I assume most people aren’t getting dropped off on the side of the highway. They’re being moved between more dense points that are otherwise underserved or not served by mass transit.
The existence of a job doesn’t imply that said job is unexploitative. People are attracted to (or left with) exploitative jobs for all kinds of reasons.
What is exploitation? Working a service job for minimum wage is not what I'd call a good job, but it's not exploitation as long as the employer did not cheat employees out of wages, put them at undisclosed risk, or some other dishonest practice. Exploitation is more than just "I think the wage is too low".
These Uber and Lyft drivers picked this job out of all their options. They arrived at the conclusion that it was the best job that they could get out of all their options. Why do you think you know better than they do?
I think that using peoples’ inability to factor in the depreciation of their cars is a form of exploitation in this case. Uber and Lyft are profitable in part because they assume no maintenance or repair risk.
Edit: “out of all their options” reveals the point here: the minimum wage exists so that, in theory, there is a cap on the things that people have to do to put food in their mouths.
If this were the case, then the remediation is to promote better awareness about depreciation and factoring it into net profit calculation. Then, once drivers realize that depreciation is a thing, Uber and Lyft would see drivers quitting en masse when they realize they're not making as much money as they thought - if what you are saying is true, that is.
But the reality is Uber and Lyft drivers aren't idiots and do indeed realize that depreciation exists. This strikes me a quite a condescending take, that Uber and Lyft drivers aren't smart enough to o take wear and tear on their vehicles into account.
> If this were the case, then the remediation is to promote better awareness about depreciation and factoring it into net profit calculation.
This is a long-standing point of public messaging around rideshares. It's not a secret; the reality is that the people who care about it aren't the ones with hundreds of millions allocated for advertising.
None of this assumes that Uber or Lyft drivers are stupid. Everybody discounts long-term externalities; it's a universal human trait, and it's why we have entire society-level issues that boil down to long-term discounting. The only thing that sets rideshare drivers apart in this particular case is that a company is actively exploiting that human weakness, and can do so in part because we allow economic privation as a fulcrum.
No, discontinuing depreciation is not a universal human trait. You bet that when I drive for work I expense the depreciation on my car. And and Uber and Lyft driver worth his or her salt deducts the depreciation of driven miles from taxable income. Go on Uber and Lyft driver forums and this is in every beginner's guide. This notion that most drivers aren't accounting for depreciation is just not true.
> No, discontinuing depreciation is not a universal human trait. You bet that when I drive for work I expense the depreciation on my car.
The fact that you're allowed to expense your car's deprecation indicates that this is not a long-term externality for you. Of course people take advantage of reimbursements available to them; the fact that none applies here is the thing being discussed.
Again: being "worth his or her salt" reveals the point here: the point of a minimum wage is to ensure that people who aren't financially literate are, in theory, afforded a baseline quality of life. It's fine if we don't agree about the civic value of that, but that's what it boils down to: not punishing people with a life of privation for not having the skills, means, or anything else that others have.
I don't doubt that there are some Uber and Lyft drivers that fail to take into account depreciation. But the vast majority do. Because they're financially incentivized to do so, in order to deduct from taxable income. People tend to like free money.
I stand by my point: the idea that a significant portion of ride share drivers are failing to account for depreciation is ridiculous.
Have they? The linked article did not make this claim. I'd be very interested in sources studying what percentage of ride share driver's supported this law.
I also haven't seen any studies of percentage of drivers that support/oppose this rule. MULDA (https://mulda.org/) is the group of drivers pushing for this ordinance.
There are clearly many people who both want to drive for these companies and want to rules in place to ensure fair pay and working conditions. It is not an either/or.
"many" is a nebulous statements. "Many" could be less than 1% of drivers. If you want to make the claim the this is supported by a large, or even significant, segment of drivers you need to make a proportional claim.
I never made that claim. I wrote that the ordinance was pushed for largely by drivers. I made no speculation on the proportion of drivers.
Nor have you. You have made the assumption that accepting the terms of employment implies that drivers accept/support the companies position in this conflict. I see no evidence for that.
> the ordinance was pushed for largely by drivers.
This, too, is baseless. Plenty of people who aren't drivers support legislation like this. Neither the claim that most drivers support this legislation, nor the claim that this legislation has been mostly supported by drivers is substantiated.
Well, look at the history of workplace safety laws (removing the option to work in dangerous conditions), minimum wage laws (removing the optin to work below a certain amount of money), and union protection laws. I haven't done a study, but I'm pretty sure we'd find that each of those laws resulted in less exploitation.
EDIT: There are also loads of limitations on what contracts are valid. The government removes the option to contract yourself into slavery, as well as a host of other things. All these laws removing these options were written in response to exploitation, and I'm pretty sure you'd find that they actually reduced exploitation.
> I'm pretty sure you'd find that they actually reduced exploitation
Correlation is not causation. It would be illogical to remove options and have less exploitation. When luck and free markets compensate for the removed options - great. A strong labor market with lots of employers is the best tool against exploitation. But here we are talking about a corrupted, monopolistic government-controlled market where there weren't many choices to begin with. New entrants should be encouraged and celebrated, not shunned and punished.
Minimum wage laws are incredibly damaging as well. For example, the unpaid part-time "job" that launched me in the IT field would be illegal now. And I would be much poorer for it. But, hey, I wouldn't have been "exploited".
> It would be illogical to remove options and have less exploitation.
It may be somewhat counterintuitive, but it's certainly not illogical.
> Minimum wage laws are incredibly damaging as well. For example, the unpaid part-time "job" that launched me in the IT field would be illegal now. And I would be much poorer for it. But, hey, I wouldn't have been "exploited".
First of all, are you sure it wouldn't have existed? Just because you're willing to get something for free doesn't mean you're not also willing to pay for it; and minimum wage is a lot cheaper than a properly trained full-time IT person.
Secondly, having skilled workers available is a public good [1] that benefits all companies, so it makes economic sense for the government to invest (on behalf of all companies) in developing those skills. If these sorts of apprenticeships are generally useful, then having the government sponsor or subsidize them also makes sense.
I know it ended since I am still friends with the owner: the labor regulations become so onerous he gave up on having a couple overly-enthusiastic pain-in-the-butt kids around to train every year.
> having the government sponsor or subsidise them also makes sense
Of course government intervention begets ever more government intervention - it's the only one that can fix the messes it creates. But I lived under a regime where the government controlled everything - and we were starving.
The government is the most incompetent, slow and corrupt organization built by man. It makes sense, as it has no competition to push it to be otherwise - it's the ultimate monopoly. Boggles the mind that somebody would voluntarily rely on it.
There's some truth to this. A minimum wage is a blunt instrument that can end up causing more harm than good. If the goal is to raise wages, I think there's better ways of doing it. Maybe with some kind of tax code reform.
No. Semi-slavery is no "opportunity" in any real sense of the word, it is a trap. Very few people advance out of sub-poverty wages (and the few who do are no "proof" that it is an "opportunity").
There is a massive difference between people of equal power making arms-lencgh transactions, vs people of virtually unlimited power coercing others to work for sub-poverty wages when their only other option is starvation.
Minimum Wage and Unions work against the tendency for capital, owners, and management to exploit workers for their own gain. History shows societies with a large middle class are far better off and more resilient than societies with a thin upper class and mostly impoverished workers.
Whenever workers for a company are disproportionately reliant on public assistance, as was found in MN, it means that the management has figured out a scam to get rest of the taxpayers to subsidize their business.
The taxpayers make up the difference between what is paid vs a living wage which would be required for those workers to sustainably work for the corp, and the management/shareholders pocket the difference. So, Uber and Lyft are literally scamming the rest of the taxpayers for their profits. Do you enjoy paying taxes to support the executives and shareholders of Uber and Lyft (also WalMart, etc.).
There are several solutions, including:
Solution 1: Reset the minimum wage the way it was originally designed (by 1950s Republicans), so that it pays a livable wage for one person working 40 hours to support a family of 4 above the poverty line. This is what built the middle class.
Solution 2: Tax any and all automation sufficiently to pay a Universal Basic Income above the poverty level so that people have options and do not need to work unless an employer makes it worth their while to undertake the commute, etc. Actual minimum wages may be lower, but the corp taxes will be higher.
Either way, we are the wealthiest society in the history of the planet. We CAN afford to treat everyone with dignity, which includes providing for their basic needs of food, housing, healthcare when they work a full-time job.
Allowing some to exploit others in a coercive semi-slavery arrangement should not be an option in the most wealthy society in history.
Arguing with such a broad statement usually isn't worth the time but I'll bite anyways.
First:
If all minimum wage did was remove opportunities, we wouldn't have one in most of the civilized world. It's plainly obvious that isn't all it does, regardless how you feel about it's effectiveness.
Second:
Minimum wage does remove opportunities - and so what? There's nothing inherently bad about that. If a business can't afford a minimum wage, then they aren't a viable business. Businesses don't deserve to exist in the same sense that jobs don't deserve to exist. A business that can only survive by trapping employees in wage-slavery isn't to the happiness and health of it's society.
Yes "ride share", where you share the car with a driver that only happens to go the same way as you because you asked them to.
These are straight up taxi companies, not ride sharing. Uber, and Lyft, keeps sticking to "ride sharing" sales pitch, while running money losing taxi services. If they truly where ride sharing services, then they wouldn't be having these legal issues.
In Austin, Yellow Cab became Z-Trip, with more of a ride hailing model than the old taxi model. They are cheaper than Uber or Lyft and considerably more reliable. Uber/Lyft will cancel a pick-up (sometimes, without telling you) when the pick-up is less profitable or would cause the driver to leave an area with more ride pickups. Z-Trip has never done that, that I know of. U/L also tend to have more drivers who are less proficient with English, which causes communication issues. Lastly, if you have a medical condition and it's not an urgent trip, Z-Trip can usually handle it. I have had Uber and Lyft drivers cancel on me, once while I was sitting in the car. But the main difference is on price - Z-Trip does not do the annoying surge pricing like the others do.
There are only 39 licensed cab drivers in the city (as opposed to 1900 drivers 10 years ago). The sudden crash bang will be interesting as ride-sharing has become such a part of city life. I'm not familiar with what wage Uber currently pays their drivers. Leaving every city that demands a minimum wage, can't be their long-term plan... can it?
It's troubling that these business models aren't viable unless you pay the drivers less than $15 an hour. Especially with no benefits. That is very little these days.
The law did not mandate a $15 and hour wage. It set specific per mile cost requirements, which could easily be well over $15 per hour.
Ride share driver's aren't slaves. They chose to drive for ride share companies above the other options. If it was a bad deal then Uber and Lyft would be having trouble finding drivers. How is strictly fewer options a good thing?
Go read about working conditions at factories in the 19th century. Those people weren't slaves either; they "chose" to work 12 hour days, 7 days a week, in extraordinarily dangerous conditions, because the alternate from their perspective was to starve to death. That's not the situation these Uber drivers are in, specifically because of unions and other laws (such as minimum wage laws) which prevent such "choices" from happening.
The irony is that industrial jobs in the early 19th century were better than the alternatives, namely subsistence farming. For all the talk about "Dickensian" industrial working conditions, the industrializing countries in 19th century saw some of the biggest leaps in standards of living in history, unions or not.
This is exactly the kind of misguided take that leads people deprive people less privileged then themselves of employment opportunities. You wouldn't want to drive for Uber, it'd be a bad choose in your situation. And you're applying the same thinking to people who don't have the same employment prospects.
What will Uber and Lyft drivers do now that price controls have made ride sharing too expensive for most of the market? Work at fast food joints? In retail? All of those choice were present when drivers chose to drive for ride share companies, and the drivers concluded they were inferior to working for Uber and Lyft. Now, were forcing them to go to one of those inferior choices and patting ourselves on the back for doing a supposedly good thing.
I think this is a bit of a false dichotomy. Yeah wasting away in a factory for 12 hours a day is better than starving to death on a farm, but still, the factory conditions didn't have to suck as bad as they did.
Or Uber and Lyft could simply make less profit so they could abide by local labor laws. The labor law didn't remove the employment opportunity. Greed and shitty companies that don't want to abide by the law removed the employment opportunity. Don't shift blame for the scofflaws.
But if profit is negative then Uber and Lyft will just leave the market entirely. The only way to keep profits positive is to increase prices beyond what customers are willing to pay.
I'm afraid most humans are not "choosing", at least not in the way many people on hackernews get to choose between various extremely-cushy white collars job.
Work = Survival
We'll "choose" the best option available to use, and as the overall temperature of the market changes, so do our "choices"..
It appears the drivers are choosing to lobby their city government for this increase. If you believe the boundaries of political power for labor do not extend past slavery you're overlooking a large and incredibly important part of American history.
I don't really agree with that, because it is exceedingly unlikely that all drivers are lobbying for it or agree with it, even if a majority do so (which is not at all certain).
I'm very interested in sources indicating that this legislation is supported by the majority of ride share drivers. Though, to be fair, if 10 out of 1,000 ride share drivers are supporting this legislation it's technically honest to "[an unspecified proportion of] drivers are choosing to lobby their city government for this increase."
It's impossible to know how much support it has from Uber/Lyft employees, but there has been a sustained effort for this kind of legislation for a long time, both here & elsewhere (e.g. Austin, TX). Last summer the legislature passed a statewide law enforcing a minimum wage for drivers, but the governor vetoed it[1]. So it least has enough support to get it through the state House & Senate, which isn't nothing.
Yeah, of course. Lacking any direct measurement, I'm using support from elected legislators as a proxy for support from people who live here. It's an imperfect metric, obviously, but better than nothing. Presumably if they were getting 99-to-1 comments against the policy from drivers, it wouldn't have passed all of the state House, Senate, and Minneapolis city council.
Except the electorate is comprised overwhelmingly of people who aren't ride share drivers. They could easily be passing laws opposed by the majority of drivers because it's supported mostly by people who aren't ride share drivers.
I agree that option is in the possibility space. However, I don't think it is likely that a wide majority of drivers oppose it, given the support from so many legislators & the lack of that opposition being voiced in local news articles. Given this evidence and the lack of any opposing evidence (but feel free to present some!), I feel comfortable saying the ordinance is at least not wildly unpopular among drivers.
I guess DEI bans are popular among Florida University professors because the government enacted it.
Again, legislators don't care if it's popular among the impacted party. They just care if it's popular among voters. Which are overwhelmingly not Uber and Lyft drivers.
I feel comfortable that this legislation is unpopular among Uber and Lyft drivers because they chose on their own accord to drive for these apps, and now they are deprived of that choice.
Can you find some examples of drivers speaking out against it? At public hearings etc? All the news coverage I've seen about it has mentioned significant driver support and very little opposition.
> Part time driver here doing it to make ends meet and pay a few bills more comfortably - I’m definitely pissed. I can certainly understand wanting more pay for drivers, but for the city council to just sidestep the statewide study and mandate rates higher than the study advocated for seems shortsighted and irresponsible to me.
> The law did not mandate a $15 and hour wage. It set specific per mile cost requirements, which could easily be well over $15 per hour.
I'm not 100% certain, but I think this is a workaround for Uber/Lyft's workaround that lets them violate employment laws, namely, that they claim their employees are contractors, not employees. Since the contractor agreement specifies payment per mile, that's what the council's ordinance applies to. If Uber/Lyft were honest about their employees being employees, then they would have the minimum wage law applied, like any other business.
If Uber and Lyft drivers were employees the Uber and Lyft could mandate which times of day drivers need to work, as well as prohibiting them from working for competing ride share companies.
Like it or not, Uber and Lyft drivers are indeed contractors. They set their own hours, and are free to work for competing ride share apps. There's nothing dishonest about this, people are
just salty that the "Ride share driver are actually employees" meme is not true.
But on other hand they are not free to set prices. Which to me is what would make Uber and Lyft purely matching service. Allow the drivers to set the prices and rules. Then customers can take or not take them.
I think they are slaves to a degree if they are illegal immigrants, which I suspect many of them are. This is the dirty trick played by many big businesses in the US. "You'll get your low wage and you'll like it, or else." I do know this happens in the agriculture and construction businesses, and based on my limited powers of observation, it happens in the ride-share business too.
> Ride share driver's aren't slaves. They chose to drive for ride share companies above the other options. If it was a bad deal then Uber and Lyft would be having trouble finding drivers.
And slaves aren't slaves either, they chose to remain slaves above other options (rebel and be beaten or killed). If it was a bad deal, the slaveholders would be having trouble getting their slaves to work, and would just be killing or beating them all the time.
I find type of argument irksome. It basically ignores whatever the actual situation is with a blind assumption whatever the market does is the best (or at least better) thing and is therefore fine.
If you give a person terrible choices, and they pick the best of a bad lot, that choice doesn't excuse the situation. All Minneapolis did was mandate one those choices had to be better. The rest is up to Uber and Lyft, who chose to play hardball to keep exploiting their workers to the degree they've become accustomed.
> And slaves aren't slaves either, they chose to remain slaves above other options (rebel and be beaten or killed)
Coercion is when you cannot reasonably refuse. If one faces torture and execution for refusal, then they cannot reasonably refuse.
Will Uber and Lyft tie up drivers and whip them if they choose to take a job at Starbucks? Whill Uber and Lyft kill drivers? Come on, you call my argument irksome then you compare these drivers to actual chattel slavery.
Remember: at it's core, capitalism uses the threat of deprivation and want to coerce cooperation with it, and it always likes an oversupply of labor. Don't want to chose to work at my sweatshop (or the sweatshop of one of my peers) for miserable wages while I get rich off your labor? Fine, go starve. And don't go trespassing on my estate to try to grow food, if you try the men with guns will come for you.
What's so clever about it is the threat is indirect and systemic (instead of direct and personal), which is all some people seem to need to deny it's there.
It also brings to mind the ancient Roman fire brigades, which were more of an extortion racket than anything else.
The threat of deprivation if people don't do labor is omnipresent. If Hunter gatherers didn't gather berries and hunt for food, they faced starvation. At this point, the definition of coercion has been expanded such that humanity's very existence is inherently coercive.
> The threat of deprivation if people don't do labor is omnipresent. If Hunter gatherers didn't gather berries and hunt for food, they faced starvation.
I didn't say it wasn't. But don't you realize the different social dynamic here from being a hunter gatherer? Uber and Lyft were exploiting that for their own gain, and ran away from the corrective action because they think they have the power to bully it away to maintain their gain at the level of which they've become accustomed.
> At this point, the definition of coercion has been expanded such that humanity's very existence is inherently coercive.
What point am I missing? What jobs will these drivers work now that they can't drive for Uber or Lyft?
Whatever your response is, they had the opportunity to work that job before and made the deliberate decision to drive for Uber and Lyft instead. My point, that you're missing, is that there was no coercion in this decision between driving for ride share versus the alternative. And you're somehow trying to argue that depriving these drivers of the choice to work for Uber and Lyft and forcing them into the alternative that they previously judged an inferior opportunity is somehow a good thing.
Your point about people working to avoid starvation applies just as much to whatever job these ex-drivers are going to be working instead. These drivers judged that these jobs were worse than driving for ride share, but apparently you think you know better than them despite having zero knowledge about their priorities and life situation.
You edited your comment after my response:
> Uber and Lyft were exploiting that for their own gain, and ran away from the corrective action because they think they have the power to bully it away to maintain their gain at the level of which they've become accustomed.
How were Uber and Lyft bullying drivers? Again, you seem to be claiming that drivers were somehow coerced into driving for ride share apps instead of seeking alternative employment. But you've yet to explain how this bullying was perpetrated. What was Lyft and Uber doing to keep drivers from working at Starbucks or some other job?
> What point am I missing? What jobs will these drivers work now that they can't drive for Uber or Lyft?
The problem is (it appears) you're looking at this solely from the framework of free market dogma. The operation of market is assumed to be optimal, the Uber drivers had a nominal choice when they took a job with Uber, and that nominal choice cures any issue anyone could have with the terms of their employment, etc.
While seductive, that framework is oversimple, and misses much.
> My point, that you're missing, is that there was no coercion in this decision between driving for ride share versus the alternative.
I am not missing that point at all. In fact, I find that point exceedingly tiresome due to how often it's repeated. At it's core, it's an apologia for fully taking advantage of a man's desperation (which I reject), and then twists that into some kind of good deed, so someone can pat themselves on the back for it afterwards (which just adds insult to injury).
> How were Uber and Lyft bullying drivers?
What I was referring to is their attempt to bully the Minneapolis city government and other governments that may take action to give drivers a better deal.
Again, how are Uber and Lyft taking advantage of drivers' desperation any more than the jobs they're going to have to work instead, now that Uber and Lyft are banned? These drivers already had the opportunity stop driving and work those jobs instead. Why is the former "taking advantage of man's desperation" but the latter is not?
> The operation of market is assumed to be optimal, the Uber drivers had a nominal choice when they took a job with Uber, and that nominal choice cures any issue anyone could have with the terms of their employment, etc.
> While seductive, that framework is oversimple, and misses much.
Except... it does? You're insisting that this misses the point, but you don't actually explain what is misses.
Again, what will these drivers be doing to make ends meet when Uber and Lyft leave Minneapolis? Guess what, they already had that choice before and decided that ride share was better. Maybe it was the flexibility, maybe it was the independence, who knows. But they all made the decision that other available employment was worse than driving.
True, these drivers were working to put food on the table. But they're still going to be working to put food on the table in whatever job they do after ride share apps shut down in Minneapolis. It's no less "taking advantage of man's desperation".
> Again, how are Uber and Lyft taking advantage of drivers' desperation any more than the jobs they're going to have to work instead, now that Uber and Lyft are banned?
They're weaseling around minimum wage laws. In Minneapolis, the minimum wage is $15.57/hr (and tips don't count towards it, https://minimumwage.minneapolismn.gov/). Uber and Lyft are mad Minneapolis is going to make them pay drivers something close to that.
> Uber and Lyft drivers in Minneapolis and St. Paul and greater Minnesota often are paid well below the equivalent of the minimum wage after expenses are deducted, a state-commissioned study has found.
> ...
> It largely validated the narrative of many drivers, who are considered independent contractors: After taking into account wear and tear on their cars, time spent driving to and from rides, and the cost of gas and other expenses, drivers across the state earn well below the minimum wage they would likely receive if they were employees, not including tips.
> However, before expenses, drivers are paid well above the minimum wage while working.
> Minnesota Uber, Lyft drivers say it's getting harder and harder to make a living...
> "It's not fair. What Uber pays us just covers our expenses but no profit at all," said Egal, who used to be a taxi cab driver for 15 years before Uber and Lyft disrupted the marketplace and his business.
> Again, what will these drivers be doing to make ends meet when Uber and Lyft leave Minneapolis? Guess what, they already had that choice before and decided that ride share was better. Maybe it was the flexibility, maybe it was the independence, who knows. But they all made the decision that other available employment was worse than driving.
It's a market right? It will adjust to find a new, better equilibrium.
A big assumption you seem to have is that these Uber/Lyft drivers are perfect examples of homo economicus, making fully informed rational decisions about all this, so think you can infer the choice is a good one for them because they made it. However that doesn't seem to be true. If those companies offer a misleading value proposition, they can sustain themselves for some time by with a revolving door of naive and ignorant people who don't understand the misleading economics of the exchange. The competition from that flow of ignorant people (especially if they're more casual) helps keep overall wages low.
I wouldn't be surprised of Uber and Lyft have implemented some gambling dynamics for their drivers. It would make sense to offer drivers occasional jackpot days to keep them hooked, while the house wins big as always.
Homo economicus is an oversimple fiction; Homo sapiens is real. Understanding the difference goes a long way towards grasping the problems with free market dogma (but certainly not the whole way).
Aren’t you a bit presumptuous? Do you consider yourself as knowing better than them what is best for them? Do you think that you know how to run their life better? Why?
Do you think there are people out there knowing how to run your life better than you? Would you like if they came and took control over your life?
When the options are narrowed into precarious work such as most (or even all) of the "gig economy" bullshit, have more options of precarious work is not good overall for a society. It erodes the standard employment relationship, it's cheaper for employers so companies not relying on precarious work are in disadvantage which pushes more people into precarious work, creating a death spiral to proper secure employment in more sectors of society over time.
But they can be some desperate people, who are willing to put up with inhumane working conditions just to survive. We, as a developed society, should have a floor on the working conditions. Otherwise, businesses will take advantage of the weakest members of the society to bring back practices like 9-9-6, peeing in the bottle at the warehouses, child labor and what not.
Regulations are the best defense against a race to the bottom.
I don’t see why most people in America would expect to be able to afford drivers. Labor is and has long been famously expensive.
A lot of immigrants will have drivers/maids/cooks in their country of origin, and then come to the US and have to do their own laundry/cooking/driving/etc.
I don't see any reason why taxi drivers should not be able to charge same that say lawyers or software consultants. And really these platforms should allow exactly that drivers to set their own prices even above government set minimum.
It's a low-skill job that just about anyone can do. Almost all jobs of this sort will be eliminated with technology/automation ESPECIALLY since higher labor wages put upward pressure on operating costs.
i.e.: once self-driving vehicles come onto the scene (as in ubiquitous) there won't be a labor force to worry about.
I can tell you with certainty that most low-margin, high workforce industries (because I work in one of them) are looking to automate much of their workforce away especially in light of labor costs rising (minimum wage laws), increasing safety regulations (let the robots do it), increasing competitive pressure (foreign countries have cheaper labor), and social changes (people prefer interacting with a cell phone over a human being).
Couple this with a publicly traded company such as Uber/Lyft whose whole existence depends on market value (the stock price) then the management of those companies are going to do the math to figure out if automating jobs is the right thing to do: their job is to maximize the value of the company (the stock price). The shareholders also have a vested interest for the same reasons.
This would make more sense if a $15/hour wage was something out of step with historical wages. It's a big jump right now, but historically it's not out of step with previous periods. What were average wages at taxi companies pre-Uber?
As for self-driving, I'd be a little concerned that a ~$8/hour cost (assuming previous was around $7) puts Uber in an untenable situation, self-driving cars or not. Ultimately there still would be labor force to worry about, no? Currently, drivers are responsible for maintenance, cleanliness, etc. -- once you switch to self-driving, someone else has to do all of that.
Comparing them to taxis isn't one-for-one for this context: most municipalities had barriers to entry to prevent just anyone from running a taxi service (i.e. the medallions in NYC).
The business will do the math to figure out what they can get away with. Honestly there probably is a little political posturing here as OP said, but if they return it's because they made the math work, otherwise they'll stay gone.
Naive thought since I'm not familiar with the situation, but since Uber/Lyft could simply raise rates it seems to me this is political posturing on their part to see if they can force the city to back down.
They could raise rates but also run the risk of losing customers at the margin. Uber and Lyft are publicly traded companies and, as such, are required by their stockholders to maximize profit - which means raising rates, lowing costs (labor), or some mix of that (and more).
The problem here, as I see it, is that the model changed from being highly accurate (payment per mile, which can happen in a minute) to something more broad (payment per 15 minutes according to FLSA rules as I understand them).
When it comes to market viability there will come a time at which companies just pull out because the headache is too much, even if they are somewhat profitable.
FWIW I think this is posturing on Uber/Lyft's behalf, but is almost certainly a sign of future actions if they cannot make the number work.
They would have to invent a new business model to operate with an hourly minimum wage. Currently they demand very little of their drivers since they don't have to pay when the driver doesn't have a client, but add an hourly minimum wage and now they have to manage drivers a lot more to ensure they are worth that pay per hour.
Now they will get replaced by more traditionally run taxi companies that managers their drivers tighter.
Edit: Or no, the law explicitly said how much ride shares should pay per mile and per minute riding. So scratch that, not sure why they pulled out here.
"Fiduciary duty" can mean a lot beyond maximizing profit, but generally acting in good faith to advance the interests of the company is enough to satisfy that.
Why does Lyft co-operate with Uber here instead of taking this market for themselves? Seems like they should free load off of Uber's willingness to sacrifice business to politically posture.
On margin I can't believe Lyft would loose money by continuing to support Minneapolis, passing on this per mile/per minute floor to the consumer & taking over Uber's market share there.
It "not being worth supporting" has everything to do with signalling to other municipalities not to regulate (which I think makes much more sense for Uber to do than Lyft)
> I can't believe Lyft would loose money by continuing to support Minneapolis, passing on this per mile/per minute floor to the new cost to the consumer
I can. They have to pay for when the drivers are earning revenue as well as not. At the same time, support the local infrastructure running a ride-hailing service requires (e.g. government relations, customer service, et cetera).
Minneapolis and St. Paul are not super wealthy cities.
> They have to pay for when the drivers are earning revenue as well as not.
Where are you getting this from?
"The ordinance requires rideshare companies to pay drivers a wage of at least $1.40 per mile, and 51-cents per minute on rides to, from, and through city limits."
I see nothing about paying them when they aren't earning.
Price would need to increase a lot. Just looking at my most recent rides at the $0.51 / min + $1.4 / mile rate, 80% of the money I paid would go to the driver and 20% to taxes, so Lyft would have to inflate ride costs quite a bit to pay themselves.
It's funny that Uber/Lyft say drivers make more than that, but whoa, if it were a law to do what they already claim happens, then they'll have to charge a lot more. The math aint mathing.
To me the taxis were like an entrenched monopoly. Then competition tried to disrupt the system, but after lawsuits and regulation pushing up costs/prices on ride sharing, taxis will come back to fill the void. Full circle it seems. I can't help but feel this is exactly what the taxi industry wants.
Have the lawsuits/regulation been anything that taxi companies didn't also have to deal with when they had a monopoly though? I don't really see it as disrupting the system if you just don't pay the taxes or follow the regulations of the other guy.
I'm starting to think that ride sharing is just an area where you can have a profitable, sustainable company (taxis) but not the sustained, exponential growth a company like Uber is pitching. If Uber was happy to settle for paying drivers decent (but low) wages and operate at a sustainable level they would probably be fine, but that's a death sentence for a publicly traded company in their position.
> To me the taxis were like an entrenched monopoly. Then competition tried to disrupt the system, but after lawsuits and regulation pushing up costs/prices on ride sharing, taxis will come back to fill the void. Full circle it seems. I can't help but feel this is exactly what the taxi industry wants.
I think it's proof that taxis weren't "an entrenched monopoly," or at least weren't as bad as the Uber's propaganda made them out to be.
If Uber's big innovation was just "pay workers less," and their competitive advantage evaporates once regulation catches up to them, it's just proof of how misleading SV smoke-and-mirrors can be.
I can tell you that I'm about as excited about the next "innovative" consumer-oriented startup as I am the next Google chat app.
Seems to me like an opportunity for new entrants into the market. Granted… Uber and Lyft have generally been money losers over all. More folks can/should take public transit, and prices should reflect the actual social cost of these services. There’s no reason ordinary people should be subsidizing billionaire VCs efforts to disrupt the social fabric and exploit the commons by further eroding use of non-car options.
Uber and Lyft pulling out of Minneapolis is a good thing. Why? Because those companies are in California. That means the profits are leaving Minnesota and going to California.
Sure, a Taxi company operating in Minneapolis could be California owned and the profits would get funneled back to California too.
What would be better is if locally owned Taxi companies created their own ride sharing apps. Or even better, if the drivers themselves were able to create some kind of co-op company that managed the ride sharing application for them.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 195 ms ] threadIf the previous prices really were bad wages, then Uber and Lyft would be having a hard time finding drivers.
The existence of a job doesn’t imply that said job is unexploitative. People are attracted to (or left with) exploitative jobs for all kinds of reasons.
These Uber and Lyft drivers picked this job out of all their options. They arrived at the conclusion that it was the best job that they could get out of all their options. Why do you think you know better than they do?
Edit: “out of all their options” reveals the point here: the minimum wage exists so that, in theory, there is a cap on the things that people have to do to put food in their mouths.
But the reality is Uber and Lyft drivers aren't idiots and do indeed realize that depreciation exists. This strikes me a quite a condescending take, that Uber and Lyft drivers aren't smart enough to o take wear and tear on their vehicles into account.
This is a long-standing point of public messaging around rideshares. It's not a secret; the reality is that the people who care about it aren't the ones with hundreds of millions allocated for advertising.
None of this assumes that Uber or Lyft drivers are stupid. Everybody discounts long-term externalities; it's a universal human trait, and it's why we have entire society-level issues that boil down to long-term discounting. The only thing that sets rideshare drivers apart in this particular case is that a company is actively exploiting that human weakness, and can do so in part because we allow economic privation as a fulcrum.
The fact that you're allowed to expense your car's deprecation indicates that this is not a long-term externality for you. Of course people take advantage of reimbursements available to them; the fact that none applies here is the thing being discussed.
Again: being "worth his or her salt" reveals the point here: the point of a minimum wage is to ensure that people who aren't financially literate are, in theory, afforded a baseline quality of life. It's fine if we don't agree about the civic value of that, but that's what it boils down to: not punishing people with a life of privation for not having the skills, means, or anything else that others have.
I stand by my point: the idea that a significant portion of ride share drivers are failing to account for depreciation is ridiculous.
There are clearly many people who both want to drive for these companies and want to rules in place to ensure fair pay and working conditions. It is not an either/or.
Nor have you. You have made the assumption that accepting the terms of employment implies that drivers accept/support the companies position in this conflict. I see no evidence for that.
This, too, is baseless. Plenty of people who aren't drivers support legislation like this. Neither the claim that most drivers support this legislation, nor the claim that this legislation has been mostly supported by drivers is substantiated.
EDIT: There are also loads of limitations on what contracts are valid. The government removes the option to contract yourself into slavery, as well as a host of other things. All these laws removing these options were written in response to exploitation, and I'm pretty sure you'd find that they actually reduced exploitation.
Correlation is not causation. It would be illogical to remove options and have less exploitation. When luck and free markets compensate for the removed options - great. A strong labor market with lots of employers is the best tool against exploitation. But here we are talking about a corrupted, monopolistic government-controlled market where there weren't many choices to begin with. New entrants should be encouraged and celebrated, not shunned and punished.
Minimum wage laws are incredibly damaging as well. For example, the unpaid part-time "job" that launched me in the IT field would be illegal now. And I would be much poorer for it. But, hey, I wouldn't have been "exploited".
It may be somewhat counterintuitive, but it's certainly not illogical.
> Minimum wage laws are incredibly damaging as well. For example, the unpaid part-time "job" that launched me in the IT field would be illegal now. And I would be much poorer for it. But, hey, I wouldn't have been "exploited".
First of all, are you sure it wouldn't have existed? Just because you're willing to get something for free doesn't mean you're not also willing to pay for it; and minimum wage is a lot cheaper than a properly trained full-time IT person.
Secondly, having skilled workers available is a public good [1] that benefits all companies, so it makes economic sense for the government to invest (on behalf of all companies) in developing those skills. If these sorts of apprenticeships are generally useful, then having the government sponsor or subsidize them also makes sense.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)
Please describe the mechanism then.
> are you sure it wouldn't have existed
I know it ended since I am still friends with the owner: the labor regulations become so onerous he gave up on having a couple overly-enthusiastic pain-in-the-butt kids around to train every year.
> having the government sponsor or subsidise them also makes sense
Of course government intervention begets ever more government intervention - it's the only one that can fix the messes it creates. But I lived under a regime where the government controlled everything - and we were starving.
The government is the most incompetent, slow and corrupt organization built by man. It makes sense, as it has no competition to push it to be otherwise - it's the ultimate monopoly. Boggles the mind that somebody would voluntarily rely on it.
There is a massive difference between people of equal power making arms-lencgh transactions, vs people of virtually unlimited power coercing others to work for sub-poverty wages when their only other option is starvation.
Minimum Wage and Unions work against the tendency for capital, owners, and management to exploit workers for their own gain. History shows societies with a large middle class are far better off and more resilient than societies with a thin upper class and mostly impoverished workers.
Whenever workers for a company are disproportionately reliant on public assistance, as was found in MN, it means that the management has figured out a scam to get rest of the taxpayers to subsidize their business.
The taxpayers make up the difference between what is paid vs a living wage which would be required for those workers to sustainably work for the corp, and the management/shareholders pocket the difference. So, Uber and Lyft are literally scamming the rest of the taxpayers for their profits. Do you enjoy paying taxes to support the executives and shareholders of Uber and Lyft (also WalMart, etc.).
There are several solutions, including:
Solution 1: Reset the minimum wage the way it was originally designed (by 1950s Republicans), so that it pays a livable wage for one person working 40 hours to support a family of 4 above the poverty line. This is what built the middle class.
Solution 2: Tax any and all automation sufficiently to pay a Universal Basic Income above the poverty level so that people have options and do not need to work unless an employer makes it worth their while to undertake the commute, etc. Actual minimum wages may be lower, but the corp taxes will be higher.
Either way, we are the wealthiest society in the history of the planet. We CAN afford to treat everyone with dignity, which includes providing for their basic needs of food, housing, healthcare when they work a full-time job.
Allowing some to exploit others in a coercive semi-slavery arrangement should not be an option in the most wealthy society in history.
First:
If all minimum wage did was remove opportunities, we wouldn't have one in most of the civilized world. It's plainly obvious that isn't all it does, regardless how you feel about it's effectiveness.
Second:
Minimum wage does remove opportunities - and so what? There's nothing inherently bad about that. If a business can't afford a minimum wage, then they aren't a viable business. Businesses don't deserve to exist in the same sense that jobs don't deserve to exist. A business that can only survive by trapping employees in wage-slavery isn't to the happiness and health of it's society.
Third:
Minimum wage has little to no effect on inflation: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01651...
And it does have a positive effect on the quality of life of low-skilled workers: https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hpb20180622.107025/
People that argue against the merits of a minimum wage are usually:
- parroting something they heard from a right-wing talking head, (i.e.: they have no evidence to back their claims), or
- they are a business owner that knows their business can only survive if they prey on low-skilled labor
Disclosure: I work at Alto.
Hadn’t heard of Alto; looks neat. But the website seems to ambitiously evade disclosing their area of operation.
That said, it does look like ride-sharing in Minneapolis is headed for a members-only model [1].
[1] https://www.axios.com/local/twin-cities/2024/03/14/uber-lyft...
These are straight up taxi companies, not ride sharing. Uber, and Lyft, keeps sticking to "ride sharing" sales pitch, while running money losing taxi services. If they truly where ride sharing services, then they wouldn't be having these legal issues.
taxi services in the US have yet to roll out any type of for hailing rides afaik and have a fleet of vehicles with their own livery.
Don't NYC taxis have one? I vaguely recall there being something when I visited several years ago.
[note, I had to guess to fill in the blank for your comment, since it seemed like you dropped a critical word].
If you mean Uber/Lyft, no, we do not call them cabs in NYC.
Ride share driver's aren't slaves. They chose to drive for ride share companies above the other options. If it was a bad deal then Uber and Lyft would be having trouble finding drivers. How is strictly fewer options a good thing?
This is exactly the kind of misguided take that leads people deprive people less privileged then themselves of employment opportunities. You wouldn't want to drive for Uber, it'd be a bad choose in your situation. And you're applying the same thinking to people who don't have the same employment prospects.
What will Uber and Lyft drivers do now that price controls have made ride sharing too expensive for most of the market? Work at fast food joints? In retail? All of those choice were present when drivers chose to drive for ride share companies, and the drivers concluded they were inferior to working for Uber and Lyft. Now, were forcing them to go to one of those inferior choices and patting ourselves on the back for doing a supposedly good thing.
I'm afraid most humans are not "choosing", at least not in the way many people on hackernews get to choose between various extremely-cushy white collars job.
Work = Survival We'll "choose" the best option available to use, and as the overall temperature of the market changes, so do our "choices"..
Not challenging you, but do you have evidence?
I remember in California drivers being famously against reform.
[1] https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/05/25/walz-vetoes-bill-ad...
Again, legislators don't care if it's popular among the impacted party. They just care if it's popular among voters. Which are overwhelmingly not Uber and Lyft drivers.
I feel comfortable that this legislation is unpopular among Uber and Lyft drivers because they chose on their own accord to drive for these apps, and now they are deprived of that choice.
Check out what drivers are saying on the Minneapolis and Minnesota subreddits: https://www.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/1bfjyej/lyft_a...
I'm not 100% certain, but I think this is a workaround for Uber/Lyft's workaround that lets them violate employment laws, namely, that they claim their employees are contractors, not employees. Since the contractor agreement specifies payment per mile, that's what the council's ordinance applies to. If Uber/Lyft were honest about their employees being employees, then they would have the minimum wage law applied, like any other business.
Like it or not, Uber and Lyft drivers are indeed contractors. They set their own hours, and are free to work for competing ride share apps. There's nothing dishonest about this, people are just salty that the "Ride share driver are actually employees" meme is not true.
And slaves aren't slaves either, they chose to remain slaves above other options (rebel and be beaten or killed). If it was a bad deal, the slaveholders would be having trouble getting their slaves to work, and would just be killing or beating them all the time.
I find type of argument irksome. It basically ignores whatever the actual situation is with a blind assumption whatever the market does is the best (or at least better) thing and is therefore fine.
If you give a person terrible choices, and they pick the best of a bad lot, that choice doesn't excuse the situation. All Minneapolis did was mandate one those choices had to be better. The rest is up to Uber and Lyft, who chose to play hardball to keep exploiting their workers to the degree they've become accustomed.
> How is strictly fewer options a good thing?
Exploitative options aren't a acceptable.
Coercion is when you cannot reasonably refuse. If one faces torture and execution for refusal, then they cannot reasonably refuse.
Will Uber and Lyft tie up drivers and whip them if they choose to take a job at Starbucks? Whill Uber and Lyft kill drivers? Come on, you call my argument irksome then you compare these drivers to actual chattel slavery.
What's so clever about it is the threat is indirect and systemic (instead of direct and personal), which is all some people seem to need to deny it's there.
It also brings to mind the ancient Roman fire brigades, which were more of an extortion racket than anything else.
I didn't say it wasn't. But don't you realize the different social dynamic here from being a hunter gatherer? Uber and Lyft were exploiting that for their own gain, and ran away from the corrective action because they think they have the power to bully it away to maintain their gain at the level of which they've become accustomed.
> At this point, the definition of coercion has been expanded such that humanity's very existence is inherently coercive.
Only if you miss the point.
Whatever your response is, they had the opportunity to work that job before and made the deliberate decision to drive for Uber and Lyft instead. My point, that you're missing, is that there was no coercion in this decision between driving for ride share versus the alternative. And you're somehow trying to argue that depriving these drivers of the choice to work for Uber and Lyft and forcing them into the alternative that they previously judged an inferior opportunity is somehow a good thing.
Your point about people working to avoid starvation applies just as much to whatever job these ex-drivers are going to be working instead. These drivers judged that these jobs were worse than driving for ride share, but apparently you think you know better than them despite having zero knowledge about their priorities and life situation.
You edited your comment after my response:
> Uber and Lyft were exploiting that for their own gain, and ran away from the corrective action because they think they have the power to bully it away to maintain their gain at the level of which they've become accustomed.
How were Uber and Lyft bullying drivers? Again, you seem to be claiming that drivers were somehow coerced into driving for ride share apps instead of seeking alternative employment. But you've yet to explain how this bullying was perpetrated. What was Lyft and Uber doing to keep drivers from working at Starbucks or some other job?
The problem is (it appears) you're looking at this solely from the framework of free market dogma. The operation of market is assumed to be optimal, the Uber drivers had a nominal choice when they took a job with Uber, and that nominal choice cures any issue anyone could have with the terms of their employment, etc.
While seductive, that framework is oversimple, and misses much.
> My point, that you're missing, is that there was no coercion in this decision between driving for ride share versus the alternative.
I am not missing that point at all. In fact, I find that point exceedingly tiresome due to how often it's repeated. At it's core, it's an apologia for fully taking advantage of a man's desperation (which I reject), and then twists that into some kind of good deed, so someone can pat themselves on the back for it afterwards (which just adds insult to injury).
> How were Uber and Lyft bullying drivers?
What I was referring to is their attempt to bully the Minneapolis city government and other governments that may take action to give drivers a better deal.
> The operation of market is assumed to be optimal, the Uber drivers had a nominal choice when they took a job with Uber, and that nominal choice cures any issue anyone could have with the terms of their employment, etc.
> While seductive, that framework is oversimple, and misses much.
Except... it does? You're insisting that this misses the point, but you don't actually explain what is misses.
Again, what will these drivers be doing to make ends meet when Uber and Lyft leave Minneapolis? Guess what, they already had that choice before and decided that ride share was better. Maybe it was the flexibility, maybe it was the independence, who knows. But they all made the decision that other available employment was worse than driving.
True, these drivers were working to put food on the table. But they're still going to be working to put food on the table in whatever job they do after ride share apps shut down in Minneapolis. It's no less "taking advantage of man's desperation".
They're weaseling around minimum wage laws. In Minneapolis, the minimum wage is $15.57/hr (and tips don't count towards it, https://minimumwage.minneapolismn.gov/). Uber and Lyft are mad Minneapolis is going to make them pay drivers something close to that.
https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-uber-and-lyft-drivers-...:
> Uber and Lyft drivers in Minneapolis and St. Paul and greater Minnesota often are paid well below the equivalent of the minimum wage after expenses are deducted, a state-commissioned study has found.
> ...
> It largely validated the narrative of many drivers, who are considered independent contractors: After taking into account wear and tear on their cars, time spent driving to and from rides, and the cost of gas and other expenses, drivers across the state earn well below the minimum wage they would likely receive if they were employees, not including tips.
> However, before expenses, drivers are paid well above the minimum wage while working.
https://www.startribune.com/uber-lyft-msp-minneapolis-airpor...:
> Minnesota Uber, Lyft drivers say it's getting harder and harder to make a living...
> "It's not fair. What Uber pays us just covers our expenses but no profit at all," said Egal, who used to be a taxi cab driver for 15 years before Uber and Lyft disrupted the marketplace and his business.
> Again, what will these drivers be doing to make ends meet when Uber and Lyft leave Minneapolis? Guess what, they already had that choice before and decided that ride share was better. Maybe it was the flexibility, maybe it was the independence, who knows. But they all made the decision that other available employment was worse than driving.
It's a market right? It will adjust to find a new, better equilibrium.
A big assumption you seem to have is that these Uber/Lyft drivers are perfect examples of homo economicus, making fully informed rational decisions about all this, so think you can infer the choice is a good one for them because they made it. However that doesn't seem to be true. If those companies offer a misleading value proposition, they can sustain themselves for some time by with a revolving door of naive and ignorant people who don't understand the misleading economics of the exchange. The competition from that flow of ignorant people (especially if they're more casual) helps keep overall wages low.
I wouldn't be surprised of Uber and Lyft have implemented some gambling dynamics for their drivers. It would make sense to offer drivers occasional jackpot days to keep them hooked, while the house wins big as always.
Homo economicus is an oversimple fiction; Homo sapiens is real. Understanding the difference goes a long way towards grasping the problems with free market dogma (but certainly not the whole way).
Aren’t you a bit presumptuous? Do you consider yourself as knowing better than them what is best for them? Do you think that you know how to run their life better? Why?
Do you think there are people out there knowing how to run your life better than you? Would you like if they came and took control over your life?
When the options are narrowed into precarious work such as most (or even all) of the "gig economy" bullshit, have more options of precarious work is not good overall for a society. It erodes the standard employment relationship, it's cheaper for employers so companies not relying on precarious work are in disadvantage which pushes more people into precarious work, creating a death spiral to proper secure employment in more sectors of society over time.
But they can be some desperate people, who are willing to put up with inhumane working conditions just to survive. We, as a developed society, should have a floor on the working conditions. Otherwise, businesses will take advantage of the weakest members of the society to bring back practices like 9-9-6, peeing in the bottle at the warehouses, child labor and what not.
Regulations are the best defense against a race to the bottom.
A lot of immigrants will have drivers/maids/cooks in their country of origin, and then come to the US and have to do their own laundry/cooking/driving/etc.
I can compete with a taxi driver based on my existing skill set. I cannot with a lawyer or coder. This is basic supply and demand.
i.e.: once self-driving vehicles come onto the scene (as in ubiquitous) there won't be a labor force to worry about.
Couple this with a publicly traded company such as Uber/Lyft whose whole existence depends on market value (the stock price) then the management of those companies are going to do the math to figure out if automating jobs is the right thing to do: their job is to maximize the value of the company (the stock price). The shareholders also have a vested interest for the same reasons.
As for self-driving, I'd be a little concerned that a ~$8/hour cost (assuming previous was around $7) puts Uber in an untenable situation, self-driving cars or not. Ultimately there still would be labor force to worry about, no? Currently, drivers are responsible for maintenance, cleanliness, etc. -- once you switch to self-driving, someone else has to do all of that.
The business will do the math to figure out what they can get away with. Honestly there probably is a little political posturing here as OP said, but if they return it's because they made the math work, otherwise they'll stay gone.
What am I missing here?
The problem here, as I see it, is that the model changed from being highly accurate (payment per mile, which can happen in a minute) to something more broad (payment per 15 minutes according to FLSA rules as I understand them).
FWIW I think this is posturing on Uber/Lyft's behalf, but is almost certainly a sign of future actions if they cannot make the number work.
Now they will get replaced by more traditionally run taxi companies that managers their drivers tighter.
Edit: Or no, the law explicitly said how much ride shares should pay per mile and per minute riding. So scratch that, not sure why they pulled out here.
This is a myth.
The market isn’t worth supporting at those rates.
It "not being worth supporting" has everything to do with signalling to other municipalities not to regulate (which I think makes much more sense for Uber to do than Lyft)
I can. They have to pay for when the drivers are earning revenue as well as not. At the same time, support the local infrastructure running a ride-hailing service requires (e.g. government relations, customer service, et cetera).
Minneapolis and St. Paul are not super wealthy cities.
Where are you getting this from?
"The ordinance requires rideshare companies to pay drivers a wage of at least $1.40 per mile, and 51-cents per minute on rides to, from, and through city limits."
I see nothing about paying them when they aren't earning.
I'm starting to think that ride sharing is just an area where you can have a profitable, sustainable company (taxis) but not the sustained, exponential growth a company like Uber is pitching. If Uber was happy to settle for paying drivers decent (but low) wages and operate at a sustainable level they would probably be fine, but that's a death sentence for a publicly traded company in their position.
I think it's proof that taxis weren't "an entrenched monopoly," or at least weren't as bad as the Uber's propaganda made them out to be.
If Uber's big innovation was just "pay workers less," and their competitive advantage evaporates once regulation catches up to them, it's just proof of how misleading SV smoke-and-mirrors can be.
I can tell you that I'm about as excited about the next "innovative" consumer-oriented startup as I am the next Google chat app.
San Francisco is richer. That lets it support higher prices.
Some more discussion last week when this was news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39711041
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39718043
Sure, a Taxi company operating in Minneapolis could be California owned and the profits would get funneled back to California too.
What would be better is if locally owned Taxi companies created their own ride sharing apps. Or even better, if the drivers themselves were able to create some kind of co-op company that managed the ride sharing application for them.