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So basically desperate people ruin everything? Say I use Uber to take advantage of HOV lanes going to and from work (and make a little extra cash). Now because

• hyperbovine 7y ago
  > So basically desperate people ruin everything? What a perfect distillation of the empathy-deficient and contemptuous attitude that a large fraction of rich, fortunate techies have towards everyone else. Qu'ils mangent de la brioche.
  • tracer4201 7y ago
    You cherry picked a part of OPs post. The rest of it is a reasonable argument. You can refute it or otherwise you’re clinging to an emotional argument and not rational one.
  • wozniacki 7y ago
    Let's not infantilize these poor and "desperate" drivers who don't know any better than to be exploited by the technocrats. They were doing no better illegally sub-contracting with illegal sub-lessees of taxi medallions who themselves illegally forked out hundreds of thousands of dollars to wealthy medallion owners who hoarded them and prevented anyone else from legally procuring them. The previous taxi system ( prior to the arrival of ride-hailing apps ) was thoroughly corrupt at every level. I hope thats not up for debate. Immigrant new-arrival drivers would pay daily fixed amounts to illegally "lease" these cabs (on the daily) to those at the bottom of the chain of operators described above. They were already "part-time" (well before the arrival of Uber and Lyft) and weren't afforded many of the protections the medallion issuing body put in place. It was a thoroughly corrupt sham that the governing bodies paid little attention to and hand waived the illegal practices because they were (and are) themselves corrupt rent-seekers who were in bed with those interests they truly protected. The officials knew it. The medallion owners knew it. The sub-vendors knew it. The immigrant daily-wage-slaves knew it. This is why Uber, Lyft and others were such life savers when they arrived. Everyone hated taxi cabs.
    • privateSFacct 7y ago
      The CC machine was always broken. Wildly under insured (despite the regulation!) No service in tough neighborhoods late at night when you needed them. Would drive while yelling on the phone. Despite the fares shown (very high) the guys driving looked totally broke. NO WAY were they actually getting the $$.
  • SilasX 7y ago
    That was the trick: the "app" the GP describes already exists! It's called the deposit system on recyclables, and somehow, governments never consider promoting such full time redeemers into employees! Do you think governments should turn away all such recyclables that the homeless bring in on the grounds that they're not making a living wage? If not, you see the legit problem the GP described.
• cdmcmahon 7y ago
  > Say I use Uber to take advantage of HOV lanes going to and from work (and make a little extra cash) No one does this. This argument exists in a fantasy land.
  • tracer4201 7y ago
    I commute with an app called Scoop between Bellevue and Seattle. Many people who drive using that app, especially between Seattle and the east side, do it so they can recoup the cost of the 520 toll while also being able to drive in the HOV lane. I don’t think it’s a stretch at all that I might drive for Uber in the morning and take a passenger or two that’s on my way across 520. It’s comical how confidently you speak on this matter.
    • pnutjam 7y ago
      So you do this, but don't even use Uber to do it.. Hmmmm...
      • tracer4201 7y ago
        I don’t have a car and don’t drive. My post shared what drivers have always told me over the past couple years. If you’re willing to drive for Scoop, you can also drive for Uber or other ride service.
    • olyjohn 7y ago
      Then why are you not doing it every day and recouping your costs? Seems kind of stupid to me that you're flushing money down the toilet if it's such an easy thing to do with Uber.
      • tracer4201 7y ago
        I’m not doing it at all because I don’t have a car - I only ride using this app. Picking up someone on your way to work could be ideal or a challenge if you need to get to work early. I’m not sure what your point is - it should have zero opportunity cost or it’s a bad deal? Does your current job have any opportunity cost?
• toomuchtodo 7y ago
  A healthy society is more important than clever technocrats.
  • dev_dull 7y ago
    This is the mantra of all government regulation (which is really just a legislated grab at power): “I know it’s bad for you, but it will be better for others. And because we think that’s more important, you have no choice.” An objectively free society is always better than your subjectively “healthy” society.
    • toomuchtodo 7y ago
      You vote, I vote, we all vote, and whatever policy wins becomes the law. And it looks like this is going to become law. The people have spoken. If one takes issue, plenty of other states to choose from to better experience one’s personal idea of “freedom”.
      • dnautics 7y ago
        You vote, I vote, we all vote, and sometimes the lawmakers kick out yellow people because there's too many of them immigrating into this country. There are plenty of other countries to choose from to better experience your idea of social justice.
    • nosianu 7y ago
      The only "free" society is you alone in a large area. In any other place, with other humans nearby, you will not be "free". And this definition of "Freedom" only looks at the impact from other humans, totally ignoring the restrictions the world itself imposes on you (but to human psychology those don't matter nearly as much as the will of other people imposed on yourself). This sounds cliche, and it is, but for whatever reason I feel kind of forced to reemphasize the obvious in response to your self-centered-universe-outlook comment. In a human society, the alternative to government is rule of the strongest. That's how we got nobles and kings, later the great capitalist tycoons and their private police and armies. > An objectively free society That does not mean anything. Well, it means you are trying to shove your world-view down everybody else's throat while shutting out any discussion and arguments that you dislike.
• alistairSH 7y ago
  Say I use Uber to take advantage of HOV lanes going to and from work Slugging might be an option.[1] Doesn't help with additional income, or work very well for suburb-to-suburb commutes, but at least in DC, it's a very popular option, especially coming from the south on the I-95 corridor. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slugging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slugging
  • lozaning 7y ago
    There's also scoop, which is explicitly for this kind of activity. You define your route to and from work and then it matches you to people who are going the same place at the same time as you.
• jeltz 7y ago
  Yes? Why do you think we need things like minimum wage and OSHA? Because there are desperate people and people who exploit them.
  • umvi 7y ago
    > Yes? Why do you think we need things like minimum wage and OSHA? Because there are desperate people and people who exploit them. Nobody is intentionally exploiting anybody; desperate people exploit themselves. So the solution is either gatekeeping or rate limiting. a) only allow people that meet a minimum economic status to make money from the app. b) limit the amount of money/time that can be spent on the app so it is clear the intent is not to provide full-benefits careers.
  • DataWorker 7y ago
    That’s why capitalists love immigration and outsourcing. Desperation lowers operating costs.
  • vasilipupkin 7y ago
    you can’t mix all things together as an argument for some unrelated third thing. Yes, we need OSHA which has nothing to do with the fact that people are choosing on their own to drive for Uber because it is convenient for them. If you classify them as employees, many of them won’t be able to do the thing they are voluntarily choosing to do.
    • lazyasciiart 7y ago
      They are all the same category of things - making it illegal for a person to work in a job that they are volunteering to take. Maybe it's illegal because the pay is below minimum wage, maybe it's because they are doing something without following the safety requirements of OSHA. Some people think this is a sign that minimum wage/child labor laws/any such restriction should be removed. Others, like myself, think that it should be possible for everyone to have better options available so that nobody does want to work for scraps.
      • 7y ago
• lozaning 7y ago
  Im pretty sure if you made an app that would pay people a dime for every piece of trash they picked up, Delhi would just have even more cobras. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
  • umvi 7y ago
    Well, I'm thinking more along the lines of Italki. The app would just be for escrow and connecting people. Someone posts a trash bounty for their neighborhood. Another person accepts the bounty. They exchange messages, the acceptance criteria is agreed upon, and the transaction is completed after the bounty poster has verified the trash is gone. I think such an app would work great for cleaning up public places, but would break down as soon as people started tried to turn it into a career.
• pnutjam 7y ago
  Who do you imagine is doing these jobs? It's people who need money.
• candu 7y ago
  It's almost as though...we as a society continually assess whether the harm from some activity exceeds benefit, and react accordingly? Or maybe we're starting to expect that people building things have responsibility to foresee potential harms arising from their use, whether or not part of the intended use case, and to build in an equitable way? After all, if "inadvertently deepens abject poverty" is a possible outcome of a tool you're building, maybe the problem is with the design and not the people using it.
  • aeorgnoieang 7y ago
    I'm pretty sure actually, uniformly enforcing all of the currently existing labor laws would 'inadvertently deepen abject poverty' too. There are a lot of people working black or gray market jobs (i.e. workers for whom the 'employment' relationship is itself illegal, at least in some aspects) already. There are tens of millions of people in the U.S. that are not legally permitted to reside here, let alone work. Are you also in favor of actually enforcing those laws and either preventing them from working or deporting them? > It's almost as though...we as a society continually assess whether the harm from some activity exceeds benefit, and react accordingly? I do not think that U.S. society, or any country really, could be even approximately described like this, accurately. As just one example, minimum wage laws were originally introduced to prevent minorities (e.g. black people) from undercutting the wages of ethnic-majority workers (i.e. 'white' people). As another, a large number of U.S. states require certification or licensing for people to cut or style other's hair. I am extremely skeptical that such laws or regulations were enacted because a fair cost-benefit analysis implied that such were reasonable.
• aeorgnoieang 7y ago
  > So basically desperate people ruin everything? This is due to people (non-consciously or not-explicitly) holding or believing something like 'The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics'. In a nutshell, it's often better to ignore a problem than attempt to improve it in any way less than perfect, at least in terms of other third parties' reactions.