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Comment by lightcatcher | Hacker News Reader

I give about 30% of my Lyft drivers a tip, and I'm glad Lyft includes the option in their app. I've occasionally wanted to tip an Uber driver but then not had cash on me.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect ride share companies to pay their drivers a fair wage when they are in fierce competition with each other and self-driving cars are on the horizon.

I agree "mandatory" tipping like in US restaurants isn't a great system. I don't think including tipping in an app with a default of $0 makes it close to mandatory. Lyft could give stats on what fractions of rides have a tip given; my bet is it that it's relatively low. Making optional tipping easier is a good thing.

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> I don't think it's reasonable to expect ride share companies to pay their drivers a fair wage

It's always reasonable to expect companies to pay their people a fair wage.

I always liked the quote, “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”

Nice quote, thanks!

"In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living."

Franklin Roosevelt's Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act (16 June 1933)

[0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt

You can "expect" this all day but as long as you keep throwing your dollars to companies that try to pay their workers as little as possible (like Uber) they will continue to squeeze them as much as they can.

So if you were running Uber, would you increase your prices to pay a more fair wage even if it makes you more expensive than competitors? Would you expect to stay in business if you offered a commodity like transport at 20% higher prices than competitors?

Is it a particularly ethical standpoint to say "I don't pay my driver's a fair wage, but if I did then I wouldn't make money!"?

I would rather have companies be forced to pay a reasonable minimum wage and compete by improving the service or efficiency, not just pushing the employees to work for less and less.

> Is it a particularly ethical standpoint to say "I don't pay my driver's a fair wage, but if I did then I wouldn't make money!"?

Not very ethical, but rational, profitable, and prevalent. Cost is a large area to compete in, and people are expensive.

It would be nice if companies acted ethically, but that isn't their reason for existence (especially in fast growing or large companies). If it's not surprising to me when companies act unethically, can I honestly say that I expect them to act ethically? Not if expect means "assign high probability to".

I agree that regulation is needed. It seems that often basic economics (people want to move around as cheaply as possible) lead to unethical situations (paying people as little as possible to move people around). I'm far from an expert of economics, but it seems like regulation is a way to change the rules of the game to have more ethical/fair/uniformly distributed equilibriums at some cost in net efficiency.

I think this comes back to the original statement of "It's always reasonable to expect companies to pay their people a fair wage."

This is a bit ambiguous, and perhaps it's a different reading of it that's the contention.

Expect can either mean I think it's likely, as in I expect the sun to rise tomorrow, or a requirement.

I am not surprised that uber try and pay their drivers so little, but I am disappointed and want better from them.

> I'm far from an expert of economics, but it seems like regulation is a way to change the rules of the game to have more ethical/fair/uniformly distributed equilibriums at some cost in net efficiency.

I agree. Safety regulations are a good example of this.

Contractors, not employees.

I assume these drivers are all cutting checks to the IRS?

In the UK at least they're workers (based on the outcome of a fairly recent ruling), despite Uber trying to say they're all self-employed.

If it weren't for the contractor lawsuit, I think Uber should have kept it's anti-tipping policy.

The 'Premium' image was black cars, inspected cars, and no need to tip.

In the UK taxi tipping is often just rounding up, so an 8 or 9 pound fare is £10. The driver won't be upset about giving change, but £1 times 10 5 days a week adds up. (disclaimer: my prices are based on 10+ years ago and always paying cash).

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