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Comment by ChicagoDave | Hacker News Reader

I always go back to one thing.

No one and I mean no one was concerned about taxi drivers as workers before Uber.

What’s different now? Drivers have flexibility and simple terms. Passengers love it.

Who did Uber hurt? Medallion owners. I would argue at the root of every anti Uber push is the taxi industry lobbying against it.

These “workers rights” people never once showed up to punish the pre-Uber taxi industry.

I’m skeptical even if Uber has cut corners as a global business. I imagine many global corporations have as much, if not more dirty laundry.

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Your comment is a bunch of straw-mans taken to the absurd.

Medallion systems aren't that common, and you have no idea when and where "workers rights people" have showed up to punish the local taxi industry.

> Medallion systems aren't that common

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_medallion:

> Several major cities in the US use these in their taxi licensing systems, including New York City, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

They seem pretty common to me.

And Uber has much higher ratings than the Taxi industry in the Chicago area. I'm guessing there are people under 30 that have never even been in a cab. They've never felt the need.

I like how this comment just sits here, unceremoniously ignored. Perhaps you're a little too cynical in how you've framed this, but it has a correct central thesis.

The reason most people aren't as bothered by this situation as they "should be" is... things were worse under the old Taxi system for everyone we should have sympathy for.

Uber didn't make everything perfect, but they improved things dramatically.

So sure, let's keep improving things. But if the "anti-Uber" fanatics take down Uber, they won't get an improvement. They'll get the old system back, which was worse for drivers and passengers alike.

Agreed. The workers they think they're defending would be the ones most negatively impacted by an unwinding of Uber. The passengers would be the second most aggrieved.

The only people that would benefit are lawyers, lobbyists, and the taxi industry.

Pretty sure there are _independent_ polls of ride share drivers in the 60% to 70% that like the system as it is. You can drive whenever you want for as long as you want. No boss. Just you and your car and some cool people getting from point A to point B.

But somehow this is equated to full time jobs and the lack of benefits. If someone wants benefits, they can always get a regular FT job. The market has plenty of them at the moment. I have never once met an Uber driver that hated Uber.

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