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How Uber Profits Even When Its Drivers Aren't Earning Money (vice.com)
tedlistens writes: Jay Cassano spoke to Uber drivers about "dead miles" and what work means when your boss is an algorithm, and considers a new frontier of labor concerns and big data. "Uber is the closest thing to an employer we've ever seen in this industry," Bhairavi Desai, founder of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, told him. "They not only direct every aspect of a driver's workday, they also profit off the entire day through data collection, not just the 'sale of a product.'"
The taxi industry in South Florida has (or had) the municipal government in it's back pocket. They tried to shut down Uber, etc, until it became clear that everyone knew that the commission was being bribed, and that federal investigations were incoming unless they started representing the will of the people and not the will of Yellow Cab (Jessie Gaddis, here).
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
..but they're exactly a product of our current political and economic environment.
Uber drivers will get paid for that which they have the economic power to extract payment for and not anything else.
Is that unfair? Yes. Everything TFA suggests about how Uber is screwing drivers is true. It's also irrelevant. Uber is scum. The idea that they aren't employing people is among the most evil types of legal fictions aimed at perpetuating and protecting a corrupt and exploitive economic relationship under color of law.
The solution isn't to make Uber marginally less evil toward its employees.
The solution is to pull up a terminal and type sudo ECONOMY=$ECONOMY/socialism
Depending on your distro you may need to use $ECONOMY/democratic_socialsm. Make sure you don't under any circumstances add "comunism" to your ECONOMY vars. If you do that you'll have to rm -rf on your whole society.
Also I love TFA was all about how companies exploit freelancers in the gig economy. Check the byline. Sure enough, it's by a freelance journalist. It's not like VICE media is a small struggling company anymore. They're worth more than several mainstream media companies I've worked for.
Me too, I don't see why taxis are so slandered/libeled by Uber!