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A Driver’s Suicide Reveals the Dark Side of the Gig Economy

87 points by monsieurpng 9y ago

civilian 9y ago
One of my close friends killed himself. I don't wish suicide on anyone. I'm sure Doug Schifter's fallacies are obvious to us. He was committing the CBT cognitive distortions of "Personalization" and "magnification". He failed to recognize that his taxi job was an ill-gotten gain, gotten through lobbying, government control, and harming consumers. Our species is built around the principle of adaptation. When the world changes, you must change with it. Or you die.
- alphonsegaston 9y ago
  That you've so internalized this oppressive ideology as natural or just is why I imagine people like Schifter feel so hopeless in the face of their circumstances. Perhaps think on this before dismissing another's life so glibly.
  - civilian 9y ago
    No, I've just done a lot of CBT. Killing yourself for a chance at a NYT article is flawed thinking, plain and simple. I graduated at 2009, after the recession, with a degree that wasn't particularly useful. I was unemployed for a long time, but I figured out how to lower my standards, get something to survive on, and then use that foundation as an opportunity to retrain myself. It's hard, but it's not impossible, and millions of people take new jobs that are in different fields.
    - 6d6b73 9y ago
      But you're not 60, right?
- ohyes 9y ago
  Eh, Uber is driving taxi companies out of business with billions of dollars in VC money. Offering a dramatic discount in a unsustainable way to ruin your competition is anti-competitive and pretty unethical. In NYC 88,000 is a livable wage. NYC metro is a very expensive place to live. Calling a livable wage for a weeks work “ill gotten gains” is a bit far fetched. Unions and state controlled monopolies exist for a reason, not the least of which is protecting the broader workforce who don’t have leverage against their wealthy employers otherwise.
  - dcow 9y ago
    I find it hard to blame Uber for doing something that companies have done for hundreds of years in the US. So what if it's 2018 and a venture capital backed tech company is at the center of it this time? Unions don't prevent new competition, otherwise they'd be rather unethical themselves..one (with a capitalist mindset) might argue. This is capitalism and if it's too emotionally painful to watch disruption unfold then as a society we need to find a different mode of operation. Why get distracted by the players when the game is the problem? I've been largely okay with capitalism I guess because I've benefitted from it. But human lives have decreased in value. In a society where making $500, literally, is more valuable than a human life, we'll choose the money every time. That's the game. Of course I have no idea what to do, in the face of this almost existential crisis, but getting mad a Uber for disrupting an industry is wasted effort.
- dang 9y ago
  This somehow crosses into personal attack, which is not ok in HN comments. The man who killed himself may not be here to read it, but the reason we have this rule is because of community effects.
- hmschreck 9y ago
  A little more in depth, the article specifically mentions the depreciation of taxi medallions. "Medallions, which grant the right to operate a taxi in New York City, were now depreciating assets and drivers who had borrowed money to pay for them, once a sound investment strategy, were deeply in debt." Just like any investment, you are not guaranteed a right to a return, or even to keep the money you put into an investment, and there is no reason why taxi medallions should be any different. The only reason these medallions were so valuable and such a "sound investment" for so long is because of government-induced artificial scarcity. There are good arguments behind that model, but if you depend on a model like that, eventually, you will have problems. "He was now sometimes forced to work more than 100 hours a week to survive he said; when he had started out in the 1980s a 40-hour week was fairly typical." In 5+ years, he never had the opportunity to change careers or do something about his situation? I know it's not easy, especially as you get older, but it's a lot easier than leaving your family behind. I apologize if I sound harsh, but he had years to come to terms with the changes in his profession and adapt, and he chose not to. "For taxi drivers staring down an even bleaker future of driverless cars" - in other words, the changes brought about by Uber and Lyft and every other service of that sort is inevitable anyway. What do these drivers think will happen the moment they can reasonably be replaced by the very cars they drive? A lot of this feels like the death throes of an industry that had its time and served its purpose, but an arguably better alternative came along, and the industry now feels as though it is owed something by virtue of existing, rather than by virtue of providing something of value. Pardon me, my buggy whip was left in the beginning of last century.
chrischen 9y ago
What’s stopping them from switching to driving for Uber and Lyft? Whether or not those are devasting to Taxis the fact still remains those systems are superior to traditional Taxis.
- ProAm 9y ago
  The money is lower, its still a race to the bottom, still essentially financed by VC and both companies hope to eliminate the driver with autonomy.
- cwyers 9y ago
  Taxi medallions are hellishly expensive. Most of the time, you have a loan to purchase your medallion, that you then spend a long, long time paying off. It's essentially a form of indentured servitude. You can switch to Uber/Lyft. But you still have to pay off that loan for your medallion. And if Uber/Lyft aren't paying the same rate as driving a cab used to, you can find yourself without the money to pay your medallion loan and still make ends meet. That said, I disagree with the headline blaming this on the gig economy. There's lots to blame the gig economy for, but this is pretty squarely showing the flaws in the old medallion system -- that you need a crippling amount of financial debt in your name to participate in the system.
  - Domenic_S 9y ago
    I thought taxi companies owned the medallions -- hoarding them like gold coins -- and charged the driver what amounted to a "rental fee" for using them. IIRC it's unusual for a single driver to own their own medallion. I could be misremembering though.
    - lambda 9y ago
      In many cities there would be a mix. Some drivers would rent them from companies, some would own the medallion themselves.
    - lazerpants 9y ago
      You're both right. As the medallions increased astronomically in price, only larger groups of drivers or companies could afford to participate.
johnsushant 9y ago
What would all these drivers do once self driving taxis become the norm? They would instantly go from severely underpaid to completely unemployed. Considering that a market disrupter like Uber has affected them to this extent, do people honestly believe 100,000 new jobs would be available once automation takes their jobs?
- iaw 9y ago
  This is a larger problem than just livery drivers, automation threatens nearly every industry over the next 30 years. The vocations requiring less training will go first but eventually jobs that no one expected will become automated. This is a bigger societal problem than just livery drivers, what do we do when there is no work for people? What do we do when technology drives the market value of an individuals labor to zero? To be clear, I don't believe letting them kill themselves is a good answer.
  - peacetreefrog 9y ago
    Just because we're not sure what the jobs of the future will be like doesn't mean there won't be any. In the 1800's, 90% of people worked in agriculture. Tell anyone back at the time that in the 21st century it'd be < 2% and they'd freak out just like you are now.
    - iaw 9y ago
      I think the increase in leverage provided through the industrial revolution will pale in the comparison of that provided in the upcoming age of automation. Just because historically there was job replacement with the innovation doesn't mean that we'll see that in the coming century. If we are unprepared it could threaten our society for decades.
- martin1975 9y ago
  Airplanes do in fact have the capability to complete a flight from point A to point B without a pilot. Yet, we still embed pilots in the cockpit. Cars might be simpler, but there's way too many gotchas while driving a computer cannot be programmed to handle that a human driver can intuit or defend against. A completely driver-less future might happen, but it won't be with the current infrastructure. IMHO, you'd need to isolate self-driving lanes from human driver lanes completely before it can become a reality, and slowly phase out driver-only cars with self-driving cars/lanes. Even at that rate, I'm still not certain it would work better than what we have now...
GuiA 9y ago
Technological disruption can often be a good thing - more/better product/services can be had for less money - I don’t think the HN crowd needs to be convinced of this. However, it also means that in the short term, the people doing the work that has been disrupted are going to be impacted. And while a few Stanford grads can push an app at the click of a button, it takes humans much longer to adapt to the changes engendered, particularly if they’ve been doing the same job in the same city for 30 years, supporting a family with that income, and all of a sudden that job only generates a fraction of the money it once did. Ideally, the society in which this occurs would have a number of safety nets (public healthcare, housing/food assistance, cheap/free education, reliable and affordable public transportation, etc) to ensure that those people do not suffer too much because of the transition. Put simply, the US does not have many of these safety nets. Labor protection laws are a joke - the US still has no laws mandating paid maternity leave, for one example amongst many. Healthcare is a disaster, meaning that if you are unemployed and get seriously sick, it could literally spell the end of your life. Education is very expensive, making a professional reconversion hard to fathom for most. And housing prices in large cities are spiraling out of control, meaning that if you can’t make rent, homelessness is often the next step. Uber, and so many companies like it, are improvements in some ways - who knows how long it would have taken for taxi companies to let people summon a car from a tap of a button on their phone. But in doing so, they’re also destroying the livelihoods of many. If the taxes that Uber paid were put to good use by the US government to offer support in all the ways we’ve seen above to those affected, it wouldn’t be as much of a problem. But here we are.
- hmschreck 9y ago
  I can agree with most of this - the taxes of the disruptors destroying an industry should absolutely be used to help those displaced. At the same time, people affected need to be realistic. There is no protection for them, so complaining about the changes while doing nothing to help yourself is just a losing game.
  - coolaliasbro 9y ago
    Complaining draws attention which can lead to interest and eventually actionable conditions for a greater group of individuals than just the affected. Also, when one is scrambling to make ends meet, it's not always so easy to be more proactive. Surviving in such situations consumes a lot of mental, emotional, and temporal resources.
pweissbrod 9y ago
Adding the link to Doug Schifter's Facebook post before committing suicide in protest https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1888367364808997&id=100009072541151 https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1888367364808997...
imgabe 9y ago
You don't see a lot of elevator operators anymore. That used to be a job. It became "deprofessionalized" as now anyone with a finger can operate an elevator. Should we have erected a wall of legislation to protect their jobs? > For taxi drivers staring down an even bleaker future of driverless cars These are not "taxi drivers". They are human beings. They are not single-purpose machines who are incapable of doing anything else. Humans are capable of learning a variety of different skills, even if they have already learned one. Articles like this treat them like specially made parts that are only suited for one thing.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
  Humans are capable of learning new things, but in general they don't like to. And they HATE when learning new things is not optional and is a requirement for continued employment. Just because we can adapt doesn't mean this transition won't be extremely difficult for society and have major consequences. Just look at the riots in Greece when people were told the age of retirement eligibility for state pensions was going from 61 to 63.
  - imgabe 9y ago
    I'm sure at some point in human history some group of humans depended on, say, a herd of bison who grazed on a certain plain. I'm sure they had a really good system and they knew all about that herd of bison and how to best hunt them. Then maybe something changed and the bison weren't there anymore. Did they complain that they now had to learn a new way to hunt bison or perhaps a new way to find food entirely? Probably some of them did. Maybe they didn't like that they were forced by circumstances to learn something new. Still, nature doesn't care whether you like what you have to do to survive or not. Adapt or die. Such is life.
    - plurgid 9y ago
      hold on now. This isn't nature we're talking about here. It's other humans. When I spend 20 or 30 years of my life specializing in a particular task, and doing it to generate a large amount of wealth for my employer, who passes a much smaller amount of wealth on to me, there are and should be strings attached to that from the employer's side. In the US at least, there are already PLENTY of strings attached from the employee side. I can't see a doctor without a job. I can't borrow money without a job. I can't smoke grass, yadda yadda yadda. And I live in an "at will" state as well. Sorry. This is not nature we're dealing with. It's humans exploiting other humans. The "adapt or die" philosophy is not justified.
peacetreefrog 9y ago
It's a sad story and an unfortunate part of capitalism. But the alternative is worse. You don't (or shouldn't) have a right to make people purchase your product or service at whatever price you want.
turc1656 9y ago
"He blamed politicians — mayors Michael R. Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo — and their acquiescence to the rich for permitting so many cars to flood the streets." Sounds like this guy didn't really believe in a free market and wanted the politicians to make sure supply was tightly controlled so that he could profit from reduced competition. I'm sorry but I can provide no sympathy for someone with this mentality because I'm quite sure he saw no issue with restricted competition and a very, very significant barrier to entry when he was able to profit from it (those medallions cost more than most people's houses in NYC).
- djsumdog 9y ago
  To be fair, there is no such thing as the free market. Markets only exist thanks to States. They have never existed independently of a state (I recommend the book Debt: The First 5,000 Years). Now back to the free market, Uber is operating at a loss. They're undercutting Taxis and taking huge hits to keep their business running. That kind of pricing is illegal, and we've seen companies like airlines get into huge trouble for operating at a loss to try to kill smaller airlines. It's literally anti-competitive. If the playing field were fair, it'd be different. But it's not. Uber constantly ignores laws on an international scale, under the name of "disruption." They might be laws you don't like, but they do exist for a reason, and somewhere you have to draw a line.
  - turc1656 9y ago
    Agree 100% on Uber's anti-competitive practices and pricing structure. Amazon does the same thing - it's retail business which is what Amazon is famous for produces a substantial loss every quarter (and it's increasing). They have been subsidizing their losses with the profits from the high margin cloud business. This is supposedly a very serious felony when you have pricing/market power (and obviously Amazon does have that), yet Jeff Bezos and his executive team remain handcuff-free. I haven't read that book, but your statement about markets only existing with the state strikes me as very odd. Conceptually, no government is required for a simple barter system - you and I can simply agree to trade X for Y. Perhaps that is key point - if you want to use "money", then the state is required. Although even then you can theoretically just use gold/silver coins.
beisner 9y ago
I wish people would stop blaming companies for doing exactly what they are designed/incentivized to do. That is the capitalist system. We should be blaming the system that allows for the circumstances that many people being displaced by technology are experiencing. Individuals should not have their financial viability completely compromised by shifts in technology or society. Sure, I feel for the existential problems that shifts cause (e.g. seeing your life’s work commoditized), but the material, economic harm that comes from it is entirely systemic. Is not Uber’s fault that taxi drivers are becoming homeless. It is the government’s fault for not providing an adequate social safety net.
- peacetreefrog 9y ago
  It sounds like a cliche, but capitalism = freedom. People can choose whether or how they want to get around -- whether it's calling an uber, hailing a taxi, or walking -- and whether the cost of doing so is worth it to them. Similarly, people can decide whether the money they'd make ($69k annually according to this article) driving a taxi is worth it to them, and if not, do something else. There are alternatives. Capitalism is just the aggregation of all these micro-transactions. Most of the time, intervening in this system means preventing win-win transactions between consenting adults.
  - alphonsegaston 9y ago
    >It sounds like a cliche, but capitalism = freedom. And War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength.
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    You cannot choose options in a monopoly or when a major player uses dumping prices and worker churn to force out competition. The natural end state of capitalism is an efficient and aggressive monopoly or cartel. (Including a cartel with the government.) How is lack of proper options freedom?
    - peacetreefrog 9y ago
      Simultaneously complaining about monopoly, which allows firms to keep prices artificially high, and "price dumping" makes little sense. I have issues with both. It's obviously not a monopoly. Apart from Uber AND Lyft, you have regular taxi's, public transit, personal cars, bicycles and the ability to walk. As for price dumping, again -- if rich VC's want to compete with each other to subsidize my rides and my drivers wages -- I'm not going to complain about it. Uber and Lyft are the epitome of options vs what was going on in the NYC taxi scene before them.
neo4sure 9y ago
One question no one explains is since the value of a medallion is obviously lower now why doesn't the commission have some kind our revaluation and give back money to the people who purchased it at a higher price.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  Because our baking system is hopelessly corrupt and doesn't favor the struggling US citizen. Look at the 2008 financial collapse. Banks were bailed out, the US government buying debt $1 for $1 (instead of for cents on the dollar like they should have). They could have, instead of bailing out the banks, forced those banks to sell debt (their mortgages) back to consumers at fractions of a dollar. Most people struggled and fought to get basic loan adjustments. The smart ones walked away from their houses. The reality is, yes the State needs to step in and adjust the medallion prices and cut the independent owners a break. But only a fraction are owned by individuals. Most are owned by the big companies, which many would argue shouldn't get a break. Plus it's not like the city of NY has a lot of money to even suggest this. They can't even keep transit funded enough to maintain MTA and keep Penn Station from falling apart.
jgoodhcg 9y ago
Universal Basic Income would have saved him, and help all the other people in an unstoppable disruption.
- martin1975 9y ago
  Only temporarily. Without true job creation to sustain things like UBI, welfare, unemployment insurance, etc - you're just living on borrowed dollars and hoping for a better future. Of course, we could always print some dollars and quantitatively ease them into the economy ;)
  - jgoodhcg 9y ago
    Idk, no stats or data to back this up but... I really believe that UBI would be sustainable by tapping into the concentrated wealth that arises as an unfortunate and unfair side effect of the economic rules we put in place.
gist 9y ago
I am surprised that most comments here have zero empathy for a worker in that age group that had been (for lack of a better way to put it) 'put out to pasture'. Under the same type of thinking (and I wouldn't say that I am a union sympathizer in any way) there would be little use for unions since there will always be a large group of people that are willing and able to take the job at a vastly lower pay rate (for many union jobs). There has to be a balance but the balance isn't simply removing all restrictions and letting people loose their living. And no when you are in your 60's you are not going to simply learn and pursue a new career either everything becomes harder and your obligations are such that many times it's simply not practical.
- lagadu 9y ago
  There is: in significant chunks of the world we call that "social security".
southphillyman 9y ago
Sucks for who ever invested in the medallions at the wrong time. Other than that I find it hard to feel sorry for the taxi industry. Cabs refusing to pick people up based on race, refusing to go to certain areas, flat out cheating people by manipulating routes, some times not showing up if called. I've seen it all. Uber seems to eliminate all of those issues as far as I can tell.
habosa 9y ago
Most of the comments in here are along the lines of "are we expected to protect the outdated taxi driver? Let them drive for Uber or get a new job!" In a vacuum, that logic holds. But remember that the government has made taxi driving very regulated for a long time. To become a driver you had to buy their medallion and follow all of their regulations. These regulations imposed a high fixed cost and many recurring costs on taxi drivers. Yes of course these regulations were also beneficial to taxi drivers by restricting their competition, but the point is that this deal was struck between the industry and the government and a lot of individuals staked their livelihood on the details here. Now the same city governments are basically saying "thanks for all that investment, we are deleting it" when they let Uber and Lyft come in. The city officials also did this with an uncharacteristic speed, basically capitulating immediately in a world where it takes years and years to get anything done. Taxi drivers were rightly surprised and individually harmed, they played by the rules as they were written and were told to fuck off by a bunch of VC-funded engineers with big lawyers and bigger budgets. This is not a good precedent.
- peacetreefrog 9y ago
  The taxi union teamed up with city governments to restrict competition at the expense of consumers. It's not the rules as they were written so much as the rules they wrote. Getting rid of them is great precedent. What's unfortunate is that it'll be much harder to get rid of rules like this in other, not as consumer facing industries. Also, re: the "speed" at which this happened. Seems like driving for Uber or Lyft (less money but on your own time) would in theory be a great way for drivers to transition to something else.
- joeblau 9y ago
  > This is not a good precedent. If you're only analyzing this from the side of the drivers, I would agree. As someone who has used public transpiration my whole life, the service that taxis provide has been average to blatantly discriminatory. I have stories from Washington D.C., New York City, Chicago, and L.A. where I've not been able to get a ride because of how I look. In some cases I've been denied rides at cab stands and been forced to walk to a friends house (over a mile). I've had to ask caucasian women to hail a cab and then do a quick swap to get a ride. I've been asked "where I'm going" and then been told "no sorry I'm not going there." I've been given a joy ride around a city, using my iPhone to realize that the driver is doing loops and taking me out of the way to run up the fare. Not all taxi drivers were like this, but I have real experiences that make it difficult for me to empathize with a community that really didn't care about my dollar in the first place. I can't speak for riders that never had problems getting a cab, but the traditional U.S. taxi market was barely accessible to me; Uber and Lyft were never like that.
calvinbhai 9y ago
Taxi and Limo drivers were setting themselves up for such disruption for quite some time. Forget the cost of the ride, if only they (as in, all drivers) had provided respectful and quality service without denying rides or throwing a tantrum for those who chose to pay by card, Uber and Lyft wouldn't have benefited from such anti-incumbency sentiment. During the pre Uber/Lyft days, a driver himself told me how he worked: Basically, give enough rides till he get's his next meal's money or a bit more. Thats the kind of job security they had. Of course, they were benefiting from the regulatory bubble before Uber and Lyft deflated it instead of popping it. I feel bad for those who joined the taxi industry just before Uber/Lyft juggernaut started, and were probably singed the worst.But I guess such things happen for those who join industries that are about to be disrupted.. The incumbent Taxi and Limo drivers didn't realize that with Uber and Lyft, they (cab drivers) had lesser political clout, to get favorable terms in regulations.
Sohcahtoa82 9y ago
Taxi drivers can cry me a river. Maybe if they didn't provide shitty service and lobby for self-serving, anti-consumer laws to limit how many taxis can be on the road, I'd have some sympathy, but no. They shit their own bed, now they get to sleep in it.
kisstheblade 9y ago
I don't like it that uber is coming to my country also and taxis are being deregulated. Until now you could make a decent living driving a cab, and all the cab drivers were skilled and professional and trustworthy. If you forgot your wallet in the cab you could be sure to pick it up at the lost and found. It just isn't possible to operate a quality servicde with uber's model and prices. You will have unskilled labour for less than minimum wages, ie. they won't be able to afford to buy a home for themselves driving for uber. This is key from the article: "Implicit in his testament was the anger he felt over the de-professionalization of his life’s work" Somebody here compared this to elevator operators. Come on, what a silly comparison. Driving optimally in a city and finding your way and not crashing is actually a job that takes skill and practice.

87 points by monsieurpng 9y ago

One of my close friends killed himself. I don't wish suicide on anyone. I'm sure Doug Schifter's fallacies are obvious to us. He was committing the CBT cognitive distortions of "Personalization" and "magnification". He failed to recognize that his taxi job was an ill-gotten gain, gotten through lobbying, government control, and harming consumers. Our species is built around the principle of adaptation. When the world changes, you must change with it. Or you die.

alphonsegaston 9y ago
That you've so internalized this oppressive ideology as natural or just is why I imagine people like Schifter feel so hopeless in the face of their circumstances. Perhaps think on this before dismissing another's life so glibly.
- civilian 9y ago
  No, I've just done a lot of CBT. Killing yourself for a chance at a NYT article is flawed thinking, plain and simple. I graduated at 2009, after the recession, with a degree that wasn't particularly useful. I was unemployed for a long time, but I figured out how to lower my standards, get something to survive on, and then use that foundation as an opportunity to retrain myself. It's hard, but it's not impossible, and millions of people take new jobs that are in different fields.
  - 6d6b73 9y ago
    But you're not 60, right?
ohyes 9y ago
Eh, Uber is driving taxi companies out of business with billions of dollars in VC money. Offering a dramatic discount in a unsustainable way to ruin your competition is anti-competitive and pretty unethical. In NYC 88,000 is a livable wage. NYC metro is a very expensive place to live. Calling a livable wage for a weeks work “ill gotten gains” is a bit far fetched. Unions and state controlled monopolies exist for a reason, not the least of which is protecting the broader workforce who don’t have leverage against their wealthy employers otherwise.
- dcow 9y ago
  I find it hard to blame Uber for doing something that companies have done for hundreds of years in the US. So what if it's 2018 and a venture capital backed tech company is at the center of it this time? Unions don't prevent new competition, otherwise they'd be rather unethical themselves..one (with a capitalist mindset) might argue. This is capitalism and if it's too emotionally painful to watch disruption unfold then as a society we need to find a different mode of operation. Why get distracted by the players when the game is the problem? I've been largely okay with capitalism I guess because I've benefitted from it. But human lives have decreased in value. In a society where making $500, literally, is more valuable than a human life, we'll choose the money every time. That's the game. Of course I have no idea what to do, in the face of this almost existential crisis, but getting mad a Uber for disrupting an industry is wasted effort.
dang 9y ago
This somehow crosses into personal attack, which is not ok in HN comments. The man who killed himself may not be here to read it, but the reason we have this rule is because of community effects.
hmschreck 9y ago
A little more in depth, the article specifically mentions the depreciation of taxi medallions. "Medallions, which grant the right to operate a taxi in New York City, were now depreciating assets and drivers who had borrowed money to pay for them, once a sound investment strategy, were deeply in debt." Just like any investment, you are not guaranteed a right to a return, or even to keep the money you put into an investment, and there is no reason why taxi medallions should be any different. The only reason these medallions were so valuable and such a "sound investment" for so long is because of government-induced artificial scarcity. There are good arguments behind that model, but if you depend on a model like that, eventually, you will have problems. "He was now sometimes forced to work more than 100 hours a week to survive he said; when he had started out in the 1980s a 40-hour week was fairly typical." In 5+ years, he never had the opportunity to change careers or do something about his situation? I know it's not easy, especially as you get older, but it's a lot easier than leaving your family behind. I apologize if I sound harsh, but he had years to come to terms with the changes in his profession and adapt, and he chose not to. "For taxi drivers staring down an even bleaker future of driverless cars" - in other words, the changes brought about by Uber and Lyft and every other service of that sort is inevitable anyway. What do these drivers think will happen the moment they can reasonably be replaced by the very cars they drive? A lot of this feels like the death throes of an industry that had its time and served its purpose, but an arguably better alternative came along, and the industry now feels as though it is owed something by virtue of existing, rather than by virtue of providing something of value. Pardon me, my buggy whip was left in the beginning of last century.

chrischen 9y ago

What’s stopping them from switching to driving for Uber and Lyft? Whether or not those are devasting to Taxis the fact still remains those systems are superior to traditional Taxis.

ProAm 9y ago
The money is lower, its still a race to the bottom, still essentially financed by VC and both companies hope to eliminate the driver with autonomy.
cwyers 9y ago
Taxi medallions are hellishly expensive. Most of the time, you have a loan to purchase your medallion, that you then spend a long, long time paying off. It's essentially a form of indentured servitude. You can switch to Uber/Lyft. But you still have to pay off that loan for your medallion. And if Uber/Lyft aren't paying the same rate as driving a cab used to, you can find yourself without the money to pay your medallion loan and still make ends meet. That said, I disagree with the headline blaming this on the gig economy. There's lots to blame the gig economy for, but this is pretty squarely showing the flaws in the old medallion system -- that you need a crippling amount of financial debt in your name to participate in the system.
- Domenic_S 9y ago
  I thought taxi companies owned the medallions -- hoarding them like gold coins -- and charged the driver what amounted to a "rental fee" for using them. IIRC it's unusual for a single driver to own their own medallion. I could be misremembering though.
  - lambda 9y ago
    In many cities there would be a mix. Some drivers would rent them from companies, some would own the medallion themselves.
  - lazerpants 9y ago
    You're both right. As the medallions increased astronomically in price, only larger groups of drivers or companies could afford to participate.

johnsushant 9y ago

What would all these drivers do once self driving taxis become the norm? They would instantly go from severely underpaid to completely unemployed. Considering that a market disrupter like Uber has affected them to this extent, do people honestly believe 100,000 new jobs would be available once automation takes their jobs?

iaw 9y ago
This is a larger problem than just livery drivers, automation threatens nearly every industry over the next 30 years. The vocations requiring less training will go first but eventually jobs that no one expected will become automated. This is a bigger societal problem than just livery drivers, what do we do when there is no work for people? What do we do when technology drives the market value of an individuals labor to zero? To be clear, I don't believe letting them kill themselves is a good answer.
- peacetreefrog 9y ago
  Just because we're not sure what the jobs of the future will be like doesn't mean there won't be any. In the 1800's, 90% of people worked in agriculture. Tell anyone back at the time that in the 21st century it'd be < 2% and they'd freak out just like you are now.
  - iaw 9y ago
    I think the increase in leverage provided through the industrial revolution will pale in the comparison of that provided in the upcoming age of automation. Just because historically there was job replacement with the innovation doesn't mean that we'll see that in the coming century. If we are unprepared it could threaten our society for decades.
martin1975 9y ago
Airplanes do in fact have the capability to complete a flight from point A to point B without a pilot. Yet, we still embed pilots in the cockpit. Cars might be simpler, but there's way too many gotchas while driving a computer cannot be programmed to handle that a human driver can intuit or defend against. A completely driver-less future might happen, but it won't be with the current infrastructure. IMHO, you'd need to isolate self-driving lanes from human driver lanes completely before it can become a reality, and slowly phase out driver-only cars with self-driving cars/lanes. Even at that rate, I'm still not certain it would work better than what we have now...

GuiA 9y ago

Technological disruption can often be a good thing - more/better product/services can be had for less money - I don’t think the HN crowd needs to be convinced of this. However, it also means that in the short term, the people doing the work that has been disrupted are going to be impacted. And while a few Stanford grads can push an app at the click of a button, it takes humans much longer to adapt to the changes engendered, particularly if they’ve been doing the same job in the same city for 30 years, supporting a family with that income, and all of a sudden that job only generates a fraction of the money it once did. Ideally, the society in which this occurs would have a number of safety nets (public healthcare, housing/food assistance, cheap/free education, reliable and affordable public transportation, etc) to ensure that those people do not suffer too much because of the transition. Put simply, the US does not have many of these safety nets. Labor protection laws are a joke - the US still has no laws mandating paid maternity leave, for one example amongst many. Healthcare is a disaster, meaning that if you are unemployed and get seriously sick, it could literally spell the end of your life. Education is very expensive, making a professional reconversion hard to fathom for most. And housing prices in large cities are spiraling out of control, meaning that if you can’t make rent, homelessness is often the next step. Uber, and so many companies like it, are improvements in some ways - who knows how long it would have taken for taxi companies to let people summon a car from a tap of a button on their phone. But in doing so, they’re also destroying the livelihoods of many. If the taxes that Uber paid were put to good use by the US government to offer support in all the ways we’ve seen above to those affected, it wouldn’t be as much of a problem. But here we are.

hmschreck 9y ago
I can agree with most of this - the taxes of the disruptors destroying an industry should absolutely be used to help those displaced. At the same time, people affected need to be realistic. There is no protection for them, so complaining about the changes while doing nothing to help yourself is just a losing game.
- coolaliasbro 9y ago
  Complaining draws attention which can lead to interest and eventually actionable conditions for a greater group of individuals than just the affected. Also, when one is scrambling to make ends meet, it's not always so easy to be more proactive. Surviving in such situations consumes a lot of mental, emotional, and temporal resources.

pweissbrod 9y ago

Adding the link to Doug Schifter's Facebook post before committing suicide in protest https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1888367364808997&id=100009072541151 https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1888367364808997...

imgabe 9y ago

You don't see a lot of elevator operators anymore. That used to be a job. It became "deprofessionalized" as now anyone with a finger can operate an elevator. Should we have erected a wall of legislation to protect their jobs? > For taxi drivers staring down an even bleaker future of driverless cars These are not "taxi drivers". They are human beings. They are not single-purpose machines who are incapable of doing anything else. Humans are capable of learning a variety of different skills, even if they have already learned one. Articles like this treat them like specially made parts that are only suited for one thing.

ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
Humans are capable of learning new things, but in general they don't like to. And they HATE when learning new things is not optional and is a requirement for continued employment. Just because we can adapt doesn't mean this transition won't be extremely difficult for society and have major consequences. Just look at the riots in Greece when people were told the age of retirement eligibility for state pensions was going from 61 to 63.
- imgabe 9y ago
  I'm sure at some point in human history some group of humans depended on, say, a herd of bison who grazed on a certain plain. I'm sure they had a really good system and they knew all about that herd of bison and how to best hunt them. Then maybe something changed and the bison weren't there anymore. Did they complain that they now had to learn a new way to hunt bison or perhaps a new way to find food entirely? Probably some of them did. Maybe they didn't like that they were forced by circumstances to learn something new. Still, nature doesn't care whether you like what you have to do to survive or not. Adapt or die. Such is life.
  - plurgid 9y ago
    hold on now. This isn't nature we're talking about here. It's other humans. When I spend 20 or 30 years of my life specializing in a particular task, and doing it to generate a large amount of wealth for my employer, who passes a much smaller amount of wealth on to me, there are and should be strings attached to that from the employer's side. In the US at least, there are already PLENTY of strings attached from the employee side. I can't see a doctor without a job. I can't borrow money without a job. I can't smoke grass, yadda yadda yadda. And I live in an "at will" state as well. Sorry. This is not nature we're dealing with. It's humans exploiting other humans. The "adapt or die" philosophy is not justified.

peacetreefrog 9y ago

It's a sad story and an unfortunate part of capitalism. But the alternative is worse. You don't (or shouldn't) have a right to make people purchase your product or service at whatever price you want.

turc1656 9y ago

"He blamed politicians — mayors Michael R. Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo — and their acquiescence to the rich for permitting so many cars to flood the streets." Sounds like this guy didn't really believe in a free market and wanted the politicians to make sure supply was tightly controlled so that he could profit from reduced competition. I'm sorry but I can provide no sympathy for someone with this mentality because I'm quite sure he saw no issue with restricted competition and a very, very significant barrier to entry when he was able to profit from it (those medallions cost more than most people's houses in NYC).

djsumdog 9y ago
To be fair, there is no such thing as the free market. Markets only exist thanks to States. They have never existed independently of a state (I recommend the book Debt: The First 5,000 Years). Now back to the free market, Uber is operating at a loss. They're undercutting Taxis and taking huge hits to keep their business running. That kind of pricing is illegal, and we've seen companies like airlines get into huge trouble for operating at a loss to try to kill smaller airlines. It's literally anti-competitive. If the playing field were fair, it'd be different. But it's not. Uber constantly ignores laws on an international scale, under the name of "disruption." They might be laws you don't like, but they do exist for a reason, and somewhere you have to draw a line.
- turc1656 9y ago
  Agree 100% on Uber's anti-competitive practices and pricing structure. Amazon does the same thing - it's retail business which is what Amazon is famous for produces a substantial loss every quarter (and it's increasing). They have been subsidizing their losses with the profits from the high margin cloud business. This is supposedly a very serious felony when you have pricing/market power (and obviously Amazon does have that), yet Jeff Bezos and his executive team remain handcuff-free. I haven't read that book, but your statement about markets only existing with the state strikes me as very odd. Conceptually, no government is required for a simple barter system - you and I can simply agree to trade X for Y. Perhaps that is key point - if you want to use "money", then the state is required. Although even then you can theoretically just use gold/silver coins.

beisner 9y ago

I wish people would stop blaming companies for doing exactly what they are designed/incentivized to do. That is the capitalist system. We should be blaming the system that allows for the circumstances that many people being displaced by technology are experiencing. Individuals should not have their financial viability completely compromised by shifts in technology or society. Sure, I feel for the existential problems that shifts cause (e.g. seeing your life’s work commoditized), but the material, economic harm that comes from it is entirely systemic. Is not Uber’s fault that taxi drivers are becoming homeless. It is the government’s fault for not providing an adequate social safety net.

peacetreefrog 9y ago
It sounds like a cliche, but capitalism = freedom. People can choose whether or how they want to get around -- whether it's calling an uber, hailing a taxi, or walking -- and whether the cost of doing so is worth it to them. Similarly, people can decide whether the money they'd make ($69k annually according to this article) driving a taxi is worth it to them, and if not, do something else. There are alternatives. Capitalism is just the aggregation of all these micro-transactions. Most of the time, intervening in this system means preventing win-win transactions between consenting adults.
- alphonsegaston 9y ago
  >It sounds like a cliche, but capitalism = freedom. And War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  You cannot choose options in a monopoly or when a major player uses dumping prices and worker churn to force out competition. The natural end state of capitalism is an efficient and aggressive monopoly or cartel. (Including a cartel with the government.) How is lack of proper options freedom?
  - peacetreefrog 9y ago
    Simultaneously complaining about monopoly, which allows firms to keep prices artificially high, and "price dumping" makes little sense. I have issues with both. It's obviously not a monopoly. Apart from Uber AND Lyft, you have regular taxi's, public transit, personal cars, bicycles and the ability to walk. As for price dumping, again -- if rich VC's want to compete with each other to subsidize my rides and my drivers wages -- I'm not going to complain about it. Uber and Lyft are the epitome of options vs what was going on in the NYC taxi scene before them.

neo4sure 9y ago

One question no one explains is since the value of a medallion is obviously lower now why doesn't the commission have some kind our revaluation and give back money to the people who purchased it at a higher price.

djsumdog 9y ago
Because our baking system is hopelessly corrupt and doesn't favor the struggling US citizen. Look at the 2008 financial collapse. Banks were bailed out, the US government buying debt $1 for $1 (instead of for cents on the dollar like they should have). They could have, instead of bailing out the banks, forced those banks to sell debt (their mortgages) back to consumers at fractions of a dollar. Most people struggled and fought to get basic loan adjustments. The smart ones walked away from their houses. The reality is, yes the State needs to step in and adjust the medallion prices and cut the independent owners a break. But only a fraction are owned by individuals. Most are owned by the big companies, which many would argue shouldn't get a break. Plus it's not like the city of NY has a lot of money to even suggest this. They can't even keep transit funded enough to maintain MTA and keep Penn Station from falling apart.

jgoodhcg 9y ago

Universal Basic Income would have saved him, and help all the other people in an unstoppable disruption.

martin1975 9y ago
Only temporarily. Without true job creation to sustain things like UBI, welfare, unemployment insurance, etc - you're just living on borrowed dollars and hoping for a better future. Of course, we could always print some dollars and quantitatively ease them into the economy ;)
- jgoodhcg 9y ago
  Idk, no stats or data to back this up but... I really believe that UBI would be sustainable by tapping into the concentrated wealth that arises as an unfortunate and unfair side effect of the economic rules we put in place.

gist 9y ago

I am surprised that most comments here have zero empathy for a worker in that age group that had been (for lack of a better way to put it) 'put out to pasture'. Under the same type of thinking (and I wouldn't say that I am a union sympathizer in any way) there would be little use for unions since there will always be a large group of people that are willing and able to take the job at a vastly lower pay rate (for many union jobs). There has to be a balance but the balance isn't simply removing all restrictions and letting people loose their living. And no when you are in your 60's you are not going to simply learn and pursue a new career either everything becomes harder and your obligations are such that many times it's simply not practical.

lagadu 9y ago
There is: in significant chunks of the world we call that "social security".

southphillyman 9y ago

Sucks for who ever invested in the medallions at the wrong time. Other than that I find it hard to feel sorry for the taxi industry. Cabs refusing to pick people up based on race, refusing to go to certain areas, flat out cheating people by manipulating routes, some times not showing up if called. I've seen it all. Uber seems to eliminate all of those issues as far as I can tell.

habosa 9y ago

Most of the comments in here are along the lines of "are we expected to protect the outdated taxi driver? Let them drive for Uber or get a new job!" In a vacuum, that logic holds. But remember that the government has made taxi driving very regulated for a long time. To become a driver you had to buy their medallion and follow all of their regulations. These regulations imposed a high fixed cost and many recurring costs on taxi drivers. Yes of course these regulations were also beneficial to taxi drivers by restricting their competition, but the point is that this deal was struck between the industry and the government and a lot of individuals staked their livelihood on the details here. Now the same city governments are basically saying "thanks for all that investment, we are deleting it" when they let Uber and Lyft come in. The city officials also did this with an uncharacteristic speed, basically capitulating immediately in a world where it takes years and years to get anything done. Taxi drivers were rightly surprised and individually harmed, they played by the rules as they were written and were told to fuck off by a bunch of VC-funded engineers with big lawyers and bigger budgets. This is not a good precedent.

peacetreefrog 9y ago
The taxi union teamed up with city governments to restrict competition at the expense of consumers. It's not the rules as they were written so much as the rules they wrote. Getting rid of them is great precedent. What's unfortunate is that it'll be much harder to get rid of rules like this in other, not as consumer facing industries. Also, re: the "speed" at which this happened. Seems like driving for Uber or Lyft (less money but on your own time) would in theory be a great way for drivers to transition to something else.
joeblau 9y ago
> This is not a good precedent. If you're only analyzing this from the side of the drivers, I would agree. As someone who has used public transpiration my whole life, the service that taxis provide has been average to blatantly discriminatory. I have stories from Washington D.C., New York City, Chicago, and L.A. where I've not been able to get a ride because of how I look. In some cases I've been denied rides at cab stands and been forced to walk to a friends house (over a mile). I've had to ask caucasian women to hail a cab and then do a quick swap to get a ride. I've been asked "where I'm going" and then been told "no sorry I'm not going there." I've been given a joy ride around a city, using my iPhone to realize that the driver is doing loops and taking me out of the way to run up the fare. Not all taxi drivers were like this, but I have real experiences that make it difficult for me to empathize with a community that really didn't care about my dollar in the first place. I can't speak for riders that never had problems getting a cab, but the traditional U.S. taxi market was barely accessible to me; Uber and Lyft were never like that.

calvinbhai 9y ago

Taxi and Limo drivers were setting themselves up for such disruption for quite some time. Forget the cost of the ride, if only they (as in, all drivers) had provided respectful and quality service without denying rides or throwing a tantrum for those who chose to pay by card, Uber and Lyft wouldn't have benefited from such anti-incumbency sentiment. During the pre Uber/Lyft days, a driver himself told me how he worked: Basically, give enough rides till he get's his next meal's money or a bit more. Thats the kind of job security they had. Of course, they were benefiting from the regulatory bubble before Uber and Lyft deflated it instead of popping it. I feel bad for those who joined the taxi industry just before Uber/Lyft juggernaut started, and were probably singed the worst.But I guess such things happen for those who join industries that are about to be disrupted.. The incumbent Taxi and Limo drivers didn't realize that with Uber and Lyft, they (cab drivers) had lesser political clout, to get favorable terms in regulations.

Sohcahtoa82 9y ago

Taxi drivers can cry me a river. Maybe if they didn't provide shitty service and lobby for self-serving, anti-consumer laws to limit how many taxis can be on the road, I'd have some sympathy, but no. They shit their own bed, now they get to sleep in it.

kisstheblade 9y ago

I don't like it that uber is coming to my country also and taxis are being deregulated. Until now you could make a decent living driving a cab, and all the cab drivers were skilled and professional and trustworthy. If you forgot your wallet in the cab you could be sure to pick it up at the lost and found. It just isn't possible to operate a quality servicde with uber's model and prices. You will have unskilled labour for less than minimum wages, ie. they won't be able to afford to buy a home for themselves driving for uber. This is key from the article: "Implicit in his testament was the anger he felt over the de-professionalization of his life’s work" Somebody here compared this to elevator operators. Come on, what a silly comparison. Driving optimally in a city and finding your way and not crashing is actually a job that takes skill and practice.