[xelamonster]

I think I agree with you in this case, but I'm not so sure about a lot of the examples given in that linked article.

BHH Labs: pretty obvious to me it's ethically wrong to find the most desperate people around and pay them less than minimum wage to staff your event...

Uber: yes there was a need here, yes the experience offered by traditional taxis is awful and their service is strictly better where available, that really is not related to the ethical concerns I have with them. They're cheaper because they underpay drivers, and quite often they'll come into an area and drive out all the taxis then all but disappear themselves, leaving the town with zero practical transport options.

[dang]

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42096116. Not that what you posted was bad, it just led to an offtopic tangent.)

[AnthonyMouse]

> They're cheaper because they underpay drivers

I don't really get this one. If you drive for Uber, you're going to have a pretty good idea what you're getting paid, and if you don't like that amount then you're under no obligation to keep doing it.

People like to do the math on this using some kind of midsized SUV getting 20ish MPG and that will need major repairs before 150k miles, whereas the people doing it sensibly are using full electric cars or 50 MPG hybrids from reliable makes that will do 500k miles, for which the math is very different.

There are also people who do it part time and thereby have very different costs because they're e.g. accepting rides for trips that they themselves would have made alone regardless. These people are not being "underpaid", they're getting nearly free money.

And when everybody knows the deal ahead of time -- or can reasonably have figured it out within a week -- how can they be underpaying people (i.e. paying them less than competing employers) and yet people still choose to do it? Unless it's not as bad a deal as it's made out to be for those people.

> then all but disappear themselves, leaving the town with zero practical transport options.

Do they leave or are they forced out? Because it's an app; it doesn't make a lot of sense for them to leave for no reason.

[freeone3000]

Uber offers higher rates when moving into an area, sometimes the point of making a loss per ride. Once an area is established, they cut rates to drivers. Obviously, the drivers make the rational decision you’ve outlined above; but the taxi companies don’t come back.

[LewisVerstappen]

Again that's not how it works. It's a two-sided marketplace.

> the drivers make the rational decision you’ve outlined above

Okay... then the rates for drivers will automatically go up again since there's there'll be a mismatch between drivers & riders.

[AnthonyMouse]

Not only that, how would the proposed alternative make any sense for Uber? They spend a lot of money to undercut the taxi companies, only to abandon the market as soon as they have no competition?

The predatory practice would be to raise prices at that point, not to abandon the market, but they can't even do that very much because then they'd be undercut by Lyft or the taxi companies actually would come back.

[idiotsecant]

Uber burned investor money in major markets for years operating at a loss to drive smaller operations out of business, only to become at least as expensive as their former competitors but as the only game in town.

[kortilla]

No, they are not as expensive as cabs even in a regular market and they are still more reliable

[blincoln]

> how can they be underpaying people (i.e. paying them less than competing employers) and yet people still choose to do it?

"paying them less than competing employers" being synonymous with "underpaying" is probably not a great assumption, although I'm sure it's the definition an MBA would use.

Most regular people are choosing the least-worst option in terms of employer. That doesn't mean that the least worst option is necessarily good, or paying fairly on an absolute scale. It could just be the job that means workers can handle one unexpected large bill before going bankrupt instead of not being able to handle any at all working for the next-worst option.

In other words, there's an imbalance of power between employers and the "regular person" workforce. The workers technically have a choice of where to work, but in many cases, none of the choices are good.

[duvenaud]

Right, but the employer they choose is presumably the one offering the best deal in the world from their point of view. Wouldn't it make more sense to be mad at every other employer for not proposing better pay, than the one that's offering the best pay for that worker?

[troupe]

> people are choosing the least-worst option in terms of employer

Doesn't that mean people are choosing the best employer that wants their skill set?

[lazyasciiart]

Yes, just like 6yo chimney sweeps were and children in sweatshops today are.

[AnthonyMouse]

There are two ways to get rid of child labor.

One is to ban it. This has some obvious drawbacks in weak economies, e.g. if the kid's choices are to work or to starve and then you ban them from working, they starve. It also interferes with kids being entrepreneurial. What's wrong with a kid mowing some lawns after school for spending money?

The other option is to create an economy strong enough that parents have no need to put their children to work instead of sending them to school, and then they don't.

What developed countries often do is to do the second one, then the first one, because that has some evolutionary fitness in politics. The more severe drawback of the first method is mitigated when the second one is in place, because then you're banning something people mostly wouldn't be doing anyway. Meanwhile politicians then get to claim credit for "solving the problem" by passing the ban, after it was already solved by something else.

These alternatives generalize to most types of labor restrictions (e.g. minimum wage). The reason only ~1% of people make minimum wage is that minimum wage is dumb so the rate is set low enough to minimize the damage done by the law, while still giving politicians something to claim credit for passing. What you actually want to do is the following: Use transfer payments (e.g. EITC/UBI) to help people making low wages, foster a stronger economy where people get paid more (e.g. make it easier to start a business), and lower the cost of living by preventing market consolidation and regulatory capture (e.g. enforce antitrust and don't allow restrictive zoning to constrain the housing supply).

Then you don't have to ban people from accepting less than a given amount of money because they would be under no pressure to do that to begin with.

[some_random]

I actually agree with you on BHH Labs but for a completely different reason. We have minimum wage laws for a reason, and by working for less than that they were undercutting other people's labor. Without that externality I don't really see an issue with it.

Underpaying drivers is not part of the Uber discussion here whatsoever, they're specifically talking about raising prices for inclement weather to incentivize more drivers to accommodate more passengers. If they're paid $10 vs $11 an hour or $100 vs $110 an hour is irrelevant for discussing the ethics in this case.

[xelamonster]

I'm a bit unclear what you're trying to say re BHH or if that actually is a different reason. Totally fair point on Uber though, I didn't read that one closely enough, but I'll still argue that's unethical for a more relevant reason: surge pricing reinforces inequality by blocking less wealthy people from access to services while those who can afford it are unaffected. The distribution of who is able to use the service under heavy demand is massively skewed towards the class of people that most likely would be just fine without it while the ones most heavily impacted by a missed appointment or being late to work or whatever are the ones left out to dry.

[kortilla]

Don’t distract this thread with a shit tier “Uber sux” analysis.

Cabs were completely unusable in most cities before Uber unless you were staying at a hotel where they hung out. They also paid their drivers as poorly as Uber does and the benefit just went to the owner instead of Uber. It’s not like cabbies were specially trained.

Taxis were more expensive because they were so fucking shitty that the 5 fares a day a car would get had to cover the expenses.

>leaving the town with zero practical transport options.

Again, taxis were not practical before. It was more reliable to beg strangers at a bar for a ride home than to get a cab to show up in the 90s.

[xelamonster]

I'm not sure where you got the idea my post was claiming taxis were superior in any way, I explicitly said Uber was better. Taxis weren't practical but they at least they existed. I have lived in cities that used to have taxis which were annoying and unreliable, but after Uber came and left there was literally no way at all to get from point A to point B without getting a ride from a friend.

Regardless I will admit I misread the issue stated in the article a bit and addressed that more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42097052

[rangestransform]

Did uber leave or did your city scare them off

[Rapzid]

In Texas most times I called a cab I expected them to never come. Only exception was scheduled airport rides a day or more in advance.

[20after4]

Yep, and that scheduled ride costs $100