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Still a million times better than what it replaced. About 20 years ago I was working with the Australian taxi cab industry. The hq of the regulatory authority s

Still a million times better than what it replaced. About 20 years ago I was working with the Australian taxi cab industry. The hq of the regulatory authority shared the address of the main payment system. The regulatory authority was made up of representatives of each taxi cab company that each had one vote. There was one taxi company (the one that controlled the payment system allowed) with 200+ subsidiaries that made up that organization. If anyone tried to get into the taxi industry they'd use their 200 votes to say they are not allowed by regulations. This was a company making 2billion a year in one state of Australia alone (NSW). It was so incredibly fucking corrupt and i am thankful to Uber Lyft and all the other incumbents for managing to get their foot in. It required dirty dealing to get past this corruption.

blowski 4y ago
The technology definitely made life easier for passengers, especially in big cities. Prices were cheaper for some time, but only because they were subsidised by investors, so hardly a net gain. Arguably, they made the environment worse by pushing middle income off public transport and into taxis For drivers, things seem to have got worse. I’ve spoken to various taxi drivers, including current and former Uber drivers, and none of them liked working for Uber. They merely felt trapped. But there is an argument to say that the local taxi cartels needed breaking up, and only a company prepared to engage in these kind of tactics could have done it. I don’t know what I think about all this.
- alisonatwork 4y ago
  A key point here is that Uber didn't just disrupt taxi cartels, it also undermined public transport services. In places like Miami it even became a sanctioned alternative to bus routes that were cut. To me this is the true long term damage of their VC-funded predatory pricing model.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - rawling 4y ago
    > In places like Miami it even became a sanctioned alternative to bus routes that were cut. As in... government justified cutting bus services by saying Uber was a viable alternative?
    - alisonatwork 4y ago
      Technically, yes. For a while they provided vouchers to reimburse riders for using Uber instead of the public bus system.[0] Now those particular night bus routes have returned to service, but others have been reduced or canceled. This has been happening for the past 10 years or so all over the US.[1] It's not clear if Uber is the primary culprit, but it certainly doesn't help.[2] [0] https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article241822716.html https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article24182271... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/upshot/mystery-of-missing-bus-riders.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/upshot/myster... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856422000945 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096585642...
  - indymike 4y ago
    USA centric answer here: In flyover country, in most cities ride share has been life changing for people that would be stuck using overpriced local taxis (in smaller 80K-150K person cities taxi rates are confiscatory and service is often VERY limited) or terrible public transportation. Terrible meaning, a $2 bus ride that takes three and a half hours (of which 2 hours is sitting in the elemets) out of their day vs. ride share taking 10 minutes and $15. Honestly, I'm not sure where the idea came from that outside some of the largest cities, public transport or taxis even were viable options. Now there's uber/lyft everywhere, because there's always someone with a car who would like to make some money.
    - kelnos 4y ago
      That's great, but how does that justify Uber's poor behavior in places like Miami?
      - indymike 4y ago
        Not even trying to justify it.
    - alisonatwork 4y ago
      The idea comes from many other countries where 80k-150k cities have public transport services that don't require people to spend 2 hours sitting in the elements waiting for a bus.
    - bsder 4y ago
      > USA centric answer here: In flyover country, in most cities ride share has been life changing for people that would be stuck using overpriced local taxis (in smaller 80K-150K person cities taxi rates are confiscatory and service is often VERY limited) or terrible public transportation. And if Uber/Lyft had confined themselves to delivering reliable transport at a reasonable price in Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, etc. people would be singing their praises. But they didn't. Because those places weren't just unprofitable but were wildly unprofitable. Which is stupid because I suspect being a reliable broker between driver and client could still be profitable. Having someone put in "I need to go from A to B at time X." and having a pool of drivers who can go "I'm going to B anyway, so why don't I adjust my time and make some money for doing so." would be a good thing in "flyover" country. However, it won't be venture capital profitable. And that's really the crux of the problem here.
- jbullock35 4y ago
  > I’ve spoken to various taxi drivers, including current and former Uber drivers, and none of them liked working for Uber. They merely felt trapped. I live in the U.S. I speak to almost all of my rideshare drivers about how they feel about their work. Literally none of them have expressed the feeling that they're trapped. (And not one has said that he would prefer driving a taxi.) They do make criticisms, more of Uber than of Lyft. But the main sentiments that they express are appreciation of scheduling flexibility and of not having a boss.
  - adra 4y ago
    If they can be de-platformed, they have a boss. They just have flexible work hours.
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      Being able to work for many platforms means you choose your boss.
      - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        Being able to take several drugs means you choose your drug
        Gunnerhead 4y ago
        This is the second time I see you mentioning drugs in this thread [1], I genuinely don't understand the correlation or the argument you're trying to make? Comment by ClumsyPilot - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32048240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32048240
  - neilk 4y ago
    The people who are currently working for Uber think working for Uber is a good deal. You might get similarly positive reviews from the buyers of scratcher lottery tickets. There are a lot of articles from random websites saying that it is a good deal, and given the ease of placing such content I think we should be skeptical. Every time I see an article from a driver, who is not a pro blogger in the space, and who’s done the math, it is usually pretty negative to neutral. https://www.quora.com/Is-driving-for-Uber-worth-the-wear-and-tear-and-mileage-on-my-car https://www.quora.com/Is-driving-for-Uber-worth-the-wear-and... It’s actually really hard to know if you’re making money when you take things like capital depreciation and opportunity cost into account, and sophisticated businesspeople make this mistake all the time. The average driver could easily be fooled until it’s too late. It would be nice if capitalism did correct price discovery here but we’re dealing with a market which has been highly distorted, both from questionable government regulation and taxi monopolies AND from insane startup valuations and investment. The only accountability moment has been the public markets and even then it’s pretty mixed. Uber has overwhelming power over their drivers and if it was actually a good deal for them it would be the first time in the history of labor relations that a company left money on the table out of the goodness of their heart. Does Uber strike you as that company? Yes I use ridesharing when I’m in the SFBA because there’s few other plausible ways to get around. I’m crossing my fingers the whole time that I’m not helping someone dig themselves deeper into a financial hole.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Uber and others should really have been punished harshly for dumping. Banned from operating without extra taxes to bring them in line with other operators and fined for billions.
seibelj 4y ago
It’s hilarious how everyone acts like the pre-Uber taxi world was one of generous wages, honest hard working companies, and politicians working hand in hand with stakeholders. The taxi industry was (is?) insanely corrupt. There are literally state-sanctioned limits on taxis and artificial markets for medallions that made early purchasers absurdly rich.
- onion2k 4y ago
  Replacing a corrupt system with a different corrupt system isn't progress.
  - elbigbad 4y ago
    Isn’t it strictly better if no groups from the old system got worse, but some groups that transferred got better.
  - AnotherGoodName 4y ago
    It is though. There's now 2 corrupt systems lobbying in different directions. We can now have them play against each other. When corruption is enshrined by the law itself what other way do you have to fight it except to have the corrupt play off against each other. The taxi industry existed for centuries (perhaps longer) in the cartel form. It's amazing progress to see that their power is no longer absolute.
    - hgomersall 4y ago
      At least one of which has the explicit aim of displacing the actual solution to the problem: effective public transport.
    - otikik 4y ago
      More lobbying isn’t good for the public, even if it’s done in “different directions “
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Sounds though like an orthogonal problem that could have been solved independent of destroying the entire industry?
asdfjkhasjkdfh 4y ago
> Still a million times better than what it replaced. Uber didn't replace taxi. taxi was dying on it's own. Uber actually kept the bad designs of taxi going but they monopolized the Medallions. "what it replaced" was the ongoing outcry to minimally decent public transit. Some of the international offshoots of the Occupy movement actually had this as their central theme.
- legalcorrection 4y ago
  This is fantastical. Paying someone to drive you somewhere is not going anywhere anytime soon.
- twblalock 4y ago
  People even use Uber in Europe despite having world-class public transit. That should tell you something about the utility it provides people: they could have used top-tier public transit but they chose to use Uber instead.
registeredcorn 4y ago
I don't know if this really qualifies as the same sort of thing, but I do recall hearing a story about cabbies somewhere in Asia: A sociology professor I had assigned us a project to do something that would be "considered abnormal to the general public", and then document the results. He had mentioned over and over again to try and implement "as many safety measures as possible during planning". The professor went on to explain that the reason for harping on safety was such a big deal because a student of a previous class (decades before ridesharing) decided that their project would be to bring their personnel vehicle to where cabbies would line up. The student would instead offer rides to customers completely for free. I believe they even had a little sign they put on their window. After this occurred two or three times, all of the cabbies completely boxed the students car in and called for the police to come. If I recall correctly, they were yelling, screaming, and honking at the student about how they were taking money out of their pockets. Some were accusing the student of taking customers to an undisclosed location and robbing them in order to get paid, while others were saying that doing this for free was essentially stealing from the cabbies, since the student didn't have a taxi permit. I'm not sure if this was a matter of corruption as much as it was messing with/hurting people trying to make a living, but, I did think it was interesting that all of these different cabbies, from all of these rival taxi companies were all willing to work together spur of the moment, to stop someone who they couldn't possibly compete with. As I understand it, the depths of the rivalry between some of these companies ran pretty deep; it was shocking how willingly they all were to join up to crush this outside threat.
sschueller 4y ago
No, in Switzerland. Instead it managed to steal almost a billion USD from drivers in Switzerland alone and give others the "idea" they can break the law too. Uber is the worst kind of business preying on the lower class claiming independence and freedom when it's the opposite and you are basically a working slave. It did everything possible to go around government worker protections. [1] https://www.20min.ch/story/uber-soll-fahrern-eine-halbe-milliarde-schulden-646772268209 https://www.20min.ch/story/uber-soll-fahrern-eine-halbe-mill...
- dsco 4y ago
  I know a bunch of people who are happy Uber drivers as they couldn’t afford becoming regular taxi drivers. Do you often point out to your Uber divers that they’re lower class and being preyed on? How do they take it?
  - mavu 4y ago
    you can tell yourself that all day long if it makes you feel better. In Europe, uber is exploiting the most vulnerable in our societies, and profiting of the harm they do to people and communities. Not to mention, breaking laws, endangering passengers, using outright evil methods to keep their workers money.
    - yladiz 4y ago
      Some of the most vulnerable are the homeless and mentally disabled. How is Uber exploiting them?
      - harvey9 4y ago
        The phrase 'most vulnerable' is terribly overused, but your comment is still disingenuous.
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      These are not fair comments because everything you say the taxi industry it replaced is guilt of and closing the market. Uber puts new cars on the road and opens the industry to those who are locked out.
np1810 4y ago
Uneasy co-incidence, that recently an Indian Uber competitor (named Ola) also had a report of lobbying efforts... https://twitter.com/shrutisonal26/status/1544540603932758016 https://twitter.com/shrutisonal26/status/1544540603932758016 Edit: Apart from the tweets, the actual article is behind a paywall.
AnotherGoodName 4y ago
Btw I'm being a bit coy about naming names but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabcharge#Findings_of_the_Taxi_Industry_Inquiry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabcharge#Findings_of_the_Taxi... has all the details of what i spoke about above in case any doubts how corrupt the taxi industry is (although absolutely no one has doubted that to be fair).
pjmlp 4y ago
Maybe some places have shitty taxis, in my European corner I haven't seen anything good about Uber other than bringing the US gig economy of employee exploitation.
- maccard 4y ago
  Not sure where you're located but I'm from Ireland living in the UK. In Edinburgh, all Ubers are private hire cars (it's not just anyone in 4 wheels). Uber has forced all of the major taxi firms to accept card payments, have apps with tracking, etc. Uber itself funnily is actually less reliable than the other operators. My experience in Dublin is the same. It's also completely removed the "take someone the scenic route and charge them 3x" (which happened to me in a taxi in Dublin from the airport in 2014!) Meanwhile, visiting my parents in a smaller part of Ireland, getting a taxi involves phoning, waiting to see if they decide to pick up (if it's busy they don't), then having them tell you it'll be 10 minutes only to arrive after an hour, not accepting card, etc.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    In Germany nowadays, card payments and phone apps to call taxis were already a thing before Uber came here. In Scandinavian countries it was even better.
  - doktorhladnjak 4y ago
    Irish taxis are unusual compared to taxis in other countries. They’re virtually all self-employed owner-operators like Uber drivers. They are individually licensed and usually own their own vehicles. They can take app or radio dispatches or pick up street hails. If taxis in other markets had taken the same regulatory approach, something like Uber may never have had such widespread success.
winternett 4y ago
Slightly better circumstances don't exonerate corruption. Laws and regulation are supposed to reign in bad industry. Brigading and PR spin is rampant with Uber online for some strange reason, when in truth, they could provide a far better service by relaxing their tendency to spin bad PR by paying and insuring drivers better, and by operating more like a legit Taxi business. It is NOT Uber that swept in and fixed the corrupt transport for hire system... It was passengers choosing a less expensive (subsidized by company investment) service, which is now dramatically increasing in cost to users now that they have stable market dominance. The online PR spins only hold up for people who don't properly recall the past and for those who are unaware of the deception involved in use of "folksy" individual personal tropes used to over-simplify complex issues.
- TheDudeMan 4y ago
  > now that they have stable market dominance Do they? I'm trying to find some data on how much market share Uber has vs Lyft vs taxis.
  - winternett 4y ago
    That's not a key issue to the discussion, the discussion is about corruption.
    - TheDudeMan 4y ago
      You were the one that brought it up.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Uber is only “better” because it is unprofitable. The minute it starts turning the screws to be profitable, the service quality will go back to what it replaced. Here in India, its already less reliable and often more expensive than old school taxis.
- Nasrudith 4y ago
  If they slash their operating developers from dropping out of the self driving cars race that would make them much more profitable. Whether doing so would be a good idea is another topic.
- awillen 4y ago
  Not true. In SF when Uber started, it only had black cars and was meaningfully more expensive than a cab. The difference was that if you called a cab, depending on where you were in the city, there was a pretty decent chance you'd be told it'd take 15 minutes, but no one would ever show up. The Uber would be there 100% of the time. Uber held drivers accountable. The taxi lobby did the exact opposite - they brutally abused an advantage gifted to them by the government because taxis are supposed to be a valuable public service. In India it may be different, but in the US it continues to be extremely reliable.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    > In India it may be different, but in the US it continues to be extremely reliable. This is a hint at the main thing we need to remember: Uber replaced a terrible taxi situation in San Francisco. Every city is not like San Francisco. Every country is not like the US. Based on various comments here from people outside the US, some places already had functioning taxi systems, with reasonable prices, clean cars, and good drivers. Why is it ok that Uber got to flaunt regulations in those places as well?
    - awillen 4y ago
      I don't think it was ok anywhere. Even in SF I think it was beneficial but not "ok" in a general sense of fairness. The ends justify the means, I suppose. I'm not saying that Uber overall is a particular ethical company - I don't think they're great on that dimension.
curious_cat_163 4y ago
End does not justify means. Disruption can (and does) happen without resorting to breaking the law.
- runarberg 4y ago
  I wonder if there are any examples of a company that disrupted a bad industry with malpractice and then magically stopped it ones they succeeded. For some reason I would think the opposite was more common, i.e. if a company gets away with bad behavior, they will continue to do so until stopped by their government authorities.
  - Nasrudith 4y ago
    It is a known and unfortunate phenomenon that regulation winds up creating moats even if in service of good ends and intentions. Pulling up the ladder effectively happens to the benefit any incumbent who can afford something far more than upstart competitors. If say, a scrubber stack on factories doubles the equipment costs it favors the existing factory owners even if retrofitting is a hefty expense, it would buy them a moat. Stopping on their own has to do with cost benefit analysis and is thus circumstantial. For a sort of in progress Amazon openly admits that they need to reduce turn over because they are running out of hiring pool. Their work conditions are still infamous but they set standards. That could ironically potentially mean a more competitive environment could have had worse wages. Not an arguement against it being a problem but an amusing irony. Similarly deeper pockets mean a need to be less reckless as big payout judgements become collectable. If a fly by night roofing company has a worker fall and break their back from lack of safety equipment it may only have a few hundred thousand in assets total. If it is a state wide one they could be on the hook for millions.
    - runarberg 4y ago
      This is a good point. Which is why I’m a big fan of general workers’ solidarity, including via unionization. Solidarity among workers offers us a tool to combat these companies, and force them to make changes that benefit us at the cost of their shareholders. The union should be able to lobby the government to enact and enforce sufficient safety laws such that a worker will never be changing the roof over night unless adequate safety standards are met. And if a company fails, a worker has the means to refuse the work, regardless of the size of the company. With solidarity we simply don’t have to wait for these companies to stop on their own, because we can collectively force them to stop, bottom up.
jimnotgym 4y ago
How does that follow at all. Uber breaking the laws was not the only possible way to break up a cartel!
runarberg 4y ago
What is your point? Is it that we can’t have nice things and we should just settle with whichever company is able to make the most money from whatever corruption they can get away with? You are posting an anecdote and non-substantiated accusations against an industry based on your area. And you are doing this under a news where they have evidence that their competitors are as corrupt as it gets, a company which has been accused in the past of violating labor rights, disregarding local laws, bribing officials, exploiting workers, etc. And your point is that their competitors in Australia are worse “because you say so”. Nah, I’m not buying it. The fact that the Australian taxi industry is bad, does not excuse Uber’s conduct. In fact I don’t care what the state is in this industry regarding this conduct and I wish Uber all the worst.
- AnotherGoodName 4y ago
  I worry that stories like the above article will be used to justify outlawing ride share in favor of the cartels. This is actually the case in many jurisdictions where ride-share apps are still not allowed and the taxi industry still operates in a cartel fashion. I don't care about Uber or Lyft fwiw. No stake in either in any way shape or form. My post is a very relevant warning (in my view) about allowing politicians to use the above stories as an excuse to close down an industry. They are looking for such an excuse. Be warned and call it out.
  - runarberg 4y ago
    I think you might be focusing on the wrong thing here. There is no reason to outlaw ride shares, only ride shares that engage in illegal lobbying, labor violations, and disregarding of the law. In fact this is not specific for ride share companies, but companies in general (including traditional taxi cab companies). People have been complaining about Uber not because it is a ride share company that undercuts the traditional taxi cab companies, but because they exploit their workers, bribe their elected officials, brake their local laws, and use VC funding to undercut their competitions. For this they should be outlawed.
ccvannorman 4y ago
whataboutism isn't useful for highlighting corruption - is why you are being downvoted.
- AnotherGoodName 4y ago
  I worry that stories like the above article will be used to justify outlawing ride share in favor of the cartels. This is actually the case in many jurisdictions where ride-share apps are still not allowed and the taxi industry still operates in a cartel fashion. I don't care about Uber or Lyft fwiw. No stake in either in any way shape or form. My post is a very relevant warning (in my view) about allowing politicians to use the above stories as an excuse to close down an industry. They are looking for such an excuse. Be warned and call it out.
FlyingSnake 4y ago
> Still a million times better than what it replaced. Not really. It is not easy to paint existing systems with a wide brush. The situation in Germany is not the same as in Croatia which is not the same in India. I will always trust taxis in Mumbai and Berlin over Uber, whereas in a foreign location I will look for local options like Ola, Grab, FreeNow. Uber did act as a catalyst for the incumbents to get off their butts, but it created another set of problems which are equally bad.
drevil-v2 4y ago
This is such a stupid simplistic view - read the BBC article on this leak of Uber files. The corruption they (Uber) instituted was just as bad as this anecdote you are alleging. How does replacing one set of elite corruption with another set of elite corruption get to " i am thankful to Uber Lyft and all the other incumbents for managing to get their foot in"?? You are thankful to them? What are you on about?
- dang 4y ago
  Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN, regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
akira2501 4y ago
> It required dirty dealing to get past this corruption. Why do you think the current state is "/past/ this corruption." It sounds like Uber spent a bunch of money to just "own the corruption for itself." On the whole, I don't believe it's an actual improvement. You may like the state of the cars more, but the continued overt monopolization and the worse outcomes for labor are massively negative outcomes, even if you aren't in a position to be personally impacted by them.
pessimizer 4y ago
So instead of virtual domination by one very large local incumbent with 200 subsidiaries, you have two foreign cab companies. That's an improvement?
wolverine876 4y ago
> Still a million times better than what it replaced. Not in my experience at all. I can't count how many taxis I've taken, with hardly any problems ever. > corrupt They lacked anywhere near the resources to be as corrupt as Uber!

blowski 4y ago

The technology definitely made life easier for passengers, especially in big cities. Prices were cheaper for some time, but only because they were subsidised by investors, so hardly a net gain. Arguably, they made the environment worse by pushing middle income off public transport and into taxis For drivers, things seem to have got worse. I’ve spoken to various taxi drivers, including current and former Uber drivers, and none of them liked working for Uber. They merely felt trapped. But there is an argument to say that the local taxi cartels needed breaking up, and only a company prepared to engage in these kind of tactics could have done it. I don’t know what I think about all this.

alisonatwork 4y ago
A key point here is that Uber didn't just disrupt taxi cartels, it also undermined public transport services. In places like Miami it even became a sanctioned alternative to bus routes that were cut. To me this is the true long term damage of their VC-funded predatory pricing model.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rawling 4y ago
  > In places like Miami it even became a sanctioned alternative to bus routes that were cut. As in... government justified cutting bus services by saying Uber was a viable alternative?
  - alisonatwork 4y ago
    Technically, yes. For a while they provided vouchers to reimburse riders for using Uber instead of the public bus system.[0] Now those particular night bus routes have returned to service, but others have been reduced or canceled. This has been happening for the past 10 years or so all over the US.[1] It's not clear if Uber is the primary culprit, but it certainly doesn't help.[2] [0] https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article241822716.html https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article24182271... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/upshot/mystery-of-missing-bus-riders.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/upshot/myster... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856422000945 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096585642...
- indymike 4y ago
  USA centric answer here: In flyover country, in most cities ride share has been life changing for people that would be stuck using overpriced local taxis (in smaller 80K-150K person cities taxi rates are confiscatory and service is often VERY limited) or terrible public transportation. Terrible meaning, a $2 bus ride that takes three and a half hours (of which 2 hours is sitting in the elemets) out of their day vs. ride share taking 10 minutes and $15. Honestly, I'm not sure where the idea came from that outside some of the largest cities, public transport or taxis even were viable options. Now there's uber/lyft everywhere, because there's always someone with a car who would like to make some money.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    That's great, but how does that justify Uber's poor behavior in places like Miami?
    - indymike 4y ago
      Not even trying to justify it.
  - alisonatwork 4y ago
    The idea comes from many other countries where 80k-150k cities have public transport services that don't require people to spend 2 hours sitting in the elements waiting for a bus.
  - bsder 4y ago
    > USA centric answer here: In flyover country, in most cities ride share has been life changing for people that would be stuck using overpriced local taxis (in smaller 80K-150K person cities taxi rates are confiscatory and service is often VERY limited) or terrible public transportation. And if Uber/Lyft had confined themselves to delivering reliable transport at a reasonable price in Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, etc. people would be singing their praises. But they didn't. Because those places weren't just unprofitable but were wildly unprofitable. Which is stupid because I suspect being a reliable broker between driver and client could still be profitable. Having someone put in "I need to go from A to B at time X." and having a pool of drivers who can go "I'm going to B anyway, so why don't I adjust my time and make some money for doing so." would be a good thing in "flyover" country. However, it won't be venture capital profitable. And that's really the crux of the problem here.
jbullock35 4y ago
> I’ve spoken to various taxi drivers, including current and former Uber drivers, and none of them liked working for Uber. They merely felt trapped. I live in the U.S. I speak to almost all of my rideshare drivers about how they feel about their work. Literally none of them have expressed the feeling that they're trapped. (And not one has said that he would prefer driving a taxi.) They do make criticisms, more of Uber than of Lyft. But the main sentiments that they express are appreciation of scheduling flexibility and of not having a boss.
- adra 4y ago
  If they can be de-platformed, they have a boss. They just have flexible work hours.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    Being able to work for many platforms means you choose your boss.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      Being able to take several drugs means you choose your drug
      - Gunnerhead 4y ago
        This is the second time I see you mentioning drugs in this thread [1], I genuinely don't understand the correlation or the argument you're trying to make? Comment by ClumsyPilot - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32048240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32048240
- neilk 4y ago
  The people who are currently working for Uber think working for Uber is a good deal. You might get similarly positive reviews from the buyers of scratcher lottery tickets. There are a lot of articles from random websites saying that it is a good deal, and given the ease of placing such content I think we should be skeptical. Every time I see an article from a driver, who is not a pro blogger in the space, and who’s done the math, it is usually pretty negative to neutral. https://www.quora.com/Is-driving-for-Uber-worth-the-wear-and-tear-and-mileage-on-my-car https://www.quora.com/Is-driving-for-Uber-worth-the-wear-and... It’s actually really hard to know if you’re making money when you take things like capital depreciation and opportunity cost into account, and sophisticated businesspeople make this mistake all the time. The average driver could easily be fooled until it’s too late. It would be nice if capitalism did correct price discovery here but we’re dealing with a market which has been highly distorted, both from questionable government regulation and taxi monopolies AND from insane startup valuations and investment. The only accountability moment has been the public markets and even then it’s pretty mixed. Uber has overwhelming power over their drivers and if it was actually a good deal for them it would be the first time in the history of labor relations that a company left money on the table out of the goodness of their heart. Does Uber strike you as that company? Yes I use ridesharing when I’m in the SFBA because there’s few other plausible ways to get around. I’m crossing my fingers the whole time that I’m not helping someone dig themselves deeper into a financial hole.
Ekaros 4y ago
Uber and others should really have been punished harshly for dumping. Banned from operating without extra taxes to bring them in line with other operators and fined for billions.

seibelj 4y ago

It’s hilarious how everyone acts like the pre-Uber taxi world was one of generous wages, honest hard working companies, and politicians working hand in hand with stakeholders. The taxi industry was (is?) insanely corrupt. There are literally state-sanctioned limits on taxis and artificial markets for medallions that made early purchasers absurdly rich.

onion2k 4y ago
Replacing a corrupt system with a different corrupt system isn't progress.
- elbigbad 4y ago
  Isn’t it strictly better if no groups from the old system got worse, but some groups that transferred got better.
- AnotherGoodName 4y ago
  It is though. There's now 2 corrupt systems lobbying in different directions. We can now have them play against each other. When corruption is enshrined by the law itself what other way do you have to fight it except to have the corrupt play off against each other. The taxi industry existed for centuries (perhaps longer) in the cartel form. It's amazing progress to see that their power is no longer absolute.
  - hgomersall 4y ago
    At least one of which has the explicit aim of displacing the actual solution to the problem: effective public transport.
  - otikik 4y ago
    More lobbying isn’t good for the public, even if it’s done in “different directions “
JKCalhoun 4y ago
Sounds though like an orthogonal problem that could have been solved independent of destroying the entire industry?

asdfjkhasjkdfh 4y ago

> Still a million times better than what it replaced. Uber didn't replace taxi. taxi was dying on it's own. Uber actually kept the bad designs of taxi going but they monopolized the Medallions. "what it replaced" was the ongoing outcry to minimally decent public transit. Some of the international offshoots of the Occupy movement actually had this as their central theme.

legalcorrection 4y ago
This is fantastical. Paying someone to drive you somewhere is not going anywhere anytime soon.
twblalock 4y ago
People even use Uber in Europe despite having world-class public transit. That should tell you something about the utility it provides people: they could have used top-tier public transit but they chose to use Uber instead.

registeredcorn 4y ago

I don't know if this really qualifies as the same sort of thing, but I do recall hearing a story about cabbies somewhere in Asia: A sociology professor I had assigned us a project to do something that would be "considered abnormal to the general public", and then document the results. He had mentioned over and over again to try and implement "as many safety measures as possible during planning". The professor went on to explain that the reason for harping on safety was such a big deal because a student of a previous class (decades before ridesharing) decided that their project would be to bring their personnel vehicle to where cabbies would line up. The student would instead offer rides to customers completely for free. I believe they even had a little sign they put on their window. After this occurred two or three times, all of the cabbies completely boxed the students car in and called for the police to come. If I recall correctly, they were yelling, screaming, and honking at the student about how they were taking money out of their pockets. Some were accusing the student of taking customers to an undisclosed location and robbing them in order to get paid, while others were saying that doing this for free was essentially stealing from the cabbies, since the student didn't have a taxi permit. I'm not sure if this was a matter of corruption as much as it was messing with/hurting people trying to make a living, but, I did think it was interesting that all of these different cabbies, from all of these rival taxi companies were all willing to work together spur of the moment, to stop someone who they couldn't possibly compete with. As I understand it, the depths of the rivalry between some of these companies ran pretty deep; it was shocking how willingly they all were to join up to crush this outside threat.

sschueller 4y ago

No, in Switzerland. Instead it managed to steal almost a billion USD from drivers in Switzerland alone and give others the "idea" they can break the law too. Uber is the worst kind of business preying on the lower class claiming independence and freedom when it's the opposite and you are basically a working slave. It did everything possible to go around government worker protections. [1] https://www.20min.ch/story/uber-soll-fahrern-eine-halbe-milliarde-schulden-646772268209 https://www.20min.ch/story/uber-soll-fahrern-eine-halbe-mill...

dsco 4y ago
I know a bunch of people who are happy Uber drivers as they couldn’t afford becoming regular taxi drivers. Do you often point out to your Uber divers that they’re lower class and being preyed on? How do they take it?
- mavu 4y ago
  you can tell yourself that all day long if it makes you feel better. In Europe, uber is exploiting the most vulnerable in our societies, and profiting of the harm they do to people and communities. Not to mention, breaking laws, endangering passengers, using outright evil methods to keep their workers money.
  - yladiz 4y ago
    Some of the most vulnerable are the homeless and mentally disabled. How is Uber exploiting them?
    - harvey9 4y ago
      The phrase 'most vulnerable' is terribly overused, but your comment is still disingenuous.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    These are not fair comments because everything you say the taxi industry it replaced is guilt of and closing the market. Uber puts new cars on the road and opens the industry to those who are locked out.

np1810 4y ago

Uneasy co-incidence, that recently an Indian Uber competitor (named Ola) also had a report of lobbying efforts... https://twitter.com/shrutisonal26/status/1544540603932758016 https://twitter.com/shrutisonal26/status/1544540603932758016 Edit: Apart from the tweets, the actual article is behind a paywall.

AnotherGoodName 4y ago

Btw I'm being a bit coy about naming names but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabcharge#Findings_of_the_Taxi_Industry_Inquiry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabcharge#Findings_of_the_Taxi... has all the details of what i spoke about above in case any doubts how corrupt the taxi industry is (although absolutely no one has doubted that to be fair).

pjmlp 4y ago

Maybe some places have shitty taxis, in my European corner I haven't seen anything good about Uber other than bringing the US gig economy of employee exploitation.

maccard 4y ago
Not sure where you're located but I'm from Ireland living in the UK. In Edinburgh, all Ubers are private hire cars (it's not just anyone in 4 wheels). Uber has forced all of the major taxi firms to accept card payments, have apps with tracking, etc. Uber itself funnily is actually less reliable than the other operators. My experience in Dublin is the same. It's also completely removed the "take someone the scenic route and charge them 3x" (which happened to me in a taxi in Dublin from the airport in 2014!) Meanwhile, visiting my parents in a smaller part of Ireland, getting a taxi involves phoning, waiting to see if they decide to pick up (if it's busy they don't), then having them tell you it'll be 10 minutes only to arrive after an hour, not accepting card, etc.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  In Germany nowadays, card payments and phone apps to call taxis were already a thing before Uber came here. In Scandinavian countries it was even better.
- doktorhladnjak 4y ago
  Irish taxis are unusual compared to taxis in other countries. They’re virtually all self-employed owner-operators like Uber drivers. They are individually licensed and usually own their own vehicles. They can take app or radio dispatches or pick up street hails. If taxis in other markets had taken the same regulatory approach, something like Uber may never have had such widespread success.

winternett 4y ago

Slightly better circumstances don't exonerate corruption. Laws and regulation are supposed to reign in bad industry. Brigading and PR spin is rampant with Uber online for some strange reason, when in truth, they could provide a far better service by relaxing their tendency to spin bad PR by paying and insuring drivers better, and by operating more like a legit Taxi business. It is NOT Uber that swept in and fixed the corrupt transport for hire system... It was passengers choosing a less expensive (subsidized by company investment) service, which is now dramatically increasing in cost to users now that they have stable market dominance. The online PR spins only hold up for people who don't properly recall the past and for those who are unaware of the deception involved in use of "folksy" individual personal tropes used to over-simplify complex issues.

TheDudeMan 4y ago
> now that they have stable market dominance Do they? I'm trying to find some data on how much market share Uber has vs Lyft vs taxis.
- winternett 4y ago
  That's not a key issue to the discussion, the discussion is about corruption.
  - TheDudeMan 4y ago
    You were the one that brought it up.

spaceman_2020 4y ago

Uber is only “better” because it is unprofitable. The minute it starts turning the screws to be profitable, the service quality will go back to what it replaced. Here in India, its already less reliable and often more expensive than old school taxis.

Nasrudith 4y ago
If they slash their operating developers from dropping out of the self driving cars race that would make them much more profitable. Whether doing so would be a good idea is another topic.
awillen 4y ago
Not true. In SF when Uber started, it only had black cars and was meaningfully more expensive than a cab. The difference was that if you called a cab, depending on where you were in the city, there was a pretty decent chance you'd be told it'd take 15 minutes, but no one would ever show up. The Uber would be there 100% of the time. Uber held drivers accountable. The taxi lobby did the exact opposite - they brutally abused an advantage gifted to them by the government because taxis are supposed to be a valuable public service. In India it may be different, but in the US it continues to be extremely reliable.
- kelnos 4y ago
  > In India it may be different, but in the US it continues to be extremely reliable. This is a hint at the main thing we need to remember: Uber replaced a terrible taxi situation in San Francisco. Every city is not like San Francisco. Every country is not like the US. Based on various comments here from people outside the US, some places already had functioning taxi systems, with reasonable prices, clean cars, and good drivers. Why is it ok that Uber got to flaunt regulations in those places as well?
  - awillen 4y ago
    I don't think it was ok anywhere. Even in SF I think it was beneficial but not "ok" in a general sense of fairness. The ends justify the means, I suppose. I'm not saying that Uber overall is a particular ethical company - I don't think they're great on that dimension.

curious_cat_163 4y ago

End does not justify means. Disruption can (and does) happen without resorting to breaking the law.

runarberg 4y ago
I wonder if there are any examples of a company that disrupted a bad industry with malpractice and then magically stopped it ones they succeeded. For some reason I would think the opposite was more common, i.e. if a company gets away with bad behavior, they will continue to do so until stopped by their government authorities.
- Nasrudith 4y ago
  It is a known and unfortunate phenomenon that regulation winds up creating moats even if in service of good ends and intentions. Pulling up the ladder effectively happens to the benefit any incumbent who can afford something far more than upstart competitors. If say, a scrubber stack on factories doubles the equipment costs it favors the existing factory owners even if retrofitting is a hefty expense, it would buy them a moat. Stopping on their own has to do with cost benefit analysis and is thus circumstantial. For a sort of in progress Amazon openly admits that they need to reduce turn over because they are running out of hiring pool. Their work conditions are still infamous but they set standards. That could ironically potentially mean a more competitive environment could have had worse wages. Not an arguement against it being a problem but an amusing irony. Similarly deeper pockets mean a need to be less reckless as big payout judgements become collectable. If a fly by night roofing company has a worker fall and break their back from lack of safety equipment it may only have a few hundred thousand in assets total. If it is a state wide one they could be on the hook for millions.
  - runarberg 4y ago
    This is a good point. Which is why I’m a big fan of general workers’ solidarity, including via unionization. Solidarity among workers offers us a tool to combat these companies, and force them to make changes that benefit us at the cost of their shareholders. The union should be able to lobby the government to enact and enforce sufficient safety laws such that a worker will never be changing the roof over night unless adequate safety standards are met. And if a company fails, a worker has the means to refuse the work, regardless of the size of the company. With solidarity we simply don’t have to wait for these companies to stop on their own, because we can collectively force them to stop, bottom up.

jimnotgym 4y ago

How does that follow at all. Uber breaking the laws was not the only possible way to break up a cartel!

runarberg 4y ago

What is your point? Is it that we can’t have nice things and we should just settle with whichever company is able to make the most money from whatever corruption they can get away with? You are posting an anecdote and non-substantiated accusations against an industry based on your area. And you are doing this under a news where they have evidence that their competitors are as corrupt as it gets, a company which has been accused in the past of violating labor rights, disregarding local laws, bribing officials, exploiting workers, etc. And your point is that their competitors in Australia are worse “because you say so”. Nah, I’m not buying it. The fact that the Australian taxi industry is bad, does not excuse Uber’s conduct. In fact I don’t care what the state is in this industry regarding this conduct and I wish Uber all the worst.

AnotherGoodName 4y ago
I worry that stories like the above article will be used to justify outlawing ride share in favor of the cartels. This is actually the case in many jurisdictions where ride-share apps are still not allowed and the taxi industry still operates in a cartel fashion. I don't care about Uber or Lyft fwiw. No stake in either in any way shape or form. My post is a very relevant warning (in my view) about allowing politicians to use the above stories as an excuse to close down an industry. They are looking for such an excuse. Be warned and call it out.
- runarberg 4y ago
  I think you might be focusing on the wrong thing here. There is no reason to outlaw ride shares, only ride shares that engage in illegal lobbying, labor violations, and disregarding of the law. In fact this is not specific for ride share companies, but companies in general (including traditional taxi cab companies). People have been complaining about Uber not because it is a ride share company that undercuts the traditional taxi cab companies, but because they exploit their workers, bribe their elected officials, brake their local laws, and use VC funding to undercut their competitions. For this they should be outlawed.

ccvannorman 4y ago

whataboutism isn't useful for highlighting corruption - is why you are being downvoted.

AnotherGoodName 4y ago
I worry that stories like the above article will be used to justify outlawing ride share in favor of the cartels. This is actually the case in many jurisdictions where ride-share apps are still not allowed and the taxi industry still operates in a cartel fashion. I don't care about Uber or Lyft fwiw. No stake in either in any way shape or form. My post is a very relevant warning (in my view) about allowing politicians to use the above stories as an excuse to close down an industry. They are looking for such an excuse. Be warned and call it out.

FlyingSnake 4y ago

> Still a million times better than what it replaced. Not really. It is not easy to paint existing systems with a wide brush. The situation in Germany is not the same as in Croatia which is not the same in India. I will always trust taxis in Mumbai and Berlin over Uber, whereas in a foreign location I will look for local options like Ola, Grab, FreeNow. Uber did act as a catalyst for the incumbents to get off their butts, but it created another set of problems which are equally bad.

drevil-v2 4y ago

This is such a stupid simplistic view - read the BBC article on this leak of Uber files. The corruption they (Uber) instituted was just as bad as this anecdote you are alleging. How does replacing one set of elite corruption with another set of elite corruption get to " i am thankful to Uber Lyft and all the other incumbents for managing to get their foot in"?? You are thankful to them? What are you on about?

dang 4y ago
Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN, regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

akira2501 4y ago

> It required dirty dealing to get past this corruption. Why do you think the current state is "/past/ this corruption." It sounds like Uber spent a bunch of money to just "own the corruption for itself." On the whole, I don't believe it's an actual improvement. You may like the state of the cars more, but the continued overt monopolization and the worse outcomes for labor are massively negative outcomes, even if you aren't in a position to be personally impacted by them.

pessimizer 4y ago

So instead of virtual domination by one very large local incumbent with 200 subsidiaries, you have two foreign cab companies. That's an improvement?

wolverine876 4y ago

> Still a million times better than what it replaced. Not in my experience at all. I can't count how many taxis I've taken, with hardly any problems ever. > corrupt They lacked anywhere near the resources to be as corrupt as Uber!