Posted on 10/19/2014 5:08:00 AM PDT by Kaslin
Uber.Com. AirBnB.Com. TaskRabbit.Com. What are these websites about, and why are they so controversial?
Let's be clear: these websites, and others like them, are online hubs for what is best described as the emerging "freelance services industries." The service providers you find through these websites are most certainly freelancers, not established corporate business owners or employees of other peoples' companies.
Uber.Com, a San Francisco-based venture that matches people who need a ride from one end of a city to another with people who have cars and are willing to travel, is perhaps the most high profile of these entities.Visit the company's website, download the app, and search for people who are ready right now to shuttle you about. If you want to be a freelance service provider, Uber.Com has a screening process whereby you can register to deliver transportation services.
This very basic " seller-hooks-up-with-buyer" type of transaction is happening at an increasing rate in cities all across the country, all on a freelance non-professional basis and mostly all via online connections. Need someone in your area to run errands or perform household chores? TaskRabbit.Com might help you find a provider who's ready right now. Got an extra room to rent for people visiting your town? AirBnB.Com connects travelers with in-home accommodations. If Uber.Com doesn't have the ride you want, their main competitor Lyft.Com might be helpful.
Be careful to not form an opinion about the freelance services industry too quickly. And don't decide that it is irrelevant and choose to ignore it. Consider these important facts:
1) Freelance service providers are business owners unto themselves, and not employees: The most egregious examples of people misunderstanding this generally happen in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other large cities where President Barack Obama's economic entitlement policies are still popular. Indeed, protesters have demonstrated against Uber.Com in their home turf of San Francisco demanding that Uber drivers be given membership in a labor union.
But drivers for Uber.Com are independent contractors, not employees, and as such they are NOT "laborers" in the organized labor sense. If you don't like the going rates for Uber rides, then start your own freelance business without Uber.Com's assistance or get out of the industry altogether. But understand that when you're a business owner you can't just simply "protest" or "demonstrate" like the AFL-CIO suggests. Business owners have to be more responsible and mature than that.
2) The freelance services industry is a huge disruption to bigger, more powerful interests: Guess who doesn't like Uber.Com ride sharing services? The established taxi cab industry. And can you imagine who might not like AirBnB.Com providers renting a room in their home? The established hotel and motel industry. And mayors, governors, and elected officials nationwide are disposed to not liking any of this freelance enterprise because they don't know how to tax it and regulate it.
To be fair, many taxi service operators have a legitimate gripe with Uber.Com and Lyft.Com. In most cities across the U.S. (some far worse than others), owning and operating a taxi business requires thousands of dollars in training, licensing, permitting, bonding, insuring, and permitting, just to get government approval to launch the business. And then there are the recurring expenses of permit renewals and vehicle inspections - once again, all paid to the government - just to keep the business going.
This same type of expensive government taxation and regulation applies to just about every other type of service industry one can Envision. And if private individuals are undercutting, say, a hotel owners' revenues by renting out rooms in their houses and apartments, even after the hotel owner has paid all his or her government fees, then yes, the hotel owner should be upset.
Politicians share in the outrage over successful freelancers. Less business at the hotel or the taxi company means, in most cases, less tax revenue for the politicians to spend. If you're intending to become a freelance business operator, beware: there are lots of people who have an interest in your failure.
3) A successful freelance economy requires a society that respects individual rights: There may be few Americans who are willing to deny that they support "individual rights." But when confronted with what "individual rights" entails, many of us begin to hedge.
The rights of individuals to freely sell their services on the open market means competition for established industries -and these established industries often have powerful lobbying capacities than can pressure politicians to pass laws that squelch the freelancers. Do we really respect everybody's individual rights in the U.S., even if the exercise of one's rights means that my immediate financial wellbeing is challenged?
4) Resolving the disparities between established industries and freelance services providers will require less government regulation, not more: In New York City - another region where President Obama's vision of politicians determining economic winners and losers remains quite popular - Mayor Bill DeBlasio has determined that individuals who rent-out a room in their house or apartment are violating city law, and has vowed to run AirBnB.Com out of the city.
On the other hand, in Spokane, Washington - a city where American free enterprise is still generally accepted - the city just crafted new transportation industry regulations that both the taxi cab industry and Uber.Com seem to like. Despite city council members' threats to run Uber.Com out of their city, the voices of freelancers managed to be heard and the result was a compromise that subjects Uber.Com and its service providers to some new, minimal levels of government regulations, while reducing the heavy-handed burdens the city has historically placed upon traditional taxi operators.
Will the USA move to respect and uphold the rights of freelance service providers? Or will we continue to embrace the Obama-styled protections and privileges for large corporations and old-school traditional groups? Americans have an important choice to make - and the economic wellbeing of individuals is weighing in the balance.
I suggest always going about in full body armor, then.
The taxi service from the airport to downtown in New Orleans is quite good, based on a recent experience. Nice new clean Toyota minivans are the norm, based on our ride and the other cabs at the airport cab stand.
Great point, Pappy, and it is a concern. There was a case out of Atlanta, I believe, where an Uber driver was picking up women and then groping them. He was eventually caught, but it's been raised as a concern by several entities, not the least of which was the cab unions.
If I live or die, all that is up to God. He is the one that put me here.
The PUC here in Pittsburgh bashed Uber hard. Guess Uber didn’t pay the cronies enough.
Pfl
There probably are sex offender uber operators. Do you think there are no sex offender cab drivers? If the prospect worries you stay out of both. But the way it isn’t hard to become a sex offender today.
We have used airbnb all over the US and Europe. As you might expect, the accomodations vary from great to adequate. We saved a lot of money and met interesting local people. I could bore you with lots of interesting stories.
Just remember your are a paying guest in somebody’s home and in some cases you have to work with them regarding scheduling, and things going on in their lives too.
Well worth it.
What is your preference in sex offenders? Are you looking for a certain bent?
Just curious. Can you get along with Social Security and Medicare?
“Great point, Pappy, and it is a concern. There was a case out of Atlanta, I believe, where an Uber driver was picking up women and then groping them. He was eventually caught, but it’s been raised as a concern by several entities, not the least of which was the cab unions.”
The thing is, every Uber transaction goes trough Uber’s web site. Every driver and every car is matched to ever customer. They are not just driving around looking for fares. A customer has to create an Uber account (like an Amazon account). There is no anonymous cash option. Drivers are dispatched by Uber, based on proximity to the ride request. If a driver gropes a customer, all the customer has to do is notify Uber, and Uber has the driver’s info. Uber can also cut the driver off for further business. Uber also knows the driver’s location (via smartphone), if they are working.
Mob bosses and their installed politicians HATE independent business!
Glad you had a good experience with them, but I’ve not heard a lot that’s positive.
Here in Albuquerque someone that was an Uber drive had the outside mirror broken off his car door and the same passenger puked all over the back seat. He gets nothing for the damage unless he takes the passenger to court. For what, a $40 fare?
In Denver, I read that a concert goer took an Uber car to a concert at Red Rocks and found out upon arrival that it was over $200! Uber said when there’s a big event on and vehicles are in short supply, there’s a multiplication factor that gets entered into the cost. The passenger said they knew nothing about it.
Reviews on Yelp for the Denver area are pretty bad. http://www.yelp.com/biz/uber-denver-3
The PUC here in Pittsburgh bashed Uber hard. Guess Uber didn’t pay the cronies enough.
“In Denver, I read that a concert goer took an Uber car to a concert at Red Rocks and found out upon arrival that it was over $200! Uber said when there’s a big event on and vehicles are in short supply, there’s a multiplication factor that gets entered into the cost. The passenger said they knew nothing about it.”
You do have to play by the rules. I took a cab once in NYC because they were at 4x, but only because I bothered reading the terms. The price you pay is what they tell you...they could not last very long if they were multiplying promised prices. It really isn’t the driver’s fault that Colorado legalized weed.
Here's the story to which I was referring, it was in Orlando:
A caution to potential drivers and hosts are in order as well. The Uber and Airbnb business model is actually akin to that of a casino — “the law of large numbers”, and you as the driver are like one of the gamblers.
They have no stake whatsoever in making sure that any individual driver or host makes a lot of money, makes a good living at it, or even covers his own expenses. They make it up on volume. And, like a casino, Uber (especially) makes a lot of noise about the three or four “winners” who have done very well, while offering very little, in fact, refusing to offer, objective numbers on how the “average” driver can expect to do.
The matter of many Uber drivers pocketing less than minimum wage is for another post.
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If you’re an Uber driver, you have an “app” from Uber on your smartphone that tells the big Uber computer in the sky where you are. That puts a dot on a map that potential passengers can see. They click on the dot and you get a notice to go to where they are.
You can turn your app on and off as you wish, so you can be a driver all day long if you like or just in the evenings and so on.
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