
Juno to soft-launch this month as the anti-Uber service - tortilla
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/tripping/wp/2016/04/05/juno-expects-soft-launch-this-month-as-kinder-gentler-than-uber/
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dopamean
I cant help but wonder if Juno and others are overestimating how much people
care about the treatment of their drivers. I think very many people, myself
included, would say that it is important to them that their driver is happy
with his relationship with his employer. But at the end of the day does that
really translate to a change in purchasing behavior?

For me it does not.

I use Uber here in Austin because it is significantly cheaper that Lyft. I
hear people say that their drivers tell them that Lyft treats them better.
Apparently that's not so much better that they stop driving for Uber. I've
actually never had a driver make a comment to me in either direction about
Uber. And I've had many drivers who drive for both companies. They have told
me, on the few times that I've asked, that the reason they do it is to
increase their likelihood of getting a fare.

When I think about it more it really seems like drivers for these services are
all getting a raw deal just based on the wear and tear on their vehicles and
so small differences in business practices don't really count for much to me.

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toomuchtodo
This is why government regulation is so important. Most people don't mind
others being exploited if its beneficial to them.

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strictnein
To me, the exploitation that occurs in this system are the government
regulations involved in someone just wanting to be paid to drive me from Point
A to Point B.

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toomuchtodo
Can you explain to me how you feel exploited by the government protecting
someone from being taken advantage of economically? I would genuinely like to
understand this.

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strictnein
Why does the government have a say on who I pay to drive me someplace and
where they can drive me?

Edit: And the exploitation I was referring to was of the taxi drivers under
the current system, not myself.

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toomuchtodo
Awesome, thanks for clarifying that.

Government regulation exists to protect people. Whether that's labor
regulations, fire code, zoning ordinances, etc, its to ensure the health and
well being of citizens.

Now, you'll argue that always isn't the case, and I'll agree with you.
Incentives with taxi regulation went sideways, hence the medallion system. But
that doesn't mean regulation is wrong, that means that _apathetic,
disinterested stakeholders are the problem_. Just as we've made the problem by
not caring enough to fix it, we can care enough to work towards fixing it. The
number of vehicles for transport in a metro can be regulated using an unbiased
algorithm. The wages of drivers can be determined by labor regulations. These
are not hard technical problems to solve. They're political problems to be
solved.

Should we throw out the medallion system? Yes. Should Uber get to stampede all
over transport regulations? No. There should be a middle ground.

People say someone should be able to accept a job no matter what the pay is,
as long as they're willing. No one is willing when they're an economic
captive. It costs a minimum amount of money (dependent on locale) to have
shelter, food, and clothing. This is what government regulation is for (see:
minimum wage, employee/contractor classification, etc), to ensure that people
can support themselves on the work they can obtain. If they can't support
themselves on what a job pays, _the job pays too little and the business
relying on that undermarket labor rate is unsustainable_ (see: Walmart
educating its workers on relying on social benefits, thereby using the
government as a subsidy).

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aianus
> All drivers there are licensed by the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission
> (TLC), as required by law. Their vehicles must also be licensed with the
> TLC, and they have to carry commercial insurance.

This is going to negatively impact driver supply (making wait times higher,
especially in the outer boroughs) and increase the cost of the service vs
Uber.

> Juno’s drivers will provide better service because they’re happier, Marco
> said.

The only 'service' I want from a taxi driver is to show up, follow the GPS,
and not double-swipe my credit card or claim the machine isn't working. Uber
already has basically perfect service.

Unless they have some secret innovation I'm not seeing this is going to be a
massive failure.

~~~
ArnoldP
All other things being equal I'll go with the service that gives more to the
person doing the actual labour.

~~~
redthrowaway
Buy anything from Amazon? Because they're infamous for treating their non-
engineer employees terribly, yet I and most people I know still buy from them
because they're cheap and have great customer service.

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ArnoldP
No, I don't. But I'm not in the US and Amazon doesn't really present that
great a deal once you factor in shipping, taxes, duty etc.

I don't shop at Walmart though, because of their poor track record treating
their employees well.

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jkraker
This will show my age a bit, but am I the only one that had a rush of memories
about Juno email seeing this headline? Good old dial up email...

I'm probably just weird. At least the general population probably has no such
associations with primitive email services.

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ineedtosleep
Ah yes, Juno. Along with NetZero and Freewwweb, I journeyed the path of the
"grey"-side with free internet hacks (which just blocked the ads). My parents
didn't yet see the value of internet -- nor did they have the extra cash for
it.

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peterwwillis
Free internet and "click this Ad to get paid $0.10" were some really
interesting hacks back in the day. Oh, the money you could make with Visual
Basic and a dial-up modem....

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dopeboy
Don't forget the "cracks" you could download to hide the netzero ads.

~~~
peterwwillis
Some of us might have made them ;)

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notlefthanded
Seems weird to me that these are still called 'ride-sharing' services. Having
used blablacar, which I would consider does true ride-sharing, uber and its
ilk are more in the vein of ride-hiring.

~~~
pavlov
Yes. If Uber is ride-sharing, then I guess factory work is "hand-sharing" and
prostitution is "body-sharing"...

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bcgraham
I live in NYC. During an Uber ride, I was talking to a driver about Juno.
Between my understanding of him and my recollection, some of this may be
incorrect.

They've recruited a lot of the NYC Uber drivers. They've been paying them
$25/week to keep the Juno app open while they're on duty, collecting
information about driving habits, routes, etc. The drivers' relationships with
Juno won't be as contractors, so Juno will have much more control over the
drivers - such as having exclusivity agreements.

The idea seemed to be to bring on all the drivers as employees, destroy the
population of (good) Uber drivers, and advertise the app. The plan is that
everyone in NYC switches to Juno, since you won't be able to get an Uber in a
timely way, and Uber's quality will be bad because it'll just be the
"leftovers" of the driver talent pool.

That's what I remember getting out of the conversation, anyway.

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koolba
I've never heard of Juno before and it took some serious A-level googling to
find their website. Only PR articles (like this one) show up when you search
for them and none of them actually link to their site. That's some seriously
odd SEO.

~~~
FilterSweep
I haven't looked at their HTML source in a while, but last time I checked
Uber's, it was meta keyword stuffed to an extent that would make a blackhatter
proud.

Did you try targeted or scoped Google searches? (EDIT: disregard second
paragraph, thats A-level googling)

~~~
argonaut
Everyone knows Google ignores the meta keyword, so it's hardly blackhat - at
worst Google actually penalizes it (just my speculation), at best it just
slows down the page load a tiny tiny bit.

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rdtsc
I like the ownership idea that is pretty cool.

I already pick Lyft whenever I can just because I noticed in the past drivers
with Lyft were happier and some mentioned they were treated better by Lyft
than when they were with Uber.

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freyr
In addition to being treated better, my Lyft driver yesterday claimed that he
preferred Lyft because the software is better, with more efficient routing and
fewer bugs.

~~~
acchow
Also, Lyft's GPS location for the car you're looking for is basically real
time. Uber's seems to be off by about 1 minute, which is really not a great
experience.

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jlgaddis
Probably 20 years or so ago, there was a company named Juno that provided free
(ad-supported) dial-up Internet access -- even via toll-free numbers if they
didn't have a local number in your area.

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davidu
"the anti-Uber service" is called driving your own car.

~~~
jkyle
Or public transit or riding a bike, etc.

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hughes
What a confusing headline... last I checked, Juno launched[1] in Oct 2013.
It's almost all the way to Jupiter now.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft)#Launch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_\(spacecraft\)#Launch)

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raimille1
Isn't this Lyft's mission already? Good treatment of drivers, community
creation and human connection?

