So what does the study tell us about the ride-hailing business model? “It tells us that it’s a shitty place to work,” says Mark Tluszcz, co-founder and CEO of Mangrove Capital Partners who has described the gig economy model as the modern day sweatshop, and says his VC firm made a conscious decision not to invest in gig economy companies because the model is exploitative.
“It tells you that it’s a great place if you’re a company. It’s really a poor place to be an employee or be a worker.”
The exploitative asymmetry of ride-hailing platforms comes because workers have a certain amount of fixed costs but the platform intermediary can just hike its commission at will and lower the service cost to the end user whenever it wants to increase competitiveness vs a rival business.
“At the end of the day there are a certain amount of fixed costs [for drivers],” says Tluszcz. “You have to buy a car, you have to get insurance, you have to pay for gas… And if you as an intermediary, which those platforms are, are taking an increasing amount of commission — 10%, 15%, now 20 in most of their markets — and then you’re using the price of the trip as a way of beating your competitor… then you as a driver are sitting there with basically all of your fixed costs and your income is going down and frankly the only way to cover your costs is to spend more hours in the car.
“Which is frankly what’s clearly illustrated by this study. These people have to spend so much time to cover their costs when you break it down to an hourly revenue, it’s a pitiful amount. And by the way you have no social coverage because you’ve got to take care of that yourself.”
Leftists love uber too. Let that sink in. They love a company that pays less than minimum wage.
Ryder James
How easy is it for illegal immigrants to drive for Uber or Lyft? I have felt from the start that the company was using technology to obscure low wages, but maybe some of the drivers have shady things going on themselves. At the very least 95% of the drivers I have had have been non-white so they are almost entirely exploiting non-whites. Sort of a mixed bag here.
Lucas Garcia
90% of uber drivers are Muslim I couldn't care less if they starved
Jaxon Sanchez
bump
Nolan Martin
Big surprise that the lower taxi fair only cuts the driver...
Adrian Murphy
Old news
Alexander Diaz
Pretty sure this is a new study actually.
Nicholas Watson
I know people who are old with medical problems who use it as a source of income because they can't get other jobs but can drive Not sure about migrants doing it, but probably, pretty sure all you need is a driver's lisence
Luke Foster
My point is if it is serving a community of people who shouldn't be working in the first place, it is better than nothing, similar to places that pay below minimum wage for housekeeping or construction or other work to illegal immigrants, under the table, in cash. That said, this is clearly a scam, but I would like to hear the an-cap perspective on modern sweat shops that are entirely voluntary.
Christopher Fisher
Most Uber & Lyft drivers are part time. There's even a minority that do this for recreation.
Noah Morales
And it is ok to pay part-time workers less than minimum wage? People work for fun so then it is ok? These are shitty arguments, friend. Uber is getting away with violating employment law.
Christopher Allen
bump
Easton Lopez
I tell you how it works in UK. The Uber Driver is a paki (or other muslim), living off state welfare, drives a minicab as a 1/4 or half time "job", only to kill boredom. He could do it for free, as a jihad agains infidels looking for honest job.
Parker Adams
Didn't leftists themselves hate cabbies so much that they pushed heavily on uber. Anyway no one is forcing them to be an uber driver, people just want to add few extra bucks. If all those uber drivers are unhappy about it why don't they charge what is the equivalent of hourly minimum wage. Plus the study takes into consideration the price of cars and insurance (that a person has to own himself). The thing is if the uber drivers were got paid minimum wage or more, wouldn't that make cabs and shit cheaper? I don't really understand your argument here.
Josiah Martinez
>chronic failures that self employ and set their own hours end up failing oh no! ermergerd! what are we going to do?!
William Hall
The argument I heard was that taxis wouldn't stop for Blacks whereas with Uber you get locked out of the app for mysterious periods of time if you refuse too many customers so it is appreciated as a more racially inclusive taxi service. Ironic that Blacks were complaining Uber wouldn't serve them when very few taxi drivers here were white to begin with so clearly the issue was Blacks behaving badly, not segregationist drivers.
A lot of sweatshop labor is technically voluntaristic in nature, the issue is do people have the right to a minimum financial expectation for a given period of work. In the United States, this issue is long since settled, legally speaking, and Uber is clearly flouting the law.
>if the uber drivers were got paid minimum wage or more, wouldn't that make cabs and shit cheaper
no it would still be cheaper than taxis, just not as much. Now I can pay 3-5 dollars and get an "express pool" ride to most places in my city, and the driver supposedly profits from being able to ferry multiple passengers at once (can't do that legally in a traditional cab, only one fare at a time), but the drivers clearly are making very little money off this.
Juan Ramirez
bump
Jose Miller
Seems like you're trying to keep your thread alive in vain, clearly no one cares about the jews behind uber taking money from uber drivers and them not getting paid the equivalent of the minimum wage.
Mason Powell
They fired the Jew in charge. It is run (officially at least) by some token brown person now I think.
Matthew Roberts
bump2
Grayson Stewart
people who lose money doing this don't write literally every single expense even remotely related to your car off on the taxes. You get it all back end of year.
t. lyft driver.
Daniel James
uber pool is bull shit and I avoid areas that use it.
Joseph Peterson
also I don't drive for uber because they are chink tier payment level. and customers can just say I never took them and they deduct that ride fair after I've been paid with out ever asking me shit about what happened.
Angel Lewis
>Mark Tluszcz >Tluszcz Tłuszcz literally means fat. Nigga.
Sebastian Bennett
now we have express pool.
assigns a pickup and drop-off location that may be a 1-2 block walk for the rider but charges about 30-40% less than regular pool.
