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
The taxi driver union is a joke, almost no driver is a member of it.
I don’t know if you want your taxes so bad just keep using them. They smell like ass, huge vehicles that guzzle gas, have ads that won’t stop playing, don’t take credit/debit card, charge insane amounts, but if this is what you really fucking want go use it.
The taxi industry 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 (and STILL is cash only in many places), 0 innovations, dirty ancient smelly barely running cars, a dispatch who would constantly say a car “was just around the corner” for 2 hours.
Even now they can’t get their head out of their ass to make a proper app in 2024 that just tells you how much you’re going to pay. Last time I tried out one of those taxi “apps” last year:
It wouldn’t tell you where or how long till the taxi got to you
It would only give you an “estimated price range” (FUCK THAT)
It looked like it was from 2013 and they got a “nephew who knows computers” to make it
Fuck Uber, but at least when Uber tells me a price, that’s the price that gets charged (excluding tip). At least I know where the Uber car is and when it’s getting to me. At least the Uber driver can’t screw around with routes and fares.
So really the choices for a taxi-like service are between a shit sandwich and a giant douche. Ugh, I’m just going to start renting cars.
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.
Ha ha this happened when I took a taxi to the railway station, leaving Paris after 10 years. It was quite nice to get the “tourist” route early in the morning so I rolled with it :-)
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).
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.
That’s Uber propaganda. The system was created because prior to that cities had traffic jams with a ton of freelance cabs with no quality controls or regulation. The medallion system set a price floor and mandated inspections and insurance and background checks. Uber bypassed all of that for years and surprise; women were being assaulted by drivers with criminal history, passengers were injured from uninspected vehicles and couldn’t get remedied because the drivers were uninsured, and cities have worsening traffic jams because there was no limit on Uber drivers choking downtown streets.
The taxi industry evolved this way for good reasons. Uber was initially sold as good for immigrants and now immigrants protest how that company gets special treatment over every other cab company and hurts their bottom line.
To the immigrant thing - I was on vacation a few weeks ago and took five Uber rides. None of the drivers spoke English. I wonder if ride sharing is going the immigrant predator route these days.
For clarification, it didn’t bother me to have non-English speaking drivers. They were all great.
Oh yeah, I don’t think either are great, but at least Uber didn’t require drivers to submit to some crazy legal Ponzi scheme while paying for special driver’s licenses and competing with other drivers for the good shifts on a shared taxi licence. The Taxi mafia lobbied my city pretty hard and now Ubers get the opportunity to lose money to a middle man too! I’ve seen a bunch of taxis straight up also driving for Uber throughout the city.
Maybe we’re all just fucking bored Kyle! and need a change every now and then to feel something, anything; to take our minds off this revolving hamster wheel of mundanity
Ngl Lemmy’s one drawback are the boomers being mad about stupid shit like this.
Cool, zero wait GPS tracked and background checked drivers that work with my company’s corporate account that I don’t need to submit a reimbursement ticket for? No no no, BUT MUH YELLOW 19TH CENTURY CAB?!
“My company’s corporate account covers it” - Yeah, while fucking the accessibility of any kind of reasonable taxi service for the rest of us. Eat shit, parasite.
Also, that “zero wait” would mean that those drivers would have to sit around constantly, not being paid, all to uber’s profit/benefit so that you can feel like a special little person when you walk up and give Uber the credit - Some parasitic POV you have there on multiple fronts… Maybe take a bit of time to look inward on that (ooh, or just raise VC capital to found a new startup that burns houseless people’s bodies for private jet fuel - win for everyone, corporate account bro!!!"
Saying this as a millennial, everything I don’t like is a “boomer” is a lazy scapegoat. Boomers suck in the many areas where they actually, specifically suck. But in fact here, you seem to actually have a lot more personally in common with the boomers with your pseudo-reaganite, “My company’s corporate account covers it” BS POV.
Except the taxi cab company has figured out how to offload the purchasing and maintenance of their fleet to their drivers. Probably pay their drivers less, as well.
Really depends on the taxi company. In the small mountain town I went to college in there was a traditional company and a co-op company. The traditional company had better cars, an app, and a nice person on the phone. The co-op had old (but clean) cars, drivers acting as dispatch, and drivers that were actually happy to be there and have conversations.
Only one of those companies had nearly all the same drivers the entire time I was there.
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.
“Just a taxi” I mean, can a taxi actually regular charge me MORE than a taxi used to cost from the airport to my home PLUS the magic bonus of surge increases in that also higher cost when I’m most vulnerable… I think not - check mate assholes, Uber for the win!"
-a tesla owner while his broken tesla is in the shop waiting months for parts
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I’m old enough to remember the EDC artist named Überzone
“Wait, what are the four things on the side?”
I call them wheels and I reinvented them."
Its a taxi with extra steps.
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
What is stopping an uber competitor?
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Who needs fire when everything is on fire?
Things kindle naturally, that’s what they’ll tell ya.
The taxi driver union is a joke, almost no driver is a member of it.
I don’t know if you want your taxes so bad just keep using them. They smell like ass, huge vehicles that guzzle gas, have ads that won’t stop playing, don’t take credit/debit card, charge insane amounts, but if this is what you really fucking want go use it.
removed by mod
It isn’t, they’re both shit.
The taxi industry 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 (and STILL is cash only in many places), 0 innovations, dirty ancient smelly barely running cars, a dispatch who would constantly say a car “was just around the corner” for 2 hours.
Even now they can’t get their head out of their ass to make a proper app in 2024 that just tells you how much you’re going to pay. Last time I tried out one of those taxi “apps” last year:
It wouldn’t tell you where or how long till the taxi got to you
It would only give you an “estimated price range” (FUCK THAT)
It looked like it was from 2013 and they got a “nephew who knows computers” to make it
Fuck Uber, but at least when Uber tells me a price, that’s the price that gets charged (excluding tip). At least I know where the Uber car is and when it’s getting to me. At least the Uber driver can’t screw around with routes and fares.
So really the choices for a taxi-like service are between a shit sandwich and a giant douche. Ugh, I’m just going to start renting cars.
Same thing with streaming. Enshitification ensures that all services end up in the same final state it seems.
Why would you give a regular taxi driver an Uber PIN? You just walk up to a taxi and get 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.
“Sorry, sir. No tip because you kept getting lost.”
Would be epic for a third-grader to loudly firmly vociferate a taxi driver back into shape
You kiss your mother with that mouth?
My mom’s dead but if she was alive I’m sure she’d be proud of my vocabulary. Anyway my parents & I have never been on kissing terms so no.
Is that why you turned to drinking, Mr. Duffman?
Ha ha this happened when I took a taxi to the railway station, leaving Paris after 10 years. It was quite nice to get the “tourist” route early in the morning so I rolled with it :-)
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).
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.
That’s Uber propaganda. The system was created because prior to that cities had traffic jams with a ton of freelance cabs with no quality controls or regulation. The medallion system set a price floor and mandated inspections and insurance and background checks. Uber bypassed all of that for years and surprise; women were being assaulted by drivers with criminal history, passengers were injured from uninspected vehicles and couldn’t get remedied because the drivers were uninsured, and cities have worsening traffic jams because there was no limit on Uber drivers choking downtown streets.
The taxi industry evolved this way for good reasons. Uber was initially sold as good for immigrants and now immigrants protest how that company gets special treatment over every other cab company and hurts their bottom line.
To the immigrant thing - I was on vacation a few weeks ago and took five Uber rides. None of the drivers spoke English. I wonder if ride sharing is going the immigrant predator route these days.
For clarification, it didn’t bother me to have non-English speaking drivers. They were all great.
90% of Uber drivers for me were immigrants. Its normal to me.
Oh yeah, I don’t think either are great, but at least Uber didn’t require drivers to submit to some crazy legal Ponzi scheme while paying for special driver’s licenses and competing with other drivers for the good shifts on a shared taxi licence. The Taxi mafia lobbied my city pretty hard and now Ubers get the opportunity to lose money to a middle man too! I’ve seen a bunch of taxis straight up also driving for Uber throughout the city.
Maybe we’re all just fucking bored Kyle! and need a change every now and then to feel something, anything; to take our minds off this revolving hamster wheel of mundanity
Ngl Lemmy’s one drawback are the boomers being mad about stupid shit like this.
Cool, zero wait GPS tracked and background checked drivers that work with my company’s corporate account that I don’t need to submit a reimbursement ticket for? No no no, BUT MUH YELLOW 19TH CENTURY CAB?!
LMAO have fun taking the “tourist” route.
“My company’s corporate account covers it” - Yeah, while fucking the accessibility of any kind of reasonable taxi service for the rest of us. Eat shit, parasite.
Also, that “zero wait” would mean that those drivers would have to sit around constantly, not being paid, all to uber’s profit/benefit so that you can feel like a special little person when you walk up and give Uber the credit - Some parasitic POV you have there on multiple fronts… Maybe take a bit of time to look inward on that (ooh, or just raise VC capital to found a new startup that burns houseless people’s bodies for private jet fuel - win for everyone, corporate account bro!!!"
Saying this as a millennial, everything I don’t like is a “boomer” is a lazy scapegoat. Boomers suck in the many areas where they actually, specifically suck. But in fact here, you seem to actually have a lot more personally in common with the boomers with your pseudo-reaganite, “My company’s corporate account covers it” BS POV.
I mean, there are some pretty legitimate concerns about employee welfare with Uber. Do the drivers get paid while waiting for customers?
They do in NYC yeah, if it falls below a threshold. I think it’s like $23/hr or something.
Except the taxi cab company has figured out how to offload the purchasing and maintenance of their fleet to their drivers. Probably pay their drivers less, as well.
With Uber drivers driving their own cars, how is Uber any different in that regard?
That’s what I’m saying. Uber is the taxi company.
Really depends on the taxi company. In the small mountain town I went to college in there was a traditional company and a co-op company. The traditional company had better cars, an app, and a nice person on the phone. The co-op had old (but clean) cars, drivers acting as dispatch, and drivers that were actually happy to be there and have conversations.
Only one of those companies had nearly all the same drivers the entire time I was there.
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.
I’m kinda surprised that insurance companies haven’t offered to buy driver information from these types of companies so they can raise rates
“Just a taxi” I mean, can a taxi actually regular charge me MORE than a taxi used to cost from the airport to my home PLUS the magic bonus of surge increases in that also higher cost when I’m most vulnerable… I think not - check mate assholes, Uber for the win!"
-a tesla owner while his broken tesla is in the shop waiting months for parts
Weird straw man you built there but okay