Comment by dcrazy
2 days ago
It’s not an issue of social class. It’s an issue of the gig economy being a race to the bottom that cannot afford (legally or monetarily) to hold workers to professional standards.
2 days ago
It’s not an issue of social class. It’s an issue of the gig economy being a race to the bottom that cannot afford (legally or monetarily) to hold workers to professional standards.
> an issue of the gig economy being a race to the bottom that cannot afford (legally or monetarily) to hold workers to professional standards
They absolutely can. Uber just prizes availability above service while Lyft perplexingly fails to differentiate itself. To the extent Waymo is cracking the market, it’s not by being an AV provider. It’s by being higher quality.
New York had Juno and then Revel that similarly targeted quality. The former was bought by Uber and ruined. The latter switched from employed drivers to a gig model.
lol. Remember when Uber was cracking the market? Taxis where bad bad. Uber was cool cool. One "monopoly" got exchanged for another. Now Waymo is cool cool. In 10 years or so Waymo will be bad because they will play loud ads or some shit.
> Remember when Uber was cracking the market? Taxis were bad bad. Uber was cool cool
Yes. My Brown-educated perpetually suit-wearing black roommate couldn’t get a hail on 5th Avenue and the credit-card machines never worked.
Yep, Waymo turning into a terrible exploitative experience 5-10 years after locking up the market will be the least surprising business story ever.
I’m not convinced enshittification of the Waymo experience is inevitable. It’s possible there’s a price point at which they can produce a profit while remaining a premium experience. Uber chose to expand into the mass market, which every lay person already knew was not full of producer surplus. Taxis weren’t famous for shitty service and bad employment practices because they were a monopoly, they were famous for it because it’s a cutthroat, low-margin business.
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