[svanderbleek]

Read the article more carefully, "they might be willing to switch to a co-op model that offers a cheaper price and solid service". A co-op can have lower prices and pay it's members more because they don't have to funnel profits to support the bloat of a central corporation like Uber.

[nickparker]

Can they, though?

The corporation isn't some money-sucking black box. It's dispute resolution, software development to match rides efficiently (Uber Pool is tricky), and advertising.

Yes, it also skims money off the top to pay for things like driverless car R&D, but is a small, likely disorganized co-op going to be efficient enough at all the above to take advantage of that margin?

[Kalium]

It's highly unlikely that a small, disorganized co-op is going to be efficient enough to take advantage of the situation and be able to out-compete Uber.

That said, the reality is irrelevant here. Jacobin is the kind of magazine where economic reality is treated as a suggestion, to be discarded as is convenient.

[svanderbleek]

That's how economic reality should be treated. Our own reality is primary. We will take back our lives. What Jacobin is working towards is admirable. We believe in progress, that a better way is possible, and that the current state of affairs is suboptimal. We should encourage alternative economic thinking.

[Kalium]

I am in favor of encouraging plausible, workable economic thinking. Jacobin is better described as leftist fever-dreams with roughly that level of connection to any reality.

Could things work differently? Absolutely. Are they going to work differently because some hack gets off fantasizing about how in abstract theory, the services Uber performs could be better performed by a co-op that pays workers more? No.

All the co-ops I've encountered or dealt with fall into one of three categories:

* Non-functional, incapable of making decisions or delivering value.

* Functional but completely unscalable. May depend on bizarro local economic conditions or be in one of the few cities where people are willing to pay 30% extra for pizza because it's a co-op.

* Function, scalable, and does not operate much like a co-op at the level of service delivery. REI falls into this category.

Uber works because it's functional, scalable, and reliable. You can go to almost any major city in the US, boot up your Uber app, and reasonably expect to get decent service. It is, abstractly, possible for a co-op to do that. You and Jacobin are completely, totally, 100% correct on this point. Things could be different and better for the people who Jacobin has decided matter.

In fact, we all live in a framework where such a thing is possible! If only someone was brave enough to put their labor where their mouth is. Maybe the propagandists at Jacobin could... nah. They wouldn't go for that. They much prefer theory.

[tanderson92]

> * Function, scalable, and does not operate much like a co-op at the level of service delivery. REI falls into this category.

No true scot? The definition of a co-op is a group organized to meet economic or social desires through jointly owned business. What does this have to do with any particular approach to service delivery? You appear to be defining cooperatives as some unworkable theoretical concept and then any actual successful example of implementation is an exception. Convenient!

Vanguard also falls into this category but is absolutely a cooperative.

[Kalium]

Workers at REI get sub-$12/hr. REI is structurally and technically a co-op. They are just a co-op that does not exhibit the benefits of a co-op that Jacobin would suggest will flow from being a co-op.

If it's structured like a co-op and exhibits none of the benefits of a co-op, what's been gained? I'm saying that co-ops generally have to sacrifice at least one of: structure, functionality, scalability.

[tomcam]

The definition you just gave for co-op also includes any publicly owned corporation.

[tedmiston]

United Dairy Farmers based around Cincinnati is one co-op you might find interesting. They are an ice cream shop / convenience store / occasional gas station (I know it sounds strange) that has grown to ~200 stores in our tristate area. I wish there more info about them online.

http://www.udfinc.com/about-udf

The founder and family made Forbes' billionaire list.

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/10/S22J.html

[neffy]

and then there's John Lewis.

and a few others.

[dnautics]

You're confusing "economic reality" with "economic narrative". That's a superset of "capitalist narrative", "free-market narrative" (distinct from "capitalism"), and "socialist narrative". All parties (as you just did) spin their own stories about what ought to happen or why what does or should happen is morally justified, and all of these stories run up against the reality (measurable or unmeasurable) of coordination of supply, demand, and the interaction of voluntary and coercive power with that.

[Apocryphon]

A small, disorganized co-op, sure. A large, efficient one on the other hand...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

[dilemma]

Mondragon is a co-op by name only. If you look into how it's structured, its basically just a corporation with a twist. Source: The Ownership of Enterprise, available on Amazon.

[honkhonkpants]

I would say at this stage Uber really is just a money-sucking black box. The revenues they get from their commissions in established cities they pour into marketing and just flat out buying business in new cities. All existing drivers are working to expand Uber, and they do not benefit from that in any way. The point of a co-op would be to recapture the spread and put it back in drivers' and riders' pockets.

[peterwoo]

A flat rate could cover software fees and advertising. Dispute resolution should maybe be insured for each and every ride, but at nothing close to the ~20% cut currently taken.

[valhalla]

That may be true. I'd imagine that a cheap median price and solid service will depend on the scale of Swift's supply side. Assuming there's plenty of demand (lots of Uber, Lyft customers switching over) then Uber's drivers would be more than willing to switch over to Swift. The co-op model would be a great incentive.

The issue is though how does one get drivers to switch from a reliable (though possibly imperfect, inefficient) source of regular income with a well-known brand to an upstart at a large enough scale to pose a direct threat to Uber, thereby forcing them to change their model or go out of business?

I'm living in LA right now and I typically wait 4 min for a car (longest has been 10 min). My last ride cost $4.44. That's less than a Big Mac! ($5.04 average price in the US). I can't imagine a new service being able to beat that from it's inception.

The other issue is that if drivers are allowed drive for Uber and Swift there could be a free rider dynamic: drivers get the benefit of belonging to Swifts' co-op but still get to be part of Uber's network. Sure Uber's service would suffer, but it would be a huge drain on Swift's resources and undercut their model (and reason of existing) from the driver's perspective.

[random3]

> The issue is though how does one get drivers to switch from a reliable (though possibly imperfect, inefficient) source of regular income with a well-known brand to an upstart at a large enough scale to pose a direct threat to Uber,

Incrementally, starting to use the second for a small percent and then gradually more

[pfarnsworth]

You're right, I missed that line. But I also don't believe that prices would go down in a co-op model because individual drivers don't see the big picture.

It seems like a few lines later, it says:

By turning to co-op apps, drivers can retain the flexibility of working under a model like Uber’s while also having a say in their own wages and conditions.

If the workers have a "say" in their own wages that means increasing prices, unconditionally. And who is going to provide the assurances that drivers won't lose money if they drop prices. When Uber drops prices, they guarantee wages as per:

https://newsroom.uber.com/beating-the-winter-slump-price-cut...

How will this happen in a co-op? Spoiler alert: it won't.

[fineIllregister]

Why doesn't Uber just raise prices, unconditionally? The same reason co-ops won't: competition.

[srtjstjsj]

You can't just call it "bloat", you have to prove that it is bloat.

[svanderbleek]

True, I do know people who work at Uber who I have worked with before. Just kidding but I would like to show that worker owned business can be more efficient because of locality of information transfer and decision making. It's not my professional area so I have to rely on my beliefs. I am working toward creating software companies to embody these ideas.

[morgante]

> A co-op can have lower prices and pay it's members more because they don't have to funnel profits to support the bloat of a central corporation like Uber.

How?

What is the "bloat" of Uber that this taxi co-op would avoid. Uber's primary spending is on marketing and developer salaries. Without marketing, how do you expect anyone to use the co-op app?

Ultimately, I think it comes down to drivers (and leftists) not valuing developers. You're not going to build and maintain an app which competes with Uber if you're not paying for the "bloat" of developers.

[KKKKkkkk1]

The idea behind capitalism is that people who have money use it to start a company with the goal of making profits. For example, if it's a transportation company, they will use the money to buy cars or to hire drivers. Thanks to competition, they will have to make sure that they are providing a good service at a competitive price, and so if they want to get their profits, they will have to make sure that their company runs as efficiently as possible.

Those are the two ingredients of capitalism: competition and the profit motive. Once you take away one of them, things start breaking down. And that's why not-for-profits are notorious for being wastefully run and being taken advantage of by their senior management.

[tanderson92]

Non-profit consumer-owned collectives like Vanguard, you mean? How is that working out for them?

[Apocryphon]

Credit unions are co-ops.

[SilasX]

Right, but they still have to find the funds to pay someone to set up the system and get it bootstrapped, or find enough volunteer or discounted labor to make it happen. Considering the risks and difficulty of doing so, the money funneled away as profits may not rightly be called "pointless gatekeeper bloat".