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This doesn't surprise me at all and it's because of hidden costs incurred by the driver, combined with an implicit bidding system that drives down wages. Hidde

This doesn't surprise me at all and it's because of hidden costs incurred by the driver, combined with an implicit bidding system that drives down wages. Hidden costs: 1. Vehicle wear and tear (cars cost you money when you drive them) 2. Vehicle depreciation (cars cost you money even when you aren't driving them) 3. Interest and fees associated with auto loans and leases 4. Insurance premiums 5. Gas 6. Unexpected/unplanned for tax bills But the feedback you're getting about your income is just the dollar figure that shows up in your account, which is vastly higher than the true amount you could reasonably keep as profit. It makes $10 feel like $100. Combine that with the implicit bidding system. And by this I mean, market forces will naturally saturate Uber and Lyft with drivers until the price falls low enough that drivers won't accept it. And because of the factors I listed above, that natural price point is practically guaranteed to be well below minimum wage. The whole setup is just beautifully engineered to trick poor people into thinking this can be a career. I've often thought about which is worse, this or Herbalife. I think Uber and Lyft might impact more people than Herbalife, and generally those people start with less, so I might give it to Uber and Lyft. Actually, it's also a profession that has one of the highest rates of workplace fatalities, so I'd definitely give the title to Uber/Lyft over Herbalife.

Sam-C 9y ago
To add in to that, Uber itself seems to offer a lot of "helpful" services for their drivers, such as the cellphone they provide that only runs the driver app and nothing else, that uber charges $10 a week to lose.
- aianus 9y ago
  Yeah, nobody does this. You just install the driver app on your personal phone.
astronautjones 9y ago
The insurance point deserves further discussion - in many states your normal coverage is voided by driving for profit. So if you get into an accident where they can prove you were working, you aren't going to get anything. I know many people who are driving for Uber and Lyft and have no idea about this
- Steeeve 9y ago
  Uber and Lyft both now verify that you have supplemental insurance. It's kind of screwy. If you have a passenger in the car, Uber/Lyft coverage is in place. If you are driving around working but no passenger, it's the driver's rideshare insurance - which is typically a rider on their personal policies. This probably changes regionally, but that's how it works in California.
  - lsc 9y ago
    Which is a good first step... but if I'm injured at a regular job? workers comp will cover my own bills and lost wages while I recover(usually even if it was my own goddamn fault) - Uber drivers don't get that benefit, and they are a lot more likely to be injured on the job than I am.
    - EdJiang 9y ago
      https://help.uber.com/h/ba03b1db-46f9-4350-9a39-8a98b83f813e https://help.uber.com/h/ba03b1db-46f9-4350-9a39-8a98b83f813e Uber is partnered with a company that provides driver injury insurance for ~4c/mile.
- throwaway0255 9y ago
  Oh yeah, insurance and financial products in general are just silent murderers of people's finances. Families get wrecked financially for generations to pay for this stuff and they don't even realize it's happening. And in order to even be eligible to become an Uber or Lyft driver, you first must navigate through that minefield of auto loans and auto leases and insurance companies. And Uber and Lyft is the opportunity that convinces you that it's a good idea to do that (more similarities to Herbalife). I say all this as someone who uses Uber and Lyft almost every day. The drivers think I'm paying them to drive me somewhere, but what I'm actually doing is paying for them to take on the liabilities/debt/depreciation associated with owning a vehicle. That's where the value is for me, it has nothing to do with them driving.
- tonyztan 9y ago
  Both Uber and Lyft have insurance policies that cover drivers and passengers during rides, and in most cases the maximum coverage per accident is $1 million. https://www.uber.com/drive/insurance/ https://www.uber.com/drive/insurance/ https://help.lyft.com/hc/en-us/articles/115013080548-Insurance-Policy https://help.lyft.com/hc/en-us/articles/115013080548-Insuran...
thegabez 9y ago
When my girlfriend traded in her car, they asked if it was ever used as a taxi/uber/lyft.
antoniuschan99 9y ago
The difference may be that there is no end goal with Herbalife. With Uber and Lyft, once the self driving cars start working it will truly displace all the drivers. So perhaps they are just pawns in this endgame.
dpweb 9y ago
I drove for a few days as an experiment. What struck me was how low skilled work it is. No judgement. Just, it felt like having a really easy job. And a little humiliating. I’m old, and with drunk kids being a little condecending, plus seemed like my car smelled like booze for days! But, how low it pays and it shocks me there are ALOT of people with free time willing to work for sub minimum wage.
- samsonradu 9y ago
  Have a friend who did it for a couple of weeks and said pretty much the same thing. It's literally a race to the bottom, heard stories about drivers who come into the big cities and sleep in their cars for this wage. Uber & co calling drivers entrepreneurs makes me sick.
HNthrow22 9y ago
I had a driver once mention a promotion uber was running for their drivers if you hit "X rides' in a certain time period you'd receive a $Y cash bonus - the catch was the system made it extremely difficult but not impossible to achieve the goal through subtle gamification techniques. Big picture tech/gamification has reached a point where oversight/legislation of some sort is long overdue. No restrictions + profit motive with our current understanding of human psychology and dopamine triggers is a recipe for a bad time.
- kermittd 9y ago
  Yep I have heard about several similar promotions in the LA area from drivers. A lot of drivers tell me often that as they close to hitting their number they get rides that are far away from where they are. They then have to drive across town to pick the rider up and then drop the rider off at their destination ( which can be 15min to hours away). The net effect is drivers rush during these promitions for quotas they usually don't hit. Would not be surprised if Uber's algorithm started placing rides for drivers far away to avoid paying out promotions.
  - fludlight 9y ago
    This sounds like the basis for a class action lawsuit that eventually settles for a $15 gas card for the affected drivers and $2m in fees for the plaintiffs' lawyers.
flomo 9y ago
I drove a cab for beer money back in college, and a year or so ago, I had an interesting discussion with a cab medallion owner, after some typical uber driver cut us off. He thought it was a suckers' game where it looked like you were making money - until you had your first breakdown and you had no money and no income. He was pretty confident the average cab driver couldn't plan for this, and the whole thing would collapse like a house of cards. For him, breakdowns weren't an issue because he still had the old Crown Victoria. He also said "they're all from turnip town" which I thought was hilarious.
- throwaway0255 9y ago
  So, Googling "they're all from turnip town" led me to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuKvUf7cr0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuKvUf7cr0s And I still don't know what it means to be from turnip town. That video has 300 views and is one of the weirdest things I've ever seen.
  - flomo 9y ago
    Ha, thanks for that. The implication was the drivers live in cheaper rural areas and come into the city on weekends to make money. Thus they don't know where they're going and are dependent on internet maps. Back when I drove a cab, there actually was some skill to it - you had to keep all the streets and bars in your head and know the best routes.
- johnpowell 9y ago
  My mom is fantastically bad with money. When I was ten my dad was murdered. Our survivor benefits in 1987 were ~2400. Our three bedroom apartment in San Diego was 700 a month. My mom managed to make us broke in 2 weeks and we were getting food boxes at the end of the month. She just went fucking bonkers whenever she had cash like it was our last day on earth. Tons of fast food, buying toilet paper at 7/11 instead of bulk at a large store. 30 years later she is even worse. She considers payday loans and her credit card unused balances income. It is fucking absurd. A few years ago I paid off all her stuff and said not to do it again. This ended exactly how you think it would. I took the long way around to explain that people like my mom are so short-sighted that she will just see the balance and never consider the cost that was occurred for that balance.
bsimpson 9y ago
Subsidized public transportation is nearly essentially for a world-class city, but it anchors the value of a ride in people's minds, which is brutal for the private transportation market. My own labor is valued at a lot more than $12 per hour, but I don't even blink at getting in the car for 20 minutes for $4 - if anything, Lyft and Uber start to look expensive in comparison to the local metro.
- vlovich123 9y ago
  Of course Lyft & Uber are more expensive than the local metro. They also pick you up & drop you off exactly where you need to be & don't make any additional stops. The anchoring for cost is to Taxi services not metro. Moreover, Lyft & Uber let you plan pretty precisely how much time you'll need even for the carpooling option in my experience; I've been in more buses/metros that broke down in the middle of my trip & am currently at 0 such issues for Lyft/Uber (I use it a fair amount for work).
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
I agree that market forces push down the prices below minimum wage. I don't think that itself is necessarily a bad thing. For one this labor is relies on a skill that most people (in US at least) already can do, so is almost unskilled labor. And unemployed people who can't find a minimum-wage job (which may be limited especially in places that set high minimum wages) are actually able to earn something. Plus these low salaries do help lower transportation costs for Uber/Lyft users. But what I don't like is how Uber/Lyft market themselves into tricking poor people that this can be a worthwhile career, especially when all these hidden costs are not clearly communicated to drivers. I think the solution relies in potential drivers becoming aware about these hidden costs.

Sam-C 9y ago

To add in to that, Uber itself seems to offer a lot of "helpful" services for their drivers, such as the cellphone they provide that only runs the driver app and nothing else, that uber charges $10 a week to lose.

aianus 9y ago
Yeah, nobody does this. You just install the driver app on your personal phone.

astronautjones 9y ago

The insurance point deserves further discussion - in many states your normal coverage is voided by driving for profit. So if you get into an accident where they can prove you were working, you aren't going to get anything. I know many people who are driving for Uber and Lyft and have no idea about this

Steeeve 9y ago
Uber and Lyft both now verify that you have supplemental insurance. It's kind of screwy. If you have a passenger in the car, Uber/Lyft coverage is in place. If you are driving around working but no passenger, it's the driver's rideshare insurance - which is typically a rider on their personal policies. This probably changes regionally, but that's how it works in California.
- lsc 9y ago
  Which is a good first step... but if I'm injured at a regular job? workers comp will cover my own bills and lost wages while I recover(usually even if it was my own goddamn fault) - Uber drivers don't get that benefit, and they are a lot more likely to be injured on the job than I am.
  - EdJiang 9y ago
    https://help.uber.com/h/ba03b1db-46f9-4350-9a39-8a98b83f813e https://help.uber.com/h/ba03b1db-46f9-4350-9a39-8a98b83f813e Uber is partnered with a company that provides driver injury insurance for ~4c/mile.
throwaway0255 9y ago
Oh yeah, insurance and financial products in general are just silent murderers of people's finances. Families get wrecked financially for generations to pay for this stuff and they don't even realize it's happening. And in order to even be eligible to become an Uber or Lyft driver, you first must navigate through that minefield of auto loans and auto leases and insurance companies. And Uber and Lyft is the opportunity that convinces you that it's a good idea to do that (more similarities to Herbalife). I say all this as someone who uses Uber and Lyft almost every day. The drivers think I'm paying them to drive me somewhere, but what I'm actually doing is paying for them to take on the liabilities/debt/depreciation associated with owning a vehicle. That's where the value is for me, it has nothing to do with them driving.
tonyztan 9y ago
Both Uber and Lyft have insurance policies that cover drivers and passengers during rides, and in most cases the maximum coverage per accident is $1 million. https://www.uber.com/drive/insurance/ https://www.uber.com/drive/insurance/ https://help.lyft.com/hc/en-us/articles/115013080548-Insurance-Policy https://help.lyft.com/hc/en-us/articles/115013080548-Insuran...

thegabez 9y ago

When my girlfriend traded in her car, they asked if it was ever used as a taxi/uber/lyft.

antoniuschan99 9y ago

The difference may be that there is no end goal with Herbalife. With Uber and Lyft, once the self driving cars start working it will truly displace all the drivers. So perhaps they are just pawns in this endgame.

dpweb 9y ago

I drove for a few days as an experiment. What struck me was how low skilled work it is. No judgement. Just, it felt like having a really easy job. And a little humiliating. I’m old, and with drunk kids being a little condecending, plus seemed like my car smelled like booze for days! But, how low it pays and it shocks me there are ALOT of people with free time willing to work for sub minimum wage.

samsonradu 9y ago
Have a friend who did it for a couple of weeks and said pretty much the same thing. It's literally a race to the bottom, heard stories about drivers who come into the big cities and sleep in their cars for this wage. Uber & co calling drivers entrepreneurs makes me sick.

HNthrow22 9y ago

I had a driver once mention a promotion uber was running for their drivers if you hit "X rides' in a certain time period you'd receive a $Y cash bonus - the catch was the system made it extremely difficult but not impossible to achieve the goal through subtle gamification techniques. Big picture tech/gamification has reached a point where oversight/legislation of some sort is long overdue. No restrictions + profit motive with our current understanding of human psychology and dopamine triggers is a recipe for a bad time.

kermittd 9y ago
Yep I have heard about several similar promotions in the LA area from drivers. A lot of drivers tell me often that as they close to hitting their number they get rides that are far away from where they are. They then have to drive across town to pick the rider up and then drop the rider off at their destination ( which can be 15min to hours away). The net effect is drivers rush during these promitions for quotas they usually don't hit. Would not be surprised if Uber's algorithm started placing rides for drivers far away to avoid paying out promotions.
- fludlight 9y ago
  This sounds like the basis for a class action lawsuit that eventually settles for a $15 gas card for the affected drivers and $2m in fees for the plaintiffs' lawyers.

flomo 9y ago

I drove a cab for beer money back in college, and a year or so ago, I had an interesting discussion with a cab medallion owner, after some typical uber driver cut us off. He thought it was a suckers' game where it looked like you were making money - until you had your first breakdown and you had no money and no income. He was pretty confident the average cab driver couldn't plan for this, and the whole thing would collapse like a house of cards. For him, breakdowns weren't an issue because he still had the old Crown Victoria. He also said "they're all from turnip town" which I thought was hilarious.

throwaway0255 9y ago
So, Googling "they're all from turnip town" led me to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuKvUf7cr0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuKvUf7cr0s And I still don't know what it means to be from turnip town. That video has 300 views and is one of the weirdest things I've ever seen.
- flomo 9y ago
  Ha, thanks for that. The implication was the drivers live in cheaper rural areas and come into the city on weekends to make money. Thus they don't know where they're going and are dependent on internet maps. Back when I drove a cab, there actually was some skill to it - you had to keep all the streets and bars in your head and know the best routes.
johnpowell 9y ago
My mom is fantastically bad with money. When I was ten my dad was murdered. Our survivor benefits in 1987 were ~2400. Our three bedroom apartment in San Diego was 700 a month. My mom managed to make us broke in 2 weeks and we were getting food boxes at the end of the month. She just went fucking bonkers whenever she had cash like it was our last day on earth. Tons of fast food, buying toilet paper at 7/11 instead of bulk at a large store. 30 years later she is even worse. She considers payday loans and her credit card unused balances income. It is fucking absurd. A few years ago I paid off all her stuff and said not to do it again. This ended exactly how you think it would. I took the long way around to explain that people like my mom are so short-sighted that she will just see the balance and never consider the cost that was occurred for that balance.

bsimpson 9y ago

Subsidized public transportation is nearly essentially for a world-class city, but it anchors the value of a ride in people's minds, which is brutal for the private transportation market. My own labor is valued at a lot more than $12 per hour, but I don't even blink at getting in the car for 20 minutes for $4 - if anything, Lyft and Uber start to look expensive in comparison to the local metro.

vlovich123 9y ago
Of course Lyft & Uber are more expensive than the local metro. They also pick you up & drop you off exactly where you need to be & don't make any additional stops. The anchoring for cost is to Taxi services not metro. Moreover, Lyft & Uber let you plan pretty precisely how much time you'll need even for the carpooling option in my experience; I've been in more buses/metros that broke down in the middle of my trip & am currently at 0 such issues for Lyft/Uber (I use it a fair amount for work).

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago

I agree that market forces push down the prices below minimum wage. I don't think that itself is necessarily a bad thing. For one this labor is relies on a skill that most people (in US at least) already can do, so is almost unskilled labor. And unemployed people who can't find a minimum-wage job (which may be limited especially in places that set high minimum wages) are actually able to earn something. Plus these low salaries do help lower transportation costs for Uber/Lyft users. But what I don't like is how Uber/Lyft market themselves into tricking poor people that this can be a worthwhile career, especially when all these hidden costs are not clearly communicated to drivers. I think the solution relies in potential drivers becoming aware about these hidden costs.