
Against Sharing - smacktoward
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/against-sharing/
======
tptacek
At some point in the next 10-15 years, there's going to be some kind of
reckoning over the "sourcing and allocating independent contractors" model of
business. Right now, companies can insulate themselves from labor laws almost
entirely by (a) not providing employees with equipment and (b) using
structured customer feedback and expectations in lieu of training and
supervision. There are instances where this model can be fair to all parties,
but there are also obviously instances where it's abusive.

My intuition, which is probably wrong, is that the model fails most
straightforwardly when there are monopsonies playing the "source and allocate"
role. The trouble is that many of these companies work on a "winner take all"
go-to-market plan, which almost dictates that they end up controlling the
market.

There have already been low-grade rumblings over this in the past. For
instance, the Microsoft "Permatemp" scandal. But we can see the model taking
hold across the economy --- see: drivers, housecleaning. My guess is that the
long-term resolution for this is going to be legislative, and it's not going
to make companies like Uber happy.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Right now, companies can insulate themselves from labor laws almost entirely
> by (a) not providing employees with equipment and (b) using structured
> customer feedback and expectations in lieu of training and supervision.
> There are instances where this model can be fair to all parties, but there
> are also obviously instances where it's abusive.

The problem is that the distinction is silly to begin with. If large companies
have to provide various insurance and benefits but sole proprietors don't, the
market is going to shift to the entity structure with lower operating costs.
You either have to do it everywhere or not at all. But nobody wants to tell
legitimate small business owners that they have to buy various insurance _for
themselves_ the cost of which would in actual fact make them uncompetitive
against larger competitors.

The fundamental cause is that this is what capitalism does in markets where
the supply of labor outstrips demand. What did people expect to happen when
suddenly you could make $20/hour from unskilled labor? High prices spur an
increase in supply and drive down prices. Works for labor the same as it does
for bushels of wheat.

This is why the unionization attempts never work. Uber doesn't have a huge
barrier to entry in its market. If you can provide an app to source rides
which provides lower fares, customers are going to switch. So if Uber's
drivers unionized and successfully demanded higher fares, customers would
immediately switch to Lyft and Uber would go out of business. If Lyft's
drivers then unionized it would create a market opportunity for a new
competitor to come in and drive Lyft out of business by offering lower fares
with non-union labor.

The problem for these drivers is not Uber, it's that there are many other
drivers willing to do the same job for less money.

~~~
xorcist
You act as if the 20th century never existed.

Your description why unions don't work is in fact the explanation why unions
organize workers across different employers.

Your description why cheap labor will skip out on the unions is in fact the
explanations why unions make economic sense for its members. You earn more in
them than out of them.

Organized labor creates a level playing field across markets, simply because
they have a shared interest with the unionized companies that they thrive and
provide work for its members. It is a natural part of a healthy free market.

I don't think the problem described in the article is particularly unique or
interesting. We've seen it before and we know the solution. What is new is
that workers are called contractors and not workers, but the markets dynamics
is largely the same.

~~~
tptacek
OT: He _writes_ as if the 20th century never happened. We have no idea how he
acts. The distinction is important for civil debate. Among other things: we
may be miscontruing, or he may be expressing his idea imprecisely.

~~~
xorcist
I think it should be fairly clear from the context that it is the act of self
expression that is alluded to, in this particular case the act of writing.

It is similar to the use of the word act in "you act surprised". This is
something you can say, even in writing, and people will generally understand
what is meant.

What is important for a civil debate is not to pick on words, but to try to
understand one another. If someone you are responding to writes something that
can be understood in several ways, choose the one that is more flattering to
_their_ side of the argument.

~~~
tptacek
Sure. The last sentence you wrote is a restatement of the principle of
charity, which is something HN is supposed to embrace but manifestly does not.

~~~
S4M
> The last sentence you wrote is a restatement of the principle of charity. Do
> you mean "clarity" instead of "charity"? sorry I wouldn't bother on a simple
> typo if it wasn't for the word "clarity".

~~~
tptacek
Charity.

------
ameister14
I spoke with my UberX driver about unionization the other day; it's honestly
the only way forward for the drivers.

Without unionizing, the prices will continue to be cut and they will continue
to lose out. Going even further, lots of people are talking about the job
creation boom associated with the sharing economy. However, in the case of
Uber and Lyft, that's short term. In 10-15 years, does anyone actually think
people will be driving cars for Uber in San Francisco? With the way things are
going, auto-driving cars will take their place.

Unions could lobby the state legislature to make for auto-driving cab or ride
services illegal without a driver in the car. Right now, they could make a
serious case for that as a safety thing, since the technology is unproven. In
5-10 years, that won't be the case.

So yes, from the driver perspective, they have to unionize. If they don't
they're finished sooner or later.

~~~
jwr
In the long term, I would rather start thinking about whether we really _want_
to keep driver-type jobs around. I think people have to start to accept that
certain types of mindless jobs will be gone sooner or later, and that (as hard
as it might seem) everyone needs to educate themselves and work towards jobs
that cannot be automated.

~~~
smacktoward
This is the sort of thing you generally hear from people who assume their job
is not among those that can be automated.

Many of those people are going to be unpleasantly surprised.

~~~
ewzimm
On the contrary, I think anyone who is thinking seriously about automation
acknowledges that their job is on the list, especially for a lot of software
work like debugging, updating libraries, refactoring code, etc. There's
nothing wrong with that. Automation means more free time to do things people
actually enjoy, but only if we properly distribute the benefits. The challenge
is not to prevent automation of any kind of work but rather to ensure that
people are fairly compensated for that automation and all the benefits don't
go to the people at the top.

~~~
abakker
This. I'm glad some people see this as a problem. We can only automate so far
without providing credits, or redistributing wealth to some degree. If we
decrease the number of jobs, and don't make any attempt to provide those "left
out" of the economy with a reasonable income, we're going to systematically
lower Aggregate Demand in our economy. There is no stimulus package that can
effectively combat consistently falling Aggregate Demand.

------
graeme
How is Uber considered "sharing economy"? If the term is to have any meaning,
then it refers to people having spare capacity in an asset and allowing others
to use it.

Airbnb: Have a room in your home or can leave your home, and allow others to
rent it.

Taskrabbit: Have extra time you can sell

Say what you want about the ethics of either company, but users are free to
negotiate prices.

A "sharing economy" car company would monetize spare capacity in cars and
allows drivers/passengers post rates.

But that would be complicated. So Uber has adopted a fixed rate model.
Whatever it's virtues, it's not sharing. It's just service for hire at a fixed
rate.

~~~
dwg
I agree. If you're doing Uber full-time it's not sharing at all. It's just
business.

~~~
rmc
There are pleanty of people using a property fulltime for AirBnB.

~~~
dwg
Agree, but there's a difference between renting out an investment property
full-time, renting out a spare room, and renting your place while away
vacation. The later two are what I define as "sharing economy", while the
former is more of a business transaction.

AirBnB and Uber facilitate both sharing and business type transactions, but
the article seems to mixing these up to me in terms of the problem being
expressed.

------
ef4
Uber is not a monopoly and the barriers to entry are lower than people think.

Now that the idea is proven, there's nothing stopping more competitors from
building local app driven services to compete with them.

If you can organize thousands of drivers, you shouldn't bother with a union.
You should just have them collectively fund their own driver owned app and
compete with uber instead of asking for crumbs.

~~~
phkahler
>> Uber is not a monopoly and the barriers to entry are lower than people
think.

That is actually a large part of the problem. Competition from Lyft will force
Uber to lower fares. Competition from a driver-union-app would force them to
be even lower.

At some point, lowering fares will directly hurt uber. Prior to that point,
it's hurting the drivers because uber doesn't care at all about drivers costs,
and drivers are either not good at taking that into account, or have been
screwed by falling fares.

~~~
kazagistar
Presumably, if prices are driven down enough by competition, then price vs
quality differentiation. Cheaper prices vs better/nicer drivers.

------
johnrob
Part of the blame needs to be on the drivers, who are likely bad at estimating
the true cost of operating a vehicle. Uber could probably do better at making
this clear, but it's not really in their interest. Long story short:
traditional taxi pricing seems expensive but is actually pretty fair once you
account for costs and a decent wage.

Airbnb has given the sharing economy an inflated reputation, because they feed
off a great business model: renting a scarce asset (land) with minimal
marginal cost.

~~~
erroneousfunk
> traditional taxi pricing seems expensive but is actually pretty fair once
> you account for costs and a decent wage.

This isn't true in some cities, such as Boston, where weird politics have
driven the cost of a medallions, required to operate a taxi, up to ridiculous
levels (The Boston Globe did an excellent article series on this
[http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/03/30/spotlight/9eVWW7...](http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/03/30/spotlight/9eVWW7Y6RaOIqII62n2XlI/story.html\)Anyway),
there are a lot of factors that go into cab fares, and some of them genuinely
are stupid and antiquated.

------
mahyarm
The biggest unmentioned thing I'm noticing, is when are these car hailing apps
going to start competing in how much of a cut they take? The marginal cost of
their software is near %0.

When will amazon-uber come up and say to uber: "Your [20% profit] margin is my
opportunity".

~~~
BillinghamJ
The vast majority of that 20% goes into overheads associated with operating
the service - e.g. insurance, background checks, etc.

What's left to cover engineering & profit is probably only 2-3%.

~~~
ThisIBereave
The drivers have to pay for their own insurance, so it's not that. Hard to see
how a background check requires 20% of all revenue.

~~~
BillinghamJ
Uber has their own insurance as well, in case a driver isn't insured. And the
"etc." part of what I said is probably no less than 100 major things, so seems
pretty silly to to make that statement.

------
coldcode
I'm no marxist, but this is exactly what Karl Marx railed against:
exploitation of the masses by capitalists. Of course a market economist sees
this as an optimization of a market. If people suffer enough what usually
happens is change, sometimes violent change.

~~~
Zigurd
> _I 'm no marxist_

You will be when _your_ job gets automated. The challenge is to be able to
think ahead of that event and not be left to react to it.

~~~
coldcode
My job will be the one making the automation of my job. So thinking ahead of
the event will mean doing a poor job.

------
hywel
Uber must have a lot of drivers if "Arman, an Uber driver in LA" isn't
specific enough to be identified.

It would be tragically ironic if this article resulted in his being
'deactivated'.

~~~
Ryanmf
Elsewhere in the comments someone claims to have found his Facebook profile,
and perhaps they did. But as a counterpoint, my hometown of Glendale
(Northeast LA-adjacent) has the largest population of Armenians anywhere in
the Western Hemisphere. Lots of Armenians == Lots of guys named
Armon/Armen/Arman. We can safely assume at least two of them drive for Uber.

------
sebst
Not sure if that article is really about shifting risks from corporates to
workers and weakening their protections.

It is more like a kind of gatekeeper discussion. Digitalization has moved the
gate keeper role from media dinosaurs to agile startups and companies.

Uber can de-activate their users as well as Facebook can reduce organic
visibility of fan pages or Google may kick you out of their index. The open
internet that we have is still built upon the gate keeper behavior.

In the Uber case that clearly affects individuals, like taxi drivers, but in
the case of Facebook, Twitter and Uber that can affect large companies, too.

So, may I read this article also as a manifest against "attention"
monopolists?

~~~
ngpio
> Not sure if that article is really about shifting risks from corporates to
> workers and weakening their protections.

Jacobin articles are rarely 'about' anything. Their primary mode of reasoning
is like folk etymology on a discourse level. There's usually a fair amount of
factual evidence included, but it's forced through a narrative -- that's there
for the sake of appearing novel -- into a conclusion that doesn't logically
follow from anything presented.

(I haven't read this one yet, but if it's anything like _Against Chairs_ [1],
my criticism should apply. Admittedly I'm doing the same thing in this comment
that I'm criticizing Jacobin for doing.)

[1] [https://www.jacobinmag.com/2012/04/against-
chairs/](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2012/04/against-chairs/)

------
crazypyro
The problem is when one technology company that uses this model reaches
critical mass stage, they create a chicken-and-egg problem for anyone that
wants to attempt to disrupt their market. You can't get contractors without
clients and if you don't have contractors, clients won't want to wait. The
problem has been getting worse with the rise of the internet and global
connectivity as these companies can more easily expand into an entire industry
and quickly dominate the technology side.

This domination of the tech side of old industries makes it especially hard
for tech companies that want to disrupt the "old" companies because the market
often assumes there is only room for one technological provider/disruptor per
market service. This is similar to the first to market principle. If you get
your service out there and generating new users before your competitor, you
have an innate advantage over all the competition AND a great advantage over
future companies using a similar model to yours. In the process of shutting
out new, small tech companies, the competition is narrowed down to the "old"
companies/interests in which the tech company has a clear new, tech-inspired
advantage over, else why would they be called a disrupting tech startup?

So you have situations where 1 tech company, slowly morphing into a giant,
effectively shuts out both the entrenched interests who cannot adapt fast
enough to stem the hemorrhage of customers and the new interests who can't
compete on either price or availability without a long ramp up and generally
necessary venture capital. This creates a situation in which the contractors
are taken advantage of, due to the lack of competition and complete monopoly
that is slowly being acquired by the tech company.

~~~
Retric
Several über drivers are also lyft drivers. Über is trying to prevent this by
requiring drivers to accept a minimum percent of rides, but a company could
get critical mass in a large city using 5% time from a large number of
drivers. Growing from there would easily enable full time drivers.

Which means über can only maintain a monopoly with thin margins which is
generally considered ok.

------
golemotron
When I first saw Uber it seemed obvious to me that drivers would be squeezed.
In the regulated hodge-podge of companies that Uber and Lyft are replacing,
drivers didn't make very much. Uber and Lyft drivers got a "raise" when they
signed up, but that came from Uber and Lyft's cash-on-hand and their rally to
sign up drivers.

The fact is that there is no scarcity of people who can drive, so prices will
be driven down to the point where a consumer can make a choice between a
college student who is part-timing with a ten year old car and a full time
driver with a brand new Prius. You might pay a small premium for the latter,
but the former will be dirt cheap and they'll be paid next to nothing.

AirBnb is a sharing company that won't have this squeeze because the supply of
properties is more bounded than the supply of drivers.

~~~
swang
To clarify, neither Uber nor Lyft would allow someone to drive a 10 year old
car... And I would think a lot of people using those services wouldn't get
into a 10 year old car.

So even if there was a service that allowed old cars, there would probably be
some segmentation.

~~~
golemotron
That's my point. In this model it's a race to the bottom.

If Uber or Lyft don't take advantage of the supply of drivers with 10 year old
cars someone else will. So Uber and Lyft can either take that low-cost market
under a different name and hope that they can maintain income at a quality
point that doesn't pollute their brand, or someone else steps in and Uber/Lyft
become merely services for people who would take limos.

------
sagevann
Against 'Sharing Economy'.

Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but does it bother anyone else that the 'Sharing
Economy' is not sharing at all? Renting your assets out for use when you're
not using them is entirely different than giving them to someone else to use
and expecting nothing in return.

~~~
UrMomReadsHN
Yes.

I think that this type of employer-employee relationship described is just
being rebranded as "sharing economy" and "disruptor."

------
abakker
From a recent Oxford Economics study sponsored by SAP/SuccessFactors:

"As the economy evolves to a state where nearly everything can be delivered as
a service, companies are increasingly tapping external expertise and resources
they need — and on an as-needed basis — to fill skills and resource gaps and
to accommodate rapidly changing business and customer demands. That means more
temporary staff, more consultants and contract workers, and even “crowd-
sourced” projects. In fact, of those companies surveyed as part of Workforce
2020, 83 percent of executives say they will be increasing the use of
contingent, intermittent or consultant employees. " (Source, Workforce 2020
study, Oxford Economics,
SAP)([http://www.successfactors.com/en_us/lp/workforce-2020-insigh...](http://www.successfactors.com/en_us/lp/workforce-2020-insights.html)
\- need to register to download)

I laughed when I first heard the term "contingent labor". We all know that
companies like Uber, and a whole host of companies that rely on contractor
drivers/deliverydrivers will be the first to buy self-driving cars. That Uber
would tout their job-creating function is pretty low. They would love to cut
out the drivers and run 24/7\. The sad part is, engineers could probably
figure out optimizing algorithms that would make the service better if it
didn't have human drivers, and maybe even cheaper.

I haven't reached the point yet where I give up on these kind of services, but
its close. I feel badly that we aren't coming up with jobs as fast as we are
coming up with ways to get rid of them.

------
golemotron
I just want to know who owns the cars. To me, it is beyond belief that each of
the Uber and Lyft drivers I've had ponied up and bought a fresh new car to
participate in "sharing."

There's more polish on an Uber vehicle than any car or cab in my neighborhood.
It seems odd to use the word "sharing" for something that seems like ultra
professional service - even on the low UberX end.

Is Uber offering financing?

------
chrismcb
If any other company did what uber does, they would be branded as evil, and
the mob would have pitchforks out, and calling for boycotts. They exploit
their employees, they skirt and out right break laws, they appear to commit
fraud to disrupt competitors. Yet because they perform a service that many
here like, many sing the praises... And keep using the service.

------
pasbesoin
Economists could do some solid and useful work by researching historical as
well as current cost/benefit scenarios. So much at least of general public
knowledge and reporting in the realm is focused upon "prediction". How about
painting some clear pictures of what _has_ happened; _why_ ; and who paid and
who benefited?

And as our knowledge, e.g. of long-term health effects, continues to grow,
such topics remain open for further analysis and refinement.

Perhaps Ken Burns could put together a series on the economic history of the
U.S., for example. (Perhaps those spreadsheets are more interesting when
subjected to a slow pan... ;-)

Seriously, though. Last year I got sucked into yet another discussion of
recent politics, and I suggested putting the whole situation under a
comprehensive cost accounting analysis. For the other parties in the
discussion, it -- a bit surprisingly, to me -- seemed to be something of a
"lightbulb moment".

------
remoteone
The original Jacobins were mostly libertarians and would presumably like
Uber's model. The idea that they were anti-capitalists is wrong. In the US,
"Jacobin" was used as a pejorative to describe Jefferson.

It's unfortunate people associate the Jacobins and the Revolution with
Robespierre, when it was much more Thomas Paine-esque.

------
edgyswingset
It seems like this article is about Uber, not the sharing economy as whole. We
don't have enough data to say if a "sharing" economy is viable or ethical.
Companies skirting around laws and exploiting their employees (or whatever
they choose to call them) such as Uber don't reflect well on this, though.

------
vdaniuk
I have an intuitive understanding that these "socialist" publications about
the danger and perils of sharing economy are absolutely useless.

Either developed countries implement some variation of basic income or the
social order will go down in flames. Unskilled labour, such as taxi drivers,
will be commoditized and become interchangable. If anti-Uber initiatives and
quasi-unions will get more power it will only increase the incentives to
getting self-controlled cars on the roads. The automation-worker conflict
can't be won by humans and can't be wished away.

Socialists (an outdated term for the society to come) should choose their
battles much more wisely and concentrate efforts on developing and
implementing of sustainable models of creating and redistributing wealth
geared towards 90% of population.

Anti-Uber sentiment and the likes aren't sustainable and will fail.

~~~
anon1385
I would call myself a socialist and my biggest reason for disliking Uber is
that it is filling the highways with drivers who no longer have valid
insurance, and whose vehicles are not adhering to the level of maintenance
checks usually required for commercial vehicles that spend all day on the
road. So anti-Uber sentiment can exist for much more mundane reasons like
insurance coverage.

The comoditization of labour (skilled and unskilled - don't think that you are
immune) is already well underway anyway, and Uber makes little difference to
the process. The number of Uber drivers is tiny compared to the number of
warehouse pickers, fast food workers, cleaners, social carers, designers,
labourers, mechanics etc etc who are on zero hours contracts or have been
reclassified as self employed contractors.

The main reason to talk about Uber is that it's in the public consciousness at
the moment, not because transport drivers are a special case. I guess it also
has a lot of high profile backers. So we can talk about how Paul Graham thinks
European countries lack 'entrepreneurial spirit' because they want drivers on
their roads to be insured. Uber is a case where the capitalists got their
order of attack slightly off. They needed to 'disrupt' the idea of insurance
first, because at the moment there is a widespread understanding of the need
for driver insurance and going against that just makes you look like a massive
asshole. It's always helpful in a debate when your opponent keeps scoring own-
goals, as Ubers cheerleaders do.

The example of Uber is appealing, because it's probably an easy victory. Maybe
Uber will get insurance laws rewritten and in a few years we will all be
enjoying the freedom of driving on roads without the regulative burden of
mandatory insurance. That won't be an easy argument to win though, even with
massive wealth of their backers and assistance from lobbyists like ALEC . So I
strongly disagree with your description of anti-uber sentiment as doomed to
failure.

~~~
vdaniuk
Uber doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. I don't care if you or
anyone are a socialist, a capitalist or a subscriber of other garden variety
ideology.

Either you act on strategy that sustainably benefits the poor and the middle
class or you attack "capitalists". When a self-professed socialist
regurgitates same points about the evil ways of Uber (which may be absolutely
true), he or she doesn't help the poor. Or even drivers in the long-term.

Concentrate on the important issues. Even if you win against Uber, cars will
be automated sooner. That's all.

Anti-Uber articles certainly increase the author pageviews though.

Oh, and I am perfectly sure that my job as an entrepreneur, programmer and
marketer will be automated, too. A little bit later, but the Singularity won't
spare anyone's job.

------
auggierose
Sounds a lot like another sharing economy: prostitution.

------
bbd
According to wiki: sharing economy is socio-economic system built around the
sharing of human and physical resources. For ridesharing industry, the
resources are drivers and their personal resources. Uber/Lyft/... are intent
to become the gateway or dispatch or distribution layer to some extent. They
are competing to "own" these resources and become monopoly. But for the
drivers and the customers, it will always be in their interest to keep it a
more "perfect competition" situation. Some third party shall come in to
facilitate the conflict of interest -- maybe government, union or others.

------
cheald
Maybe it's just my lack of understanding of the subtleties of the situation,
but I'm not quite sure why people are surprised that this is happening.
Without the constraint of regulatory restrictions on the number of people who
can drive, there is more supply than demand for drivers. Additionally, apart
from that, when multiple companies start competing in the same market, their
prices _will_ drop. Given the supply of drivers and the need for companies to
compete on fares, why would anyone expect expect pricing to _not_ reach an
equilibrium where margins are as low as drivers will tolerate?

------
driverdan
I would love to see a system like Uber or Lyft that used variable pricing and
a bid system for drivers. Drivers could enter the minimum fare they're willing
to work for and users could take it or leave it.

~~~
dnautics
Sidecar basically has this, but the biggest problem with sidecar: It has too
many bells and whistles. Sometimes simpler is better. Moreover, you are simply
shifting the pricewar to a finer granularity.

I'm not sure what drivers are grumbling about. As a driver, I have to say, I
knew what I was getting in to, and I have a plan to get out of it. I'm still
ok, though, since I drive a very fuel-efficient car that seems to have had
zero mechanical issues (cross fingers) in the 60,000 miles I have driven for
the two services.

------
dwg
The subject of this article frames the argument incorrectly. Some drivers on
Uber may have full-time jobs and are just driving for Uber to get a little
extra in their spare time. Those people who treat Uber itself as a job,
however, have little to do with the "sharing economy". IMO this is just
another labor dispute, not really an issue with a sharing. On a side note,
it's too bad a company so young and apparently game changing should be risking
a labor dispute so early in its life.

~~~
hywel
I think the root of the problem is that the drivers are contractors not
employees, so have fewer rights. And that's at the heart of the idea behind
the sharing economy, that independent individuals with a resource can offer
that resource to the marketplace at ad hoc times.

Whether or not the article is right is another matter, obviously.

~~~
dwg
I guess I have a different view of "sharing economy".

There are many other businesses which facilitate the connection of contractor
to customer, but we don't call them part of the sharing economy. This is true
even when they provide the tools (e.g. car) in addition to their services
(e.g. driving). The fundamental difference for me comes down to whether they
are providing this service as their primary means of livelihood (in which case
it's a job), or are they simply looking to make better use of a resource (e.g.
car) that they already own but do not fully utilize.

Uber seems to be used for both "job" and "share," but the problems seem to be
with the former.

------
eykanal
The article argues pretty strongly that Uber is a horrible company, which
isn't really news to anyone. I'm missing, though, the leap from that argument
to the idea that (quoting the article tagline) "Sharing economy companies like
Uber shift risk from corporations to workers, weaken labor protections, and
drive down wages." There are numerous other examples (Lyft, TaskRabbit,
JobRunners, even Amazon's Mechanical Turk) where this model seems to work
pretty well.

~~~
pessimizer
>There are numerous other examples (Lyft, TaskRabbit, JobRunners, even
Amazon's Mechanical Turk) where this model seems to work pretty well.

...by shifting risk from corporations to workers, weakening labor protections,
and driving down wages.

This article isn't about how to maximize profit, it's about how profit is
being maximized.

------
herbig
A simple Google search and I was able to find the Facebook profile of the guy
whose last name was not included "out of fear of retribution".

------
elwin
> Uber is just capitalism, in its most naked form.

Considering that the workers own the means of production, this is a curious
thing to say.

~~~
misuba
Owning a car and being available to drive doesn't "produce" a fare, though.
Only Uber's app can do that.

~~~
cheald
The service being purchased is transportation; the driver is the one who owns
the means of production of that service.

------
shkkmo
It seems to me that Uber and Lift are working hard to poach eachother's
partner drivers. Perhaps one of them will actually make the leap to make a
partner driver union with a seat on the board and a say in policy and pricing
changes? Wouldn't that help them poach the other companies employees?

Maybe I'm being overly optimistic here...

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maceo
Labor organizers ought to use the same tactics to reach Uber drivers as Uber
used to reach Lyft drivers.

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lnanek2
Doesn't seem like a very fair or intelligent article. It basically says Uber
is doing nothing good and just exploiting workers, but if I wrote an Uber
clone app, no one would download it, or even hear about it. Then if someone
did download it there would be only one or two drivers. Then if they traveled
to another city and opened the app there would be no drivers at all.

We developers can often write an app that is technically competent, but then
it never pulls in the users. In the case of Uber, they not just have a
successful app and brand that people know and download, but the app also needs
to have a large network of drivers in it to provide good service. The vast
majority of drivers I've ever had gave me their personal business card, but I
never use them since I'd have to call and negotiate a time and a price - and
the price they start at is often more than just booking them through Uber or
SuperShuttle or whatever. So these guys aren't getting the fares on their own,
Uber is clearly providing some benefit.

~~~
plorg
It's not clear, though, that this benefit is positive. The article seems
pretty clear on the fact that Uber has pulled a bait-and-switch, offering
drivers a living wage only to drop their rates (and thus their wage payout)
substantially once they had garnered the network effects you describe.

It is precisely these network effects which are both benefiting Uber and
working against the drivers. By training users to go to Uber for their ride-
sharing needs, the drivers now have to also use Uber if they want to get
passengers. Sure, you have a bunch of individual drivers' business cards, but
you're probably _less_ likely to get a ride from any of those drivers than if
Uber had never wrangled them in the first place. Meanwhile, the drivers have
invested a good deal of money and effort into an industry in which they may
not have chosen to participate if Uber hadn't recruited them.

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golemotron
Speaking of the sharing economy, why isn't AirBnB setting price and using
surge pricing?

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sharer
this sounds like a criticism of Uber's practices not sharing in general.

