Lyft and Uber say they will leave Minneapolis if the mayor signs a minimum wage bill for drivers::Lyft and Uber threatened to stop doing business in Minneapolis after the city council adopted a new rule Thursday that would set a minimum wage for rideshare drivers.

  • @[email protected]
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    602 years ago

    Cool, Columbus Ohio’s bus system offers a subsidized version of Uber and while it sucks in service area the idea and price both make perfect sense for Minneapolis to adopt.

    Rideshare apps aren’t the solution, effective and adaptive public transportation is. Public transit based rideshare is a great way to fill in the gaps of bus and train systems and to push them to fill their own gaps.

    And when all else fails, unionized taxi services.

    Sometimes Silicon Valley feels like the monorail man

      • @[email protected]
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        42 years ago

        Public transit is good where I live and I know it’s not good everywhere but I would so rather take the bus or train over uber and lyft. I only take ubers and lyfts if I have a coupon or I absolutely have to take one because its 3 am and there’s no other way to get home.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      Public transit based rideshare is a great way to fill in the gaps of bus and train systems and to push them to fill their own gaps.

      That is what I am hoping for. I don’t know how many times I see an empty bus or would save so much time if I could just get from one local station to another instead of going all the way to a main hub and back. The ride share companies are collecting all this data on where populations really need to go. If we could somehow use them for last leg of distance, route bridges, and filling in lines that are over served.

      I am not sure what exactly the best way to structure this but we do have policy experts so that is there job. Some form of public-private partnership.

    • @[email protected]
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      42 years ago

      Proper ride sharing would be awesome. It’s love if I could come to work by using an app to find someone going the same way as me and getting a lift.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      Sometimes Silicon Valley feels like the monorail man

      Just don’t look up what they’re planning to build for the airport connection in San Jose…

  • @[email protected]
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    192 years ago

    I think we should seize all of Lyft and Ubers assets and use them to construct actual public transportation in USA

    • @[email protected]
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      162 years ago

      What assets? All they have is debt and maybe some servers. I guess the app and brand has some value, but only to another ride share company.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 years ago

        If we’re talking total fantasyland, I suppose put those employees to work building a government backed alternative or an open platform to allow smaller companies?

        Suppose you had a centralized federated system where states or municipalities or even companies could have their own drivers but it’s a common app?

        Edit to add you could also have both driver and passenger rate each other and allow both to filter by rating, lower ratings would naturally pay more or less to compensate for the service. I bet in cities you’d have luxury versions of the same services all from the same app, but also cheap shitty services too.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 years ago

          The existence of Uber and Lyft does not prevent the government from doing this. If we are paying people to build and maintain this process we may as well hire people to do so. Taking over Uber would lead to the best employees leaving for other tech companies.

          • @[email protected]
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            02 years ago

            I think you’re underestimating how many people want to work for the government for the perceived benefits. I’m saying they have the stuff already set up, in fantasyland it would be a fairly smooth transition.

    • @[email protected]
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      12 years ago

      Better off seizing taxis and the cars they own, but ultimately, why would we do that? Pass legislation to make them comply

  • Obinice
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    522 years ago

    Good.

    Move out of the way for employers willing to follow the law.

    Also side note, why don’t they already have a minimum wage mandated by nationwide law?! Do people not get basic human rights over there? What the actual fuck is wrong with these people?

    If you took away our minimum wage we would topple the bloody government, and that’s coming from England where we hardly get excited over anything. But, that would be an unprecedentedly evil, evil thing to do, with gigantic wide ranging negative effects across the whole nation the likes of which we’ve never seen.

    • @[email protected]
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      52 years ago

      Ok calm down beans on toast we get it. If you really care about the nuance of it all over the outrage factor… Well the Internet exists so all that info is out there just waiting to educate ya!

    • Cethin
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      282 years ago

      We do have nationwide minimum wage. These companies get around it though because they drivers are “contract workers” not employees of the company. In every meaningful way, this is bullshit. It let’s them not be required to pay the workers though.

  • @[email protected]
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    602 years ago

    I see no down side here. Taxi unions existed long before Uber and Lyft undercut the hell out of them.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      Those taxi unions had a monopoly in the areas they served (which was far smaller than Uber and Lyft’s service area) and their prices reflected that.

      If Uber and Lyft leave there’s one thing sure to happen: a lot more people dying from being hit by drunk drivers.

      This isn’t a good thing any way you cut it.

        • @[email protected]
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          32 years ago

          You’re doing a terrible disservice to those people who were, and still are, actually enslaved by using that term.

      • @[email protected]
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        202 years ago

        dog what

        dude there are like… other rideshare apps

        and taxis still exist

        and Minneapolis has an effective (for America) transit system

        there are so many options in place before breaking the law

        and if paying a living wage is not possible for Uber or Lyft, maybe they shouldn’t be in business

        • @[email protected]
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          92 years ago

          Honestly exactly this, if a business is impossible to exist without exploitation then it straight up shouldn’t exist, and if that means our economy can’t exist, it needs to be rethought so goods and services exist to be goods and services, and not a money making scam.

        • @[email protected]
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          32 years ago

          That all means nothing when some night in the coming weeks Joe 6 pack walks out of the bar after a few to many, tries to get an Uber, a Lyft, both fail. Looks at his car he was gonna leave there, and risks it.

          This isn’t an acceptance of the unfair work conditions, it’s simply an outcome that WILL happen if the cord is cut all at once.

      • @[email protected]
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        222 years ago

        Not all, they were kicked out from Hungary - although that was less a victory of workers’ rights rather than that of the taxi driver union.

        • @[email protected]
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          22 years ago

          I noticed when I visited Vancouver, BC there were no uber’s or lyft’s available, however - uber eats was available. And most restaurants I walked past had uber eats signs in the windows saying they did delivery. And this was in like 2018

  • @[email protected]
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    482 years ago

    This mindset of catering to companies is infuriating. They took the risk creating the business, if they are no longer able to afford to pay wages or have competitive prices they don’t deserve to remain open. That’s the whole fucking point of the free market. Let these companies fail, the country and the economy will recover and new companies that fill current niches and needs will pop up.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      These companies bled investor money for years acquiring market share with their long term viability plan being that self driving cars were around the corner. They’ve been waiting to fire all the drivers but they got grifted by Elon types into thinking self driving tech was imminent.

      They didn’t think they’d still have to pay people. Those salaries were supposed to be a temporary loss leader

      • @[email protected]
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        22 years ago

        There’s no way the plan was ever to actually create a fleet of high tech cars they own and maintain themselves, which depreciate over time and eventually have to be replaced. Surely that was just a lie to get the money.

  • @[email protected]
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    2 years ago

    Hopefully this turns out better than the statewide bill that the governor vetoed earlier this year. It looks like they went with the same mileage payments, which is a good thing. The statewide bill was vetoed due to handicapped transportation services in MN having partnerships with Uber. I wrote to the governor about it, this is going to a committee to quote “find the best solution”. Unfortunately I don’t have high hopes to see it reintroduced. Gig workers need a minimum standard of labor protections.

    Edit: I missed the fact that this is a twin cities ordinance. Fucking good, the metro council should be expanding transportation services to make uber irrelevant.

    • @[email protected]
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      42 years ago

      Hold out a little hope. Democrats have both houses and the governor. And uncharacteristically they’re actually moving some shit though. We got weed legalization, a huge investment in housing, and some good public transit is in the works.

  • @[email protected]
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    1342 years ago

    How to know if a company is predatory and exploitative: They argue about minimum wages.