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Having spoken to enough Uber drivers in West Yorkshire (you don’t have a choice, they will talk to you) you start to get a feeling for the reasons. Flexibility

Having spoken to enough Uber drivers in West Yorkshire (you don’t have a choice, they will talk to you) you start to get a feeling for the reasons. Flexibility of working hours is a big thing. People like to be able to drop shifts and pick them up as and when they need. If they need more money in the run up to Christmas they can put more time in. The other is that the firms aren’t exactly bastions of fairness either. I hear time and again that the operators give the jobs to their favourite staff, or as described; whoever is fucking the operator. The concept of working for a boss and having to deal with some fundamental injustice seems to ring true. For better or worse Uber is seen as ‘fair’ to the drivers, at least on the whole. The rules are at least laid out, keep your rating clean and we’ll give you jobs just like anyone else.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
> For better or worse Uber is seen as ‘fair’ to the drivers, at least on the whole. The rules are at least laid out, If true, people wouldn’t be complaining about surge pricing. People just want cheap, quality, fast service. They don’t care about fair. The transparency provided by electronic records and payment of taxi rides does lead to better service though.
- mft_ 7y ago
  Not sure if you’re missing the point made. Consumers are the ones likely to complain about surge pricing. Drivers are the ones who (in the example given) do want fairness from the dispatcher, which they sometimes don’t get with traditional taxi companies and human dispatchers, but presumably do from Uber’s algorithm.
  - jackcodes 7y ago
    This is what I was trying to convey. From the taxi drivers perspective, the ‘algorithm’ is seen as being more equal than the dispatcher. The ‘algorithm’ in this instance doesn’t discriminate on skin colour, handsomeness, or the side of the bed it woke up on. They still find plenty of unfairness in Uber from the individual to Uber relationship, such as the fees for one, but there seems to be less injustice between fellow drivers compared to traditional firms.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      > The ‘algorithm’ in this instance doesn’t discriminate on skin colour, handsomeness, or the side of the bed it woke up on. But the drivers do, which is a source of complaints in places where taxi service is considered to be an extension of public transport. Uber-like companies (it's not just Uber, MyTaxi/FreeNow suffers from this as well) are notoriously unreliable if you live in or want to go to places further away from the city center or otherwise inconvenient for the drivers, or if your start or destination suggests you might be inconvenient to handle. For instance, I've had trouble getting a ride to a maternity hospital in the city center, and only got one after I switched the destination to a nearby beauty salon. I confirmed this when talking later with the drivers over other rides - they see the requests to/from hospitals, they just skip them. In this way, an algorithm is fairer than dispatcher for the drivers, but the dispatcher is fairer for the passenger.
      - lotsofpulp 7y ago
        > In this way, an algorithm is fairer than dispatcher for the drivers, but the dispatcher is fairer for the passenger The algorithm is the dispatcher, and theoretically, would weed out drivers that discriminate after a certain number of incidents. I don’t see why a human dispatcher has less reason to discriminate than a driver. Presumably, discrimination is to maximum use revenue, which is in both the driver and dispatcher’s interest.
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        In the places I've ordered taxis via a call, human dispatchers don't usually know who the passenger is and where they want to go, so they don't get to discriminate on those.
        lotsofpulp 7y ago
        I imagine if a taxi driver refused to give someone a ride, who was already told they would get a ride from a dispatcher, because it would lower their revenue, the dispatcher would not penalize them in any way.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    Yes, I misunderstood that.

lotsofpulp 7y ago

> For better or worse Uber is seen as ‘fair’ to the drivers, at least on the whole. The rules are at least laid out, If true, people wouldn’t be complaining about surge pricing. People just want cheap, quality, fast service. They don’t care about fair. The transparency provided by electronic records and payment of taxi rides does lead to better service though.

mft_ 7y ago
Not sure if you’re missing the point made. Consumers are the ones likely to complain about surge pricing. Drivers are the ones who (in the example given) do want fairness from the dispatcher, which they sometimes don’t get with traditional taxi companies and human dispatchers, but presumably do from Uber’s algorithm.
- jackcodes 7y ago
  This is what I was trying to convey. From the taxi drivers perspective, the ‘algorithm’ is seen as being more equal than the dispatcher. The ‘algorithm’ in this instance doesn’t discriminate on skin colour, handsomeness, or the side of the bed it woke up on. They still find plenty of unfairness in Uber from the individual to Uber relationship, such as the fees for one, but there seems to be less injustice between fellow drivers compared to traditional firms.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > The ‘algorithm’ in this instance doesn’t discriminate on skin colour, handsomeness, or the side of the bed it woke up on. But the drivers do, which is a source of complaints in places where taxi service is considered to be an extension of public transport. Uber-like companies (it's not just Uber, MyTaxi/FreeNow suffers from this as well) are notoriously unreliable if you live in or want to go to places further away from the city center or otherwise inconvenient for the drivers, or if your start or destination suggests you might be inconvenient to handle. For instance, I've had trouble getting a ride to a maternity hospital in the city center, and only got one after I switched the destination to a nearby beauty salon. I confirmed this when talking later with the drivers over other rides - they see the requests to/from hospitals, they just skip them. In this way, an algorithm is fairer than dispatcher for the drivers, but the dispatcher is fairer for the passenger.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      > In this way, an algorithm is fairer than dispatcher for the drivers, but the dispatcher is fairer for the passenger The algorithm is the dispatcher, and theoretically, would weed out drivers that discriminate after a certain number of incidents. I don’t see why a human dispatcher has less reason to discriminate than a driver. Presumably, discrimination is to maximum use revenue, which is in both the driver and dispatcher’s interest.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        In the places I've ordered taxis via a call, human dispatchers don't usually know who the passenger is and where they want to go, so they don't get to discriminate on those.
        lotsofpulp 7y ago
        I imagine if a taxi driver refused to give someone a ride, who was already told they would get a ride from a dispatcher, because it would lower their revenue, the dispatcher would not penalize them in any way.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Yes, I misunderstood that.