This article says differently:

Do you feel the same about the 14 year old kids who can't work in sweatshops in this country? Stupid laws are standing in between them and their potential income!

if what itshot's spewing were true(of course it isnt) and uber/lyft were "just connecting drivers to passengers" then uber wouldn't be controlling the price of the rides, the make and models of the cars allowed, the minimum number of rides you need to do before getting the payout, nor other controlling factors that clearly legally make them an employer and not a company employing independent contractors..


another market that i dont understand how they get away with what they do is strip clubs. they are also CLEARLY employers/employees but still get to **** over their workers as if they were independent contractors..

Between 8.55 and 11 depending whose estimates you use. It's a part time for most people, as 75-80% do it for additional income.

You all can ***** about uber and lyft exploiting people....that's great and all, but these folk will not have the opportunity to earn those benefits you want for them. It's simply not feasible. The Democrats have substantially increased the cost to provide service to the point it not longer justifies operating the business. So keep bitching about how bad Uber and Lyft are....

It is amusing because there is no evidence ride sharing is a viable business at the price it would be necessary to be profitable even if the extreme exploitation of labor was allowed to continue.

It is certainly not viable if they pay their employees and charge enough to be profitable. The pricing elasticity simply does not exist in the marketplace.

The states, like California, are definitely doing investors in these monetary sink holes a favor by impeding their bonfire of cash burning.

I don’t even know how these businesses got off the ground to be honest but they did con a lot of allegedly sophisticated investors into buying in. I don’t know how any of these meetings got past the most rudimentary discussion of projected financials.

Uber Pitch
1. Make App
2. Find Driver
3. ?
4. Profit

Is essentially what they were pushing on their roadshows. Obviously that is a bit facetious but they did have to hinge the entire marketplace on extreme labor exploitation AND the ability to eventually increase pricing by thousands of percent. Not a really compelling business pitch.

“So your long term plan is to charge customers $50 to go 1/4 in a Honda Accord while paying the driver $1.83 less fees?”

There is a reason why they were racing to self driving cars. They knew they couldn’t exploit their “employees” to such an extreme forever and even if they could they still couldn’t make money.

There is no evidence they could be profitable if they automagically had self driving fleets tomorrow. Plus self driving cars are not coming into common usage anytime soon.

There is certainly a demand for AFFORDABLE ride share. And for now that affordability is subsidized by the companies and their exploited employees. That is not viable much longer.

They haven't been profitable even with the exploitation, so I'm not sure why this is supposed to concern me. The model of both companies is:

1. Light a bunch of money on fire generating low cost rides for people.
2. ?????
3. MONOPOLY POWER
4. JACK UP PRICES

There's no path to said monopoly power, and if they can jack up prices in the future so as to be profitable, they can also jack up prices now.

I don't care how much money Uber and Lyft burn, that is their prerogative, my issue is, there are thousands of people who were generating income from this folly, to which the Democrats just shat all over to where they no longer can earn this income.

Hint: the Market controls prices (demand), not Uber/Lyft. It's not a monopoly. If prices rise, less people are going to use the service (also, think of all the low income folks who now have to pay $20 to cabby instead of $7 to an uber driver). ****ing Progressive at the their best, make poor people pay more for transportation so part time drivers can get treated as an employee, as opposed to a contractor.

IHIV,

You really think Uber and Lyft are benevolently providing for all these poor drivers out of the goodness of their hearts.

We haven’t even gotten into the problems with these drivers using their own vehicles and over the long term some drivers will actually be paid negative for giving rides.

“Yes um sir! I like driving for you for -$10 a day. Thank you for the job!”

lul

LOL, no it doesn't. Algorithms written by Uber and Lyft control prices. You haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about.

Amazing.

It is very obvious you are seriously concerned about their well being.

Those of us demanding a living wage, benefits and proper compensation for the use of the vehicles are really the ones screwing them over.

I hope nobody tears down the statue they build of you one day!

Almost all routes are being sold below cost. If the market is determining that it’s time to shut the doors.

That's bullshit, I've posted several estimates where the cost is factored, and it includes expenses.

It's a ****ING PART TIME JOB for an overwhelming majority of people. It's EXTRA income.

....

Surge Price : This is an additional multiplier that is added when there is a lot of strain in the system, basically a supply and demand function. So if you are in a surge area, your overall fee can multiply by up to x3.

Maybe we shouldnt tie health insurance benefits to employment...

The cost of what is factored?

It's also amazing that IHIV pretends like he just super cares about the well-being of these workers, yet if investors forced Uber to fire (sorry, "end consulting relationships with") tons of drivers tomorrow to become profitable he wouldn't give two shits. Would not care in the slightest. That's capitalism at work, and capitalism is good.

Literally the only reason he cares here is because he sees this as something he can blame on Democrats. At least he's honest about that part, seeing as he yells at them for being terrible in every other post here while having never written a post in his life expressing regret at workers fired for other reasons.

That step doesn’t matter to people investing well before IPO. Growing user base and rapidly increasing revenue is enough to turn an early 1 million dollar investment into 20 mil+. Everybody is aware it might not ever be profitable.

So? Do you think part time workers should have to be extremely exploited?

Do you think if drivers were properly compensated we might see more full time workers? You seem to think exploiting desperate people is ok because you are giving them “something”.

****ing amazing projection. There is no correlation to how many drivers Uber has and it's bottom line. Under its business model, the only time it would be an issue is if they had too few drivers. Consequently, if these companies were to have to treat these people as employees, you'd have less drivers.

You know "surge pricing" didn't always exist, right? Like, this was a feature Uber added to their system (because, again, literally the whole "market" is algorithms they wrote that determine price, drivers cannot set prices).

Is this evidence that Uber was not a marketplace pre-surge pricing? If you think the answer is "no", then obviously there's no reason its addition should bolster the argument that Uber is now a marketplace.