pstarr wrote:If Uber is merely an app that is licensed to (and connects) drivers with cars and passengers then I don't see how the Uber is responsible for said drivers wellbeing, healthcare etc?
"Selling a product or service to paying customers" is the definition of a business. I'd say if a company is worth $40 billion then that's a fair indicator it is a business, not a hippy non profit co-op just "connecting people." (and as Pops pointed out, uber sets all the rates and acts like a taxi company in every way, just a no frills model but still it's a darn taxi company. And consumers take a chance on getting a wacky crazy uber driver, just as you take a chance when you fly a "no frills" airline that's cutting corners
and using low paid sub contractor pilots and mechanics)
No frills or not, $40 billion is a heck of a lot of money, yeah it's a a business.
The whole point of the "uber" model is the whole sub contracting thing / "crowdsoucring" -- it's the ultimate in profits and efficiency because it gets people to work for free, or far lower wages than a traditional "business." Think of something like elance. Instead of hiring a local IT small business person to design a website or make a logo or do some programming or anything, one can go on elance instead where Indians and Pakistanis and Americans are all competing for five cents.
And then the "work for free" model is everywhere. Take computer games, for example. A new thing in recent years is releasing a game "in development" (I forget the terminology for this). It's wildly profitable. It allows the company to start selling their product in early stages of development, and just keep selling throughout and sometimes this goes on for a year or two years before it's a "finished" product.
So then what happens, is that the volunteer fan community wind up making mods for the game, and it's actually volunteer fans that are developing the thing while not getting paid a cent for it. So then the devs will just look at the mods and then write their own version of that and incorporate it into the game.
I read Steam had an idea of finally starting to pay modders -- the issue is, mods are so popular, it's really about half the actual product yet these volunteers get paid nothing. They do it for the enjoyment of it, and that's wonderful work to be doing something you enjoy but the problem is that the more that the entire economy goes this route -- folk aren't gonna be able to eat or pay any bills, if everyone is "working for free" in the future. Or close to free. So anyhow, I think I read that none of the game companies liked this paid modders idea at all and that never went anywhere.
Crowdsourcing can produce great results but the trouble with it is that the people actually doing the work are not making any money, only the facilitator that brought the crowd together. It's like communism but without even a food ration card, just nothin' at all.There are many, many examples of this new trend in business -- not paying the laborers, at all, getting them to work for free, all profits to the owner and all expenses shifted onto government.
So that's the danger here, with these economic models. Contractors were long ago extended out way beyond anything that should logically be a contractor -- in many companies you can't tell a difference between who is an "employee" and who is an "independent contractor," all sitting at their desks, unless you look at who is getting the shaft on pay and benefits.
So now the crowdsourcing, and things like uber, are the NEXT iteration of contractors. Business always does this, seeking the most efficiency and profit possible -- and now the efficiency is so extreme that people work for free.
Bottom line: yeah, uber got fantastically wealthy by undercutting higher paid taxi services, on what they charge for fares and what they pay their drivers. And also, for some quirky reason people just like a phone app "order a driver" thing versus a traditional taxi.
But that can't go on forever, they have become a monopoly business putting all the others out of business, $40 billion is so much money we're into Russian military budget numbers here.
They are a monopoly business, of course they should have some responsibilities and not be exempt from all labor laws and some kind of special exception to everything just because it's a phone app.(p.s. youtube some years back finally did something, and starting paying its content providers. I'm not sure if it's a fair amount or not, but see there is another example -- essentially a tv network that doesn't even have to pay for the product it makes money off. People just "work for free" "because they enjoy it" and then google got 100% of the profit.)
