Rideshare services - Uber, Lyft, Hailo, etc.

/nobody seems to mind surge pricing for airlines, hotels, etc etc basically everything./

People /freaking hate/ airline pricing, are you kidding me? And what they especially hate about it is the unpredictability and time-dependence.

they might not love it but it I don't see articles on 'why we need to regulate airlines so they can't charge more for holiday flights'

idg matt's rant. money spent on cab rides you call from an app on your iphone wouldn't have otherwise been spent on r&d for renewable energy. the rich dudes who fund uber also throw insane amounts of money at tesla.

also more cabs makes it easier for people not to own cars

I think surge pricing feels particularly predatory because most cities don't have good comprehensive 24 hr public transit. In the absence of good PT, cabs fill some of that role (practically and...emotionally, say), and the idea of a public good suddenly being subject to surge pricing doesn't sit well with most ppl.

uber itself doesn't help matters by being so nakedly malevolent and shitty

I would be interested to hear or read an analysis of uber in the framework of the "right to the city" http://newleftreview.org/II/53/david-harvey-the-right-to-the-city

my friend drives for uber, or did drive quite a bit til she found out what see you next tuesdays they are

ppl shouldn't charge for stuff other ppl want or need tbh

― irl lol (darraghmac), Sunday, 28 June 2015 14:26 (Yesterday) Permalink

excuse me didn't give u permission to blow my mind dude

I've become hooked on Uber tbh. I don't drink like I used to but the peace of mind is awesome.

https://speedbird.wordpress.com/2015/06/29/uber-or-the-technics-and-politics-of-socially-corrosive-mobility/

socially corrosive mobility – I like it.

It's very much like the charter school movement, or what happened with deregulation of the telecoms, where instead of outright dismantling a public-sanctioned monopoly, they give private players unfair advantages and erode the public-sanctioned monopoly.

― my jaw left (Hurting 2), Tuesday, November 25, 2014 10:54 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is what I keep thinking of too - or, closer to transportation, the brief era of "jitney buses" in Los Angeles, which similarly could cream-skim choice trips, while the trolleys were stuck with increasingly unprofitable franchised lines (struggling in part due to the fact that the streets they ran on, paid for by the trolley companies among other entities, were increasingly choked by cars and jitney buses). To paraphrase Robert Fogelson, the jitneys could ruin the trolleys, but not replace them, since they were never going to run out to all the unprofitable places the trolleys ran. Similarly, MCI could destroy AT&T's financial base in long-distance, but was not about to launch a replacement for Bell Labs or guarantee state-regulated low rates for local service.

You can argue that in both cases the "losing" entities made their own beds, insofar as the trolley companies were happy to have made their buck on land speculation when they first ran the tracks out into the boonies, heedless of future service threats, but there's a lot more to that story and anyway the real loser is the consumer who, once the trolleys were finally shut down (not directly by jitneys, which in fact were banned by law in anticipation of this outcome), has no way to get around besides buying a car.

The question I guess is how much does any of this apply to Uber? Can they effectively soak up the most profitable customers that would have otherwise gone to medallion taxis? And if so, what kinds of effects would that have for consumers? In the extreme hypothetical, if Uber could put all taxis out of business, I think there would suddenly be large swaths of cities where people either cannot get a ride (where the medallion taxis were required to provide one) or are subject to much, much higher "surge pricing." The other stuff about insurance and liability and so on, I really don't know enough about taxis to say... and then the issue of driver compensation which should probably be front and center...

I dunno, the whole business model just kinda wigs me out, it feels like it's "for" app-obsessed libertarian inhumanoid "share economy" boosters like the sick fucks who invented this butler service for busy yuppies on the go, or this thing where you have peons go fetch you cash from an ATM. I realize this is a knee-jerk reaction and that it is possible someone could eventually invent a "share"-based business that doesn't overwhelm me with creepy vibes and assumptions about its creators/intended customers.

In other cities I suppose there's also a question about what this would do to transit services, if frequent transit riders were to switch to Uber, but I sort of doubt it since the price difference is so huge - most people who're really commuting five days a week on the train is not going to switch to Uber, right? In NYC at least, transit ridership is the highest it's been since the Depression, so that's not a super pressing question...

I live in a suburban neighborhood where standing on a corner flagging a cab is an impossibility. Miami is a driving town. Uber consistently prices $7-$10 less than a cab ride of comparable length. Its business practices are heinous and I'm waiting for the first successful class action law suit though (and it's still technically illegal here).

if you use uber you are an advocate/a lobbyist/collaborator ?

this appeared today: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/fred-grimm/article25618213.html

when uber is a crime only criminals will uber

https://speedbird.wordpress.com/2015/06/29/uber-or-the-technics-and-politics-of-socially-corrosive-mobility/

― j., Monday, June 29, 2015 10:26 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is good and worth reading imo. first couple paragraphs i was put off by the style/verbosity but it really does sum things up really well re: this neoliberal fantasy-verse and the risk to things which were, in the first place, not left to the smooth flows of the open market for a reason.

Where innovations in personal mobility could just as easily be designed to extend the right to the city, and to conceive of on-demand access to all points in the urbanized field as a public utility, Uber acts to reinscribe and to actually strengthen existing inequities of access. It is an engine consciously, delicately and expertly tuned to socialize risk and privatize gain. In furtherance of the convenience of a few, it sheds risk on its drivers, its passengers, and the communities within which it operates.

Maybe I'm just a closet app-obsessed libertarian inhumanoid "share economy" booster, but I'd probably try the butler for yuppies.

The ATM one, not sure much, since I'm usually not that lazy.

where are you gonna be between your home and anywhere else cash is needed that you couldn't just go to an atm along the way anyway

who uses cash?

lol @ defending fucked up exploitative & racist taxi companies like some socialized public good from a left wing pov

as of right now, uber is cheaper, pays drivers more, gives them more flexible hours, and goes places taxis won't go. onus is on leftists to show how despite all these things it is still inequitable. you can't just say mrmrmmmarket? socialize risk privatize reward?

lol, assumed at first 'fucked up exploitative & racist taxi companies' referred to uber, then wondered why you did a 180 degree turn and were sticking up for them.

Anyway, 'pays drivers more'- does it?

Where innovations in personal mobility could just as easily be designed to extend the right to the city, and to conceive of on-demand access to all points in the urbanized field as a public utility, Uber acts to reinscribe and to actually strengthen existing inequities of access.

like this is just such empty fantasy feel-good economics. who's going to drive "on demand access to all points in the urbanized field" (what does that even mean?) and who's gonna pay? do i have to pay for people who chose to live in the burbs to cab to work every day? taxis and uber complement public transit, why not just say "let's have really good public transit"?

can max or someone translate the David harvey out of marxese? all the surplus values make my head spin

xp- yeah, google "krueger uber"

taxis and uber complement public transit, why not just say "let's have really good public transit"?

i think this is where a lot of these discussions break down--i mean for one i think "let's have really good public transit" is a given for everyone involved in the conversation except maybe travis kalanick. i mean, markets built on top of solid public infrastructure and institutions--who doesn't want this in every arena? so the answer to "why not just say it" is sort of like, well, because that's fantasy feel-good policymaking. the cities we live in now, with few exceptions, have bad public transportation, and anything that 'disrupts' the quasi-public transportation that residents rely on is going to change attitudes about cities, about distances, locations, etc. etc. etc. that stuff is worth examining! even if uber is better than what it's replacing, which in many ways it is.

yah i feel you, I guess I'm discounting the political economy of urban public transit

Among my take-aways from that article were that whatever we think about taxi companies, taxi drivers are, at least on paper, protected in certain (limited!) ways by existing in a regulated, licensed market -- insurance/benefit obligations for example -- whereas Uber gets away with ignoring even the on-paper aspect of this. Taxi customers are, at least on paper, also protected, for example in the requirement that the taxi has to take you way out to your unprofitably remote (but in-city) neighborhood, let's say when the subway is down and your leg is in a cast. Uber isn't subject to these obligations, and in fact its business model seems to be built on avoiding them - keeping costs close to zero by avoiding financial obligation to its drivers, and jacking up the price at will, let's say when the subway is down and your leg is in a cast. Like, specifically this is why we regulate certain markets.

I keep going back to telephone service because that's what I know the most about, but like, if AT&T had just been allowed to do what it wanted, they would have shut down almost all local service in the postwar era, or at least raised the rates drastically, since it was enormously labor-intensive (complex and multitudinous wiring, endless maintenance, very high-intensity switchboard operations), versus long-distance service which was used primarily by big business and was comparatively simple to implement. (This is muddled a bit because the differential rate structure was itself created by the regulatory framework, but the basic point still holds - long-distance, once it reached a certain point of popularity, was where the money was.) We didn't let them do that because access to the system for the general public was deemed basically desirable; they just had to suck it up and take the unprofitable calls too. MCI was allowed to enter the long-distance market without any obligations to provide local service and it was indeed "destabilizing," ultimately to the detriment of consumers who saw rising bills and declining service after divestment. (And let's not even get into Bell Labs.) So yeah, here I find myself defending the world's largest corporation, itself hardly bereft of sinister activities and shady practices - but there was something even more shady about the way it was undone, and how the public did not really get to make a deliberative choice about which kind of telephonic market they wanted to have.

Some of this, again, is knee-jerk: I just don't like it when a business jumps sharkishly into a regulated market wearing its destabilization as a sign of hep-cat blowin-yer-mind rebelliousness, establishing themselves in that market thoroughly well before there has been any actual public or governmental debate over what the pros and cons might be, and whether it should be permitted. It's like, if a well-capitalized Silicon Valley startup started just digging up the roads without permits and laying their own super-sewers for the rich, I would be like "wait, hold up" even if it could be shown that this was in no way harmful (which seems unlikely) just because I feel like such intrusions should be subject to discussion and being overruled. Instead they just establish themselves, effectively cultivating their own political base and transforming the discussion into a "well, like it or not, they're here to stay and we just have to work around them now!" deal. It'd be one thing if they were jumping into the market for delicious peppermint candy or comic books, but they are jumping into the market for taxicabs, which is regulated for any number of reasons, and avoiding that discussion by pretending that what they offer is somehow not a taxicab.

I dunno, I mean I guess I don't really know enough about taxi regulation to have an opinion, since even my opinion on telephone stuff is pretty gray-area in certain ways. It just feels wrong, what they're doing, and the vibe I get off the company is sooooo snotty and proud about that wrongness.

max, places that have horrible public transporation tend to have horrible quasi-public systems too

the kreuger paper is uber marketing and an uber employee is listed as an author. the drivers' stated hourly wages don't include expenses, and we know that expenses for uber drivers (insurance, repairs, cleaning, etc) aren't congruent to the expenses of the taxi and chauffeur companies, which are more heavily (and justly?) regulated and which pay for more expenses on behalf of their drivers. If working on behalf of uber was a sweet deal, I don't think there'd be such a high turnover among drivers (which the kreuger paper also tells us about).

Kreuger also tells us that uber drivers are whiter, younger, more educated, and more affluent, so speedbird's charge that uber is selling elitism and "comfort" rings true.

I live in the number 2 uber market and public transportation here is great.

DrC otm

I can speak a little bit to taxi regs in Chicago. Taxi rates are controlled by municipal regulation and they are some of the lowest in the country (with an additional fuel surcharge added on when gas gets above a certain price). Taxi licenses are issued through a medallion system under which, as it currently stands, a handful of people actually own the medallions and lease their use out to individual drivers. As a result, taxi drivers were working insanely long hours to try to make enough money to afford to do their jobs. In response, the city did not raise taxi prices, but limited the number of hours drivers could drive. smdh. So it's hard for Chicago taxi drivers to make a living, and I have ridden with a few UberX (as noted previously, in Chicago "UberX" is the ride share service, Uber Black is the black car service, and regular Uber is just a decentralized taxi dispatch service where you can call a licensed city tax through the Uber app on your phone) drivers who were previously or sometimes simultaneously taxi drivers.

One major protection that licensed taxi drivers in Illinois have that UberX drivers do not is that for the purposes of workers' compensation law, taxi drivers are considered employees. That means that if a cab driver is in a car accident while driving, s/he gets the full protection of IL workers' comp statutes. That's no small thing, and is one of the reasons why I still prefer licensed taxis over UberX.

Another thing that Uber does that I think is super shady and worth a closer look is to offer to finance new cars for potential drivers (at least in IL - this may not be legal in all states) at rates that are not so great, creating a company-store type dependance on the company.

Oh I forgot to say that taxi medallions are outrageously expensive, like $350,000, so there is a massive barrier to ownership there if someone wanted to be a self-employed licensed taxi driver.

http://www.wbez.org/news/changes-taxi-industry-leave-cab-owners-underwater-111920

I kind of wonder if taxi drivers "making more money," which they probably do with uber in markets like Chicago where there have been undue restrictions on their rates, is offset in a lot of places by the fact they own the car, have to provide their own insurance and maintenance, etc

It kind of leaves the bad taste in my mouth that some proposed corporate policies "allowing" employees to byoc (bring your own computer! you don't have to use the crappy corporate ones! it's a good deal, we swear!) do. It's touted as a win-win, but really it's just offsetting costs and liability.

tbh I wish I'd put together an uber infrastructure first and then just let taxi companies opt-in to it, where they'd pay a rate for everything the app provides and you could then have second-tier companies offering car/insurance/liability packages. As a driver, you could be employed by a typical taxi company or just buy that stuff ala carte

max, places that have horrible public transporation tend to have horrible quasi-public systems too

― iatee, Monday, June 29, 2015 1:57 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i totally agree! i tend to be on the flopson side of things here generally. like this is funny to read from the perspective of a nyer:

Taxi customers are, at least on paper, also protected, for example in the requirement that the taxi has to take you way out to your unprofitably remote (but in-city) neighborhood, let's say when the subway is down and your leg is in a cast.

since uber is vastly better at/for outer-borough cab rides.

but city transit is such a kludgey system already i think its worth being careful at what we're replacing the horrible bits with, since the stuff that is immediately better may end up being worse in the long run

Employers need to be careful with that BYOC crapola or they're going to run afoul of employer/independent contractor regulations. B-ing YOC might work if the employer pays the equivalent of a mileage rate.

But lord that would be an IT nightmare, too, wouldn't it? Unless you expect employees (OR MAYBE INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS NOW) to access work entirely through Citrix or VPN or something.

Another thing that Uber does that I think is super shady and worth a closer look is to offer to finance new cars for potential drivers (at least in IL - this may not be legal in all states) at rates that are not so great, creating a company-store type dependance on the company.

This is kind of funny you bring it up cos one person I know who was getting a job as an Uber employee also tried to pull some shady stuff to get a new car around the same time. He was trying to get the landlord to forge a made-up lease.

access work entirely through Citrix or VPN or something

hai

cabs are garbage in nyc, that might be yr problem

the kreuger paper is uber marketing and an uber employee is listed as an author.

alan krueger is one of the most credible & nonpartisan (if anything left-leaning, he co-authored the famous NJ-PENN fast food min wage study with david card) empirical economists though. they just gave him the data & there was a stipulation that they wouldn't have a final say on what gets in. if you wanna go full conspiracy you could say they gave him garbage data, but i don't doubt he reported the facts straight.

the drivers' stated hourly wages don't include expenses, and we know that expenses for uber drivers (insurance, repairs, cleaning, etc) aren't congruent to the expenses of the taxi and chauffeur companies, which are more heavily (and justly?) regulated and which pay for more expenses on behalf of their drivers.

good point. wage differentials in that table are pretty big though

If working on behalf of uber was a sweet deal, I don't think there'd be such a high turnover among drivers (which the kreuger paper also tells us about).

this prob has more to do with it being way easier to become an uber driver. people can just try it out as pt thing to make some spare cash. same applies for the white college thing.

I know who Krueger is and I also know uber gave him the data. They're buying his credibility.

I think what you're saying about motivations for starting with uber are true, but I also think it's structured both deliberately and not deliberately to be a socially exclusive transportation network. The two-way rating system makes that tendency seem inevitable and that's the non-deliberate part. The deliberate parts are the libertarian ideals and the marketing.

If uber instigated a reform of the medallion system, that'd be cool.

I also think it's structured both deliberately and not deliberately to be a socially exclusive transportation network. The two-way rating system makes that tendency seem inevitable and that's the non-deliberate part. The deliberate parts are the libertarian ideals and the marketing.

not sure what you mean by this

fwiw despite all i've said itt i think this is a good (though politically infeasible) idea http://m.thenation.com/article/192545-socialize-uber (although my friend brought up a good pt that risk of being socialized could distort incentive to create future start-ups)

I think a worker-owned Uber alternative could be very interesting, though I'd still have many of the same concerns as above, and the worker-owned entrant would face some serious challenges. Uber has deep pockets and no commitment to a fair playing field; it seems plausible they'd be willing to cut their own prices impossibly low in the short-term, to squeeze that competition out of the market. Not sure why it's "politically infeasible" though - I mean there are other worker-owned businesses in the US that get along fine, no?

What I would actually love to see is a political discussion about whether to retain the limited-medallion taxi system, or to open up the field to anybody --- provided they meet X, Y, and Z requirements. Defining X Y and Z would be an enormous headache, but it would mean a chance for the public and policymakers to articulate what they're looking for the taxicab infrastructure to do, and what standards it has to meet for its customers and its drivers. If Uber can actually meet those expectations rather than sneaking into the market through a hole in the fence, fine. I suspect the driver-owned Uber alternative, if someone's finished the technology and business plan by then, would have a lot to offer.

I meant that by having drivers rate riders and vice versa, hidden considerations for ratings will be race, class, language, etc. I think the outcome (an elitist transportation network) of these motivations for rating is unintentional, especially since, for techno-utopian libertarian bros, these rating systems typically imply democracy and meritocracy, where everyone has a voice and an equal chance. However, the elitism is implicit in their marketing and ethos and flouting of the law, and I think in that respect the elitism is intentional.

Putting aside the feasibility of socializing uber, I do believe all standard products and services should be heavily socialized, so I could get behind a national quasi-decentralized transportation network.

The entire idea of meritocracy is a farce, from the origin of the word to now, and it basically means "I value the people who I think are doing /real work/".

It's completely compatible with the libertarian bros idea that most people will get left behind in the dust when they jet off to libertarian tech island some day

these guys really think all manual labor, including driving cars, will be done by robots. as the idea leaders, they will be living in luxury, and the underclass will be the necessary but ostracized robot repairmen

https://d12vb6dvkz909q.cloudfront.net/uploads/galleries/35319/deniro_tuttle.jpg

alan krueger is one of the most credible & nonpartisan (if anything left-leaning, he co-authored the famous NJ-PENN fast food min wage study with david card) empirical economists though. they just gave him the data & there was a stipulation that they wouldn't have a final say on what gets in. if you wanna go full conspiracy you could say they gave him garbage data, but i don't doubt he reported the facts straight.

I am sure the data is fine, but it's just a distraction - there's nothing inherent in uber's model that ensures that drivers will be paid well forever, let alone in 2 years. drivers are now operating in a market w/ zero barriers to entry + uber is currently burning a lot of money. and part of the money it's burning is in hiring hundreds of people to develop driverless cars.