Lyft and Uber are favored due to convenience and price. Nothing stops a regulated Uber that pays fair wages from convenience...but the price paid will have to become higher to support people.
This is like McDonald's paying workers $3 an hour, charging $2 for a value menu meal, and then people saying 'wow, McDonald's has made Burger King obsolete!'. Of course customers will prefer the cheaper service that screws workers and does not pay fairly, but (some) workers will work it because it's their only choice.
Before Uber/Lyft existed, the taxi experience sucked. Uber/Lyft provided:
- A way to pre-pay
- A way to communicate current location and destination clearly to driver
- All from an intuitive app on your phone
I'm guessing you never went to NYC, tried in vain to find a taxi when you needed one, then got a taxi driver who barely spoke English, tried to communicate where to go, ended up paying way more than you intended?
Anyone remember calling a taxi dispatch over and over? I used to have to call both taxi dispatches in my area (there were only two!) just to guarantee I'd have a cab get me to the airport in time. And you had to pay cash.
I think we can all agree that taxis sucked before Uber/Lyft forced them to update. But that doesn't mean we can't have a better taxi experience using the tech stack Uber/Lyft created.
I agree, but imagine that this Uber/Lyft experience was not subsidized by VC money. Would you be willing to pay 2x of a typical taxi to get this enhanced experience? Probably most people would stick with the street taxi in that case...
Wait, so I get a comfortable ride, I get it fast, I get it cheap, somebody else pays for the majority of it, that somebody else has tons of their own money, not coming from my taxes, which they spend willingly on giving me a good cheap ride - and somehow this is a bad thing?
Well, yes, typically subsidizing goods/services below the cost of production (or below the market-determined "fair value") is considered anticompetitive because it drives the fair competitors out of the market (as without the subsidies they can't compete) and then once achieve monopoly control of the market, the subsidies stop and the quality of service plummets and/or the price skyrockets.
Except the prices didn't skyrocket and the quality of service didn't plummet for the last 10 years. I think if VCs are willing to give me 10 years of cheap quality rides, I'm in.
> How long do you think that this will stay like this?
If I knew how to answer questions like that, you'd see me on TV giving interviews about my trillion-dollar hedge fund.
> After competition dies out prices will skyrocket.
I have yet to see a single scenario where this actually happened without being a product of government-granted monopoly (e.g. patents in pharma). But if Uber is going to charge me 3x for the same ride (just as taxis do now) I'll stop using them (just as I stopped using taxis). In the meantime, I've been saving money for a decade. I think it's a good deal.
It would never be more expensive. And price is not the main factor (it already gets expensive quickly), the service and user experience is why people pick Uber.
This is true, but a better comparison would be to the current taxi market. As much I dislike the realities of the medallions, it's important to acknowledge that taxis have generally upped their game too.
Democratic elected leaders get to decide a fair wage because they are democratically elected leaders.
In terms of motivation a democratically elected leader motivated by the interests of their constituents is a better Stewart of the minimum wage than an un-elected boardroom whose primary motivation is investor value not the quality of life of the citizenry.
>Taxis are an obsolete service, Lyft and Uber are overwhelmingly favored by customers and businesses.
As a customer, I might favor the Uber/Lyft experience over a taxi, but I sure as hell don't favor the way that Uber/Lyft treat and pay their drivers. There's a difference.
Ok - so we can't afford to pay people for their work any more. We can't afford benefits. We can't afford unemployment. We can't afford to create an economy where people reliably earn enough to buy housing and pay for essentials.
And this in one of the most prosperous economies in the world.
Do you not understand that this is what you're arguing for?
Do you also not understand that if you don't already have a huge pile of fuck-you money as a buffer, your privileged steady middle class job will be next to be "disrupted" - likely by the end of the decade?
Because why would your employer's customers pay more than they feel like paying when they can the same service from an automation-aided gig economy developer who has been beaten down to the point where they're two weeks of savings away from being homeless?
> Ok - so we can't afford to pay people for their work any more
We can afford to pay people, but the problem here is that it's not just me paying you a bit of money to cover your gas, insurance, mechanics, and time; it's also me paying for tens of thousands of employees and cloud datacenters and all the rest to connect me to you. That's a lot of overhead, and it's duplicated by virtue of multiple companies being in the mix doing the same thing.
Also, it was never really supposed to be a career - it was supposed to be something you could do on your way to work to help subsidize your own commute. Making a career out of a side job is certainly one's own choice, and I don't want to get in the way of that, but... are people getting benefits and guaranteed hours for busking, or being a living statue? Are people guaranteed a certain minimum pay for their lemonade stand?
>We can afford to pay people, but the problem here is that it's not just me paying you a bit of money to cover your gas, insurance, mechanics, and time; it's also me paying for tens of thousands of employees and cloud datacenters and all the rest to connect me to you. That's a lot of overhead, and it's duplicated by virtue of multiple companies being in the mix doing the same thing.
Having a high overhead and not charging customers enough to recoup it sounds like a flawed business model to me.
>Also, it was never really supposed to be a career - it was supposed to be something you could do on your way to work to help subsidize your own commute. Making a career out of a side job is certainly one's own choice, and I don't want to get in the way of that, but... are people getting benefits and guaranteed hours for busking, or being a living statue? Are people guaranteed a certain minimum pay for their lemonade stand?
No, but they're also not told that they can make a living, get benefits, etc. for busking, being a living statue or running a lemonade stand. They understand from the outset that none of that will be happening. The difference here is that Uber/Lyft imply - if not state explicitly - to their drivers that it can be their sole source of income.
If it's supposed to be a method of subsidizing your own commute, shouldn't Uber/Lyft be restricting who drivers can pick up to only those customers who are heading in the same direction/on the same route that the driver has told the app they're going?
If it's supposed to be a method of subsidizing your own commute, why do Uber/Lyft assist car-less folk with obtaining rentals?
Via the democratic process, of course. People voted for representatives who implemented a law. If you dislike that, there is an election coming up in a couple months (and one where you will be able to directly vote on this issue, at that!).
Um, try the Curb app. Here in NYC, it competes just fine with Lyft and Uber, but uses licensed taxis. There's hailing, pickup, walk-away payment ("pair to pay"), etc etc
Taxis are an obsolete service, Lyft and Uber are overwhelmingly favored by customers and businesses.