Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.
Rules (Subject to Change)
--Be a Decent Human Being
--Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title
--Posts must have something to do with the topic
--Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.
--No NSFW content
--Abide by the rules of lemmy.world
That said, Taxi drivers have something Uber drivers don't- a union.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Taxi_Workers%27_Alliance
Uber was always intended to be taxis that ignore the laws and regulations of taxis and put all of the vehicle maintenance on the drivers who are paid through tips instead of Uber.
Not sure why anyone didn't see that from the very beginning.
And relieve corporate from all sorts of other liabilities, placing those on the individual drivers, too.
Workers' Comp claims? Malfeasance (driver or passenger)? Health insurance? Paid time off? Vehicle insurance? All fall to the driver.
The only thing it has "over" taxis is an app instead of a phone call to dispatch.
Originally it was also cheaper for the customer because it was subsidized by venture capital.
I can do that with my local taxi company anyway so they don't even have that to differentiate themselves.
I mean that actually was one of the things that made them so great. Tracking, arrival timer and an easy app.
Literally those being things that the taxi companies had to push to replicate is a good thing it's a shame we had to give up the idea of properly funded labor and job protection to get it.
Tracking, arrival timer and an easy app.
The fact that they would actually show up.
Where I live, before Uber you needed to call the cab company at least an hour before you wanted to get anywhere (in a city that you can get pretty much anywhere in 15 minutes). The dispatcher would tell you someone will be there in 20 minutes and, if you were lucky, somebody might show up in 45. Before Uber, there was more than one occasion where I ended up stranded downtown until 4 or 5am after the bars had closed at 3:00.
Being able to request a ride, having someone reliably show up, and show up reasonably close to when they said they would was an absolute game changer at the time.
A taxi that doesn't play games with the meter, that always takes a credit card, and that has a rating system that harshly punishes drivers with bad attitudes.
The problem with it is Uber's cut.
I would say lack of a union is a bigger problem. Most of what you say isn't really true about taxis anymore, but even if it were, that doesn't justify Uber fucking over its employees.
My city's taxi system was completely changed by Uber, as were many parts of the country. So while it might not be true anymore, and taxi drivers with bad attitudes and those fudging the meter might have been mostly weeded out, it's because of Uber that this happened. And it's because of their unions that it hadn't happened before. But the moment there started being some competition in town as opposed to their previous monopoly on the market, they had to back down if they wanted to even survive, let alone come out on top over Uber.
So while yes, uber employees are being fucked over, that has less of an impact on things than you imply. I'll still get an Uber/Bolt instead of a taxi 9/10 times, because immoral business practices are still better than immoral & illegal practices backed by a monopoly that you are powerless to change.
Very much agree with this. I still remember coming out of the airport and thinking I’ll just grab a taxi instead of ordering a ride!
All this without any ability to give feedback or a rating to the driver.
That was the last time I ever used a taxi.
And I still haven't seen any taxis yet that offered Uber's transparency about trip cost before committing.
Fuck Taxis and Uber
An entire industry that's playing the victim. Stop falling for it and stop romanticizing taxis, the shit they pulled was just as bad, if not worse than what Uber does.
Biggest difference is their drivers were complicit in the shenanigans and primarily targeted their customers. Taking LONG routes because their customer "wasn't local", saying a route will "probably be 10$" and then it's 50 and "the meter says what it says man".
They literally used strict regulations as a shield to hold local monopolies for decades which resulted in terrible downright scammy service, cash only for an unacceptable amount of time, 0 innovations, dirty ancient barely running cars, a dispatch who would constantly say a car "was just around the corner" for 2 hours
The taxi industry doesn't give a fuck about you, they're just mad because they didn't think to do what Uber is doing and now they're dying. When/If Uber/Lyft dies, I guarantee the Taxi industry will resurge for the worst and take pages out of Ubers playbook. It's just going to go back to the wait it was before.
Fuck Uber AND Taxis, they both can rot in hell, but I don't mind seeing taxis get there first.
Dude, my driving instructor charged less than a Taxi and that guy was charging in the triple digits per hour, it is insane as to how Taxis are still in business. Who the hell pays those prices?
I don’t know but probably the same people that use the Uber Eats type services. Seriously, how are people affording to pay $25 for a $10 meal?
I am once again asking for widespread public transportation
I like trains.
I'm not sure if anyone else here has mentioned this... At least up until Uber/Lyft came out, taxis were suuuuper racist. It was really hard for black men to hail taxis.
I'm a brown dude. I have so many stories about bad taxi experiences. From Taxi drivers refusing to pick me up, to them going, "You're lucky to be in my car", to "I'm not driving there. Get out."
Around 2017 and was very upset at Uber, I took a taxi from the airport. The guy refused to drive until we had more people in the car. I said this wasn't a car share, and he told me to go take a bus. When I started getting a Uber, he apologized and took me, but then bitched about it the whole drive that he was losing money.
Uber and Lyft changed it all.
Cleaner cars. No attitudes. Agreed upon destination and fair.
I have no sympathy for taxis.
Thanks for sharing your experience even though I know it can’t feel good typing it all out.
Was looking for this comment. Racism was extremely pervasive in certain areas.
The biggest reason Uber and Lyft took off is cabs sucked for the most part. Uber and Lyft aren’t great either, but people forget how bad Taxis were at that time.
That is true. In the 90s, Michael Moore had a TV show where he did a segment showing the actor Yaphet Kotto trying to get a cab in increasingly ridiculous ways and not getting picked up.
In every single way Ubers are more convenient than a taxi. It’s amazing to me that taxi companies can’t see all the little improvements that going by Uber brings.
Unless you’re the driver.
100% agreed. I’m not condoning Uber. I’m saying taxi companies should be better at copying the convenience of Uber.
About 10 years a go I missed two flights for work because the taxi I had scheduled in advance never showed, and when I called dispatch they said 'he found a better fair, he's allowed to do that's
When I explained this to my neighbor who drove cabs be was still angry with me for switching to Lyft, but also agreed with the dispatch. Cabs don't want to change, which sucks because I wish there was more competition
Back in the day Opie and Anthony tested this.
Patrice o Neal with a gold chain vs Anthony cumia in a nazi helmet
Cumia got more cabs.
And also super expensive. I've had times where it was half the price to rent a car for the day than to get one taxi from the airport.
The big difference here is that I know the cost. Getting into a cab it was always kind of blind, and a cab driver definitely tried to screw me one time by driving in circles (we were very drunk, and I noticed at some point we hadn't made it very far, so I started paying attention and it was clear pretty quickly that he had circled back almost to where he had picked us up).
Also when I lived out in Queens, cabs rarely came out there. I had to hike all the way to Queens Blvd to have a chance, and even then they would barely stop at night. Would often get told to "get out" when asking for them to take me back to Queens. I've even been able to get a Uber out almost out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.
Lyft/Uber definitely has their problems, but cabs weren't some shining beacon on the hill.
Uber can drive in circles and up your fare too... They have per ride, mile, and minute fare just like taxis. The coverage thing is just a problem with New York's medallion system. But also, speaking from experience, rideshare drivers can and will refuse rides into places they don't want to go. The difference is you're talking with dispatch instead of a single driver so they get replaced without you knowing anything. Traditional taxi companies also have a dispatcher you can call and they will handle the recalcitrant drivers, but they may also negotiate a dead head fee.
But guess what? Uber and Lyft build dead heading directly into their fee structure. If you go out of the zone you pay an extra fee so the driver isn't completely out of luck making money.
Uber and Lyft really are just digital dispatchers for privately run taxis.
Tech bros love reinventing old technologies with slapped on some technical jargon.
The trick is you have to pretend that you're actually a "tech company" to avoid all the regulations that apply to companies that are honest about what business they're in.
A few times as a kid I had to take a taxi alone. I knew the way home, but the driver decided to make a lot of unnecessary turns and go this round about way to run up the fair. I was probably in 3rd grade and knew what he was doing but didn't have the guts to call him out.
Except taxis take cash and don't track your trips in an irreovacble database. I'll take anonymous transport whenever it's a reasonable option.
All fun and games until you are given a ride around town and asked for x times your cash
Uber effectively weaseled their way into the taxi industry by somehow enticing drivers to work for them while also assuming all of the liabilities. Truly, capitalism at its finest.
Taxi drivers in my city also have something else Uber drivers don't- a licence that was bought decades ago and is limited to a certain number, they never expire and can be bought and sold between private parties and you end up with one asshole who owns a bunch and rents out the licenced car to drivers who pay him a rent. It's a pretty hardcore mafia and predates on immigrants.
They are also fucking maniacs who almost kill people every day with their reckless driving, but Ubers do that too.
But now you can't just tell the driver where to go and give him cash, you have to use the app first and you are out of luck if you phone battery is dead. So technology makes the experience activly worse in this case.
Technobros and reinventing something that already exists, but worse.
Name a more iconic duo.
Name a more iconic duo.
Tech bros and inventing something superfluous that nobody asked for that will literally bring misery, suffering and death.
Thinking Uber is worse than taxis shows how little people remember about how bad they really were.
Techbro has an app for 5,000 year old thing: "wow this is so novel and innovative!"
Way back in 2009 or so… my uber/taxi story. So I land in Newark, NJ and try to catch a cab and it’s $50 to go to the hotel on the other side of airport because we traverse 3 zones (and they charged by zone). Uber was $11. See, when Uber came out it was like a gamified systems and almost always cheaper. Drivers were getting crazy perks too, i swear one guy in seattle said he was banking north of 2k a day just back and forth to the airport. This was the only time in Uber’s history where a normal human could grind and make a nice pay with some added personal risk. I was all for it because in cities like Newark, unions control the politics and the average traveler (in this case, me) gets screwed in the name of “fairness”.
Unions are great, but not when they use that same political power to squeeze regular people for profits by controlling the pricing and forcing zones. I understand why they said they put that in place (fair competition), but in this case we all know it’s about profits first, better working for taxi drivers, second. Does that mean i love uber now? Hell no, they need a union (yep, i agree), but uber broke a broken system and made taxi companies be competitive. I can now open up several apps and see which is cheaper and choose accordingly (and these last 2 years it’s been cabs).
Yes but don't forget about the shareholder value that Uber is bringing! Or will bring when they bankrupt all the competition and then ratchet up the prices so the hedge funds can recoup their losses
