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It's interesting how it's now fashionable to bash on Uber and Lyft. Seems everyone conveniently forgot about the medallion system Uber and Lyft disrupted. Pre-

• okareaman 5y ago
  I don't understand your logic. We can't talk about problems with new things that are an improvement over old things?
• toomuchtodo 5y ago
  > The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their industry was a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber (and Lyft) simply took over as the established rent seeker. At least with medallions, there were caps to prevent overcapacity in the system and your urban cores flooded with rideshare drivers. There is no such restriction with Uber and Lyft, so their revenue comes on the back of the externalities of underpaid drivers and unregulated congestion.
  • CheezeIt 5y ago
    Uber and Lyft hare both non-profitable organizations. Even if rides were matched by some zero cost magic oracle, drivers would be making almost the same amount of profit, because that number’s defined by the next best alternative. Really, what you find objectionable is not the presence of Uber or Lyft, but the fact that people are running independent businesses, competing with each other.
  • ben940830298432 5y ago
    Not really. Drivers have the choice if they want to drive or not. If it is busy at certain times and rates are lower than don't drive at that time. If you don't want to have urban cores flooded with rideshare drivers find a way to improve busing or other competition in that space.
  • bin_bash 5y ago
    has overcapacity ever been a significant problem? I know drivers want more money but that doesn't mean customers would be willing to pay for it.
    • toomuchtodo 5y ago
      https://news.mit.edu/2021/ride-sharing-intensifies-urban-road-congestion-0423 https://news.mit.edu/2021/ride-sharing-intensifies-urban-roa... https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/6/20756945/uber-lyft-tnc-vmt-traffic-congestion-study-fehr-peers https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/6/20756945/uber-lyft-tnc-vmt... https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/5/eaau2670 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/5/eaau2670 https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/uber-lyft-traffic-congestion-car-ownership-study/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/uber-lyft-traffic-congest...
  • jlmorton 5y ago
    > At least with medallions, there were caps to prevent overcapacity That's a really interesting way of describing an artificial monopoly specifically designed to increase earnings for a specific group of rent-seeking, wealthy medallion owners. It's sort of like describing the De Beers corporation as ensuring the world is not littered with relatively-abundant diamonds. I suppose it might be true, but it certainly is not the point of the arrangement.
    • toomuchtodo 5y ago
      Besides medallions or a similar registration program, how would you balance vehicle capacity with limited street capacity? The "artificial monopoly" is a physical system, as two vehicles cannot occupy the same space at the same time. I don't support medallions, by any means, but I do support a fair quota system to balance transportation availability with congestion management.
      • californical 5y ago
        Offering higher pay at times of high capacity requirements, and lower pay at times when there is a surplus of drivers seems like a great solution to balance out when drivers should take shifts, while still letting people choose their own schedules and priorities. Which is exactly what the rideshare companies do
        • grp000 5y ago
          I thought Uber already did this with surge pricing? Or does it not take supply into account, only demand? Or is the extra money not going to the drivers?
      • 908B64B197 5y ago
        > but I do support a fair quota system to balance transportation availability with congestion management. The alternative is people using their cars and having to park it. Or taking their business elsewhere in more parking-friendly locations.
      • 5y ago
  • ardit33 5y ago
    Completely naive view of the situation, or you are just too young. You don't need be 500k in debt to get started for uber as you needed to get a yellow cab medallion Once you made that decsion (to mortgage you house to get a yellow cab medallion), you are bound to that job as a serf.... Modern day serfdom, that's what the yellow cab medallion system became to the large cities. the only way out, was bankruptcy, or hope another person will pay just as much for that medallion. Often local mafiosi types were entangled with the system, and you had to deal with them as well. Please, lets not glorify the pervious system, as it was much worse. We can work and make this new system better, and force the large corps to provide more (benefits wise), but returning to the old medallion system is two steps back.
    • 908B64B197 5y ago
      > and force the large corps to provide more (benefits wise) They would need to make more money for that, and I'm not sure the consumer is ready to pay. Taxi fares in many cities used to be way higher with the medallions and ridership was abysmal.
      • Karrot_Kream 5y ago
        This is the moral hazard of free-market economies without basic benefits. In an economy with real choice for labor, labor would walk when they're being abused with low pay and a minimum standard of living for labor would be priced into consumer prices. When there's no benefits, labor is always desperate to hold onto a job and put into situations where they accept jobs that they would rather not to not become homeless and benefit-less.
• sschueller 5y ago
  So we replaced something that sucked with something that sucks just as bad but it has an app. What ever happened to creating something great, sustainable and that makes more than enough money but doesn't exploit for maximum profit.
  • radus 5y ago
    > What ever happened to creating something great, sustainable and that makes more than enough money but doesn't exploit for maximum profit. capitalism, eventually: creating something g̶r̶e̶a̶t̶, s̶u̶s̶t̶a̶i̶n̶a̶b̶l̶e̶ a̶n̶d̶ t̶h̶a̶t̶ m̶a̶k̶e̶s̶ m̶o̶r̶e̶ t̶h̶a̶n̶ e̶n̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ m̶o̶n̶e̶y̶ b̶u̶t̶ d̶o̶e̶s̶n̶'t̶ e̶x̶p̶l̶o̶i̶t̶ for maximum profit.
  • 908B64B197 5y ago
    > So we replaced something that sucked with something that sucks just as bad but it has an app. I don't know that it sucks just as bad. If a medallion driver wanted to get out of the game he had to find a buyer. And often drivers considered their medallion their retirement naively thinking it could only go up in value. Then the city decides to emit 500 additional medallions and theirs stays on the market for years because if they match the city's price they'll lose money.
  • ilaksh 5y ago
    I believe it really does suck less. You just have to understand the enormous scale of suck that we are dealing with. It went from super extreme suck to extreme suck.
  • bboylen 5y ago
    Don't Uber and Lyft lose money? I doubt there is an easy way to operate much more ethically and also make enough money to be sustainable
    • watwut 5y ago
      If your business lose money despite you not operating ethically in pursuit of money, maybe there is something wrong with economic system that don't let you crash.
• throwawayboise 5y ago
  > The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their industry was a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants Only made possible by the local government who created an artificial scarcity in the medallion system. Sure there is probably a legitmate need for some government regualtion of taxi services, but what they did just set the table for that kind of predatory behavior to exist.
• jeffbee 5y ago
  In some American markets the taxi driver experience was fairly standardized. The driver paid a gate fee to rent a heavy-duty, professionally maintained, insured Crown Victoria for a fixed fee per shift, and earned regulated tariffs on fares. Those drivers had as much flexibility as any TNC driver, with less risk because they didn't need to use their own car. The nearest analog is the TNC programs where you rent a Corolla by the day.
  • 908B64B197 5y ago
    If anyone think renters were making above minimum wage, I have a bridge to sell them. The cost of renting was often so high the car had to stay on the road for 24h a day for it to maybe make a profit.
• bogota 5y ago
  Its honestly not worth arguing about it. I have personally benefited with driving for uber as well as lots/most of drivers i have talked to. Its not perfect but it works great when you have kids and other things you have to worry about. The job was never meant to solve wealth inequality but it sure has helped a ton of people. Jesus my life would have been 100x better if i could have driven uber in college instead of working absolutely shit job with managers who hate you because you aren’t going to be stuck working this crap job until your 60 like them. However if you go online you would think uber was killing peoples first born child. Internet forums are getting rather stupid over the past 5 years. You are mostly forced to use a few big ones that all have a hive mind of downvotes on anything contradictory to what the majority thinks. Unfortunately being the majority doesn’t make you right or even smart. Often times its the opposite. But i like to write up these posts so someone can downvote me and feel a little power.
  • clairity 5y ago
    sure, but the reason it's not worth arguing over is because large organization are exploitative by design. i'd argue it's the whole point of becoming big, as it's certainly not about being more service-oriented.
    • betwixthewires 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm Just something that might interest you on the topic of organization.
      • clairity 5y ago
        yes, that’s part of the basis of my argument[0]. there is an optimum firm size, and it’s not ‘as big as possible’. no industry—-even capital-intensive ones like aerospace—-needs mega-corporations. we’re much better served by a heterogeneous mix of mid-sized companies, including in ridesharing. mid-sized companies are big and resilient enough to benefit from economies of scale and bring efficiency to a market, but are small and nimble enough to be responsive to customer and employee needs, not just to naked capital returns. size (and other mechanisms, like the corporate veil) act to distance decision-makers from the consequences of their actions, so that they can pursue entirely greedy aims without remorse. we need to dismantle such systemic ruthlessness, and replace it with human-centered organization. it’s one of the core issues driving the economic contribution to sociopolitical disunity. [0]: one of the points of a firm is to solve the coordination problem.
• throwawaycities 5y ago
  It’s funny how random people on the internet pretend Uber and Lyft were magnanimous companies on a mission to reform the exploitative taxi industry for the benefit of drivers and riders. Just because the taxi industry wasn’t perfect in your eyes - who are you by the way? What skin in the game do you have? - doesn’t mean that Uber and Lyft aren’t orders of magnitude more exploitative.
  • cloudfifty 5y ago
    > What skin in the game do you have? The average HN user - usually in the upper middle class - are certainly on the beneficial side of this. They've received a cheap private chauffeur service, albeit decentralized, that they use to a greater extent than they would ever use taxi because of its affordability (ofc made possible by VC money and offloading costs to the drivers). The self-interested confirmation bias in HN threads about the gig/ride taxi industry must be seen in that light.
    • readflaggedcomm 5y ago
      Approving competition is proof of privilege?
      • cloudfifty 5y ago
        That lazy euphemism for systematically circumventing labour laws for profit kinda proves my point about confirmation bias.
  • dntrkv 5y ago
    What skin do you have in the game? My father drove a taxi before Uber/Lyft and that shit was way more exploitative. He was paid shit ($600/week was considered good), didn't get any flexibility (once you're on the clock, you're on the clock), he didn't get to choose his hours (they would assign times and fares by seniority, he mostly worked from the evening well into the night), he had to drive the company's disgusting cars that were constantly falling apart (which were also assigned by seniority and then he had to clean them, before and after his driving, usually because the previous driver left the car trashed), he had no recourse for shit customers that either wouldn't pay or would trash the car, and the taxi company gave zero shits about any of this because they had their medallions and that's all that mattered. It was the worst job he ever had to subject himself to and this is a man that grew up in the Soviet Union (where he actually drove taxis part time to make extra money). I'm sure it was nice if you were a taxi driver that happened to acquire your own medallion, got to work for yourself, providing dog shit service, and for rates of your choosing since the competition was artificially constrained. But that is a minority of the taxi drivers out there.
• tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  The rating system was one of the major innovations. In the taxi system, bad behavior had no direct consequence for the individual drivers, and so it was rampant.