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Comment by monkaiju | Hacker News Reader

I think Uber is a prime example of what to avoid. Sure when it started it seemed nice, it was an affordable, fairly reliable, much more convenient alternative to taxis. Now its expensive, its drivers a new impoverished class while the previously somewhat comfortable taxi-drivers have been decimated, the wait times keep getting longer, and the company is hemorrhaging money.

If all we needed was an app for taxis theres just no way this is worth it.

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How else would you make the app for taxis happen?

I don't think it's at all clear that all of those negatives you cite are entirely accurate. Impoverished is certainly an overstatement and my personal experiences with taxis have been relatively low quality compared with relatively high-quality ride-sharing experiences.

There likely have been negative impacts as a result of ride-sharing, but it isn't clear that ride-sharing is net negative. The reason technologies are called "disruptive" is because they disrupt things, which typically has some negative impacts for some folks. That doesn't mean it isn't worth it. What is lacking, especially in the United States, is a good social safety net to catch folks who have experienced disruption. That doesn't mean the tech should be banned or regulated to death.

My point is that the app isnt worth the 'disruption.' I think its pretty clear that they are, in places where their pay isnt regulated like Seattle, in fact impoverished. They'll tell you themselves and thats why so many have been pushing for more labor protections, like what many taxi drivers had. Uber knows its already unsustainable business model will lose even more money if it does lets them do that, hence it pushing so hard against them.

Why is an app needed? Maybe it's different in the US but we've had an app to get a taxi for quite a while. I've never seen any need to install that app. It's easier to call, tell how many people need a ride, tell when it's needed and get a confirmation that it's on its way and long it'll take for it to be there. Why do I need an app?

Before Uber, we had taxi companies bidding for areas. Winning bid got a monopoly for that area. That company would often use subcontractors to have enough drivers. In exchange for monopoly they needed to guarantee a certain level of service. You could get sy taxi at any time to any where, at the same rate, without surge charges. Literally every taxi was new, high end, clean, safe and comfortable. Uber lobbied to change it to "free market" model, promising lower prices, better service. Monopoly areas were removed. We started getting drivers who were dodging taxes, couldn't navigate, used lower quality cars. It should I say that happened in some cities, because Uber doesn't operate in the smaller cities. We still have the same drivers here, in a smaller city but since there's no service level guarantee anymore, there's a ton of taxis available during peak hours but it might be impossible to get one in the middle of the night because it's not cost effective anymore to have drivers standing by. You can also forget about trying to get a taxi to or from to far from cities because that's not cost effective either. Prices have gone up as well. I've talked few dozen drivers and they've all hated the change.

But at least I can use an app if I wanted to

You’re on hacker news and you ask “why do I need an app?”, red alert.

I agree with you by the way.

If I may paraphrase a book title "The best app is no app"? :-) Besides, I thought we're supposed to be building services you can talk with now so you don't have to fiddle with old fashioned buttons anymore? Sure the human component doesn't scale that well, but it's pretty localized service and speech recognition is amazing.

For why an app: it's faster, lower friction, and you don't need to rely on human beings staffing a call center. Also you get things like ride tracking, etc. Seems pretty obvious that app-based is better TBH.

For Seattle specifically, it looks like the council passed a minimum wage for ride-sharing drivers in 2019 and for app-based delivery drivers in 2022.

https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/06/01/seattle-sets-...

So that looks like it's working as intended, although I agree that the city should have acted much faster on this.

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