> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
Uber drivers in question are faced with first world costs of living. You're moving the goal posts in support of economic slavery (comparing third world workers in the third world to first world gig workers in the first world, with first world costs of living).
If you can't pay your first world employees a first world living wage, Bye Felica.
Taxi driving is not skilled labor. It simply isn't worth much; certainly not what its full-time drivers are demanding.
Can we also complain about Mechanical Turk? I'd like to earn first-world wages classifying pictures of cats full-time.
Neither scenario is what the gig economy is supposed to be about. If a job doesn't pay sustainably, don't do it.
We tried to regulate taxis such that driving one paid wages on par with costs of living, but then some asshole company undermined that with a populist smartphone app.
So your argument is allow economic abuse instead of regulating against it? No thank you. I like regulation; with it, we get a better society, not Mad Max Race To The Bottom driven by apathetic consumers and psychopathic businesses.
EDIT: I do see the problem, and still believe regulation is the answer (in this case, California legislation [1]).
"If signed into law, the legislation will codify a landmark April 2018 California Supreme Court ruling, which introduced a three-part test to determine which workers businesses can reasonably classify as independent contractors and which must be treated as genuine employees. Workers considered employees are entitled to key labor protections and benefits—such as a minimum wage, overtime pay, and protections under antidiscrimination laws—which many gig-economy companies have long resisted."
This will decapitate gig economy companies in California.
No, I'm for regulation, but Uber drivers themselves are actually the problem here.
We had a regulated industry. Its labor force had collective bargaining power. Its labor pool was capped to limit surplus labor and everyone could get paid fairly.
Uber came along, organized a bunch of scabs willing to work for pennies to undermine all that, devalued the labor the existing industry provided and now those scabs are complaining they're not paid enough.
I think you get my point and I do get yours. I don't believe in exploitation and support efforts to mitigate it.
One negative outcome of that particular regulation will be the games that start getting played to beat around that three-part test, like Walmart delegating hours just a few short of qualifying employees for benefits. We've seen this play out before and I have my doubts about its effectiveness.
I had a couple passengers who'd tried their hands at taxi driving and couldn't make money. It takes a while to figure out the ropes, where to go for the big fares that pay the bills, etc. Being able to deal with problematic people is a challenge too.
> It simply isn't worth much;
Except when you have somewhere you need to go, and no vehicle to get you there. Having someone to drive you home from the bar is invaluable when you're wasted.
> certainly not what its full-time drivers are demanding.
Economic cancer has many symptoms.
App-based dispatch simplifies driving people around for money. It also hides the cost of driving. If people don't keep track of their mileage and expenses, app drivers are probably losing their shirts on their vehicles' depreciation. The taxi company kept most of its vehicles on the road for 400,000 miles. I doubt many ride-share vehicles will make it past 200,000, as parts on cars are always breaking, and it's expensive to pay someone full shop rates ($75+/hour) to fix it for you. Our crew of 3-4 drivers put 100,000+ miles a year on the taxi we shared. That cab had a head gasket replaced, a battery pack, and a used engine was transplanted when the head gasket failed again. It was totaled in an accident at around 475,000 miles (this was after I had to quit), soon after the owner had paid it off.
I wasn't the best at maximizing my income because I was more interested in people and their stories than the bottom line. I made enough to pay my rent and keep afloat, even after the vulture capitalists arrived with their "not-a-taxi" service.
> We tried to regulate taxis such that driving one paid wages on par with costs of living,
Arizona's regulations are for safety (background checks for drivers, basic vehicle maintenance, etc) and consumer protection (calibrated taxi meters).
> but then some asshole company undermined that with a populist smartphone app.
Looks like I'm on your radar now. By the way, the etymology of the word "fedora" that was offered by one of the posters is incorrect-- I think it's an attempt at humor. It was not named after a tailor, but after a French play. I hope this helps you in your duties.
I agree that it was a presumptuous, smug, and uncurious comment. But these things are matters of degree. Public internet forums are unfortunately replete with comments like that. If I were to scold all of comments on HN that land with me that way, I'd have to post 5x as often as I do. That's physically and psychologically impossible. Also, doing so would generate tons of protest comments because people's interpretations and identifications vary so much.
It's better to deal with such a comment by posting a substantive reply, which I'm glad to see that you did above. I'm particularly glad that you did it politely and with a light touch; that's not always easy when a comment has produced irritation.
i don't think it's equianimous what you do. you essentially selectively enforce the rules and thereby normalize such smugness - case in point my response was -1 or 0 for most of today. if you're going to moderate some kinds of antisocial/antipathic behavior then you need to moderate it uniformly - it emboldens and reinforces those that get away with it - they feel validated by the community in their smugness. if you look at my comment history you can find so many of these that i've debated against just over the last few weeks. it's gotten to the point where i'm dreading working in this industry because of the smugness so many people here put on display.
in this case there is a dead comment that further sheds light on the nuance ("The bite of the comeback gets lost in translation. It was pretty good given the context and the language."). why is it dead? what is offensive about that? you encourage this kind of downvoting behavior.
there is another comment (i can't see the score but i'd bet that it's high - as high as the first smug comment's) that responds to the smug comment and concurs.
your pretense to idealism simply biases comments towards articulate arrogance/smugness rather than actual curiousity. imagine being the person that posted the root of this thread (the apocryphal story) and their reaction to the lovingly posted insight into their culture (aliswe - ali swe). why would you ever share here again? and it's such an interesting comment too, something that neither of us would ever discover on our own since we're not arabic speakers. you should have come to this person's defense, not the smug person's. this is not unlike what we see today socially - intolerance of intolerance is more strictly punished than the intolerance.
You're expecting the impossible. One person's uniform moderation is the next person's double standard; no two users will ever agree on this.
Actually, you're expecting several impossibles. Here are two others: that a large public forum can be remotely free of mediocre, uncharitable comments; and that human beings en masse can do anything other than reflect human nature. That's the source of what you're upset about, not this or that industry. Individuals can vary, but once you get to statistically significant quantities, the patterns are mechanical and don't change. If you want change, I know of only one thing that works: observe in yourself how you do the very things you object to in others.
> if you look at my comment history you can find so many of these that i've debated against just over the last few weeks
I looked at your comment history and unfortunately found many instances where you've violated the site guidelines in arguments. That's not ok, and we need you not to do that if you want to keep commenting here. It also adds more than your share of the things you're complaining about on HN, so that would also be a good reason not to do it.
>You're expecting the impossible. One person's uniform moderation is the next person's double standard; no two users will ever agree on this.
no now you're playing strawman here. i stated very clearly, by way of case in point, what i expect. you're the moderator, i'm expecting you to moderate according to your sensibilities. you recognized the smug comment and said nothing. you also recognized the unsubstantive comment and did say something. simply say something in both instances.
>not this or that industry. Individuals can vary, but once you get to statistically significant quantities, the patterns are mechanical and don't change.
that's like saying that voat.co or a jail or a bank just reflects population.
>I looked at your comment history and unfortunately found many instances where you've violated the site guidelines in arguments.
lol. that that's exactly what's at issue here. you think pointing out where someone is vile is a violation of the guidelines rather than being vile in the first place. in fact it might well be but i don't see myself ever not making comments like these
You said that we enforce the rules selectively and ought to be moderating uniformly. There are many reasons why it doesn't and can't work that way; the one I mentioned is that readers are in deep disagreement about what counts as uniform. Whose 'uniform' ought we to conform to?
Another reason is quantity. Most random walks you take through HN will be moderated non-uniformly because we can't come close to seeing all the posts. I realize it's tempting to conclude that moderators are failing and probably of bad character, but this rests on mistaken assumptions. We care about this at least as much as you do and work hard, sometimes almost to the point of burnout, to take care of the site. It's a mistake to conclude that we must think a comment is ok if it didn't get moderated. The likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it.
Since you're concerned about the worst comments on HN, why aren't you flagging them? That's a way you can actually help us do better. Emailing hn@ycombinator.com in egregious cases is also helpful, because then we're guaranteed to know about it.
Some of the comments in your list were flagkilled by users, some were penalized by moderators, and some we just didn't see. I agree with you about most of those cases, though not always with how you responded.
It's great if you want to defend others against unfair criticism, as long as you do it thoughtfully and respectfully. Your comments have been doing that sometimes, but other times you've been adding to the problem by breaking the guidelines yourself. Please stop doing that—it helps nothing, and you lose the high ground when you do it. You've been doing it in your replies to me here, in fact. Your argument becomes less convincing when you do the things you're complaining about.
And that's being generous.