Comment by SirFatty
7 hours ago
"It must be interesting being an Uber driver right now and literally watching the robots that will replace you driving around with you."
You mean the way taxi drivers had to watch as Uber and Lyft replaced them?
7 hours ago
"It must be interesting being an Uber driver right now and literally watching the robots that will replace you driving around with you."
You mean the way taxi drivers had to watch as Uber and Lyft replaced them?
That was a slightly different business model, vs a different technology.
I've been in plenty of Uber & Lyft rides in what were literally taxis.
I imagine most traditional taxi drivers converted into Uber and Lyft drivers. Unique regulatory circumstances in places like NYC might have delayed that process some of course (eg trying to pay off a medallion).
Uber and Lyft drivers are taxi drivers.
Drivers rarely owned the medallion. They leased the cab for 8-12 hours and drove it on behalf of the medallion owner.
What a stupid process. It bothers me that farmers rarely own the land too. We can't shake our tendency to let wealth turn us into tiny little kings that live off the rent. (not so tiny in the case of farms, but you get it).
> You mean the way taxi drivers had to watch as Uber and Lyft replaced them?
For the most part, they were the same drivers I think
It's funny how "exploit workers worse (medallions) and worse (rideshares) until we can fully cut them out" has played out in such a perfect microcosm, and yet somehow people here don't seem to register that it was never the workers' own fault.
Taxis didn't lose because rideshares played the game better, they lost because rideshare companies used investor money to leapfrog their apps, ignored actual commercial transport regulations that would have made them DOA, and then exploited workers by claiming they weren't even employees, all so they could artificially undercut taxis to kill them off and capture the market before enshittifying.
Taxi drivers were already not employees, they were exploited contractors for the taxi companies.
And do you not remember what using Yellow Cab was like in the Bay? It was like being kidnapped. They'd pretend their credit card reader was broken and forcibly drive you to an ATM to pay them.
When I first moved here I went to EPA Ikea, afterwards tried to get home via taxi, and literally couldn't because there was a game at Stanford that was more profitable so they just refused to pick me up for hours. I had to call my manager and ask him to get me. (…Which he couldn't because he was drinking, so I had to walk to the Four Seasons and use the car service.)
Taxis lost at least partly because the workers were assholes. Refusing to take credit card payments (the card reader is "broken") or not picking up members of certain ethnic groups or not driving to certain areas. Sure some cabbies were nice, honest people with good customer service skills but those were the exception in many cities.
There was nothing stopping taxi companies from raising investor capital to build better apps and back end technology infrastructure. They were just lazy and incompetent.
> some cabbies were nice, honest people
Most were, in fact. You just remember the assholes a lot more.
Taxi companies didn't have any apps to leapfrog in the first place. Uber and Lyft created a superior product that people wanted. Doesn't matter whose fault it is, the buyers preferred something that was more convenient.
There was never a situation where uneducated cabbies on shoestring budgets were going to be able to develop an Uber/Lyft alternative.
> Taxi companies didn't have any apps to leapfrog in the first place.
This shows just how badly behind they were. All the large cab companies have had apps for years. No one knows about them.
Here's YellowCab's: https://rideyellow.com/app/
> uneducated cabbies on shoestring budgets were going to be able to develop an Uber/Lyft alternative.
Are you under the impression that most cabs are/ were independent? That wasn't the case since at latest the 1980s. Having a radio dispatcher is a huge necessity as a cab driver.
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Enshittifying? It's still better than taxis ever were and competition between providers is preventing that from regressing.