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> There's also no reason to presuppose that personal transportation SHOULD provide a livelihood. The goal of companies like Uber/Lyft is to take advantage of th

> There's also no reason to presuppose that personal transportation SHOULD provide a livelihood. The goal of companies like Uber/Lyft is to take advantage of the currently wasted extra carrying capacity in personal vehicles. There's no reason to expect a priori that the value of extra capacity is enough to provide an income. I don't buy it. Uber flies the flag of "the sharing economy" but their requirements for the car and the drivers make it look way more like a professional car service than an opportunity to share rides if you have a car.

greggyb 12y ago
I don't have a lot of time right now, so couldn't find an explicit listing on Uber's site of their driver requirements (I don't have the app and don't want to register - so I imagine it's behind this page[0]), but here's a third party listing of requirements for non-commercial drivers[1]. There are also commercial driver versions of Uber services, which I imagine would have more stringent requirements. Please let me know if [1] is not an accurate representation of requirements for non-commercial drivers. We may be focusing on different segments. To me, the commercial version is just a taxi-hailing service with a custom pricing model. This is not too innovative - just a convenience application on top of existing services. What I consider the innovative portion, and the (I will admit unclear in my prior posts) focus of my argument, is the non-commercial service. [0]https://get.uber.com/drive/ https://get.uber.com/drive/ [1]http://www.ridesharingdriver.com/uber-driver-requirements-qualify/ http://www.ridesharingdriver.com/uber-driver-requirements-qu...