[sschueller]

So you have a profitable company but at what cost? These drivers are working at slave wages unable to pay into any retirement funds or have health insurance.

In countries where there was a reasonable taxi system uber gutted them and went around regulations taking away the few guarantees the people had like a retirement and sick leave.

In the end we the tax payer have to help these people down the road when they get sick or old and all of this for the profit of a few share holders.

In Switzerland Uber still owes drivers half a billion Swiss Francs in unpaid wages/retirement and sick leave. Where do people think this missing money will come from when these people need it later on in life?

[srge]

I have met and talked to several Uber drivers and I was surprised that the « slave » narrative was totally unfounded (on that sample at least).

Drivers were generally very happy about their Uber earnings. When I realized it I bought shares and they are now at +60% over the buying price.

Let’s just be careful with pre-digested narratives. I am not saying that every driver is happy. But many are certainly quite happy!

[tomdell]

Some are happy for now because they largely aren't accounting for the deferred costs that are being pushed down the road - once you account for wear & tear on the car and associated maintenance and eventual new car purchases, their earnings are much less than what it seems in the short-term. Uber relies on drivers not running all the numbers before signing up.

[fshbbdssbbgdd]

This argument is demeaning to the drivers. They are grown adults who do their taxes. A reasonable prior would be that people who do something for a living tend to know more about the job than people who don’t. You can surely find examples of unprofitable Uber drivers who are driving in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong car, but that doesn’t make it the norm.

There’s a lot of discussion among the driver community about how to operate to optimize earnings. People are leasing or buying cars specifically to use them to drive for Uber and depreciation, maintenance, and fuel economy are all part of the calculation.

[liamN]

I dont think it's demeaning. Uber (and others) are not very upfront about the longterm costs and risks, causing (often) desparate people to make serious decisions without critical information. This mostly affects people who drive for these companies as their full time job.

They make it seem like it's a job you can do at your own convenience, but you can't actually do it like that and expect to make consistent money. All of them start penalizing you (by giving you fewer jobs in the future) if you turn down jobs for any reason, driving down their profitibility. It also looks like youre making more money than you are because you have to do all your own taxes (which is mostly just a hassle, but did blindside my poor friend who didnt know anything about taxes and had to go into debt to pay his taxes since he was living paycheck to paycheck).

And its very easy to not make the connection that driving all day for Uber et al increases chances of getting in a car accident, which will increase monthly insurance costs, not to mention car repairs and car maintainance from driving 8-12 hours a day most days of the week. And if your car ever needs to go into the mechanic for repairs (a famously slow process often times) thats lost wages every day youre without your car. It's like being a truck driver; Uber et al just move all the costs of fleet maintainance to the drivers, which really eats into what looks like a decent wage on the surface level.

Of course, there are going to be some people who do all the research and are ok with these risks, or game the system someone. But most people who do these driving jobs full time do it because they dont have a lot of other options, and dont bother to do all the in-depth research because "it looks easy" and they didnt have another readily available choice anyway. This isnt Uber's fault per se, but they benefit from it and do nothing to inform drivers of these risks.

(cite: have a friend who worked for all the delivery and ride share apps before losing his car and being too poor to buy a new one.)

[skinner927]

This is quite a strong opinion from a sample size of 1.

[remote_phone]

Every Uber driver I’ve had in US and Canada are happy with driving for Uber. One guy I had the other day drives under as his second job and He says it pays his rent, his car payment and gas and his primary job goes straight to savings. The idea that these Uber drivers are slaves is a lie.

[carlosjobim]

You didn't deserve to be down voted for this comment.

[mentos]

Devils advocate, what will these people do if/when Uber/Lyft/etc replaces the driver with automation?

[fckgw]

Why would they do that? If you automate the drivers then suddenly Uber needs to buy and maintain a fleet of thousands or millions of autonomous vehicles and their costs balloon astronomically. Kiss any profit out the window for another decade at least.

The current system is GREAT for Uber. No vehicles to purchase, maintenance is the burden of the driver and you only need to cut off a small slice of your profits for the driver in order to keep the whole thing going. If you need more profits you simply raise rates or lower driver pay.

[smcl]

They invested a tonne of money in self-driving vehicles. If they didn't intend to utilise them then what on earth were they doing, lighting money on fire for fun?

[adeelk93]

Uber sold off that division years ago, and is no longer focused on self-driving

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/12/uber-sells-self-driving...

[harambae]

> no longer focused on self-driving

Not quite. More like they're partnering with others and staying internally focused on their core competencies, like any good company does.

Section "Get to know our autonomous partners" https://www.uber.com/us/en/autonomous/

[smcl]

Weird, I remember a lot of talk around that time of self-driving cars being their future and the reason why they had such a sky-high valuation. Guess I missed this news mid-Covid

[thworp]

Lighting money on fire to increase valuation. Getting a cab dispatch service to get valued at insane multiples was a master stroke.

[HDThoreaun]

Uber can just use idle self driving cars. How many hours a day are you using your car? Most people are at like 2 or 3.

[fckgw]

Those don't exist. No one is taking their self driving car to work and then lending it out to Uber. Not to mention if a company like GM gets their self-driving tech off the ground, why wouldn't they just spin up an app and beat Uber at their game?

[crazygringo]

> No one is taking their self driving car to work and then lending it out to Uber.

To the contrary, tons of people will be doing that.

There's going to be a big group of people who logistically need "their own car" for various reasons (live out in the suburbs, need stuff in a locked trunk, can't risk a delay in getting to work, etc.) but couldn't be happier to make money on it by lending it out as a taxi downtown during business hours. Or when they're traveling for a week, or whenever.

Especially when you don't even need to worry about messes/damage because internal cameras will catch and bill whoever was responsible, and the car will drive itself to the nearest garage for cleaning/repair.

Just as we now have hotels and AirBNB, I totally foresee different self-driving taxi services that are either fleet-owned or consumer-shared. I can't imagine why this wouldn't happen.

[ProfessorLayton]

> To the contrary, tons of people will be doing that.

Yeah, until they get their car back and there's puke in the backseat, which requires more than a basic cleaning to get the smell out (Yes, uber charges a fee for puking, but no it doesn't cover a proper detailing that'll get the smell out). Or they find a bunch of little dings on their car from slamming the door into an unretracted seat belt. There's also the vegan pleather that'll rapidly start to deteriorate from passenger traffic that's 20x more than intended etc.

Some may still do it of course, but I don't believe most will want to destroy their car's value from the depreciation that uber will cause.

[renewiltord]

I use GM's cars all the time. Pretty good in SF. They're slower but sometimes when you're not time sensitive, it's nice to grab the ride since they don't cancel or anything.

The first ride was novel. Everything after felt so routine I didn't even look at the road. As far as my girlfriend and I were concerned, we got in and then talked for a while and hung out and then got out elsewhere.

The speed is the only constraint right now.

[louzell]

> No one is taking their self driving car to work and then lending it out to Uber

Sounds like a business opportunity

[cykotic]

Perhaps some day we will live in a society that does not allow exploitation because we can’t think of what those who are exploited would do if not for the exploitation.

[flangola7]

They will probably suffer even more, why?

[Zetice]

I think his argument is that slavery benefits the enslaved, or something like that.

[pessimizer]

How would my child slaves eat if I released them?

[efields]

omg this place sucks

[sabas123]

They might move to easy to entry positions where shortages exist though.

[austhrow743]

So the anti Uber argument is that uber drivers are drooling idiots that are too stupid to act in their best interest?

[gigatree]

Well goal of any company is to increase profits, not to increase the wellbeing of its employees. So I’m sure they’re not worried about making people miserable or being a public burden.