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My personal experience is that it's been cheaper than a taxi, drivers have been nice, cars show up quickly, and the app makes it easier than telling someone on

My personal experience is that it's been cheaper than a taxi, drivers have been nice, cars show up quickly, and the app makes it easier than telling someone on the phone, who may have trouble understanding me, where to go. However my personal experiences have no value in a discussion of this leak. It's irrelevant whether consumers likes a companies product when discussing rules and regulations.

jstanley 4y ago
> It's irrelevant whether consumers likes a companies product when discussing rules and regulations. Creating the kind of world we want to live in should be the sole purpose of rules and regulations. How people want to live shouldn't play second fiddle to what rules and regulations say. Rules and regulations can be changed.
- yourusername 4y ago
  It's not only about the comfort of the people trying to book a cheap taxi. When creating the kind of world we want to live in we also need to consider the working conditions of the drivers and the regulations society wants to impose on cabs to make sure they operate safely and without nuisance.
  - ttjjtt 4y ago
    I’m uncomfortable to see that this statement seems genuinely needed in all of HN’s threads on this topic. One could easily get the impression that the HN crowd find it hard to empathize with the service worker. There’s real truth in the terrible service flaws of the previous taxi system, but the employment flaws of Uber are being smothered with the service improvements they’ve introduced. That’s not the only issue worth caring about.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      I don't see why this is bad for workers? Is it the 20% cut, then what if Uber took 5% cut instead of 20%? Could easily create such a regulation for rideshare services, and then you have a job anyone can start doing at any moment with no management layers or hassle or job interviews etc, just start earning money instantly. Having workers tie themselves to a company for 40 hours a week being the only valid way to make money is conservative thinking, be a bit progressive and see how much freedom this potentially opens up for workers.
      - cogman10 4y ago
        This is a strawman attack. The issue ttjjtt and others are pointing out about Uber are not around binding employees to one employer for a fixed 40 hour workweek. In fact, I'd bet ttjjtt would support labor laws which limit a businesses ability to punish employees for moonlighting. The issue is, like amazon's mechanical turk, that Uber is cutting corners, costs, and wages for their "employees" in ways that are both legal and illegal while secretly lobbying to make it easier for them to reduce benefits. This is a market leader using their position to harm their workers. "Conservative thinking" is that "why do we need all these labor rules and protections for employees? They signed up for it!" Progressive thinking is "Maybe we shouldn't let businesses set the rules for how they treat employees?"
        Jensson 4y ago
        > Progressive thinking is "Maybe we shouldn't let businesses set the rules for how they treat employees?" Right, so make regulators get off their asses and start draft up some reasonable regulations where workers can work freely like they can with uber and mechanical turk? Just banning that sort of freedom entirely is conservative thinking, since it aims to preserve the shitty situation we have where everyone needs to have a "job". Today people can't even imagine a society where you don't have a job, you just go and do things that are useful and get rewarded the full fruit of your labour, that sort of thing is possible with Ubers offerings and a bit of regulations, why go all in on preventing that future from happening? Uber works great for users, we know that. Uber would also work great for drivers if the drivers got a larger cut. So what is the problem, just regulate it and everything gets better than under the old Taxi systems. Why is this so hard to imagine? And no, this is not over regulating at all, at least not more than for example limiting how many Taxi's are allowed to operate in the city etc which is already happening.
    - dfxm12 4y ago
      One could easily get the impression that the HN crowd find it hard to empathize with the service worker. HN is obviously not a hive mind, but in in general, for facets of the HN crowd, the investor class, those with conservative/libertarian views on labor, business owners, etc. the default view is simply to not empathize with the service worker.
      - throwaway894345 4y ago
        Just because people disagree with progressive policies doesn't mean they aren't empathizing with a particular demographic. This particular framing is lazy and frustratingly common. A pretty obvious counterpoint: one can believe that raising the minimum wage drives unemployment among lower class workers while also raising the cost of living--this is an eminently empathetic viewpoint with respect to service workers, etc. For whatever it's worth, I tend to err a bit toward the "more regulation" end of the spectrum, but I don't feel the need to believe that the world is simple and everyone who doesn't subscribe to my simplistic view is morally deficient.
        cycomanic 4y ago
        > A pretty obvious counterpoint: one can believe that raising the minimum wage drives unemployment among lower class workers while also raising the cost of living--this is an eminently empathetic viewpoint with respect to service workers, etc. Except this counterpoint is not based on real evidence but largely based on purely theoretical arguments which have been shown numerous times to be way too simplistic.
        throwaway894345 4y ago
        That's irrelevant (and anyway, I'm not sure economists collectively agree with you), the parent claimed that conservatives and libertarians don't empathize. Even if our hypothetical conservative/libertarian is incorrect about the dynamics of minimum wage regulations, the counterpoint still demonstrates empathy.
    - SilasX 4y ago
      I'm more uncomfortable with how willing people are to sound insightful for caring about workers, and then end the thought there, without ever asking if they were treated any better as taxi drivers. (Usually no -- at least the in the US, they used the "independent contractor" trick and it was much harder to come on and off shifts.)
      - w-j-w 4y ago
      - ttjjtt 4y ago
        The problem with your response is it relies on several bad faith assumptions without evidence. Your inference that Uber is net neutral to net positive for workers rights is a statement I’ve never heard a taxi driver express or seen seriously or convincingly made in an online discussion. I’d like to hear more evidence. until then it seems like a comforting thought for a libertarian rather than a sober description of reality.
        SilasX 4y ago
        I didn’t make such assumptions, it was a comment about evidentiary standards, calling out people like you who place an unequal burden on the two positions, and didn’t even realize something could be wrong in the status quo it was being compared to. You validate that charge when you immediately shift the burden (again) to whether I personally can make the case in that direction.
        ttjjtt 4y ago
        > (you)didn’t even realize something could be wrong in the status quo it was being compared You’re on the internet arguing with imaginary strawmen for your amusement. It’s not time well spent.
        SilasX 4y ago
        Considering you just owned up to being one of them, it’s clearly not a strawman.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > we also need to consider the working conditions of the drivers and the regulations society wants to impose on cabs to make sure they operate safely and without nuisance I agree. But we also need to consider when well-intentioned measures are corrupted or fail entirely. That was the case with taxis before Uber. It remains the case with many of Uber's competitors. Uber is no paragon. But the neither is the status quo. This is far from a bimodal argument.
    - emacsen 4y ago
      This is the most reasonable statement on the topic I've seen. The fact is that Uber/Lyft created a new market even when the product existed a long time. In NYC, you could always get a car service to come and pick you up, but you had to know them, have a pre-existing relationship, etc. If you do, even today, it's cheaper than Uber, but it's a hassle. Also in NYC, taxis are terrible in comparison to Uber. They're usually dirty/unkept, the drivers are sometimes "off". Taxi owners weren't focused on the service- they were focused on the medallion, the right to have a taxi. That's where the real value was. The taxis were/are essentially anonymous, so there's no incentive to do anything more than the bare minimum in terms of cleanliness, repair or customer service. Uber, for all its extreme faults, flipped that on its head, with driver and rider visibility, and that changed everything. Uber has many problems- handicap inaccessibility, driver treatment, a ton of evidence against them regarding deliberate manipulation and probable lying to regulators, but "bring back the old ways" clearly weren't working either.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - BurningFrog 4y ago
      Calling the corrupt Taxi monopolies "well-intentioned" is not the right starting point.
  - badestrand 4y ago
    In Germany at least it's less about safety and more about keeping competition at bay. Operating a taxi requires you to buy a "token" on the black market for around USD 50.000 and by law only token owners are allowed to pick up and drive around people. Rates are set by the municipality as well. The market needs to break up and become more free. Similarly, until a few years ago it was forbidden to operate busses between cities. Uber has some negative aspects but opening up the market and allowing healthy competition is certainly a huge positive.
    - Ekaros 4y ago
      Were the rates set by the municipality the minimum or maximum? If not the minimum why didn't free market compete with cheaper rates? And was there any other requirements? Like required training or mandating mandatory supply at all times?
      - DocTomoe 4y ago
        It's neither a minimum or a maximum, it's the rate. X amount of Euros for Y amount of kilometers (as calculated by the meter while actually driving, which leads to taxi drivers often chosing the 'scenic route'). Maybe extra fees for night drives, or for driving to the airport, or for coming to the pickup place at all (which makes taxis prohibitively expensive in nonurban settings).
    - kuschku 4y ago
      That only applies if you’re running a taxi – a transport service (not actually a taxi) can be run by anyone with a Personenbeförderungsschein (just a special driving license) and proper insurance. There’s a lot of competition on the German market for taxi-alternatives, many of which started long before Uber (and are often cheaper as well).
  - woevdbz 4y ago
    Agreed, but it's a balance, and in many parts of the world, transportation user needs had been disregarded for so long that there was wide popular support for breaking with the status quo and rebalancing power in favor of the user. Everyone who was an adult city dweller pre-Uber has taxi horror stories at the ready, of not getting picked up, of being overcharged, of unsafe driving, of dirty cars, of feeling threatened or disrespected by the driver — and not feeling like they had any effective recourse. This is what caused the market to be ripe for disruption, the users' sense of powerlessness in the face of a bunch of local players set in their ways and gripped by local worker politics, in the way that most industries are thankfully not. In the process, Uber clearly behaved illegally and unethically towards its workers and government regulators. That's been known for a while. Could it have been different? Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes governments don't listen until they're forced to. Now about the working conditions of cab drivers, honestly in many places they were already being screwed over by local oligopolies (for a prime example of this, see for example the NYC medallion auction scams which defrauded individual drivers of hundreds of thousands of dollars). In the Uber story, drivers got shuttled from one shitty situation to another probably just about as shitty. Hopefully the new set of players in that space now abide by the local rules, and also the regulators learn from their failures and get on top of the industry without forgetting about their users too much.
  - AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
- capableweb 4y ago
  Sure, rules and regulations could changed, but we need to not only consider what is best for our own life but for others too. Many rich people wouldn't suffer if Uber could just forcefully employ people at will, keeping them hostage, if Uber could arrange something like that. But that hurts the people who are being kept hostage. When we create/remove/modify regulations, both sides of the coin needs to be considered. In this case, it's less about how good/bad Uber is for passengers and more about how Uber is exploiting their employees. Even if everyone loved Uber as a passenger, we can't allow them to exploit other human beings.
  - remflight 4y ago
    Please explain how Uber exploits their drivers?
    - capableweb 4y ago
      The first, glaring reason is because Uber refuses to treat them as employees, and instead force them to work as contractors/freelancers, even though they clearly are employees by any reasonable measure.
      - remflight 4y ago
        The vast majority of Uber drivers don’t want to be employees. They prefer working part time. Anything else?
        capableweb 4y ago
        Most of the Uber drivers I've spoken to, don't like how Uber is treating them. But, I'm not gonna pretend I've spoken to all of them, and I haven't spoken to any of them in the US (mostly South America, Asia and Europe). But since you apparently sit on a trove of data (as you're so sure of this) that I don't have access to, could you share a bit the results and your methodology?
  - saiya-jin 4y ago
- remus 4y ago
  > Creating the kind of world we want to live in should be the sole purpose of rules and regulations. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. I think the point is that Uber can do shitty things that should be punished and provide a good service that should be encouraged. To put it another way, the world I want to live in gives you a fair chance of running a competitive business without having to be mega rich and chummy with the leaders of the countries you operate in.
  - remflight 4y ago
    Except that the idea Uber is doing shitty things is strictly the narrative of those that want to see Uber fail. But it’s obvious drivers and customers find utility in working for Uber otherwise there are competitors they can hop to extremely easily. Or they can just stop driving for Uber instantly. The idea that Uber is creating slaves that have no agency is the typical elitist arrogance, sitting in their ivory towers, picturing all these poor Uber drivers suffering when it’s simply not the case.
    - remus 4y ago
      Uber is a big company. They can do good and bad things. I personally really like the service they offer, but that shouldn't mean we should let them get away with it if they do something shitty. For example, in Amsterdam they did the following after one of their services was found to be illegal by the local courts > Uber identified police officers through data mined from the app and then, using an internal tool called “greyball”, served them a fake view of the UberPop app, populated with ghost cars that wouldn’t stop for them. They could also block anyone from booking in certain zones, like around police stations, using a tool called “geofencing”. [1] Fair enough if you disagree with the court ruling, but they should abide by the law like everyone else. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-f2971465-73d2-4932-a889-5c63778e273d https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-f2971465-73d2-4932-...
      - LegitShady 4y ago
        >Fair enough if you disagree with the court ruling if you disagree with a court ruling, and then set up intentionally a system to avoid the police detecting you continue your behaviour, you should be punished to the maximum extent of the law. The people who orchestrated that behaviour should have money confiscated from their illegal enrichment, and jail time for purposely working to circumvent a legal order for a court. And if not back then, today.
- ysavir 4y ago
  > Creating the kind of world we want to live in should be the sole purpose of rules and regulations. And the first requirement for this is that rules and regulations are followed. Establish a culture in which there is no consequence for disobeying the rules and regulations and I guarantee that the most regular offenders are not those who's practices you agree with. The best case scenario here is that there are heavy consequences for those who broke the rules, but the rules are revisited and altered to make things more in line with consumer needs.
  - Consultant32452 4y ago
    What you're discovering here is the difference between the rules, as written, and the actual rules. This is always the case, always. The real speed limit is 10-15 mph faster than the posted limit. The school dress code says no mid-riff shirts, but plenty of girls are wearing them. The PM rules say I can't have more than 2 active user stories assigned to me, but I have 7. If you're attractive you can say all sorts of crazy shit to women, but not if you're ugly. As an autistic person I found this very hard to grasp when I was young. Now I understand that rules must be discovered as an emergent property, they cannot be read from a manual or law book. What matters is the culture that enforces whatever rules you want. Otherwise you get tons of laws on the books people don't enforce.
    - ysavir 4y ago
      It's relevant, but not quite what's described. Seems like you're addressing the difference between the concept of Social Contract and the concept of Law. The Social Contract is exactly what you described: the implicit permissions and offenses that a body of people will tolerate. It is, by definition, equal to the current will of the people, and as you said requires discovery. But it requires constant discovery, as the list of permissions and offenses may change over time, and is not necessarily consistent. Law is an explicit agreement on what permissions and offenses that body of people will tolerate. Ideally it would match the social contract's list of permissions and offenses, but in reality it will always be lagging behind, and it's a social responsibility to try and keep it up to date. Unlike the Social Contract, the law is codified and constant, requiring no discovery. In small groups of people, coexisting with just the social contract can be all you need. But as the group grows, it becomes less and less possible to predict what the current body of permissions is, leading to people committing offenses without malicious intent; there was no way for them to know beforehand that an action was an offense. And because the body of permissions changes constantly, it's also not something that can be relied on practically after the discovery. We must always suffer the anxiety of taking an action that will condemn us. Law provides an easier means to get along by providing a constant and predictable list of permissions and offenses. It changes too, but only by announcement, allowing the populace to stay abreast of the updates. This offers a relief to the anxiety presented in a strictly Social Contract setting, and encourages people to act and be involved in daily life rather than avoidant of it. The offenses you're describing seem to fall under the concept of De minimis[1], which establishes that there are offenses to a rule that just aren't worth acting on. We all know they're against the law, but not necessarily against the spirit of the law, and the cost of acting on those offenses are greater than the benefits. So we allow them to happen, by virtue of the Social Contract overriding the Law in minor circumstances. But that doesn't mean that the rules and regulations aren't important and larger offenses should never be acted on. The Law is still the Law and for good reason. Ignore it, and that anxiety returns to plague anyone without the power to force their will. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_minimis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_minimis
- foxhill 4y ago
  it’s easy to make some people’s lives better when your degrading the lives of others. the trick is to make it better for everyone.
- lumost 4y ago
  There is an inherent pricing discussion happening here. The op noted that they paid $15 for Uber and $40 for a taxi. While it’s a given that the Uber was a better experience, it’s not a given that the Ubers price is a sustainable one. The Uber driver circling at 5 am may not be turning a profit with $15 airport rides. This business may only be sustainable for as long as VC money flows, and drivers are willing to go bust.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > business may only be sustainable for as long as VC money flows, and drivers are willing to go bust Uber makes something like a 36% variable margin [1]. Even adding back sales & marketing we find a positive, if small, margin. They lose about 11% per ride. But that varies wildly region to region. (New York, for example, is profitable.) Drivers' economics are more precarious. But the "as long as VC money flows" argument hasn't made sense since Uber's 2019 IPO. [1] https://gadallon.substack.com/p/pool-is-back https://gadallon.substack.com/p/pool-is-back
    - lumost 4y ago
      > Drivers' economics are more precarious. > They lose about 11% per ride. So on net, they may be out something like 11-30% per ride dependent on location. Those are awful economics. More concerning would be busy season/dry season dynamics for Uber drivers. If there are months where rides decline in frequency or become more concentrated - then driver economics may be substantially worse than the average would have you believe.
  - remflight 4y ago
    Can you please stop with the false narrative that Uber is using VC money? They haven’t gotten any new investor money since pre-ipo several years ago. It’s a disingenuous lie to keep claiming “as long as VC money flows”. There isn’t and hasn’t been for years.
    - lumost 4y ago
      They still lose Billions per year no? Looks like they recorded a 6 Billion dollar Q1 loss. It may not be VC money anymore, but to claim that they are self-funding would be extremely wrong. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-posts-nearly-6-billion-loss-from-investments-but-reports-a-rides-rebound-beating-estimates-11651664829#:~:text=Uber%20reported%20a%20first%2Dquarter,stakes%20in%20Grab%20Holdings%20Ltd https://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-posts-nearly-6-billio....
- themitigating 4y ago
  I wasn't implying the rules and regulations shouldn't benefit consumers. If you think taxi services shouldn't have X regulation then change the regulation.
- nebula8804 4y ago
  >Rules and regulations can be changed. Rules and Regulations are extremely hard to change, thats why we have companies like Uber popping up in the first place.
Steltek 4y ago
Exactly. Vanishingly few people argue with the customer experience. It's the flaunting of the law and exploitation of drivers that's the problem. I'm saddened that the cheaper price is always mentioned because we all know how it got there.
bko 4y ago
There's also the safety issue. If you're in another country, anyone could just throw a sticker on their car. It's much scarier for women. Even if its a legit driver, it would be hard to track down an offender. With Uber, at least you know who the driver is, that they passed some kind of screen and have a history and reporting them is a lot easier.
marricks 4y ago
It’ll be cheaper than taxis until taxis are almost dead/forgotten then it will get more expensive than taxis were. Cause that’s how cornering a market works.
blablabla123 4y ago
I'm not a frequent taxi user but to me it's the most reliable mode of transportation which I always have as backup in mind when I need to get somewhere really on time. The additional luxury is cool but probably I'm fine without it, it puzzles me how dissatisfied some people are with taxis

jstanley 4y ago

> It's irrelevant whether consumers likes a companies product when discussing rules and regulations. Creating the kind of world we want to live in should be the sole purpose of rules and regulations. How people want to live shouldn't play second fiddle to what rules and regulations say. Rules and regulations can be changed.

yourusername 4y ago
It's not only about the comfort of the people trying to book a cheap taxi. When creating the kind of world we want to live in we also need to consider the working conditions of the drivers and the regulations society wants to impose on cabs to make sure they operate safely and without nuisance.
- ttjjtt 4y ago
  I’m uncomfortable to see that this statement seems genuinely needed in all of HN’s threads on this topic. One could easily get the impression that the HN crowd find it hard to empathize with the service worker. There’s real truth in the terrible service flaws of the previous taxi system, but the employment flaws of Uber are being smothered with the service improvements they’ve introduced. That’s not the only issue worth caring about.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    I don't see why this is bad for workers? Is it the 20% cut, then what if Uber took 5% cut instead of 20%? Could easily create such a regulation for rideshare services, and then you have a job anyone can start doing at any moment with no management layers or hassle or job interviews etc, just start earning money instantly. Having workers tie themselves to a company for 40 hours a week being the only valid way to make money is conservative thinking, be a bit progressive and see how much freedom this potentially opens up for workers.
    - cogman10 4y ago
      This is a strawman attack. The issue ttjjtt and others are pointing out about Uber are not around binding employees to one employer for a fixed 40 hour workweek. In fact, I'd bet ttjjtt would support labor laws which limit a businesses ability to punish employees for moonlighting. The issue is, like amazon's mechanical turk, that Uber is cutting corners, costs, and wages for their "employees" in ways that are both legal and illegal while secretly lobbying to make it easier for them to reduce benefits. This is a market leader using their position to harm their workers. "Conservative thinking" is that "why do we need all these labor rules and protections for employees? They signed up for it!" Progressive thinking is "Maybe we shouldn't let businesses set the rules for how they treat employees?"
      - Jensson 4y ago
        > Progressive thinking is "Maybe we shouldn't let businesses set the rules for how they treat employees?" Right, so make regulators get off their asses and start draft up some reasonable regulations where workers can work freely like they can with uber and mechanical turk? Just banning that sort of freedom entirely is conservative thinking, since it aims to preserve the shitty situation we have where everyone needs to have a "job". Today people can't even imagine a society where you don't have a job, you just go and do things that are useful and get rewarded the full fruit of your labour, that sort of thing is possible with Ubers offerings and a bit of regulations, why go all in on preventing that future from happening? Uber works great for users, we know that. Uber would also work great for drivers if the drivers got a larger cut. So what is the problem, just regulate it and everything gets better than under the old Taxi systems. Why is this so hard to imagine? And no, this is not over regulating at all, at least not more than for example limiting how many Taxi's are allowed to operate in the city etc which is already happening.
  - dfxm12 4y ago
    One could easily get the impression that the HN crowd find it hard to empathize with the service worker. HN is obviously not a hive mind, but in in general, for facets of the HN crowd, the investor class, those with conservative/libertarian views on labor, business owners, etc. the default view is simply to not empathize with the service worker.
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      Just because people disagree with progressive policies doesn't mean they aren't empathizing with a particular demographic. This particular framing is lazy and frustratingly common. A pretty obvious counterpoint: one can believe that raising the minimum wage drives unemployment among lower class workers while also raising the cost of living--this is an eminently empathetic viewpoint with respect to service workers, etc. For whatever it's worth, I tend to err a bit toward the "more regulation" end of the spectrum, but I don't feel the need to believe that the world is simple and everyone who doesn't subscribe to my simplistic view is morally deficient.
      - cycomanic 4y ago
        > A pretty obvious counterpoint: one can believe that raising the minimum wage drives unemployment among lower class workers while also raising the cost of living--this is an eminently empathetic viewpoint with respect to service workers, etc. Except this counterpoint is not based on real evidence but largely based on purely theoretical arguments which have been shown numerous times to be way too simplistic.
        throwaway894345 4y ago
        That's irrelevant (and anyway, I'm not sure economists collectively agree with you), the parent claimed that conservatives and libertarians don't empathize. Even if our hypothetical conservative/libertarian is incorrect about the dynamics of minimum wage regulations, the counterpoint still demonstrates empathy.
  - SilasX 4y ago
    I'm more uncomfortable with how willing people are to sound insightful for caring about workers, and then end the thought there, without ever asking if they were treated any better as taxi drivers. (Usually no -- at least the in the US, they used the "independent contractor" trick and it was much harder to come on and off shifts.)
    - w-j-w 4y ago
    - ttjjtt 4y ago
      The problem with your response is it relies on several bad faith assumptions without evidence. Your inference that Uber is net neutral to net positive for workers rights is a statement I’ve never heard a taxi driver express or seen seriously or convincingly made in an online discussion. I’d like to hear more evidence. until then it seems like a comforting thought for a libertarian rather than a sober description of reality.
      - SilasX 4y ago
        I didn’t make such assumptions, it was a comment about evidentiary standards, calling out people like you who place an unequal burden on the two positions, and didn’t even realize something could be wrong in the status quo it was being compared to. You validate that charge when you immediately shift the burden (again) to whether I personally can make the case in that direction.
        ttjjtt 4y ago
        > (you)didn’t even realize something could be wrong in the status quo it was being compared You’re on the internet arguing with imaginary strawmen for your amusement. It’s not time well spent.
        SilasX 4y ago
        Considering you just owned up to being one of them, it’s clearly not a strawman.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > we also need to consider the working conditions of the drivers and the regulations society wants to impose on cabs to make sure they operate safely and without nuisance I agree. But we also need to consider when well-intentioned measures are corrupted or fail entirely. That was the case with taxis before Uber. It remains the case with many of Uber's competitors. Uber is no paragon. But the neither is the status quo. This is far from a bimodal argument.
  - emacsen 4y ago
    This is the most reasonable statement on the topic I've seen. The fact is that Uber/Lyft created a new market even when the product existed a long time. In NYC, you could always get a car service to come and pick you up, but you had to know them, have a pre-existing relationship, etc. If you do, even today, it's cheaper than Uber, but it's a hassle. Also in NYC, taxis are terrible in comparison to Uber. They're usually dirty/unkept, the drivers are sometimes "off". Taxi owners weren't focused on the service- they were focused on the medallion, the right to have a taxi. That's where the real value was. The taxis were/are essentially anonymous, so there's no incentive to do anything more than the bare minimum in terms of cleanliness, repair or customer service. Uber, for all its extreme faults, flipped that on its head, with driver and rider visibility, and that changed everything. Uber has many problems- handicap inaccessibility, driver treatment, a ton of evidence against them regarding deliberate manipulation and probable lying to regulators, but "bring back the old ways" clearly weren't working either.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - BurningFrog 4y ago
    Calling the corrupt Taxi monopolies "well-intentioned" is not the right starting point.
- badestrand 4y ago
  In Germany at least it's less about safety and more about keeping competition at bay. Operating a taxi requires you to buy a "token" on the black market for around USD 50.000 and by law only token owners are allowed to pick up and drive around people. Rates are set by the municipality as well. The market needs to break up and become more free. Similarly, until a few years ago it was forbidden to operate busses between cities. Uber has some negative aspects but opening up the market and allowing healthy competition is certainly a huge positive.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    Were the rates set by the municipality the minimum or maximum? If not the minimum why didn't free market compete with cheaper rates? And was there any other requirements? Like required training or mandating mandatory supply at all times?
    - DocTomoe 4y ago
      It's neither a minimum or a maximum, it's the rate. X amount of Euros for Y amount of kilometers (as calculated by the meter while actually driving, which leads to taxi drivers often chosing the 'scenic route'). Maybe extra fees for night drives, or for driving to the airport, or for coming to the pickup place at all (which makes taxis prohibitively expensive in nonurban settings).
  - kuschku 4y ago
    That only applies if you’re running a taxi – a transport service (not actually a taxi) can be run by anyone with a Personenbeförderungsschein (just a special driving license) and proper insurance. There’s a lot of competition on the German market for taxi-alternatives, many of which started long before Uber (and are often cheaper as well).
- woevdbz 4y ago
  Agreed, but it's a balance, and in many parts of the world, transportation user needs had been disregarded for so long that there was wide popular support for breaking with the status quo and rebalancing power in favor of the user. Everyone who was an adult city dweller pre-Uber has taxi horror stories at the ready, of not getting picked up, of being overcharged, of unsafe driving, of dirty cars, of feeling threatened or disrespected by the driver — and not feeling like they had any effective recourse. This is what caused the market to be ripe for disruption, the users' sense of powerlessness in the face of a bunch of local players set in their ways and gripped by local worker politics, in the way that most industries are thankfully not. In the process, Uber clearly behaved illegally and unethically towards its workers and government regulators. That's been known for a while. Could it have been different? Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes governments don't listen until they're forced to. Now about the working conditions of cab drivers, honestly in many places they were already being screwed over by local oligopolies (for a prime example of this, see for example the NYC medallion auction scams which defrauded individual drivers of hundreds of thousands of dollars). In the Uber story, drivers got shuttled from one shitty situation to another probably just about as shitty. Hopefully the new set of players in that space now abide by the local rules, and also the regulators learn from their failures and get on top of the industry without forgetting about their users too much.
- AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
capableweb 4y ago
Sure, rules and regulations could changed, but we need to not only consider what is best for our own life but for others too. Many rich people wouldn't suffer if Uber could just forcefully employ people at will, keeping them hostage, if Uber could arrange something like that. But that hurts the people who are being kept hostage. When we create/remove/modify regulations, both sides of the coin needs to be considered. In this case, it's less about how good/bad Uber is for passengers and more about how Uber is exploiting their employees. Even if everyone loved Uber as a passenger, we can't allow them to exploit other human beings.
- remflight 4y ago
  Please explain how Uber exploits their drivers?
  - capableweb 4y ago
    The first, glaring reason is because Uber refuses to treat them as employees, and instead force them to work as contractors/freelancers, even though they clearly are employees by any reasonable measure.
    - remflight 4y ago
      The vast majority of Uber drivers don’t want to be employees. They prefer working part time. Anything else?
      - capableweb 4y ago
        Most of the Uber drivers I've spoken to, don't like how Uber is treating them. But, I'm not gonna pretend I've spoken to all of them, and I haven't spoken to any of them in the US (mostly South America, Asia and Europe). But since you apparently sit on a trove of data (as you're so sure of this) that I don't have access to, could you share a bit the results and your methodology?
- saiya-jin 4y ago
remus 4y ago
> Creating the kind of world we want to live in should be the sole purpose of rules and regulations. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. I think the point is that Uber can do shitty things that should be punished and provide a good service that should be encouraged. To put it another way, the world I want to live in gives you a fair chance of running a competitive business without having to be mega rich and chummy with the leaders of the countries you operate in.
- remflight 4y ago
  Except that the idea Uber is doing shitty things is strictly the narrative of those that want to see Uber fail. But it’s obvious drivers and customers find utility in working for Uber otherwise there are competitors they can hop to extremely easily. Or they can just stop driving for Uber instantly. The idea that Uber is creating slaves that have no agency is the typical elitist arrogance, sitting in their ivory towers, picturing all these poor Uber drivers suffering when it’s simply not the case.
  - remus 4y ago
    Uber is a big company. They can do good and bad things. I personally really like the service they offer, but that shouldn't mean we should let them get away with it if they do something shitty. For example, in Amsterdam they did the following after one of their services was found to be illegal by the local courts > Uber identified police officers through data mined from the app and then, using an internal tool called “greyball”, served them a fake view of the UberPop app, populated with ghost cars that wouldn’t stop for them. They could also block anyone from booking in certain zones, like around police stations, using a tool called “geofencing”. [1] Fair enough if you disagree with the court ruling, but they should abide by the law like everyone else. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-f2971465-73d2-4932-a889-5c63778e273d https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-f2971465-73d2-4932-...
    - LegitShady 4y ago
      >Fair enough if you disagree with the court ruling if you disagree with a court ruling, and then set up intentionally a system to avoid the police detecting you continue your behaviour, you should be punished to the maximum extent of the law. The people who orchestrated that behaviour should have money confiscated from their illegal enrichment, and jail time for purposely working to circumvent a legal order for a court. And if not back then, today.
ysavir 4y ago
> Creating the kind of world we want to live in should be the sole purpose of rules and regulations. And the first requirement for this is that rules and regulations are followed. Establish a culture in which there is no consequence for disobeying the rules and regulations and I guarantee that the most regular offenders are not those who's practices you agree with. The best case scenario here is that there are heavy consequences for those who broke the rules, but the rules are revisited and altered to make things more in line with consumer needs.
- Consultant32452 4y ago
  What you're discovering here is the difference between the rules, as written, and the actual rules. This is always the case, always. The real speed limit is 10-15 mph faster than the posted limit. The school dress code says no mid-riff shirts, but plenty of girls are wearing them. The PM rules say I can't have more than 2 active user stories assigned to me, but I have 7. If you're attractive you can say all sorts of crazy shit to women, but not if you're ugly. As an autistic person I found this very hard to grasp when I was young. Now I understand that rules must be discovered as an emergent property, they cannot be read from a manual or law book. What matters is the culture that enforces whatever rules you want. Otherwise you get tons of laws on the books people don't enforce.
  - ysavir 4y ago
    It's relevant, but not quite what's described. Seems like you're addressing the difference between the concept of Social Contract and the concept of Law. The Social Contract is exactly what you described: the implicit permissions and offenses that a body of people will tolerate. It is, by definition, equal to the current will of the people, and as you said requires discovery. But it requires constant discovery, as the list of permissions and offenses may change over time, and is not necessarily consistent. Law is an explicit agreement on what permissions and offenses that body of people will tolerate. Ideally it would match the social contract's list of permissions and offenses, but in reality it will always be lagging behind, and it's a social responsibility to try and keep it up to date. Unlike the Social Contract, the law is codified and constant, requiring no discovery. In small groups of people, coexisting with just the social contract can be all you need. But as the group grows, it becomes less and less possible to predict what the current body of permissions is, leading to people committing offenses without malicious intent; there was no way for them to know beforehand that an action was an offense. And because the body of permissions changes constantly, it's also not something that can be relied on practically after the discovery. We must always suffer the anxiety of taking an action that will condemn us. Law provides an easier means to get along by providing a constant and predictable list of permissions and offenses. It changes too, but only by announcement, allowing the populace to stay abreast of the updates. This offers a relief to the anxiety presented in a strictly Social Contract setting, and encourages people to act and be involved in daily life rather than avoidant of it. The offenses you're describing seem to fall under the concept of De minimis[1], which establishes that there are offenses to a rule that just aren't worth acting on. We all know they're against the law, but not necessarily against the spirit of the law, and the cost of acting on those offenses are greater than the benefits. So we allow them to happen, by virtue of the Social Contract overriding the Law in minor circumstances. But that doesn't mean that the rules and regulations aren't important and larger offenses should never be acted on. The Law is still the Law and for good reason. Ignore it, and that anxiety returns to plague anyone without the power to force their will. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_minimis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_minimis
foxhill 4y ago
it’s easy to make some people’s lives better when your degrading the lives of others. the trick is to make it better for everyone.
lumost 4y ago
There is an inherent pricing discussion happening here. The op noted that they paid $15 for Uber and $40 for a taxi. While it’s a given that the Uber was a better experience, it’s not a given that the Ubers price is a sustainable one. The Uber driver circling at 5 am may not be turning a profit with $15 airport rides. This business may only be sustainable for as long as VC money flows, and drivers are willing to go bust.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > business may only be sustainable for as long as VC money flows, and drivers are willing to go bust Uber makes something like a 36% variable margin [1]. Even adding back sales & marketing we find a positive, if small, margin. They lose about 11% per ride. But that varies wildly region to region. (New York, for example, is profitable.) Drivers' economics are more precarious. But the "as long as VC money flows" argument hasn't made sense since Uber's 2019 IPO. [1] https://gadallon.substack.com/p/pool-is-back https://gadallon.substack.com/p/pool-is-back
  - lumost 4y ago
    > Drivers' economics are more precarious. > They lose about 11% per ride. So on net, they may be out something like 11-30% per ride dependent on location. Those are awful economics. More concerning would be busy season/dry season dynamics for Uber drivers. If there are months where rides decline in frequency or become more concentrated - then driver economics may be substantially worse than the average would have you believe.
- remflight 4y ago
  Can you please stop with the false narrative that Uber is using VC money? They haven’t gotten any new investor money since pre-ipo several years ago. It’s a disingenuous lie to keep claiming “as long as VC money flows”. There isn’t and hasn’t been for years.
  - lumost 4y ago
    They still lose Billions per year no? Looks like they recorded a 6 Billion dollar Q1 loss. It may not be VC money anymore, but to claim that they are self-funding would be extremely wrong. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-posts-nearly-6-billion-loss-from-investments-but-reports-a-rides-rebound-beating-estimates-11651664829#:~:text=Uber%20reported%20a%20first%2Dquarter,stakes%20in%20Grab%20Holdings%20Ltd https://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-posts-nearly-6-billio....
themitigating 4y ago
I wasn't implying the rules and regulations shouldn't benefit consumers. If you think taxi services shouldn't have X regulation then change the regulation.
nebula8804 4y ago
>Rules and regulations can be changed. Rules and Regulations are extremely hard to change, thats why we have companies like Uber popping up in the first place.

Steltek 4y ago

Exactly. Vanishingly few people argue with the customer experience. It's the flaunting of the law and exploitation of drivers that's the problem. I'm saddened that the cheaper price is always mentioned because we all know how it got there.

bko 4y ago

There's also the safety issue. If you're in another country, anyone could just throw a sticker on their car. It's much scarier for women. Even if its a legit driver, it would be hard to track down an offender. With Uber, at least you know who the driver is, that they passed some kind of screen and have a history and reporting them is a lot easier.

marricks 4y ago

It’ll be cheaper than taxis until taxis are almost dead/forgotten then it will get more expensive than taxis were. Cause that’s how cornering a market works.

blablabla123 4y ago

I'm not a frequent taxi user but to me it's the most reliable mode of transportation which I always have as backup in mind when I need to get somewhere really on time. The additional luxury is cool but probably I'm fine without it, it puzzles me how dissatisfied some people are with taxis