I don't really understand this argument. Uber didn't create the conditions causing these people not to be able to find better jobs. If Uber stopped "preying on" these people, would they be better off? It seems like they'd just be unemployed.
Uber pays people who otherwise might not have a job at all. That doesn't mean paying them incredibly low wages is something that should be free of criticism.
If Uber were kidnapping people and forcing them to become drivers at gunpoint, you might have a point.
Slave by its very definition implies lack of choice by the other person.
> Uber pays people who otherwise might not have a job at all. That doesn't mean paying them incredibly low wages is something that should be free of criticism.
Yes, actually, it does mean that. That's the nature of choice.
If someone is offering you something you otherwise would not have, you don't get the right to complain that they are not giving you more.
There are a lot of moving pieces. The abolishment of slavery didn't end slavery and it's conditions. It changed the name and the rules. Many slaves became trapped in indentured servitude without enough pay to cover the cost of housing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude Eventually this became illegal as well, another tactic was paying employees through company credits to buy goods at the company store. Eventually this too became illegal. During all of this Jim Crow laws were made to prevent further integration, schooling, and the advancement to higher paying jobs. The origin of the phrase grandfather clause came about as a way to prevent voting for representatives who could represent them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause
This hasn't ended either, we now deal with gerrymandering.
I don't believe the ability choose a log of last resort means that job can be free of criticism. Yes it provides a vital service: given that service is insufficient to meet basic needs, improvements are needed. That may mean better services to provide jobs or providing a minimum pay with which basic needs can be guaranteed.
Sure, and why is it Uber's responsibility to make those improvements?
What is even the purpose of a company? Make unicorn valuation through low wages, write a couple blog posts, then dip?
Yeah, that sums it up. Companies have a responsibility to keep the agreements they make, and to not harm anyone. They don't have a positive responsibility to improve people's lives -- they're not charities.
> What is even the purpose of a company?
To make some people better off than they were before, by way of voluntary exchange, without hurting anyone.
If they're not doing that, if they're actually making people worse off than they would be otherwise, then that should of course be stopped.
A raise is a negotiation. You ask for a raise, they say yes or no. If they say no, you go find another job that pays what you want, and you take that one instead. Which is why, when you have that option, they may say yes to begin with.
> That may mean better services to provide jobs or providing a minimum pay with which basic needs can be guaranteed.
Expecting this to be provided by the employer of last resort is ridiculously inefficient.
The underlying problem is that the cost of living is more than the value of the labor of some people. The two main solutions that are to reduce the cost of living (e.g. housing costs), or to give up and subsidize their compensation somehow as a humanitarian gesture. The first is vastly preferable, but even when you resign yourself to the second, you want something like a UBI rather than price controls because it spreads the burden more evenly across everyone rather than imposing it only on the companies who employ the people at the bottom.
Price controls, by contrast, create a bunch of weird cliffs and perverse incentives. They cause reductions in hours or unemployment, and they're arbitrary lines. So if you raise the minimum to $10 then you do nothing for someone who is currently making $10, even though they're struggling too and it would be preferable for them to have some assistance as well. e.g. because they receive the same UBI but since they make more money than the person making $6 they also pay proportionally more taxes and give a small amount of it back. The person making $25/hour ends up paying even more taxes, and so on, until the taxes exceed the UBI.
Whereas if you raise the minimum to $25 to try to also help the person at $10 then you cause a lot more unemployment.
You’re hearing from Some drivers that think they deserve to be paid 6 figures because they drive people around. It’s by definition a low-skill job. If they want more money they need to make themselves more valuable and find better jobs.
I use the jobspotter app to make extra money on the side so I know first hand how many “hiring” signs are shown in various areas in the Bay Area. You can find a job if you want. Almost every place is hiring. To say that Uber is your only choice is bullshit.
If you can’t find a better job in this economy and market then it’s you, not the market. And if you don’t like what you’re being paid then find a new job. It’s really as simple as that.
However, that is not the point being made by the people quoted in this article, who are instead framing it in much more general terms that I might sum up as "any company not paying their employees a 'living wage' is unethical".
And a housing bubble can still happen in a deflationary economy. Money can still move from the workers to the rich. The effective price goes up even if the dollar amount doesn't.
Life is full of disappointment.
Uber didn't necessarily create the conditions, but it does knowingly exploit them. That kind exploitation is not value neutral and can be wrong.
This is impossible to say, since we cannot run a simulation in which Uber/Lyft never existed, just like we can't measure the crimes that weren't committed because of laws.
We can only examine the world as it is, including the economic conditions that precipitate a person taking a ride share job, the long-term financial implications of slowing selling time and vehicle condition, combined with the diminishing returns offered by the company to make some inferences about whether this whole thing is 'good for people' or 'not.' And, I gotta say, the situation is looking more like the latter than the former.