|
Re: I want to drive a Lincoln and spend my evenings drinking the very best Burgundy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sidd Finch
This is a bit much. The concern over a new piecework system is valid, but it seems you are holding up traditional cab companies as the good guys who follow employment laws.
Do cab companies pay minimum wage and provide benefits to drivers? I don't think so. The drivers are not employees, but independent contractors, who have to pay to lease their cabs, and who are fucked if they can't get enough fares to cover the lease, gas, etc.
Cab companies complain about Uber because they have rigged up the medallion system, which suppresses the supply in order to drive up prices -- not the price of cabfare, so much, but the price of medallions. It's not a coincidence that Uber first took off in the SF Bay Area -- not (just) because so much b.s.-tech-stuff gets started here, but because SF still has the same number of cab medallions that it had decades ago, and it's often impossible to find a cab.
(p.s. I've never ridden Uber, Lyft, or any of the other services.)
|
No doubt that Uber gains a competitive advantage by disregarding laws or engaging in regulatory arbitrage. No doubt that taxi regulation in many (most?) places is an example of regulatory capture, designed more to protect medallion-owners' investments than serve the public. It is also worth noting that Uber uses recent technology to provide services more efficiently than prior business models, and that this could confer substantial benefits on the public.
__________________
“It was fortunate that so few men acted according to moral principle, because it was so easy to get principles wrong, and a determined person acting on mistaken principles could really do some damage." - Larissa MacFarquhar
|
