General Goodbye Uber and Lyft.

Welcome to our Community
Wanting to join the rest of our members? Feel free to Sign Up today.
Sign up

Filthy

Iowa Wrestling Champion
Jun 28, 2016
27,500
29,658
Whether gig work is a side job or a main job is very context dependent. It depends on the availability of work in the region, the cost of living and a whole host of other factors, including the personal circumstances of the driver. One of the reasons ride-sharing companies ended up at this point with their workforce was because there are many drivers in California putting in excess of 40 hours a week on the road. Further, Uber in particular has regularly manipulated the percentage they take off the top as you have more rides or longer rides so drivers have seen less of a cut, making driving for them less competitive than it used to be to just join an actual taxi company, which seems crazy for those drivers (the majority) using their own vehicle. Uber and Lyft have pocketed vast sums of profits with only a small percentage going to drivers because of the independent contractor designation, very similar to the UFC. This has been exacerbated by the move away from rideshare only to different types of transportation and lately delivery of goods or food.

The business model will change, but you can argue it should've never existed in the way it does to begin with. A useful alternative structure would be for cities or whole states subsidize development of their own apps and move to a cooperative structure where the drivers received all of the revenue then devoted a small percentage collectively to (~5%) to licensing use of the app, which the cooperative or local government would own. In this model, workers would also be owners and could pay into healthcare, pension, etc. This model isn't unprecedented and had already been implemented in a number of places around the world. They're called platform cooperatives.
is there anything that central planning can't do better than the free market, in theory?

obviously never in practice, but theory is fun to bandy about....
 

kneeblock

Drapetomaniac
Apr 18, 2015
12,433
22,932
is there anything that central planning can't do better than the free market, in theory?

obviously never in practice, but theory is fun to bandy about....
In my view, central planning works for very few things. Better to plan democratically rather than using small committees or price signals.
 

Filthy

Iowa Wrestling Champion
Jun 28, 2016
27,500
29,658
In my view, central planning works for very few things. Better to plan democratically rather than using small committees or price signals.
"A useful alternative structure would be for cities or whole states subsidize development of their own apps and move to a cooperative structure where the drivers received all of the revenue then devoted a small percentage collectively to (~5%) to licensing use of the app, which the cooperative or local government would own. "

this is big government central planning.
 

kneeblock

Drapetomaniac
Apr 18, 2015
12,433
22,932
"A useful alternative structure would be for cities or whole states subsidize development of their own apps and move to a cooperative structure where the drivers received all of the revenue then devoted a small percentage collectively to (~5%) to licensing use of the app, which the cooperative or local government would own. "

this is big government central planning.
A cooperative is not central planning. Neither is government funding or is pharmaceutical R&D, endowments for the arts, and Amtrak central planning?
 

Filthy

Iowa Wrestling Champion
Jun 28, 2016
27,500
29,658
A cooperative is not central planning. Neither is government funding or is pharmaceutical R&D, endowments for the arts, and Amtrak central planning?
so no opportunity for corruption, graft, or forces of self-interest in play while "The Government" subsidizes this development?

and yes, all of your examples are central planning. They're mechanisms for crony capitalism/socialism.
 

kneeblock

Drapetomaniac
Apr 18, 2015
12,433
22,932
so no opportunity for corruption, graft, or forces of self-interest in play while "The Government" subsidizes this development?

and yes, all of your examples are central planning. They're mechanisms for crony capitalism/socialism.
So in your definition subsidies are central planning?

What is a company fixing prices in multiple markets around the US via a centralized app controlling transportation? Is that central planning?
 
Last edited:

Filthy

Iowa Wrestling Champion
Jun 28, 2016
27,500
29,658
So in your definition subsidies are central planning?

What is a company fixing prices in multiple markets around the US via a centralized app controlling transportation? Is that central planning?
it's exposing itself to being devoured by competition...unless it's part of central planning.
 

kneeblock

Drapetomaniac
Apr 18, 2015
12,433
22,932
it's exposing itself to being devoured by competition...unless it's part of central planning.
It's probably better understood as monopoly, plenty of which exist in restraint of competition. Uber and Lyft operate as cartels essentially. A publicly funded alternative would use government money to seed development of the app then rely on profits from its own business to stay afloat, much like many municipal bus companies do (I.e. government pays a private company to run the route and creates routes, signage, and may assist with the cost of either vehicle purchase or maintenance). The difference would be that in a cooperative structure the profits would be evenly distributed among the labor force, which would also own the app after it was developed and repay the local government for its capital investment. There's nothing centralized about this unless you move the goalposts of what central planning is pretty far just to make a strawman out of it.
 

Filthy

Iowa Wrestling Champion
Jun 28, 2016
27,500
29,658
don't mean to be flippant, just had a call come in as I started to type was going to be a longer response.

What you're stating, if I might oversimplify a bit, is:

instead of letting people with excess capital (regardless of whether it came by merit or malfeasance) who are highly vested in a positive outcome decide which service best fits the market, and then re-allocating capital amongst them based on successful productization

we should instead:

empower bureaucrats to take the same amount of capital from everyone, regardless of how much that impacts each person individually, and then give that capital to a group of the political class who will decide the best solution, and we'll get a better solution because they have no individual stake in the success or failure of the product and are not accountable to their customers.
 

kneeblock

Drapetomaniac
Apr 18, 2015
12,433
22,932
don't mean to be flippant, just had a call come in as I started to type was going to be a longer response.

What you're stating, if I might oversimplify a bit, is:

instead of letting people with excess capital (regardless of whether it came by merit or malfeasance) who are highly vested in a positive outcome decide which service best fits the market, and then re-allocating capital amongst them based on successful productization

we should instead:

empower bureaucrats to take the same amount of capital from everyone, regardless of how much that impacts each person individually, and then give that capital to a group of the political class who will decide the best solution, and we'll get a better solution because they have no individual stake in the success or failure of the product and are not accountable to their customers.
No, I think you should reread my posts maybe.
 

kneeblock

Drapetomaniac
Apr 18, 2015
12,433
22,932
where does 'government money' come from, if not from taking some money from everyone?
It comes from a mix of taxation and fees government collects for a variety of services and licenses it provides. Money is just a note we borrow from the federal government anyway. But local governments do directly fund themselves through taxation and rely on it to do a bunch of initiatives. I guess maybe a local vote on funding such an enterprise couldn't hurt, but it could easily be a way for a city to make itself more navigable while creating jobs with better pay margins for its local residents. Building an app like this would cost less than a single bus station.
 

Filthy

Iowa Wrestling Champion
Jun 28, 2016
27,500
29,658
It comes from a mix of taxation and fees government collects for a variety of services and licenses it provides. Money is just a note we borrow from the federal government anyway. But local governments do directly fund themselves through taxation and rely on it to do a bunch of initiatives. I guess maybe a local vote on funding such an enterprise couldn't hurt, but it could easily be a way for a city to make itself more navigable while creating jobs with better pay margins for its local residents. Building an app like this would cost less than a single bus station.
if there's not an option to opt out of the tax or fee, it's just theft under threat of violence.
 

Filthy

Iowa Wrestling Champion
Jun 28, 2016
27,500
29,658
also, you under-estimate what it takes to build an app like Uber, or overestimate the cost of a bus station