It's troubling that these business models aren't viable unless you pay the drivers less than $15 an hour. Especially with no benefits. That is very little these days.
The law did not mandate a $15 and hour wage. It set specific per mile cost requirements, which could easily be well over $15 per hour.
Ride share driver's aren't slaves. They chose to drive for ride share companies above the other options. If it was a bad deal then Uber and Lyft would be having trouble finding drivers. How is strictly fewer options a good thing?
> Ride share driver's aren't slaves. They chose to drive for ride share companies above the other options. If it was a bad deal then Uber and Lyft would be having trouble finding drivers.
And slaves aren't slaves either, they chose to remain slaves above other options (rebel and be beaten or killed). If it was a bad deal, the slaveholders would be having trouble getting their slaves to work, and would just be killing or beating them all the time.
I find type of argument irksome. It basically ignores whatever the actual situation is with a blind assumption whatever the market does is the best (or at least better) thing and is therefore fine.
If you give a person terrible choices, and they pick the best of a bad lot, that choice doesn't excuse the situation. All Minneapolis did was mandate one those choices had to be better. The rest is up to Uber and Lyft, who chose to play hardball to keep exploiting their workers to the degree they've become accustomed.
> And slaves aren't slaves either, they chose to remain slaves above other options (rebel and be beaten or killed)
Coercion is when you cannot reasonably refuse. If one faces torture and execution for refusal, then they cannot reasonably refuse.
Will Uber and Lyft tie up drivers and whip them if they choose to take a job at Starbucks? Whill Uber and Lyft kill drivers? Come on, you call my argument irksome then you compare these drivers to actual chattel slavery.
Remember: at it's core, capitalism uses the threat of deprivation and want to coerce cooperation with it, and it always likes an oversupply of labor. Don't want to chose to work at my sweatshop (or the sweatshop of one of my peers) for miserable wages while I get rich off your labor? Fine, go starve. And don't go trespassing on my estate to try to grow food, if you try the men with guns will come for you.
What's so clever about it is the threat is indirect and systemic (instead of direct and personal), which is all some people seem to need to deny it's there.
It also brings to mind the ancient Roman fire brigades, which were more of an extortion racket than anything else.
The threat of deprivation if people don't do labor is omnipresent. If Hunter gatherers didn't gather berries and hunt for food, they faced starvation. At this point, the definition of coercion has been expanded such that humanity's very existence is inherently coercive.
> The threat of deprivation if people don't do labor is omnipresent. If Hunter gatherers didn't gather berries and hunt for food, they faced starvation.
I didn't say it wasn't. But don't you realize the different social dynamic here from being a hunter gatherer? Uber and Lyft were exploiting that for their own gain, and ran away from the corrective action because they think they have the power to bully it away to maintain their gain at the level of which they've become accustomed.
> At this point, the definition of coercion has been expanded such that humanity's very existence is inherently coercive.
What point am I missing? What jobs will these drivers work now that they can't drive for Uber or Lyft?
Whatever your response is, they had the opportunity to work that job before and made the deliberate decision to drive for Uber and Lyft instead. My point, that you're missing, is that there was no coercion in this decision between driving for ride share versus the alternative. And you're somehow trying to argue that depriving these drivers of the choice to work for Uber and Lyft and forcing them into the alternative that they previously judged an inferior opportunity is somehow a good thing.
Your point about people working to avoid starvation applies just as much to whatever job these ex-drivers are going to be working instead. These drivers judged that these jobs were worse than driving for ride share, but apparently you think you know better than them despite having zero knowledge about their priorities and life situation.
You edited your comment after my response:
> Uber and Lyft were exploiting that for their own gain, and ran away from the corrective action because they think they have the power to bully it away to maintain their gain at the level of which they've become accustomed.
How were Uber and Lyft bullying drivers? Again, you seem to be claiming that drivers were somehow coerced into driving for ride share apps instead of seeking alternative employment. But you've yet to explain how this bullying was perpetrated. What was Lyft and Uber doing to keep drivers from working at Starbucks or some other job?
> What point am I missing? What jobs will these drivers work now that they can't drive for Uber or Lyft?
The problem is (it appears) you're looking at this solely from the framework of free market dogma. The operation of market is assumed to be optimal, the Uber drivers had a nominal choice when they took a job with Uber, and that nominal choice cures any issue anyone could have with the terms of their employment, etc.
While seductive, that framework is oversimple, and misses much.
> My point, that you're missing, is that there was no coercion in this decision between driving for ride share versus the alternative.
I am not missing that point at all. In fact, I find that point exceedingly tiresome due to how often it's repeated. At it's core, it's an apologia for fully taking advantage of a man's desperation (which I reject), and then twists that into some kind of good deed, so someone can pat themselves on the back for it afterwards (which just adds insult to injury).
> How were Uber and Lyft bullying drivers?
What I was referring to is their attempt to bully the Minneapolis city government and other governments that may take action to give drivers a better deal.
Again, how are Uber and Lyft taking advantage of drivers' desperation any more than the jobs they're going to have to work instead, now that Uber and Lyft are banned? These drivers already had the opportunity stop driving and work those jobs instead. Why is the former "taking advantage of man's desperation" but the latter is not?
> The operation of market is assumed to be optimal, the Uber drivers had a nominal choice when they took a job with Uber, and that nominal choice cures any issue anyone could have with the terms of their employment, etc.
> While seductive, that framework is oversimple, and misses much.
Except... it does? You're insisting that this misses the point, but you don't actually explain what is misses.
Again, what will these drivers be doing to make ends meet when Uber and Lyft leave Minneapolis? Guess what, they already had that choice before and decided that ride share was better. Maybe it was the flexibility, maybe it was the independence, who knows. But they all made the decision that other available employment was worse than driving.
True, these drivers were working to put food on the table. But they're still going to be working to put food on the table in whatever job they do after ride share apps shut down in Minneapolis. It's no less "taking advantage of man's desperation".
> Again, how are Uber and Lyft taking advantage of drivers' desperation any more than the jobs they're going to have to work instead, now that Uber and Lyft are banned?
They're weaseling around minimum wage laws. In Minneapolis, the minimum wage is $15.57/hr (and tips don't count towards it, https://minimumwage.minneapolismn.gov/). Uber and Lyft are mad Minneapolis is going to make them pay drivers something close to that.
> Uber and Lyft drivers in Minneapolis and St. Paul and greater Minnesota often are paid well below the equivalent of the minimum wage after expenses are deducted, a state-commissioned study has found.
> ...
> It largely validated the narrative of many drivers, who are considered independent contractors: After taking into account wear and tear on their cars, time spent driving to and from rides, and the cost of gas and other expenses, drivers across the state earn well below the minimum wage they would likely receive if they were employees, not including tips.
> However, before expenses, drivers are paid well above the minimum wage while working.
> Minnesota Uber, Lyft drivers say it's getting harder and harder to make a living...
> "It's not fair. What Uber pays us just covers our expenses but no profit at all," said Egal, who used to be a taxi cab driver for 15 years before Uber and Lyft disrupted the marketplace and his business.
> Again, what will these drivers be doing to make ends meet when Uber and Lyft leave Minneapolis? Guess what, they already had that choice before and decided that ride share was better. Maybe it was the flexibility, maybe it was the independence, who knows. But they all made the decision that other available employment was worse than driving.
It's a market right? It will adjust to find a new, better equilibrium.
A big assumption you seem to have is that these Uber/Lyft drivers are perfect examples of homo economicus, making fully informed rational decisions about all this, so think you can infer the choice is a good one for them because they made it. However that doesn't seem to be true. If those companies offer a misleading value proposition, they can sustain themselves for some time by with a revolving door of naive and ignorant people who don't understand the misleading economics of the exchange. The competition from that flow of ignorant people (especially if they're more casual) helps keep overall wages low.
I wouldn't be surprised of Uber and Lyft have implemented some gambling dynamics for their drivers. It would make sense to offer drivers occasional jackpot days to keep them hooked, while the house wins big as always.
Homo economicus is an oversimple fiction; Homo sapiens is real. Understanding the difference goes a long way towards grasping the problems with free market dogma (but certainly not the whole way).
Aren’t you a bit presumptuous? Do you consider yourself as knowing better than them what is best for them? Do you think that you know how to run their life better? Why?
Do you think there are people out there knowing how to run your life better than you? Would you like if they came and took control over your life?
> The law did not mandate a $15 and hour wage. It set specific per mile cost requirements, which could easily be well over $15 per hour.
I'm not 100% certain, but I think this is a workaround for Uber/Lyft's workaround that lets them violate employment laws, namely, that they claim their employees are contractors, not employees. Since the contractor agreement specifies payment per mile, that's what the council's ordinance applies to. If Uber/Lyft were honest about their employees being employees, then they would have the minimum wage law applied, like any other business.
If Uber and Lyft drivers were employees the Uber and Lyft could mandate which times of day drivers need to work, as well as prohibiting them from working for competing ride share companies.
Like it or not, Uber and Lyft drivers are indeed contractors. They set their own hours, and are free to work for competing ride share apps. There's nothing dishonest about this, people are
just salty that the "Ride share driver are actually employees" meme is not true.
But on other hand they are not free to set prices. Which to me is what would make Uber and Lyft purely matching service. Allow the drivers to set the prices and rules. Then customers can take or not take them.
When the options are narrowed into precarious work such as most (or even all) of the "gig economy" bullshit, have more options of precarious work is not good overall for a society. It erodes the standard employment relationship, it's cheaper for employers so companies not relying on precarious work are in disadvantage which pushes more people into precarious work, creating a death spiral to proper secure employment in more sectors of society over time.
Go read about working conditions at factories in the 19th century. Those people weren't slaves either; they "chose" to work 12 hour days, 7 days a week, in extraordinarily dangerous conditions, because the alternate from their perspective was to starve to death. That's not the situation these Uber drivers are in, specifically because of unions and other laws (such as minimum wage laws) which prevent such "choices" from happening.
The irony is that industrial jobs in the early 19th century were better than the alternatives, namely subsistence farming. For all the talk about "Dickensian" industrial working conditions, the industrializing countries in 19th century saw some of the biggest leaps in standards of living in history, unions or not.
This is exactly the kind of misguided take that leads people deprive people less privileged then themselves of employment opportunities. You wouldn't want to drive for Uber, it'd be a bad choose in your situation. And you're applying the same thinking to people who don't have the same employment prospects.
What will Uber and Lyft drivers do now that price controls have made ride sharing too expensive for most of the market? Work at fast food joints? In retail? All of those choice were present when drivers chose to drive for ride share companies, and the drivers concluded they were inferior to working for Uber and Lyft. Now, were forcing them to go to one of those inferior choices and patting ourselves on the back for doing a supposedly good thing.
Or Uber and Lyft could simply make less profit so they could abide by local labor laws. The labor law didn't remove the employment opportunity. Greed and shitty companies that don't want to abide by the law removed the employment opportunity. Don't shift blame for the scofflaws.
But if profit is negative then Uber and Lyft will just leave the market entirely. The only way to keep profits positive is to increase prices beyond what customers are willing to pay.
I think this is a bit of a false dichotomy. Yeah wasting away in a factory for 12 hours a day is better than starving to death on a farm, but still, the factory conditions didn't have to suck as bad as they did.
But they can be some desperate people, who are willing to put up with inhumane working conditions just to survive. We, as a developed society, should have a floor on the working conditions. Otherwise, businesses will take advantage of the weakest members of the society to bring back practices like 9-9-6, peeing in the bottle at the warehouses, child labor and what not.
Regulations are the best defense against a race to the bottom.
I think they are slaves to a degree if they are illegal immigrants, which I suspect many of them are. This is the dirty trick played by many big businesses in the US. "You'll get your low wage and you'll like it, or else." I do know this happens in the agriculture and construction businesses, and based on my limited powers of observation, it happens in the ride-share business too.
I'm afraid most humans are not "choosing", at least not in the way many people on hackernews get to choose between various extremely-cushy white collars job.
Work = Survival
We'll "choose" the best option available to use, and as the overall temperature of the market changes, so do our "choices"..
It appears the drivers are choosing to lobby their city government for this increase. If you believe the boundaries of political power for labor do not extend past slavery you're overlooking a large and incredibly important part of American history.
I don't really agree with that, because it is exceedingly unlikely that all drivers are lobbying for it or agree with it, even if a majority do so (which is not at all certain).
I'm very interested in sources indicating that this legislation is supported by the majority of ride share drivers. Though, to be fair, if 10 out of 1,000 ride share drivers are supporting this legislation it's technically honest to "[an unspecified proportion of] drivers are choosing to lobby their city government for this increase."
It's impossible to know how much support it has from Uber/Lyft employees, but there has been a sustained effort for this kind of legislation for a long time, both here & elsewhere (e.g. Austin, TX). Last summer the legislature passed a statewide law enforcing a minimum wage for drivers, but the governor vetoed it[1]. So it least has enough support to get it through the state House & Senate, which isn't nothing.
Yeah, of course. Lacking any direct measurement, I'm using support from elected legislators as a proxy for support from people who live here. It's an imperfect metric, obviously, but better than nothing. Presumably if they were getting 99-to-1 comments against the policy from drivers, it wouldn't have passed all of the state House, Senate, and Minneapolis city council.
Except the electorate is comprised overwhelmingly of people who aren't ride share drivers. They could easily be passing laws opposed by the majority of drivers because it's supported mostly by people who aren't ride share drivers.
I agree that option is in the possibility space. However, I don't think it is likely that a wide majority of drivers oppose it, given the support from so many legislators & the lack of that opposition being voiced in local news articles. Given this evidence and the lack of any opposing evidence (but feel free to present some!), I feel comfortable saying the ordinance is at least not wildly unpopular among drivers.
I guess DEI bans are popular among Florida University professors because the government enacted it.
Again, legislators don't care if it's popular among the impacted party. They just care if it's popular among voters. Which are overwhelmingly not Uber and Lyft drivers.
I feel comfortable that this legislation is unpopular among Uber and Lyft drivers because they chose on their own accord to drive for these apps, and now they are deprived of that choice.
Can you find some examples of drivers speaking out against it? At public hearings etc? All the news coverage I've seen about it has mentioned significant driver support and very little opposition.
> Part time driver here doing it to make ends meet and pay a few bills more comfortably - I’m definitely pissed. I can certainly understand wanting more pay for drivers, but for the city council to just sidestep the statewide study and mandate rates higher than the study advocated for seems shortsighted and irresponsible to me.
It's a low-skill job that just about anyone can do. Almost all jobs of this sort will be eliminated with technology/automation ESPECIALLY since higher labor wages put upward pressure on operating costs.
i.e.: once self-driving vehicles come onto the scene (as in ubiquitous) there won't be a labor force to worry about.
This would make more sense if a $15/hour wage was something out of step with historical wages. It's a big jump right now, but historically it's not out of step with previous periods. What were average wages at taxi companies pre-Uber?
As for self-driving, I'd be a little concerned that a ~$8/hour cost (assuming previous was around $7) puts Uber in an untenable situation, self-driving cars or not. Ultimately there still would be labor force to worry about, no? Currently, drivers are responsible for maintenance, cleanliness, etc. -- once you switch to self-driving, someone else has to do all of that.
Comparing them to taxis isn't one-for-one for this context: most municipalities had barriers to entry to prevent just anyone from running a taxi service (i.e. the medallions in NYC).
The business will do the math to figure out what they can get away with. Honestly there probably is a little political posturing here as OP said, but if they return it's because they made the math work, otherwise they'll stay gone.
I can tell you with certainty that most low-margin, high workforce industries (because I work in one of them) are looking to automate much of their workforce away especially in light of labor costs rising (minimum wage laws), increasing safety regulations (let the robots do it), increasing competitive pressure (foreign countries have cheaper labor), and social changes (people prefer interacting with a cell phone over a human being).
Couple this with a publicly traded company such as Uber/Lyft whose whole existence depends on market value (the stock price) then the management of those companies are going to do the math to figure out if automating jobs is the right thing to do: their job is to maximize the value of the company (the stock price). The shareholders also have a vested interest for the same reasons.
I don’t see why most people in America would expect to be able to afford drivers. Labor is and has long been famously expensive.
A lot of immigrants will have drivers/maids/cooks in their country of origin, and then come to the US and have to do their own laundry/cooking/driving/etc.
I don't see any reason why taxi drivers should not be able to charge same that say lawyers or software consultants. And really these platforms should allow exactly that drivers to set their own prices even above government set minimum.
