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Joined 7 years ago

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Sep 11

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If our drug prices are higher than in other countries it can only be because of how things are regulated. Otherwise we could buy the same thing from their market for the cost of shipping.

Comment · 7 years ago

> The value the government brings here is extreme negotiating ability with the private insurance providers that individual citizens lack.

This is not good, it distorts the market too much. Look at the negotiating power Spotify and Pandora have over musicians. Pandora negotiates rock-bottom prices with musicians on behalf of its consumers and the consumers think it's great because low prices. Long-term you've decreased compensation for becoming a musician, sound engineer, etc. and harmed the entire music ecosystem.

It's a trade-off between clear short-term gains and diffuse long-term costs.

Comment · 7 years ago

Ok, here's the rant I really try not to give to my passengers. I apologize for the length. TL;DR - Do you want to date an emotionally unavailable a-hole, or an emotionally manipulative a-hole? Pick your poison.

Lyft's president once said regarding Uber, "We're not the nice guys. We're a better boyfriend." This statement describes Lyft so much better than I ever could. They don't care about doing the right thing, they probably don't even know what the right thing is anymore, their internal sense of morality is pegged to whether or not they can keep people away from Uber.

As a driver, they have the same business model so the fundamentals of the job are exactly the same. Most of the differences are either window dressing, support quality, or bonus-related.

Uber's just kind of cold. Dealing with support is something you try not to do. It feels like they're cutting costs in their support department and they're not interested in convincing you otherwise. It's kind of like they sent you a picture of a middle finger on your third day of work and from that point on you've known the deal.

Lyft is very touchy-feely, they have events so you can eat donuts and they send a lot of emails talking about how you're a member of a community, etc. They also shame you for doing things detrimental to the community, like if you don't accept a ride. Long-term you start to realize it's all very manipulative, to the extent I've started thinking of their logo as a pink snake.

They kind of move and shift things so it's hard to tell what's going on. Especially with their bonuses, look at this[0], where do these numbers come from? 165 rides a week? That's probably 7 12 hour days. But nobody's hitting that, the middle tier might be doable, but not while driving for Uber, too, so you turn off your Uber app for the week and do 7 10's for Lyft. Next week you'll get different numbers, different goals. It's always shifting, always making you think "well, I might make an extra $50 if I don't drive for Uber this week..." Then after a few months you realize you're driving 30% more and making 20% less. And it just kind of happened while you weren't looking, while you were trying to hit these bonuses.

It also used to be that everybody got the same bonuses, but now they personalize them just for you. Because they care. I have no idea what bonuses other drivers are getting at this point, but for many or most drivers the job doesn't work without them (rental program is $1,000/month) so it ends up being an effective lever for controlling drivers.

Or the treatment of XL drivers, Uber lets the driver turn off regular rides but Lyft says that's just not possible and instead tries to "keep [the driver] busy[1]." The notion of keeping independent contractors busy is a strange one. This seems so clearly anti-competitive I don't know how it's even legal. They don't come out and say they'd rather you didn't drive for UberXL, they just want to keep you busy and if that keeps you off Uber then it's a coincidence that never crossed their mind. Why Uber isn't filing a lawsuit over this is beyond me.

Eventually you get sick of Lyft's games and decide to just drive for Uber full-time and within a day you're shaking your head wondering if Uber is even trying at all. Like, at all. So you drive for both. Then you realize if you just turn off Uber for the rest of the week you can hit this bonus on Lyft....

[0] - https://i2.wp.com/therideshareguy.com/wp-content/uploads/201... [1] - https://help.lyft.com/hc/en-us/articles/115012926367-How-to-...

Comment · 7 years ago

Better position compared to what?

> a guaranteed minimum wage

A min-wage guarantee implies Uber and Lyft will tell you when and where to drive because it would demolish the fundamental mechanism we drivers use to allocate ourselves. Otherwise we would all clump up in a parking lot somewhere trying to insulate ourselves from the costs of driving people around while collecting $10/hr.

> possibility for unemployment benefits

I haven't had this option in a decade or more. If you increase the cost of firing somebody, which is exactly what this is, you increase the cost of hiring as well. See above: this is a bottom rung job, the most important thing is to be on the ladder. If you make the bottom four rungs of the ladder illegal it doesn't mean people can magically start jumping to the fifth rung, they just get left out.

> health care benefits

Life's rough. Hopefully I solve this problem with a better job in the near future.

Don't get me wrong, I really dislike the Uber/Lyft model, I cringe every time somebody says "Oh but Lyft treats drivers so much better than Uber, right?" and I would love to see a better competitor prove the flaws of the Uber/Lyft model in the marketplace. I just don't think that minimum wage, employee status, and benefits packages are going to be that great for drivers or passengers. It's probably a mixed bag for both, but not a very good mixed bag.

As an aside, there's part of me that wants to figure out what a slide-deck is, make one, and be that competitor. So don't think I've been drinking the company Kool-Aid or anything, because I would love to put both of them out of business largely because I don't like how they treat drivers. But I'm still extremely thankful that I've had this job and I don't want to see it taken away from others who may value it in the way I have.

Comment · 7 years ago

> This is why I don't understand why people take gig jobs.

Sometimes Compared to what? is the most important question.

I've been driving for a few years. Before this I was making minimum wage with no benefits. Before that I had a difficult stretch of unemployment. One of my least favorite questions passengers ask me is What did you do before this? because I don't really like to talk about it. It is a rough job - you take a lot of risk, have a lot of bad days, and you get little reward in return. But at least it's work.

Of course the bottom rungs of the ladder look terrible to people near the top, but for who have fallen off of it the bottom is the most important part. All of these "worker protections" define the bottom of the ladder as exploitation. Let me decide that, my labor is my own to sell for whatever price I can get somebody to pay for it.