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The actual problem is that it's a stupid law. You effectively have two options. Option one, Uber signs up as many drivers as they have customers during off-pea

The actual problem is that it's a stupid law. You effectively have two options. Option one, Uber signs up as many drivers as they have customers during off-peak hours and then if you want to drive only during peak hours to take advantage of surge pricing you can't and if you want a ride then there won't be enough drivers, because they won't sign up any more if they'd have to pay someone for 8 hours to have them only drive for one. Option two, there are that many full-time drivers and then they sign up some additional part-time drivers to satisfy peak demand, but the part-time drivers are part-time and they're not getting paid during off-peak hours. Which one do you want? Notice that there is no one better off under the first option; the people who don't want to work part-time still have the option not to under the second option, the first just prevents them from doing it even if they want to.

viraptor 2y ago
Option three: They get enough drivers to cover most of the peak, and end up paying for some idle time otherwise. Just like almost every company with permanent staff. Alternatively option two with an explicit, upfront decisions who is actually part-time, so there are no surprises and the rules are known.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > Option three: They get enough drivers to cover most of the peak, and end up paying for some idle time otherwise. Just like almost every company with permanent staff. That only works when the difference in demand between peak and off-peak is small relative to the cost of idle workers. In this case it isn't. > Alternatively option two with an explicit, upfront decisions who is actually part-time, so there are no surprises and the rules are known. Then you'll be objecting that the majority of people are classified as part-time because there will be a lot of people who get 40 hours some weeks and zero other weeks due to changes in seasonal demand etc. Also, the result of that would be that in the slower weeks, one person gets 40 hours and one person gets 10 instead of each person getting 25 hours, and that's obviously not to the advantage of the person whose hours you're cutting. Which in turn implies that the person getting 40 will be signing up for some fresh hell like "you get 40 hours but we choose when they are" and then they're both getting screwed by the change.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    > one person gets 40 hours and one person gets 10 instead of each person getting 25 hours If these are the upfront conditions, why is that an issue? But the main issue you're getting closer and closer to is: uber's model doesn't seem to be profitable if they have to pay and employ with reasonable conditions. They don't have to be profitable though. We really can let them fail. The reasonable cities can then provide standard overprovisioned public transport.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      > If these are the upfront conditions, why is that an issue? Because they might have both preferred 25 hours with flexibility to a forced choice between 40 inflexible hours or 10 flexible ones. > uber's model doesn't seem to be profitable if they have to pay and employ with reasonable conditions. Uber is an app. Their primary cost is paying drivers. They're not going to fail because you imposed this inflexibility on them. What's going to happen is they're going to have fewer drivers and provide less service. But "have fewer drivers" is those people losing their jobs, which isn't really helping them out.
      - viraptor 2y ago
        > both preferred 25 hours with flexibility That's not an option though. The option uber gives is "maybe 25, maybe not, you'll find out on the day". That's still "how do we keep uber in business". There are alternatives like good quality overprovisioned public transport which can take most of those customers. It can also deal with peak situations like events. It's a sunk cost fallacy to think of uber as some kind of last resort employer that can ignore the rules.
        AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        > That's not an option though. The option uber gives is "maybe 25, maybe not, you'll find out on the day". It's 25 when it's 25. Which you can still have a preference for when the alternative is 10, or the alternative is "40 hours but your hours are 9PM to 1AM and then 5AM to 9AM". > That's still "how do we keep uber in business". Uber is still in business when they require you to work split shifts in the wee hours. We're trying to save drivers and riders from the consequences of foolish rules. > There are alternatives like good quality overprovisioned public transport which can take most of those customers. Overprovisioned public transport is just Uber with lower efficiency. You have a municipal bus with zero or one passengers instead of a smaller private car with one passenger or avoid the trip because you know before you start that no one is going there. > It can also deal with peak situations like events. Ten thousand people exit the stadium at the same time and each want to go to a different destination, thousands of which are single family homes in the suburbs. > It's a sunk cost fallacy to think of uber as some kind of last resort employer that can ignore the rules. The assumption is that Uber is bad, but Uber is better than taxi medallion cartels or private cars that then have to be parked in the city instead of picking up a different fare going in the opposite direction.
RHSeeger 2y ago
Option 3 - You hire enough people to cover general demand, have surge prices to lower demand when there's not enough drivers, and charge prices for normal/lower demand that allows you to make sure everyone you have on duty makes at least minimum wage. And if you _can't_ find a solution that allows you to pay everyone minimum wage, then you don't get to do business. I can think of plenty of businesses I could set up that would make me money and allow me to pay the people that work for me below minimum wage. But, see, we don't allow that; and we created a minimum wage law to make it very clear that we don't allow that. Not every business model is viable given the rules society has setup (to protext society as a whole)
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > Option 3 - You hire enough people to cover general demand, have surge prices to lower demand when there's not enough drivers, and charge prices for normal/lower demand that allows you to make sure everyone you have on duty makes at least minimum wage. This is just a rehash of Option 1. The point of surge pricing is to get more drivers to drive during peak times. If you're instead using that money to pay other people to be idle then the average driver makes less money because part of what would have been their compensation is now going to pay someone else to sit around idle, and they lose the ability to make a higher hourly rate by working only during peak demand. Which in turn reduces the number of drivers available during surge pricing and there goes your funding source for hiring more drivers, so you're back to laying off lots of drivers who would otherwise have part-time work, but now also reducing the median driver's hourly rate. > Not every business model is viable given the rules society has setup (to protext society as a whole) Minimum wage laws in general have never protected anyone. If there is another job available to you that pays more than minimum wage and is otherwise on equally favorable terms, you would have taken that one regardless of whether a lower paying job is available. If the lower paying job is better, e.g. because it pays slightly less but you also have lower costs in terms of commuting distance or greater flexibility in hours etc., taking away that option "for your own protection" is patronizing BS. This is why minimum wages are set at the level that only ~1% of people make minimum wage, because it minimizes the damage done by the law while still allowing opportunistic politicians to claim they've done something. Actually doing something is creating opportunities for people that have better conditions or pay higher wages so that it doesn't matter if someone is offering low wages because people aren't desperate to accept them for lack of alternatives. Notice also that taking away alternatives can do more than just force you to take a worse one. It can make the worse alternative worse. Suppose there is a job with low pay but it's across the street from where you live, and another one with an hour commute each way, costing you $40 and two hours/day. You take the first one unless the second one pays significantly better, at least several dollars/hour more to compensate you for the gas and the time. Unless the first one is banned and goes away because it was $1/hour below the "minimum". Then not only are you stuck with the second one, they can lower their pay to the minimum when they would otherwise have had to pay more to compensate for the commute because you no longer have an alternative. Price controls are bad.

viraptor 2y ago

Option three: They get enough drivers to cover most of the peak, and end up paying for some idle time otherwise. Just like almost every company with permanent staff. Alternatively option two with an explicit, upfront decisions who is actually part-time, so there are no surprises and the rules are known.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> Option three: They get enough drivers to cover most of the peak, and end up paying for some idle time otherwise. Just like almost every company with permanent staff. That only works when the difference in demand between peak and off-peak is small relative to the cost of idle workers. In this case it isn't. > Alternatively option two with an explicit, upfront decisions who is actually part-time, so there are no surprises and the rules are known. Then you'll be objecting that the majority of people are classified as part-time because there will be a lot of people who get 40 hours some weeks and zero other weeks due to changes in seasonal demand etc. Also, the result of that would be that in the slower weeks, one person gets 40 hours and one person gets 10 instead of each person getting 25 hours, and that's obviously not to the advantage of the person whose hours you're cutting. Which in turn implies that the person getting 40 will be signing up for some fresh hell like "you get 40 hours but we choose when they are" and then they're both getting screwed by the change.
- viraptor 2y ago
  > one person gets 40 hours and one person gets 10 instead of each person getting 25 hours If these are the upfront conditions, why is that an issue? But the main issue you're getting closer and closer to is: uber's model doesn't seem to be profitable if they have to pay and employ with reasonable conditions. They don't have to be profitable though. We really can let them fail. The reasonable cities can then provide standard overprovisioned public transport.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    > If these are the upfront conditions, why is that an issue? Because they might have both preferred 25 hours with flexibility to a forced choice between 40 inflexible hours or 10 flexible ones. > uber's model doesn't seem to be profitable if they have to pay and employ with reasonable conditions. Uber is an app. Their primary cost is paying drivers. They're not going to fail because you imposed this inflexibility on them. What's going to happen is they're going to have fewer drivers and provide less service. But "have fewer drivers" is those people losing their jobs, which isn't really helping them out.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      > both preferred 25 hours with flexibility That's not an option though. The option uber gives is "maybe 25, maybe not, you'll find out on the day". That's still "how do we keep uber in business". There are alternatives like good quality overprovisioned public transport which can take most of those customers. It can also deal with peak situations like events. It's a sunk cost fallacy to think of uber as some kind of last resort employer that can ignore the rules.
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        > That's not an option though. The option uber gives is "maybe 25, maybe not, you'll find out on the day". It's 25 when it's 25. Which you can still have a preference for when the alternative is 10, or the alternative is "40 hours but your hours are 9PM to 1AM and then 5AM to 9AM". > That's still "how do we keep uber in business". Uber is still in business when they require you to work split shifts in the wee hours. We're trying to save drivers and riders from the consequences of foolish rules. > There are alternatives like good quality overprovisioned public transport which can take most of those customers. Overprovisioned public transport is just Uber with lower efficiency. You have a municipal bus with zero or one passengers instead of a smaller private car with one passenger or avoid the trip because you know before you start that no one is going there. > It can also deal with peak situations like events. Ten thousand people exit the stadium at the same time and each want to go to a different destination, thousands of which are single family homes in the suburbs. > It's a sunk cost fallacy to think of uber as some kind of last resort employer that can ignore the rules. The assumption is that Uber is bad, but Uber is better than taxi medallion cartels or private cars that then have to be parked in the city instead of picking up a different fare going in the opposite direction.

RHSeeger 2y ago

Option 3 - You hire enough people to cover general demand, have surge prices to lower demand when there's not enough drivers, and charge prices for normal/lower demand that allows you to make sure everyone you have on duty makes at least minimum wage. And if you _can't_ find a solution that allows you to pay everyone minimum wage, then you don't get to do business. I can think of plenty of businesses I could set up that would make me money and allow me to pay the people that work for me below minimum wage. But, see, we don't allow that; and we created a minimum wage law to make it very clear that we don't allow that. Not every business model is viable given the rules society has setup (to protext society as a whole)

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> Option 3 - You hire enough people to cover general demand, have surge prices to lower demand when there's not enough drivers, and charge prices for normal/lower demand that allows you to make sure everyone you have on duty makes at least minimum wage. This is just a rehash of Option 1. The point of surge pricing is to get more drivers to drive during peak times. If you're instead using that money to pay other people to be idle then the average driver makes less money because part of what would have been their compensation is now going to pay someone else to sit around idle, and they lose the ability to make a higher hourly rate by working only during peak demand. Which in turn reduces the number of drivers available during surge pricing and there goes your funding source for hiring more drivers, so you're back to laying off lots of drivers who would otherwise have part-time work, but now also reducing the median driver's hourly rate. > Not every business model is viable given the rules society has setup (to protext society as a whole) Minimum wage laws in general have never protected anyone. If there is another job available to you that pays more than minimum wage and is otherwise on equally favorable terms, you would have taken that one regardless of whether a lower paying job is available. If the lower paying job is better, e.g. because it pays slightly less but you also have lower costs in terms of commuting distance or greater flexibility in hours etc., taking away that option "for your own protection" is patronizing BS. This is why minimum wages are set at the level that only ~1% of people make minimum wage, because it minimizes the damage done by the law while still allowing opportunistic politicians to claim they've done something. Actually doing something is creating opportunities for people that have better conditions or pay higher wages so that it doesn't matter if someone is offering low wages because people aren't desperate to accept them for lack of alternatives. Notice also that taking away alternatives can do more than just force you to take a worse one. It can make the worse alternative worse. Suppose there is a job with low pay but it's across the street from where you live, and another one with an hour commute each way, costing you $40 and two hours/day. You take the first one unless the second one pays significantly better, at least several dollars/hour more to compensate you for the gas and the time. Unless the first one is banned and goes away because it was $1/hour below the "minimum". Then not only are you stuck with the second one, they can lower their pay to the minimum when they would otherwise have had to pay more to compensate for the commute because you no longer have an alternative. Price controls are bad.