Posts by BenWilson
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
He's the man!
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Here we are undercutting the hell out of them. And it's much higher quality in many cases. Because citizen journalists aren't constrained to making a buck, they can pick their stories and go as hard as they like. How can anyone compete that? Everyone is looking for the new economy that actually works, and perhaps they found it in Uber.
Certainly Uber does a good job on the propaganda that they have changed the business model. But in fact it's not a new service, basically a taxi, and what is new is simply the efficient delivery and effective labour exploitation. They don't really ride share at all. And carpooling is not a new idea anyway. The fact is that no one (including Uber) has really got it to work is mostly an inherent limitation of the idea of carpooling, present since the time of wagons. It's fundamentally nowhere near as customer friendly as a taxi, because passengers are now subject to the whims of other passengers.
So finding that the new economy actually doesn't exist in the case of Uber, any more than it does for journalism, is perhaps confirming in some way. I think it's a story that they want to tell anyway, however much everyone is still catching Ubers.
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I don't know what the media fascination with Uber is all about really. I think some of it is because media people are heavy Uber users. News is about themselves again? There's probably a sense of a kindred industry wherein the battle to survive against people who are almost doing it for free is poignant for them.
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Doesn't really explain why the Herald has run many articles pointing out bitterness on Uber, tax dodginess etc. Sure they run some infomercials but that doesn't make them partisan.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to Sacha,
Yup, no references required. Hell, they even hired me!
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to goforit,
think the government must be wondering why they let Uber break all the rules in the first place.
I'm surprised that they're not worried it will blow up in their faces. They're already extremely vulnerable in being seen to tolerate corporate malfeasance, and encouraging back room deals. This organization is openly crooked. Avowedly, even. It has to be incredibly embarrassing to admit to having been in constant dialog with them.
At this point, they could act decisively to reign Uber in, directly. Very directly, the way the NZ government can. To not be doing that is extremely weak. Indeed, considering that Uber's law violation is also anticompetitive to NZ based alternatives, several of which already exist, and several more are on the verge of launching. It's not even the vaunted Free Market Saves All in place here. It's corporate favouritism, and open tolerance of large scale law breaking.
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That million is profit, btw, not turnover, which is much, much higher. At an average of $500/week per driver, and around 2000 drivers, gives weekly turnover of a million. This organization could be churning 50 million in NZ annually, and paid around $10,000 in income tax and the drivers get far less than the minimum wage, and the organization encourages all of them to blatantly break the law. Not one law. More like 5 at a time, every trip.
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I wonder how they're going to compete with a company that pays only 1% tax?
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to Alfie,
They’re more likely follow ideology and hold some sort of psuedo-review which recommends removing all restrictions on taxis.
They already are doing a review. This is being done BY the National Government. Uber's submission is particularly interesting. It is brief, and it proposes a trial in Christchurch.
The summary paper has a useful index at the bottom to see what is recommended by the reviewers after this lengthy consultation with stakeholders and due process being followed. My summary is that very little changes regarding Uber drivers. They lose the annoying PSL requirement, and that's about it. They'll still need P Endorsement, COF, log books. As Uber required when I signed up (less the PSL).
So Uber decided that they'd just do the trial that they proposed. And in April they declared it a success and rolled it out for the whole nation.
In essence, they ignored the review's recommendations, initiated by National, run by National. They also are ignoring the fact that the review is still ongoing, and that the law has not yet changed. They're following their own laws, which don't even resemble what they laws will change to. And this is happening right under the nose of National, right in their face. On a massive scale, right now. In the three biggest cities, with thousands of drivers and millions of rides, and millions of dollars changing hands, flowing to people without the right to work in many cases, and the profits are all flowing out of the country.
It's possibly the biggest pisstake of National I've ever experienced. As I said before it's "National, come here! Sit! Stay! Good dog!"
ETA: I don't know if the dog is getting a tasty snack for being so good. I suspect that it's such a well trained dog that it doesn't even need that.
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Also, goforit, I'm extremely personally resistant to the climate of fear that is encouraged by a corporation like Uber. The early formation of our association disgusted me even more than the changes did. We literally huddled like frightened children in the dark (I have photos), searching for spies and traitors, blocking people and turning on one another. We've managed to get past that. It's a long process, but I think in many ways, the slow build is the sustainable build. I doubt espionage/treachery is a serious threat for us, because open societies just don't give it anywhere to sink its teeth. Information is the enemy of all of that - such is my belief anyway, and more people are buying it every day.