Re: [projectvrm] Uber scores and so do we

[Phil Windley < >]

On Jun 7, 2014, at 8:27 PM, Doc Searls < "> > wrote:

 If you read what I say and like it - please agree on the list - and if you are "afraid" to do that feel free to give me a thumbs up in a back channel. 

Uber clearly provides a service and people get value from it and are willing to pay for it. 

It is on path to destroy the jobs of literally MILLIONS of people who currently work driving people and things around.

And if we were to forbid everything that destroyed jobs we'd have nothing to talk about. 

FWIW, I used Uber for the first time when I arrived in Santa Barbara a few weeks back, and the driver told me there isn't one less cabbie with a job, even though there are now fifteen Uber drivers in town. This guy loved his work as well.

BTW, taxis in Santa Barbara, like those in most of the U.S., have always been both expensive and sucky. I believe there are some places, e.g. London, where the taxi business works well and is staffed by people who are good at what they do. But many others, such as New York, are remarkably lousy. Yes, there are a lot of cabs, and they do employ a lot of people, but one senses corruption and protectionism at all costs. 

When they finally began to take credit cards, the default choices on the screens were something like 20%, 30% and 50%. And many of them are "broken" much of the time. That kind of passive aggression does not make me fond of the system.

FWIW, those are pretty crappy jobs that deserve to be destroyed. We romanticize them (‘ala Judd Hirch and Jim Croce), but in fact they don’t pay much. In NYC, hardly any taxi driver owns the medallion (otherwise known as the government giving you permission to work). Most medallions are far our of range for the driver who is a low wage employee of the person or company who does own a medallion. Here’s the average price of medallions in NYC for May 2014 (PDF) http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/downloads/pdf/avg_med_price_2014_may.pdf  >$1M. Wanna buy one?  No one’s stopping the taxi driver from join Uber and driving for them, so not sure how jobs are being destroyed.