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This actually does present a dilemma for working class folks. The article indicates that taxi drivers have experienced a loss in income of 30-40%. I don't imagi

• legulere 11y ago
  It's actually more of a legal question. Uber only manages to work through lots of questionable tactics of which many are illegal: - Most of the uber drivers don't actually pay taxes - Most of the uber drivers only work for uber which makes the self-employment fictitious. This allows to disregard things like minimum wage and payments for social security. - Most of uber drivers don't have a permission for transporting people. This puts customers at risk. - Most of uber drivers don't have an insurance that covers transporting people commercially. All these apply even in the case where private taxi companies are allowed. Uber's business model is based on exploiting the drivers, disregarding safety regulations and dodging taxes.
• jdimov9 11y ago
  Who should be reminded? Why? If you mean "we entrepreneurs" - what exactly do you expect us to do about it? Again, why?
  • jdimov9 11y ago
    Was the downvote because you don't like my questions, or because you don't have a good answer?
  • jdimov9 11y ago
    I mean, seriously. It's hard enough to come up with an innovative technological idea that people actually embrace and to turn it into a viable, sustainable, profitable business. In fact, that's SUPER hard, it's one of the hardest things there are, that's why there are so few people who successfully manage to pull it off. It's also why we reward them so seemingly disproportionately. Through all of this, an entrepreneur is responsible for all sorts of things - industry regulations, business regulations, local regulations, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, investor satisfaction, life/work balance, keeping the environment clean, etc, etc, etc, in addition to the actual product or service and the long-term success of the business. Now you want to also make me responsible for the social norms that I'm disrupting? Thanks, but no, thanks. This is NOT my responsibility. That's what governments are for. Governments are by definition socialist structures responsible for the well-being of the "working class". I am the opposite of socialist. I'm here to disrupt - don't ask me to step on my own toes. I mean, soon you'll be asking me to compensate the bankers that my fintech startup is disrupting...
    • wfo 11y ago
      Outside of extremist hyper-libertarian hiveminds like you find on certain threads on HN, saying "I'm here to disrupt" aka destroy lives and take as much money for yourself as possible or "the government is by definition socialist" (a silly and false claim -- government in the United States is generally wholly owned by wealthy capitalists who provide no value to society other than 'currently having money' and is in the business of socializing risk and privatizing rewards) and demanding that noone ever hold you responsible for the consequences of your actions because "thinking about how my actions effect people isn't in my personal self-interest"... well, it won't endear you or your position to anyone and it isn't convincing, it's just childish and entitled (a rather succinct description of general Libertarian political philosophy in fact). Sure you might not be legally required to be a good person, but if you choose not to be, then you're a bad person, but you've chosen to be so don't whine when people call you on it.
      • jdimov9 11y ago
        You seem to have all of your values backwards. Technological innovation CREATES value, doesn't destroy it. It necessarily disrupts the status quo and pisses people off, and that takes courage, but does not make the innovator a bad person. It makes them a very courageous person, worthy of all admiration. On the other hand, you might call a bad person someone who expects that everyone else is obliged to feed him. One who throws "responsibilities" at those who refuse to work for him. One who morally manipulates people into doing what pleases him. I'd call this a bad person, although I personally don't believe that evil exists, so I am more likely to call that person plain stupid.
• primroot 11y ago
  If losing primarily means losing one's job, then it is social organization and culture that should be blamed not technological advancement. IMHO.
  • magicmu 11y ago
    I agree with this sentiment, but I do think that there's validity in the claim that the disruptive nature of startups can have negative consequences for uninvolved parties. I don't think it's a matter of "blame," though, so much as a matter of responsibility -- it is the responsibility of those pushing these disruptive technologies to simultaneously incubate and encourage the social reform necessary to prevent such situations.
    • vixen99 11y ago
      You don't say! New rules for entrepreneurs: sit down and consider the disruptive consequences of your new startup. Next, take on the responsibility of simultaneously incubating and encouraging the social reform necessary to prevent such situations. Oh, and don't forget to spare some time for the startup. If you're a journalist or someone benefiting from the new startup, you're 'pushing it' so you have a job to do as well.
  • emodendroket 11y ago
    It seems like cheating to demand that the rules be changed so Uber can operate, the claim that the makeup of society is to blame for the consequences.
  • braythwayt 11y ago
    I didn't think Uber is a "technological" advancement, so much as a company gambling that it can get away with disrupting the legal quagmire. Same for AirBnB.
    • JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Be fair, lots of folks had the same idea and didn't execute so well. The devil is in the details; thus, technology. Even the marketing/lobbying is a technical issue of sorts.
• jayess 11y ago
  Or they could lobby so that a taxi license doesn't cost $250k, eating up a large chunk of their income.
  • nyandaber 11y ago
    The fun part is that a taxi licence is delivered for free by the city, provided you fit the criterias. But taxis don't want too many licences to be around of course, so they lobbied for a low limit to be delivered (which may or may not be revisionned when a city increase in size/population). They built this bubble themselves and now they're crying about it. Since last year you can't resell your licence anymore, obviously it only works for the new ones delivered, otherwise the country would get sued and loose instantly. But the "bought" licences are probably going to stick around forever. Also the current protest is not about Uber but UberPop, which is kinda illegal at the moment and rightly so. I don't mind the taxis getting fucked over by their own greed, but I'd prefer if it was done lawfully.
  • fla 11y ago
    it doesn't work this way. Taxi license are free. A finite number of them were issued by the state. Taxi drivers are willing to pay $250k to get a license from other taxi drivers! It's a token that get passed around. The day these license are worth $0, the last owners will be screwed. Ponzi ?
  • bweitzman 11y ago
    Except that people who own the licenses are going to lobby against that (and probably with greater effect considering they're able to afford the licenses in the first place) since that would be a huge loss in equity for them. It's the same with liquor licenses in Boston (maybe all of Mass., but I'm not sure about that). There's a limited number of them, but they can be resold, usually fetching more than a million dollars. This is a huge startup cost for new restauranteurs, but they have held their value, such that when you decide (or are forced) to sell or close the business, you can recoup that initial investment. Issuing more licenses or trying to reduce the cost of them in other ways would just destroy that value for the owners, most of which have taken out loans against them that would still need to be repaid.
• mseebach 11y ago
  I do feel bad for employees in industries entrenched behind heavy monopoly-protection. Promises were made to these employees, typically by politicians somewhere on the stupid/corrupt spectrum, that the monopoly could protect them in perpetuity. Monopoly invariably breeds indifference and high prices and that cost fall almost entirely on the taxi user, which is (generally) the wider middle class (and let's not pretend working class people never need a cab too, so they are also hurt) and it's unsustainable to force regular people to subsidise the indifference of a pretty random group of employees (and medallion owners and cab company owners - it's not an exclusive blue collar affair on the receiving end). So instead of being gently pressured to improve by competition over time, change is dramatic and discontinuous -and that is painful, and that elicits sympathy. The only thing anyone could really have done was to have gradually liberalised the taxi industry over maybe a decade or two to soften the blow, but that requires a time machine.
  • crdoconnor 11y ago
    I'd feel less bad if monopoly protections for billionaire patent holders and land owners (who collect rents from these very taxi drivers) weren't simultaneously getting much, much stronger. Sadly, some people only seem to care about liberalizing industries that the little people derive just enough income to get by on.
    • CaptainSwing 11y ago
      I'm happy that somebody has raised this point. David Harvey gives a particularly good analysis of the concept of monopoly as it relates to rent here:http://www.socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5778#.VYw0uGpwYv4 http://www.socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/... To usefully understand the struggles taking place around Uber's "disruption" of traditional taxis we need a more nuanced perspective than regulation=monopoly=bad/free market=competition=good
• fab13n 11y ago
  The main problem is that taxi medallions cost a lot (€200-250K in Paris, up to €300K in some southern cities). Independent taxi drivers got indebted to buy them, and generally expected to resell them at a profit to finance their retirement. Another thing that isn't much discussed in medias, is that a few companies, most notably G7, own most medallions and lease them to (poor) drivers, often together with the car and the radio reservation service. Those companies typically have received those medallions for free from the state, decades ago, before reselling them became legalized. Those companies obviously pull some strings, both stirring up drivers and talking in minister cabinets. Anyway eventually they're fucked, Uber or no Uber: autonomous cars will make taxis obsolete at warping speed. Taxi drivers are fucked that much harder than Uber's, because they'll be left with a worthless medallion and its 20 years mortgage. (It's also likely to make private car ownership marginal, something akin to owning your own horse in the XXth century, thus hitting car manufacturing pretty badly once enough autonomous cars have been produced, but that's another quagmire).
  • te_chris 11y ago
    There is very little proof that the techno-utopian version of autonomous vehicles is going to play out the way people like you want it to. Sure, on the surface Taxi's are dead, but I would wager that it will be a lot slower than people on here think, not least for the difficulty of cleaning autonomous cabs.
    • topynate 11y ago
      Cab drives to cleaners; some dude cleans cab. A few minutes work per day per cab. Maybe the other factors will be of more importance, but I don't see huge labour costs here. Oh, and bonus: hiring an autonomous account will likely involve disclosing your identity in advance. If you're the sort of customer who makes a habit of fouling cabs, maybe you'll have to pay more to hire one.
    • jobigoud 11y ago
      We already have car sharing services like Autolib where you can pick up an electric car at a station, use it, and park it at another station. I imagine cleaning autonomous cabs will be exactly the same effort than cleaning shared cars. Probably less if the car can drive itself to the depot.
• eloisant 11y ago
  Most taxi drivers don't own their licence, they rent it from a taxi company. Anyway, Parisian taxi drivers are responsible for Uber's very existence(). Now they're making Uber look even more compelling by behaving like dicks to maintain the status-quo. () https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber_(company)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber_(company)#History
• comboy 11y ago
  Think about these poor postmen every time you send an e-mail. As long as we are moving forward jobs market will keep changing. Those workers are also consumers. They have cheap electronics at home made in China (which caused some local factory workers to lose their jobs), they use roads built by machines in places where humans used to do the work. They eat food from automated farms that are more efficient. It's all connected. I wouldn't say it creates losers in any class. Their/our living standard would be much much lower at this point without these kind of changes. It's up up up up DOWN up up up. (DOWN being when it hits your sector and you are not prepared for the change, and up when it hits other industries)
• Kurtz79 11y ago
  "Services like AirBnB and Uber can be great for entrepreneurs, investors, part-time workers, and consumers. We should be reminded that disrupting industries sometimes creates losers in the working and middle class that don't have an easy way to switch jobs in some countries or economies." This is absolutely true, but it has always been so, for countless professions across the centuries. Industrialization, automatization, globalization have caused many people to lose their livelihood due to the obsolescence of their industry and profession, but the net result has always been a richer, more modern society (whether if 'happier' or 'better', it's hard to say). Taxi drivers happen to be a much more vocal, compact and uniform community, and that's why they appear more in the news, but there are countless other people being affected by technical progress on a daily basis (from journalist to shoe repairers to travel agents). While it might not be a zero-sum game, to reference a famous pg essay, it's a bit naive thinking that entrepreneurs can create value out of nothing, without affecting the existing status-quo in other ways than positive ones. Instead of fighting it by enforcing ad-hoc laws, governments and unions should work towards creating the conditions so that the affected workers are able to find other occupations, IMHO.
  • rtpg 11y ago
    The prime difference between Uber and, say, factory automatization is that it's not certain that Uber is strictly better. All things considered, full-time drivers make less with Uber, have less benefits, and are generally worse off. There's huge amounts of literature concerning the effects of, say, not having health insurance on general job performance (spoilers: it doesn't make them better at their jobs). So in the end we get lower quality rides, even if they're cheaper (which they aren't always due to surge pricing!) Obsession with lower costs inevitably bring about generally lower quality goods, empirically (already happened with food and consumer goods, compare a French supermarket with an American one).
    • pkkim 11y ago
      I think there are at least two ways in which Uber is intrinsically better: One, Uber Pool, which uses network effects and a computerized super-dispatcher to let riders share cabs. Two, the concentration of capital in Uber compared to taxi companies allows investment and research in driverless cars. These result purely from Uber's size and the infrastructure which enables and is enabled by that size.