Good for them. These companies appear exploitative and rent-seeking far beyond what the infrastructure they provide suggests is reasonable.
If you're interested, next time you take a car, ask the driver what their end is - you may be surprised how little of the fare they actually take home. That share will only decrease unless they all get on one side of a table.
Not sure why you're being downvoted, this is what I've heard as well. It gets a person cash while they are in transitionary periods of time. There are not a lot of jobs you can get paid for almost immediately- most require startup time, training, applications, etc.
It’s the information disparity resulting in reduced bargaining power. The unions are supposed to solve that actually.
I wonder if Americans would have more positive opinions on this if unions were called platforms, and were for profit companies that you can trade the shares.
When they sign up enough people they can enough information and use financial instruments to force fair market value and eat into other companies margins and share that with their subscribers.
I suppose this comes down to semantics. It's more grey than black and white. For instance, Russia doesn't send conscripts to fight in Ukraine. But it's hard to argue that soldiers fighting and dying in the front lines made a fair choice, while they weren't forced to sign a contract.
Similarly, there are Uber and Lyft drivers that don't have the economic freedom or level of education to work anywhere else.
> Similarly, there are Uber and Lyft drivers that don't have the economic freedom or level of education to work anywhere else.
I doubt this is true. There are much, much worse jobs. This is just their best option, and it's easier to band together and demand more and more even if it kills the host.
There is little president for healthy industry being killed by bands of unionized workers. Charitably, one might think of rust belt car industry or Britain's mines and railways. Though of course, there was no way those industries could have realistically competed with foreign economies even if all labour was given away for free.
But consider this: if collectively all drivers would go on strike indefinitely (or at least, stop using platforms and instead hustled their rides old school). Would that mean the end for Uber and Lyft? Off course not. They'd take a few punches financially, but they'd be able to pivot, build something else. They have great engineers and money, and no one is forcing them to take such a huge cut.
I'm asking this earnestly, do you ever follow up and ask if the added money/income offsets the additional wear and tear on their vehicles? Like do most of those folks you talk to understand the potential trade off? I would think the average rideshare driver understands that generally ("of course the added mileage decreases the value of the car!"), but I wonder how many folks take the time to quantify it, even roughly. Seems like a logical follow-up question when you're interviewing/making small talk with them.
Well it's the drivers themselves who voted to join the union, so presumably there's something they want to see changed. No need to speak for people who've already found their voice.
Not sure why you want to bring race into this, people from all backgrounds have the right to free association and deserve labor representation.
I have no issues with people unionizing, I think they should use their free association power as they see fit. What I take issue with is the "exploitation" framing. Everyone working for Uber is doing so voluntarily.
A union using their power to increase workers wages is not "reducing exploitation" they are using their bargaining power just as selfishly as corporations do.
When we talk about labor negotiations, that word should indicate theres no exploitation happening, its two parties negotiating and coming to an agreement.
> When we talk about labor negotiations, that word should indicate theres no exploitation happening
So in a world where no labor negotiation is happening, is exploitation possible? If Uber drivers had no legal recourse to form a union (or no avenue to otherwise participate in genuine negotiation with their employer), would it be fair to say that they might be in an exploitative employment relationship?
> Everyone working for Uber is doing so voluntarily.
Personally I don't feel that this precludes exploitation taking place. Exploiting someone is taking advantage of their hard circumstances or lack of alternatives to unethically profit (in the usage that I'm familiar with). For example I would consider hiding fare pricing breakdowns from employees and consumers, so that you can leverage their lack of information to increase your profit share, to be 'exploitative'; particularly if you hold a virtual monopoly on the taxi market in an area. For an example outside the gig-work world I'd point to price-gouging as another type of 'voluntary' exploitation; consumers may be 'consenting' to pay extremely elevated prices, but if they have no meaningful alternative and genuinely require what is being sold then it's not really 'consent' so much as 'resignation'. IMO true consent requires genuine options, not just that you signed your name on the dotted line.
yes, that is why price gouging and monopolies are illegal and employment agreements are not.
so again, unless you think all trade is exploitative, im not understanding your argument. Selling labor for money is the exact same transaction as walking into Walmart and buying a banana.
> Selling labor for money is the exact same transaction as walking into Walmart and buying a banana.
In the same comment you say that the government has to help guarantee that Walmart won't exploit you in this banana purchase transaction by outlawing price gouging and monopolization. If labor is the same type of transaction, it stands to reason that certain types of employment can be exploitative, despite the 'voluntary nature' of the transaction. Is your issue with the 'Uber exploits their contractors' framing simply based in the fact that Uber has not broken any labor laws?
Since you're having trouble following me I'll give a quick summary here. You initially said:
> if all these drivers are getting horribly exploited why are they doing it?
My point is simply that this is crap reasoning: people voluntarily participate in exploitative interactions all the time if they lack genuine alternatives.
Why are children mining rare minerals in Africa? Why are workers handling toxic waste in the name of recycling in Bangladesh? Surely they can all work from home and leave their jobs if it’s that exploitative
Spoken like someone who is financially well off and lives in an extreme bubble. Not totally surprising knowing the site we are on, but quite disgusting how anti-human and anti-worker most commentators are here. Makes sense that the public hates tech workers.
I suggest you talk to some of these workers next time, you don't have to be scared you won't catch the "poor."
I think truth is that tech companies are really bad at business unless they can scale with free unit economies. Even the unit costs with per seat subscriptions seem insane when you stop and think of the numbers in isolation. Ofc, compared to amount they pay their employees they are cheap, but in other places and industries it looks way overpriced.
R&D is not cheap and similarly executive comp is not cheap. They appear to have made a net income of 1.5 B last year (2025), but if. you look at exec comp, the top 5 execs took in 100 M. If you check all their creamy layer, it is likely they spent a quarter billion in stuff that did not need to be paid if all you had were private taxies :) with an open source app // I exaggerate of course since you need some servers to coordinate this, just pointing out where money goes. If someone could run and popularize an open ride platform, that quarter billion would go somewhere else, maybe to the drivers, maybe to the riders.
Intermediation and Uber style network effects aren't long for this world.
Personal agents will search every app for the lowest fare, when in the past the apps had a moat due to the economic frictions involved in sampling more than one app. Uber is also ripe for vibe coding.
Won't be much consolation to drivers as they'll get automated soon after probably.
I don't think all software companies are in imminent danger but Uber does seem particularly vulnerable.
100M on 52 billion revenue is 0.2%.
Net income of 1.5 billion is about 3% of revenue.
> If someone could run and popularize an open ride platform, that quarter billion would go somewhere else, maybe to the drivers, maybe to the riders.
So if you found an equally effective management team that worked for free, you would save the customer about 1% at checkout. That is a tiny benefit, even granting the massive assumption.
Those numbers suggest a competitive environment with small profits, not an abusive monoply exploiting it's position.
100M is only 5 people. You add to the entire corporate paraphernalia, we will be looking at a lot of money.
There was this story I was reading yesterday, here or reddit, where a driver got $27 for a $65 (or so) ride. That is a horrible markup. The driver is not happy, but if the driver can survive for $27, we (the people) should be able to figure out how to charge $40 for the ride. Not saying it will be easy with the entrenched interests and the for-profit goal of our country, but still ... the markup seemed obscene when I read it.
They would make plenty of money if they went in to maintenance mode and just kept the lights on development-wise instead of pouring billions into R&D each year.
There's probably a big opportunity in the startup world for building businesses that have an end goal. Like a TV show that has a whole story to tell and then stops... a business that has an entire development plan which finishes and at the end you have a stable business that stops adding features, cuts development costs to maintenance, and just exists.
Like I don't need my taxi app to change, we're good, you can just be done making new stuff.
So they burnt money and have nothing to show for it? Why do we let these companies play around with billions of dollars while we lack universal childcare or medicare for all?
Complete looney toons over here if you think this is at all acceptable. I bet the workers would figure out a better use of the budget than the executives at this rate too.
It hurts so much that our system makes that concept as impossible at scale as landing a ship on Venus with 10,000 people and starting a space colony complete with all the amenities of home.
Yours is a pretty normal idea for nearly any business before 100 years ago, plus still the way all small businesses with 1 owner generally work (they call it a “Lifestyle business” today). But any public company that just said “Yeah we basically just print $400 million in profit every year, and have no plans to grow that, nor to change anything besides doing maintenance” gets the kind of treatment Southwest just did: taken over by the enshittification engineers and destroyed. Everything must have infinite growth!!
I think it's going to take a act of Congress to make this happen. We could literally legislate our way out of enshitification but where's the huge amount of money in that?
Some forms of enshitification already feel a lot like dumping to me. I wonder why existing consumer protection laws don’t cover it already in some cases.
These companies seem great to me. Far better than what preceded them anyway. I'm skeptical that they're "rent-seeking" in any meaningful way, or that unions will meaingfully improve the situation.
It doesn't seem to me that ride share drivers should be paid while idling or repositioning. Nor am I in favor of California forcing a minimum wage on ride share drivers. In general, I don't understand how this qualifies as "rent seeking".
I think a lot of people just don't like big tech companies. They're entitled to their opinions but I think they're wrong.
Far be it from me to defend Uber of all things, but pre-rideshares, the taxi companies were - and still are - much, much worse.
I've begun to realize we now live in a time where there are a lot of adults who are too young to remember the bad old days. Are you one of those people? Because the taxi companies absolutely made their bed. Be careful of rose-colored glasses.
Taxi companies in most cities were exploitive oligarchies - it was textbook regulatory capture. Often their workers weren't any better off in terms of lopsided deals. And the customer experience sucked sooo bad. The smells, the illegal "cash only" bait and switch, the runarounds. I remember. I was there, Gandalf. And I'll take Uber any day over going back to the old system.
cliff is an expert but also famously sort of a "climate contrarian" and his takes are regularly cited by climate skeptics and conservative irritants here in the PNW. just noting his takes don't exist in a vacuum.
Contrarian experts are really important imo, and I don't think their efforts should be devalued just because nuts might be attracted to them. As long as they're properly engaging in the scientific method I reckon that they're perfectly fine to quote.
So? You’re trying to engage in tu quoque without saying it explicitly. If you think the argument is wrong, make a counter-argument. Don’t just say that the arguer hangs out with people you don’t like.
Cliff in an expert, he worked in the Obama administration on climate, and unsurprisingly, he is being cited for having opinions the support the thesis of the article.
ah.. a fallacy guy. there should be a named fallacy for mischaracterizing remarks so they fit the form of a fallacy, in order to clothe one's argument in an illusory erudition.
anyway if anything it would probably be poisoning the well. really though it's just pointing out that cliff isn't a garden variety climate scientist and comes with something like a warning label.
i think calling it "subjective opinion" is kind of disingenuous. it is a subject matter expert interpreting the data. there is a vast gulf between that and someone else simply offering their opinion on the matter.
I worked in weather for TV as a technician and I was lucky enough to work with meteorologists. I thought they were high priests in the church of science, however, I detected a gambling mentality going on.
I was just surprised at how subjective their work was, with differing opinions regarding the big picture depending on whom you asked and what their background was, as in university, whether they had worked for the navy or whether they had worked for the government.
The big surprise of the gambling mentality reminded me of people that dedicate their lives to losing as much money as possible betting on horses. These people know the form, the weather and so much, yet they do their own bets.
It was kind of the same when working out what the weather would be in Springfield tomorrow. Would it just be cloudy or actual rain? That would be a 'bet'.
The next day the observations would come in and the meteorologists would either win or lose their 'bet'. The guy who has been to Springfield and knows the local geography well would have his own reasons for his 'bet', whereas the guy who was more interested in long term storm development would have another rationale for his 'bet'.
Then there would be 'wrong all the time me', able to look at the low level cloud from contrails (which are really huge in some wavelengths on the satellite pictures) to assume rain every day.
Hence climate and weather is highly subjective even if it is highly educated and vastly experienced professionals that are interpreting the data.
There is also the additional issue of computer models constantly chasing global changes. About 10-15 years back I used to talk with folks that worked on weather modeling and they were in a state of frustration in that as soon as they could make models that could work on older data sets to do reasonable predictions, the global weather patterns had change just subtly enough that it made them just kind of average on forward predictions.
This was right before GPU compute started to become a big thing, I do wonder if they now use machine learning models on these to speed up model iteration? I would hope so, but even then there is the human factor as you said. Eventually someone has to make the call on what the data shows and how to present it to the world.
It still holds up for the most part, though of course some of the takes, being almost 50 years old, may seem a bit quaint. It's certainly worth watching the first series at least start to finish. Burke is an interesting guy.
I personally feel like _The Day The Universe Changed_ (his second documentary) is better. I love Connections but the basic thesis (there are hidden connections between disparate developments in science and technology) ends up pretty scattershot, spreading out like Brownian Motion. _tDtUC_ is much more focused. Largely based on Kuhn's _Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ for individual stories, it traces how the understanding of time in Europe changed from the middle ages to the 1980's- the idea of time as a marker of descent from a previous golden age (1), or at best a repeating cycle, evolves into our modern conception of time as endlessly improving into a better future. And the supporting book was amazing too.
I also want to speak up for the BBC history documentary team that worked with Michael Wood: _In Search of the Trojan War_, _In Search of the Dark Ages_, _The Story of England_, _The Story of India_ they were also a staple of American PBS and informed my understanding of the world.
1: My go to example for this is imagine you walk into the Pantheon in 1000 AD: no one on your entire continent has known how to build a dome like that in 500 years, and won't again for another 500 years. The fundamental way you understand the world has to be completely different from the "newer is better" baseline that we have understood the world by for the past 150 years.
> "I love Connections but the basic thesis (there are hidden connections between disparate developments in science and technology)..."
Good grief, no. The basic thesis of Connections 1 was that humanity has become fatally dependent on technology (the "technology trap" he speaks of), that that dependence continues getting deeper and deeper, and it's hard to predict what technologies will emerge or where technology will take us, possibly utopia but just as likely a living hell, and finally that we don't even have the option to stop digging ourselves deeper and deeper into the technology trap because technological advancement can't be stopped because its emergence is unpredictable. Re-watch just the first and last episodes and they will terrify you.
Connections 2 and 3 were indeed scattershot because people liked Burke's charming mannerisms and didn't want to think about the ever more complex and ever more fragile panoply of technologies that individuals, even the technologists themselves, can neither understand nor control that is all that stands between humanity and its extinction.
Better still, like a well-written essay, there is closure to the series. All the ends left about in the preceding episodes are drawn together neatly in the final one.
"The point about all this technological pizazz isn't the gee-whiz high-tech stuff. It's the secondary effects of using it. Take say what this chip could do to change the pattern of work. With this you could have telecommuting, that's where you work at home from a screen and you never go into the office.
Great! No more rush hour. But what does that do to the public transportation system and the taxes it uses. Or to the car manufacturers and their workers' jobs, and the rest of the economy that depends on their output?
Or to the concept of the city itself, with its support systems and businesses. Or to the downtown properties where maybe your pension fund's invested.
Not to speak of working at home day in and day out and what that might do to a marriage. And what do you get out of work when it's only you? What would be the effect of isolating and fragmenting the community like that?
Second the comment re the day the universe changed, and found the episode on how Islamic Spain influenced the world quite surprising. Think it was the 2nd one, starting with two competing views of the world from African Roman scholars/clerics.
Many of these older docu’s wanted you to stop and think.
I first saw Connections in the late 2000s... the final scene of the last episode, "inside the British Airways computer" (an entire floor of a large building), had me standing on my couch pointing at the screen.
A year or two before I was born, James Burke wandered between mainframes and reel-to-reel tape machines, speaking with extraordinary prescience about data, communications, decision-making systems, and power:
"This is the future. Because if you tell a computer everything you know about something, it will juggle the mix, and come up with a prediction. Do this, and you'll get that. And if you have information and a computer, you too can look into the future. And that is power. Commercial power, political power, power to change things."
I'm going to watch that scene again, because it's even more important 20 years further along: smart phones, "big data", large language models, Palantir...
A fun background show (for those of us with ADHD?) I like to have on is Computer Chronicles - a weekly show that basically documented the weekly history, for the most part, of the evolution of personal computing. It basically starts out as "these things are cool and can run spreadsheets" to evolution into music, the internet, and beyond. Lots of crazy things happen in the 1980s that we're now realizing today like touch, voice, and ai that people kept saying we'd be 2-4 years away from...I guess that is marketing speak for 20-40 years, but it's still seems very relivant to today.
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