories 100 years ago. It was wrong then, and it might be wrong now.
        • Anderkent 9y ago
          Factories were a huge improvement over peasantry/starvation actually. Yes, they were still horrible, and we've improved since; but there was a reason people moved en masse to the industrial towns. I suggest Polanyi's The Great Transformation if you want to find out more about this.
      • Jasper_ 9y ago
        Perhaps some of that $50 billion valuation can be used to pay their workforce a proper wage and give them benefits? Just a thought...
        • Anderkent 9y ago
          Valuation is not revenue nor any other form of money. They don't actually have $50 billion. At best you could claim the markets expect the future worth of the company be on average around $50 billion (modulo preferential stock impact, so actually a bit less).
• api 9y ago
  VC-driven Silicon Valley innovation is directly aimed at making money. The fact that money making overlaps significantly with oppressing the underclass is not the fault of Silicon Valley, though SV isn't doing anything to help. It's a side effect of the fact that we are in an extremely demand constrained economy. Demand constrained economy is a fancy pants way of saying "everyone is broke so they can't buy anything so why make anything for people to buy?" Below the upper middle class, nobody has any expendable income. That means there are few customers for things designed... well... for customers. That means entrepreneurs can't make money selling things to people unless they're luxury goods, and that's a tough market to break into. (Juciero wasn't such a dumb idea from this perspective. VCs aren't stupid. It was a gamble on creating a new luxury market for the top ~10%. Better executed it might have succeeded.) As a result Silicon Valley (along with every other industry) must turn elsewhere for customers. Elsewhere is advertisers, propagandists, oppressive regimes, etc., hence surveillance capitalism. The other alternative is to try to find ways to crush margin ("disrupt" as its been redefined to mean) out of some existing industry, which usually means slashing wages and killing jobs and ultimately making the demand constrained economy problem worse. The ultimate blame for this situation goes to Washington for pushing supply side economics in a demand constrained economy and to New York for abandoning productive capitalism in favor of financial gambling and bubble inflation.
  • platz 9y ago
    Quite right. Both can be true - it's not either-or. I encourage you to watch the talk, if you're willing to stomach his gen-x sensibility. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2O_fxmrP_Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2O_fxmrP_Q . > that means entrepreneurs can't make money selling things to people unless they're luxury goods "[Moore's law] is ending. It hasn't quite ended yet, but in ten years it'll be obvious that it's over. Apple is selling jewelry. That's what they sell. And there is no singularity of California. There is.. I mean Intel could not make it pay. I mean I saw them struggle to keep Moore's law alive.. they were heroes about it - it didn't work." . > The ultimate blame for this situation goes to Washington for pushing supply side economics in a demand constrained economy "The mausoleum for Moore's law. They couldn't make it pay under the Washington Consensus, and their version of global neo-liberalism. They just couldn't make it pay. So now Silicon Valley is becoming Detroit, because that's the logic of American industrial development. Tech has lost its charmed life. Even the Apple AppStore has died. It's quite like the space race after the American moon landing, or it's quite like the end of a Californian Gold Rush. This is California's DNA, and time passes for everyone, and consequences always arise. Stuff that seems revolutionary and disruptive in 2017 is mostly frills for rich people."
• adventured 9y ago
  Uber massively empowered the underclass by destroying the taxi cartels. Lyft exists because of Uber. Even if one argues that Uber deserves to be punished for its various sins, the revolution they helped spark will improve transportation over time. Just demolishing the medallion racket alone is a vast improvement for the underclass, of which pretty much all taxi drivers belonged. Pre-Uber, Taxi drivers were more like indentured workers, with between little and zero hope of ever owning or controlling anything. Medallion prices in New York City reached $1+ million before Uber tanked the scheme.
  • raiyu 9y ago
    Not sure why this comment was voted down, it's actually quite true, as I was a NYC resident for 25 years and my dad drove a cab there as well. Uber the company may have been egregious in many ways, but along with Lyft and the iPhone and their interpretation of the TLC laws they were able to bring competition to a much needed market and displace the old monopoly that taxi owners had. Which by the way, were much worse on their employees than Uber ever was. It's also important to note that the experience of using Uber/Lyft is much better than a taxi: 1. You can get back lost items 2. You have some idea that the driver picking you up is professional 3. You have recourse against a bad ride 4. Likewise, it's a two way street, as a rider the driver now also knows that you are going to act appropriately 5. Convenience of being picked up where you are 6. Convenience of not having to explain how to get a to place that isn't often frequented by taxis 7. Convenience of never having to take your wallet out 8. Overall better quality cars, both in terms of comfort and safety since they are newer and more well maintained
  • inkaudio 9y ago
    Stop repeating this, it is wrong. Uber copied Lyft, Uber was initially another high end black car/limo service, the whole history was documented on TechCrunch articles, here is one to start: https://techcrunch.com/2012/05/22/zimrides-lyft-is-going-to-give-uber-some-lower-priced-competition/ https://techcrunch.com/2012/05/22/zimrides-lyft-is-going-to-...
    • Fricken 9y ago
      App based rideshare brokering would have happened one way or another. If it hadn't been Uber or Lyft it would have been someone else, or possibly many others. Nobody in particular deserves special credit for coming up with the idea. Although Uber was quite exceptional in their aggressive growth and willingness to challenge the law. I think without Uber and specifically Kalanik, it wouldn't have happened as fast.
• stcredzero 9y ago
  Silicon Valley innovation now is directly aimed at oppressing the underclass, and everybody knows it and can see it. They hate Uber. People hate Uber. It means the death of the era of good feelings that came with this constant Moore's Law style innovation. This has been coming down the pike since at least 2012, in days when Sidecar was still a big deal. One good practice all the world religions and philosophies worth a damn tell us: Keep checking your level of smug. Put a dipstick into your smug-sump and read off the level, because it is directly correlated with your douchebag index!
• meri_dian 9y ago
  Silicon Valley doesn't oppress the underclass, what a load of melodramatic nonsense. Most Silicon Valley companies have nothing to do with the underclass, and when they do it's usually in the form of making things like movies, TV shows and music more affordable (think Spotify and Netflix among others).
  • Jasper_ 9y ago
    Wait, you don't think "the gig economy" of Uber, Lyft, Instacart, Doordash has anything to do with the underclass? That's the workforce that actually does the job that they consistently try to stifle and pay less under the guise of being "a tech company".
    • meri_dian 9y ago
      The proliferation of companies like that has probably increased the total number of jobs available in the economy. I don't see that as a bad thing. If you have a problem with wages, then you really have a problem with the whole economic structure of our society. Most of those companies couldn't exist if they paid their grunt workers more so it's not like they have much of a choice.
    • heyyyouu 9y ago
      There's a number of economists (not to mention the actual drivers of those services) who argue that these companies are bringing up the underclass by offering work opportunities to those who otherwise would find employment very difficult.
• Balgair 9y ago
  Aside: Isn't Moore's Law dead, as strictly defined? We've been at ~.25TB to 1TB phones for a few years now.
  • twalla 9y ago
    Moore's Law has to do with transistor density in integrated circuits. The analogue for storage is apparently something called Kryder's Law.
• rajacombinator 9y ago
  Oh cmon. Travis may have demonstrated himself to be an unmitigated douchebag over the years but he’s still orders of magnitude above VCs on the scale of being a decent human. Being “despised and never trusted” by those guys is a good signal. Uber may have issues also, but they’re arguably much better than SV establishment companies in terms of screwing their userbase. Uber just doesn’t hide it behind “don’t be evil” BS.
  • platz 9y ago
    how many levels of rationalization are you on
• dragonwriter 9y ago
  What does Sterling mean by the “underclass”? That usually refers to the street criminals, permanently unemployable, and others who have fallen off the bottom end of the formal economy. But the argument Sterling seems to be making seems like it more naturally would apply to the working class; while the underclass may be oppressed and SV may play a role, the way he ties Uber in just doesn't seem to connect to underclass as opposed to working class oppression.
  • platz 9y ago
    yeah, I think he's playing a little fast and loose with the word underclass here. Perhaps it's simply for dramatic effect. However the main point to me doesn't hang on exact parsing of this word - one could imagine related terms (working class, the have-nots, the little people, the proleteriat) with similar effect. It does matter exactly who he's talking about, but parsing this differently is not exactly at the level of Refutation of the main point. the whole theme is rather high level and abstract to begin with, anyway, which is not quite at the level of precision of concrete examples.