This isn't right. I know "drivers can choose," and nobody is forcing these people to live and work like this. It still feels wrong. One driver mentioned in the article leased his car from Uber and sleeps in it because it's the only way he can make enough to afford the payments. Seems like indentured servitude to me. Uber owes its drivers more.
The "drivers can choose" argument is important because it shows that for at least one driver it is genuinely preferable to sleep in his car and work 70 hours a week than do anything else. Clearly, drivers are facing unemployment, poverty, or working conditions that are even worse.
It would be very easy to regulate the hell out of Uber and turn the unicorn into a donkey. However, that wouldn't improve the conditions that those in the economic class of drivers are subject to, it would just make them less visible. Fixing the Uber problem without providing any alternative employment options is a superficial placebo to make the wealthy feel more comfortable, because it doesn't correct any of the underlying economic problems. Those drivers will still exist, they'll just be pushed into agriculture, sweatshops, and dingy housing projects; hidden places, where nobody else has to look at them again.
There's a very good article called The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics[0] which states that "when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it", and "if you interact with a problem and benefit from it, you are a complete monster." This seems to be the case with Uber, where they make money from a social and economic problem where there's an oversupply of unskilled labour, and thus get blamed for the working conditions that were already a reality for so many hidden and unnoticed people, even if they incrementally improve those conditions.
This is not a call to give Uber free rein, but rather to consider drivers as more or less rational human beings capable of making their own choices, and to consider driver wellbeing in that light.
consider drivers as more or less rational human beings capable of making their own choices
Why? Behavioral economics shows us that many, perhaps most people have huge cognitive biases and make irrational choices. If this wasn't so then scamming people wouldn't be as profitable as it historically has been. To quote PT Barnum 'there's a sucker born every minute'; and while I don't feel like digging up statistics right now, there's tons of evidence that a significant proportion of the population is clueless.
Right, nobody makes totally optimal decisions all the time, but I wasn't comparing drivers to an inhuman standard of rationality. Perhaps it would be clearer to say that drivers aren't necessarily less rational than anyone else, and that includes the people calling for a limit on hours worked.
> It would be very easy to regulate the hell out of Uber and turn the unicorn into a donkey. However, that wouldn't improve the conditions that those in the economic class of drivers are subject to
It's a bit of a strawman to use the hyperbole; plenty of industries are regulated, not regulated "the hell out of", and very profitable too. Also, I disagree with the second statement; labor regulations have a long history of helping workers and still do. They enjoy a 40 hour workweek, overtime, safe working conditions, protection for collective bargaining and much more.
It's the places where these things are absent, such as Uber and their non-employees, where people suffer more. Of course, anything can be taken too far, but unless workers have real power and leverage, they will be taken advantage of.
It may sound like economics, but it's not coincidence that everything the right wing promote strengthens business and/or weakens labor. The economic rationalizations are post-hoc talking points.
I don't think it's hyperbole. If the reason Uber gets regulated is because it makes the rich feel uncomfortable sitting near poor people, rather than because drivers themselves demand change and back their demands up with industrial action or public outcry, then the created regulations will align with the needs of the rich and not the poor. In particular, you might see artificially strict selection criteria for drivers, preventing the poorest from even having the option of driving for Uber and raising the price of the service such that only the rich can afford it, or you might see the return of the awful medallion systems.
Notably, the profiled drivers themselves weren't demanding changes: that was being done by a paid lobbyist from a group that doesn't seem to be affiliated with them.
Equally notably, while Uber may be a little exploitative, it's nothing compared to 25 hours a week rostered at random times throughout the week for a hair short of the absolute minimum wage. Taking down Uber while leaving far worse alternatives intact removes an escape hatch for the most exploited workers of all.
Turning Uber into a glorified taxi company, compliant with all existing taxi legislation in every jurisdiction worldwide and employing full-time employees with fixed schedules, would either kill it or strip its value so severely as to make it a laughing stock.
I have no doubt that heavy-handed regulation could bring such a change. Commenters here and on other submissions seem to complain that such regulation doesn't exist, in particular that Uber doesn't employ full time workers.
Maybe I'm missing something. Help me understand what the hyperbolic part is.
I'm not sure I agree. My idea of "fixing the Uber problem" is increasing the payout to drivers so they can afford a hotel room at the end of a 14 hour shift. This will directly improve the conditions of Uber drivers, at least.
It seems to me that if Uber is unable to pay its drivers a living wage, they don't actually have a sustainable business model. They have a business model that relies on regulatory arbitrage (avoiding minimum wage or other employee-protection laws by skirting the Independent Contractor line as much as feasible), externalized costs (letting the government pay for things like food stamps and housing assistance), and good old fashioned exploitation of the working class.
I mean, I understand that uber started because the taxi market was protectionist. But on the other hand, do taxi drivers have better pay and a better union? Often, yes. There may be a middle ground here.
(* note that this argument applies to a lot of the gig-economy jobs out there, including lyft, doordash, and so on, not just Uber)
The article gave pay as either $15/h or $19/h before expenses, and cited expenses as being roughly a quarter of pay. Elsewhere in the article, a driver's pay is given as $12/h after expenses, which is consistent with the other numbers.
Is that a livable wage? I'm not sure, but it's higher than minimum wage. Does it make Uber sustainable? I'm not sure, but it arguably makes it more sustainable than Walmart.
> It seems to me that if Uber is unable to pay its drivers a living wage, they don't actually have a sustainable business model.
Why does everything need to pay a living wage? Uber driving is so easy that there must be a sizeable population of people that are willing to do it for less than a 'living wage' (retirees, students, housewives who want to get out of the house once, unemployed people between jobhunting).
I do it myself a few times a week just because I like driving, even though it pays literally 8x less than my day job.
We allow our 14 year old son to use Uber all of the time for our convenience/his independence but we used Uber for the first time last weekend during a "staycation". Out of the 6 drivers we had, 4 of them said they do it for a little extra spending money or to break the monotony of their day job. One of the drivers was a manager at Verizon's corporate office. When I was single and if I had enjoyed driving and wanted to kill some time, I could have seen myself being an Uber driver occasionally.
I taught fitness classes a few times a week for years part time because I enjoyed it. It definitely wasn't for the money.
> increase Uber's already sizable losses, causing the business to fail
Or they will need to adjust and find another way, like all businesses do. Or they will fail and someone else will find a better way. That's what the free market is about.
It's an old trope that if you increase costs on a business, it's passed along to customers or someone else. That's not how economics works; businesses have many options, they aren't locked into their way of doing things (again, that 'free market').
One question I always have is, why should I care if Uber succeeds or fails? They openly disdain caring about anyone else, including their drivers and the laws of the communities where they operate. I care about their workers, but what does Uber itself matter to me?
If you want to help these drivers I think they'd prefer access to an overnight parking lot and a community-center shower for $10 than a sleezy hotel for $100.
If you really came through with the extra pay I think they still sleep in their cars and bank the difference.
> One driver mentioned in the article leased his car from Uber and sleeps in it because it's the only way he can make enough to afford the payments.
You obviously didn't read the whole article (although the author clearly tried to bury this at the end) - quote from the same driver:
“I signed up for this because I am my boss. I kind of own the business. I have the freedom and that’s a beautiful thing,”
and
“These labor advocates, they don’t know what it’s like to be a driver. They think we’re not being treated right, but I’m happy. If I didn’t like it, I would do something else.”
This jibes with my experience. Throwaway because reasons and personal.
I was doing work for <large, billion dollar tech company everyone knows> as an hourly contractor. I left to do some "sharing economy" stuff that, although is not the same as doing rideshares for Uber, it's something that's very, very similar. It involves driving. The changes that it brought were:
- Not having to do work that, at the end of the day, is the opposite of fulfilling
- Not having to answer for dumb, avoidable mistakes when the responsibility inevitably diffuses throughout the whole team
- Not having to deal with the workplace sociopaths who cause them
- Not being subjected to the whims of a mercurial, micromanaging supervisor
- Not having the stress of all these things creep into my life outside work
The downside to leaving and opting for what I'm doing now is basically this: big pay cut. I'm not a SV rockstar and have no nest egg, but this is paying for groceries and rent for the time being. I can say unequivocally that in regards to all these factors that people pretend to care about, I'm far more well off than I would have been at my former workplace, and yet if I had stayed, no one would have batted an eye and feigned to sympathize with the plight that resulted from those circumstances, because it was a "real" job.
I honestly could not give a relatable damn about the "I have my own schedule" aspects. I'm very big on planning, and the truth is that I'm able to make plans that stick even better than when I was at <the company>. By far the most important part is that when I'm not driving, I'm able to do things in my offtime that keep me sharp.
Before leaving, the idea that I could, say, build up my skills in my time off until something better comes along, was totally out of the question. I'd compare trying to stave off the braindamage of dealing with daily workplace nonsense to be similar to trying to maintain a healthy physique so that you're fit enough to enjoy your daily jog, all while your paycheck somehow relies on subjecting your body to junk food, soda, and cigarettes.
Now, I've got side projects and interesting avenues of research to explore.
Why? Not trying to be snarky; why do they owe their drivers anything but incentive to work for them (which seems sufficient, or we wouldn't even be having this conversation int he first place).
Expecting companies to be morally upstanding is silly and a modern invention by the right. The right way to solve this is now by complaining about what Uber "owes" its drivers but in legislation. But we don't want to legislate businesses, we want to stay "nimble" and "flexible", so this is what we get as a result. Don't complain about lying in the bed we've made.
Not trying to be snarky; why do they owe their drivers anything but incentive to work for them?
Because karma is bitch, and history bites back.
And if Uber doesn't step up to the plate, and start doing what's not only right for its drivers, but (by any common-sense analysis) also right for its own balance sheets in the long term (as opposed to what appears to be right in the short-term for its megalomaniacal expansion plans)-- that is, make driving a sustainable profession to be in, and not just a "well as long as times aren't so great, let's see how long we can get away with screwing these people" (as appears to be their current motto) profession -- then soon enough, it's going to bite back on them -- hard.
I think that this would essentially mean that Uber has to be a shrewder lender. Uber must know how much drivers usually make, and when a car payment would make it difficult to live, especially based on region. The solution to Uber being a bad lender and encouraging this "perception of indentured servitude" is to disallow some people who already have money problems or are buying too expensive of a car from participating.
Which is an okay decision for them to make. But it does feel like they're taking some nanny-responsibilty for people who ought to be able to make their own financial decision? And they would absolutely be disqualifying some responsible people who could have made it work.
> Expecting companies to be morally upstanding is silly and a modern invention
No, it is accepting that a social group is somehow free of all moral and ethical obligations by virtue of calling itself a "business" that is a silly modern invention.
Humans have are obligated to be morally upstanding. That obligation does not evaporate when we get together in a group, or when we file a business license to make that group "official".
> why do they owe their drivers anything but incentive to work for them
I'd say they may owe it to themselves. Press like this demoralizes employees, dissuades potential customers and hints at the presence of political capital for the taking. Whether those costs and risks are worth it is a business decision, of course, but public perception isn't a non-issue.
> why do they owe their drivers anything but incentive to work for them (which seems sufficient, or we wouldn't even be having this conversation int he first place).
History is pretty clear on this point: Without protection, workers are at too great a disadvantage when negotiating with large businesses. Look at working conditions before unions became powerful and laws and regulations were passed - they were brutal and wrong.
Nahh. The agency the corps hired, the Pinkertons, had full rights to murder people for not doing their job! I mean, this is laissez faire capitalism - of course the ones with the money have rights over other humans! /s
Yeah, summed up libertarian beliefs and their logical conclusion in a nutshell.
The right way to solve this is not via legislation, nor it is to expect Uber to be "morally upstanding"
Corporations are amoral, always have been, always will be.
The right way to solve this for people to stop using Uber, stop expecting the ultra low rates, just stop
The way to force morality upon corporations is for the CONSUMERS to be moral, and stop using the products and services of corporations that have policies they disagree with.
I love it when i hear people bitch about how terrible uber treats its drivers but continue to use them as their primary mode of transportation. THEY ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.
As as example, I dislike Walmart, I have not stepped foot in a Walmart store in more than a decade.
If more people would vote with their wallet companies would change their policies, instead they look to government to use violence for force companies to change because anything else would inconvenience them.
> Corporations are amoral, always have been, always will be.
That's not true; all corporations make moral choices, probably even Uber.
> The right way to solve this is not via legislation
What's wrong with legislation? It's knee-jerk to reject it, but I like the democratic way of solving problems.
> The way to force morality upon corporations is for the CONSUMERS to be moral
Why is millions of individuals all making a moral choice more likely than one company doing it? How often does this work? The 'free market' assumes people will act in their own interests; where that invisible hand fails to deliver, such as situations like this one, we use laws and regulations to correct the situation.
>That's not true; all corporations make moral choices, probably even Uber.
Morality is a human construct, Corporations are not people as such can not have Morality.
People make moral choices.
>>What's wrong with legislation? It's knee-jerk to reject it, but I like the democratic way of solving problems.
There is soo much wrong here.
First off, legislation often makes situation worse, and rarely improves things. After all Uber is a direct reaction to regulation of Taxi's, People wanted a less regulation more convenient service for their transportation needs, Regulation of Uber will just result in something else as people attempt to get out from under the government thumb.
Further the call for regulation is a itself a knee jerk emotional reaction to a perceived injustice.
Finally I do not like the "democratic way". I believe in individuality, not collectivism, I do not believe 51% of the population gets to dictate what the other 49% do or cant do.
>The 'free market' assumes people will act in their own interests; where that invisible hand fails to deliver,
I do not believe it is failing to deliver, clearly the people the drive for Uber believe driving for Uber is better than the other options they have, better than other jobs that are open to them. Simple because you do not like their choice or because you perceive it as "unfair" does not mean the people are not acting in their own interests. Shitty choices are still choices
Where laws and regulation should come into play is for Fraud, false advertisement, and contract violations. All of which Uber has been accused of and it should be investigated.
I also believe we should have strong Truth in Advertising laws to prevent companies like Uber from inflating income numbers, or getting people to sign terrible leasing programs like the ones Uber has. This would be good use of government regulation
Requiring all kind of Employment regulations and other types of regulation people call for is not.
>we use laws and regulations to correct the situation.
We should not, nor is it effect
Law and regulations should only be there to prevent direct physical harm, theft and fraud. Nothing else. They should not protect people from their own stupidity, they should not attempt to make the world subjectivity "fair" which is impossible as every person has a different definition of what is "fair"
The only proper role of government is to ensure people are honestly transacting with each free from coercive threats of violence, or actual violence between persons.
Beyond that any action by government ceases to be defensive in nature and becomes Aggressive and is IMO unethical
There are many philosophical principles here, but not much that seems related to the reality of people, businesses, or governments. I'll just say this:
Theory is a useful servant but a bad master, liable to produce orthodox defenders of every variety of the faith.
They should however have a responsibility to ensure drivers are driving responsibly, that they aren't sleep deprived.
Perhaps legislation will catch up here, forcing max hours and making Uber's car leasing model unsustainable. By the time it does however, the cars may be self driving in many cities anyway.
Very true, but I do see a difference between breaking laws that simply are out of date, and breaking laws which endanger public safety. I'd like to think that judges have some give and take with these things.
Since so-called "migrant farm workers" tend to be there illegally, what society owes them is a hearty punishment followed by a deportation.
Or if you're talking about the legal migrant farm workers, then what society owes them is the deportation of the illegals, so that they no longer have to compete on price with an unlimited number of people who shouldn't be there.
It's no surprise that unenforced immigration laws plus an open border to a third-world country drives down unskilled labour prices.
Heck, once we get rid of the illegals we may find that Uber prices go up too. The US doesn't really have an oversupply of unskilled labour.
If you really wanted to
stop undocumented workers, punish the employers. One Trump cabinet pick recently fired a house hold employee because of their status. That sort of thing use to be disqualifying. Not any more.
That's a good start, we need to work both ends of the problem.
Mind you, since the government doesn't have any reliable means of determining whether somebody is in the country legally or not I'm not sure how we can hold employers responsible either. The only way we could hold employers responsible is if there's a reliable system which allows people to check on others' immigration status at any time. And is that what we want?
> I'm a big fan of [corporal punishment] as a cost-effective method that everyone can fear equally.
But not everyone can fear it equally. A pregnant woman would fear it much more; so would someone older, perhaps with bad joints, or other health problems.
“This job is not for everyone. Don’t get it twisted,” he said. “These labor advocates, they don’t know what it’s like to be a driver. They think we’re not being treated right, but I’m happy. If I didn’t like it, I would do something else.”
Nope, you totally missed the pure wisdom in the driver's quote. His point is that academics in ivory towers who make policy decisions are so far removed from his reality, that they are ill-equipped to make appropriate policy decisions on his behalf. He's asking labor advocates to engage with him, rather than hand down a potentially disastrous policy decision.
Government drones could really learn a thing or two from that guy.
