So they dont take money from Uber in exchange for providing services as dictated by Uber?
The money comes from the customers they serve, not Uber.
However this is a good demonstration why Uber is a self correcting problem and why you shouldn't get attached to them. Uber is losing money hand over fist WHILST they have lower costs because they're ignoring the rules that other transport providers have to follow. In order for Uber to make money they have to give the employees a smaller cut. As they have to be cheaper than legitimate, insured taxi companies this means that the amount drivers get is already small and making it smaller means that only the most desperate will be willing to work for Uber (and don't even contemplate how badly the vehicle is repaired because that comes out of the drivers diminishing cut).
You rationalize however you want. Even if Uber is as incompetently run as you hope, it's still the end of most taxi oligopolies. Not everyone protects their taxi special interests as well as say, London does.
Reminds me of the cultists who think you'll behave like a brute animal just because you don't fully buy into their flavor of religion.
Your "it's OK to exploit people who can't find easy alternatives" may be what you see as "the American way" but only from the most amoral of the bunch in "Deadwood".
Here's another case where so-called morality is immoral. The exploitation is better than the lack of exploitation, but we're getting a proof by TV show as a justification for the suffering that people face in disaster areas for not having the things they need.
No, it is not a GOOD THING. If I'm somewhere and need to be somewhere else I don't need it want my wallet emptied by the likes of Uber. Most people don't. That is why and how we have regulations.
Then don't use them, though I gather in that case, you didn't really need to be somewhere else.
The instant Uber and it's ilk become more than an annoyance and become something people actually need they will be regulated and they will not be able to ignore the law like they do now.
That "instant" happened years ago. And it's funny how people complain about corruption from corporations and such, but when that corporate corruption involves taxis, magically, it's ok.
Introducing economic inefficiencies also creates pollution. And if all you do is buy local, then how are you ever going to taste the variety of foods world-wide?
A Taxi company needs to set their rates such that they can repair damaged vehicles and purchase new vehicles when the old ones are beyond repair. Uber doesn't need to care about either of those things when setting their rates, because that responsibility falls to the driver. And the driver is probably using Uber as a secondary source of income, using a car that they already bought and are maintaining based upon the earnings of their primary source of income. So Uber is effectively exploiting a.. loophole I guess?..in the system, pushing certain overhead costs onto the drivers, letting Uber undercut taxis.
Sounds fine to me because it is not just Uber, but the driver and passenger who are exploiting that "loophole". And if the driver wants to do something below cost, then who am I to care?
This sort of post is a strong reason I don't support fairness in life. A uniform price no matter the supply or demand is not fair to anyone. For if there's low demand for the supply of taxis, then you're overpaying. If the situation is reversed, then you have a few overworked tax drivers getting underpaid for providing a crucial service during high demand while the would be customers have to wait for a ride. And the people who really need a ride have to wait equally along with the frivolous uses, which could have waited a few hours for a lower demand time.
And access should not be on a market bidding system, it should be exclusively on a first click first served basis.
You pay with wait time rather than money. It costs more for everyone when that happens. Market bidding is superior to such a system.
As a worker, I have exactly one power at my disposal to try to enact change.
Which is another indication that these drivers are not workers for Uber. They can seamlessly use rival businesses (guess Lyft is the primary competitor). That's even more effective than not working.
Then they aren't Uber drivers. And as has been noted before, they aren't really employees of Uber in the first place.
Did you know that?
Nope, and I don't see a reason to care.
Rather than the nonsense of a "strike", the simple solution here is just not to use Uber's service - which would be a boycott. Uber does have competitors and a shift of business from Uber to these other competitors would hurt them. That's more effective than a strike.
Evidence is any data that distinguishes between the hypotheses you care about. Here, if the blogger hadn't changed her opinion, we would have clear indication disproving the assertion of being bought by the taxi companies. The abruptness of the change in opinion (and flimsiness of the resulting rationalizations) is what is drawing suspicion, I think.
Without concrete proof the claim is baseless.
You don't get concrete proof of this sort of thing, unless someone releases the payment receipts from some taxi company or associated marketing group. Reality happens whether you have concrete proof for it or not. That doesn't mean you should pretend such things can't happen.
We don't have to ignore possible problems just because we can't find enough proof to convict someone in a court of law.
This isn't most people's issue with these services - it's their treatment of their drivers.
I don't buy that in the least. The taxi cartels are what's driving the criticism. It'd be a whole lot less visible to the public otherwise. And let's face it. If there were sensible taxi markets in the first place, Uber wouldn't have the revenue stream to become such an alleged problem in the first place.
Innovation is great, exploitation, not so much.
It's a great talking point, but it's bullshit. The reason any workers are valuable in the first place is their exploitability. And if you don't like Uber's treatment of their drivers, then don't be an Uber driver.
More like they totally ignore the mechanisms of rule of law. Curious that libertards are so quick to jump in to defend those who seek to abolish the whole contract business system.
Sounds to me like you don't understand the situation. Uber/Lyft/etc are lightweight contract business systems. That's not the same as no contract business system. It's something like the stateless HTML queries (which to use the same analogy are not the same as no query). Not everything magically fits to that model. But a one-time ride from point A to point B sure does.
Freemarket libtards are just as pie in the sky as Marxist commies.
Except apparently, we're advocating selling something that people actually want. Notice that services like Uber would have zero traction, if they didn't fill a huge need which wasn't being satisfied by taxis.
As to the rule of law, it can be changed. Though it's worth noting here that a huge part of the problem is politicians willing to stretch the law to protect the taxi oligopolies which is itself a threat to rule of law.
A bunch of that money was fixed cost - though a good part of it was fixed cost per year. If you do the flights frequently enough, you'll see lower cost per flight.
A better solution is to never let you fly. Then we never have to worry about your plane being taken down by a drone, registered or unregistered.
So long as we're getting to a point where someone's "drone" is enough of a hazard to the conduct of real air operations, it makes perfect sense to nip this problem in the bud.
I suppose you can't be bothered to show that this is a problem first?
If there's an unmarked drone flying around, filming people, and doing God-knows-what-else, I want do be able to file a complaint with the FAA about it.
And what are they going to do about it that they aren't doing now?
high energy prices are unlikely to be catastrophic in themselves, it's a local problem
Two things to note. First, high energy prices now heavily penalize the countries which are trying to comply with AGW mitigation. Second, globally high energy prices due to a global mitigation effort would by definition not be a local any more.
and it may be offset by increased economic output in the green energy sector or by improved quality of life
"May". In practice, it's not.
Personally, I'm just happy if the discussion is about our reaction to the carbon crisis instead of whether it's happening. I'm from Alaska, and I've literally seen my homeland melting; the change even in my lifetime has been dramatic. Nothing is going to bring back the glaciers that once were, but perhaps we can preserve the ones that remain for our grandchildren.
I'm happy with your grandchildren never seeing a glacier ever, if that means we avoid a huge die-off of humanity. Mitigating AGW doesn't address the real problems humanity faces such as overpopulation and poverty. In fact, some of the consequences like high energy prices and inhibiting economic activity and trade make these real problems worse.
If I had a dime for every idiot on Slashdot who says stuff like that, I'd be able to buy Dice at its current inflated price by now.
There were a few incidents
Ok, so there weren't many incidents. You lost your argument since you can't show a compelling reason for the new regulation.
It sucks that a few bad apples ruined what would have been an enjoyable hobby, but it has to be regulated.
It's already over-regulated. It's not a rational mind set to conclude something isn't regulated merely because you can put more regulation on the activity.
And the idea that we need to regulate things more because idiots is a train wreck in process. You will never ever run out of bad apples, real or imagined, and thus, the bureaucrats and tyrants will never ever run out of excuses to choke off more of our freedom.
If this happens, though, WiFi drones will just become more popular, because they'll be just one more WiFi signal. And then they will shit all over WiFi for everyone.
Why would WiFi drones become popular enough to matter? Just how many people are going to be evading the law by buying WiFi drones who won't be evading the law by not registering their drones?
India has done a comparable effort with a government that is notorious for its incompetence and corruption. Maybe the government shouldn't be getting all this credit for merely sufficiently standing out of the way?
Maybe you should show that an issue first? A big problem here (which I am contributing to BTW) is a reliance to some degree by everyone in the debate on argument from ignorance. This manifests in a variety of annoying and insidious ways. For example, I get lectured on the certainty of the CFC threat to the ozone layer.
You do know the science on anthropogenic ozone depletion is quite solid and not really controversial, right?
But after some questioning on the quality and extent of the data supporting the theory, the rhetoric has fallen to a cliched lecture on the scientific method and the philosophical weaknesses of empiricism:
NOTHING is ever 100-% certain. We can't PROVE that we're not living in a clever simulation and everything we think we know is just part of a game. You might wake up tomorrow in your bedroom on Talos IV wondering what caused such a goofy dream. I wouldn't count on that BTW.
Catastrophic stuff can happen, but it's a lousy decision making process to base your decisions on those possibilities without some idea of how likely they are to happen. For example, here why do we care more about "tipping points" than catastrophic economic failure from some of the proposed fixes (which among other things can result in higher population growth and abandonment of AGW mitigation measures)?
We have supporting evidence for that as well. For example, Germany and Denmark both have very high electricity prices due to their attempts to incentivize solar and wind energy production.
Slashdot Mirror
So they dont take money from Uber in exchange for providing services as dictated by Uber?
The money comes from the customers they serve, not Uber.
However this is a good demonstration why Uber is a self correcting problem and why you shouldn't get attached to them. Uber is losing money hand over fist WHILST they have lower costs because they're ignoring the rules that other transport providers have to follow. In order for Uber to make money they have to give the employees a smaller cut. As they have to be cheaper than legitimate, insured taxi companies this means that the amount drivers get is already small and making it smaller means that only the most desperate will be willing to work for Uber (and don't even contemplate how badly the vehicle is repaired because that comes out of the drivers diminishing cut).
You rationalize however you want. Even if Uber is as incompetently run as you hope, it's still the end of most taxi oligopolies. Not everyone protects their taxi special interests as well as say, London does.
Why stop at that?
Reminds me of the cultists who think you'll behave like a brute animal just because you don't fully buy into their flavor of religion.
Your "it's OK to exploit people who can't find easy alternatives" may be what you see as "the American way" but only from the most amoral of the bunch in "Deadwood".
Here's another case where so-called morality is immoral. The exploitation is better than the lack of exploitation, but we're getting a proof by TV show as a justification for the suffering that people face in disaster areas for not having the things they need.
The flipside would be not being able to get a taxi at noon due to a lack of profit in it.
Then the rider isn't offering a large enough fare. This is not a flipside.
No, it is not a GOOD THING. If I'm somewhere and need to be somewhere else I don't need it want my wallet emptied by the likes of Uber. Most people don't. That is why and how we have regulations.
Then don't use them, though I gather in that case, you didn't really need to be somewhere else.
The instant Uber and it's ilk become more than an annoyance and become something people actually need they will be regulated and they will not be able to ignore the law like they do now.
That "instant" happened years ago. And it's funny how people complain about corruption from corporations and such, but when that corporate corruption involves taxis, magically, it's ok.
As if there is no cost/benefit analysis...
Yes. As if there's no cost/benefit analysis.
What's supposed to be absurd about my observation?
Introducing economic inefficiencies also creates pollution. And if all you do is buy local, then how are you ever going to taste the variety of foods world-wide?
A Taxi company needs to set their rates such that they can repair damaged vehicles and purchase new vehicles when the old ones are beyond repair. Uber doesn't need to care about either of those things when setting their rates, because that responsibility falls to the driver. And the driver is probably using Uber as a secondary source of income, using a car that they already bought and are maintaining based upon the earnings of their primary source of income. So Uber is effectively exploiting a.. loophole I guess? ..in the system, pushing certain overhead costs onto the drivers, letting Uber undercut taxis.
Sounds fine to me because it is not just Uber, but the driver and passenger who are exploiting that "loophole". And if the driver wants to do something below cost, then who am I to care?
Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by self-interest.
And access should not be on a market bidding system, it should be exclusively on a first click first served basis.
You pay with wait time rather than money. It costs more for everyone when that happens. Market bidding is superior to such a system.
As a worker, I have exactly one power at my disposal to try to enact change.
Which is another indication that these drivers are not workers for Uber. They can seamlessly use rival businesses (guess Lyft is the primary competitor). That's even more effective than not working.
Surely you want to do both unit testing as well as integration systems testing in a realistic production environment.
In a software environment those tend to be cheap, especially when compared to the cost of not doing them.
Catering costs more than fuel.
True in this case. Propellant is a minor cost in such rocketry programs.
Uber drivers are on strike right NOW.
Then they aren't Uber drivers. And as has been noted before, they aren't really employees of Uber in the first place.
Did you know that?
Nope, and I don't see a reason to care.
Rather than the nonsense of a "strike", the simple solution here is just not to use Uber's service - which would be a boycott. Uber does have competitors and a shift of business from Uber to these other competitors would hurt them. That's more effective than a strike.
Without concrete proof the claim is baseless.
You don't get concrete proof of this sort of thing, unless someone releases the payment receipts from some taxi company or associated marketing group. Reality happens whether you have concrete proof for it or not. That doesn't mean you should pretend such things can't happen.
We don't have to ignore possible problems just because we can't find enough proof to convict someone in a court of law.
This isn't most people's issue with these services - it's their treatment of their drivers.
I don't buy that in the least. The taxi cartels are what's driving the criticism. It'd be a whole lot less visible to the public otherwise. And let's face it. If there were sensible taxi markets in the first place, Uber wouldn't have the revenue stream to become such an alleged problem in the first place.
Innovation is great, exploitation, not so much.
It's a great talking point, but it's bullshit. The reason any workers are valuable in the first place is their exploitability. And if you don't like Uber's treatment of their drivers, then don't be an Uber driver.
A peculiar change of opinion is possible evidence, though who would bother to bribe such a blogger?
More like they totally ignore the mechanisms of rule of law. Curious that libertards are so quick to jump in to defend those who seek to abolish the whole contract business system.
Sounds to me like you don't understand the situation. Uber/Lyft/etc are lightweight contract business systems. That's not the same as no contract business system. It's something like the stateless HTML queries (which to use the same analogy are not the same as no query). Not everything magically fits to that model. But a one-time ride from point A to point B sure does.
Freemarket libtards are just as pie in the sky as Marxist commies.
Except apparently, we're advocating selling something that people actually want. Notice that services like Uber would have zero traction, if they didn't fill a huge need which wasn't being satisfied by taxis.
As to the rule of law, it can be changed. Though it's worth noting here that a huge part of the problem is politicians willing to stretch the law to protect the taxi oligopolies which is itself a threat to rule of law.
A bunch of that money was fixed cost - though a good part of it was fixed cost per year. If you do the flights frequently enough, you'll see lower cost per flight.
So long as we're getting to a point where someone's "drone" is enough of a hazard to the conduct of real air operations, it makes perfect sense to nip this problem in the bud.
I suppose you can't be bothered to show that this is a problem first?
If there's an unmarked drone flying around, filming people, and doing God-knows-what-else, I want do be able to file a complaint with the FAA about it.
And what are they going to do about it that they aren't doing now?
high energy prices are unlikely to be catastrophic in themselves, it's a local problem
Two things to note. First, high energy prices now heavily penalize the countries which are trying to comply with AGW mitigation. Second, globally high energy prices due to a global mitigation effort would by definition not be a local any more.
and it may be offset by increased economic output in the green energy sector or by improved quality of life
"May". In practice, it's not.
Personally, I'm just happy if the discussion is about our reaction to the carbon crisis instead of whether it's happening. I'm from Alaska, and I've literally seen my homeland melting; the change even in my lifetime has been dramatic. Nothing is going to bring back the glaciers that once were, but perhaps we can preserve the ones that remain for our grandchildren.
I'm happy with your grandchildren never seeing a glacier ever, if that means we avoid a huge die-off of humanity. Mitigating AGW doesn't address the real problems humanity faces such as overpopulation and poverty. In fact, some of the consequences like high energy prices and inhibiting economic activity and trade make these real problems worse.
I'm going to be the rational minority
If I had a dime for every idiot on Slashdot who says stuff like that, I'd be able to buy Dice at its current inflated price by now.
There were a few incidents
Ok, so there weren't many incidents. You lost your argument since you can't show a compelling reason for the new regulation.
It sucks that a few bad apples ruined what would have been an enjoyable hobby, but it has to be regulated.
It's already over-regulated. It's not a rational mind set to conclude something isn't regulated merely because you can put more regulation on the activity.
And the idea that we need to regulate things more because idiots is a train wreck in process. You will never ever run out of bad apples, real or imagined, and thus, the bureaucrats and tyrants will never ever run out of excuses to choke off more of our freedom.
If this happens, though, WiFi drones will just become more popular, because they'll be just one more WiFi signal. And then they will shit all over WiFi for everyone.
Why would WiFi drones become popular enough to matter? Just how many people are going to be evading the law by buying WiFi drones who won't be evading the law by not registering their drones?
India has done a comparable effort with a government that is notorious for its incompetence and corruption. Maybe the government shouldn't be getting all this credit for merely sufficiently standing out of the way?
You do know the science on anthropogenic ozone depletion is quite solid and not really controversial, right?
But after some questioning on the quality and extent of the data supporting the theory, the rhetoric has fallen to a cliched lecture on the scientific method and the philosophical weaknesses of empiricism:
NOTHING is ever 100-% certain. We can't PROVE that we're not living in a clever simulation and everything we think we know is just part of a game. You might wake up tomorrow in your bedroom on Talos IV wondering what caused such a goofy dream. I wouldn't count on that BTW.
Catastrophic stuff can happen, but it's a lousy decision making process to base your decisions on those possibilities without some idea of how likely they are to happen. For example, here why do we care more about "tipping points" than catastrophic economic failure from some of the proposed fixes (which among other things can result in higher population growth and abandonment of AGW mitigation measures)?
We have supporting evidence for that as well. For example, Germany and Denmark both have very high electricity prices due to their attempts to incentivize solar and wind energy production.