Uber Movement(movement.uber.com) |
Uber Movement(movement.uber.com) |
Most people who can afford a car will opt out of spending 3 hours a day on a bus, but for people who don't have any other option, they are burdened with this on top of working long minimum wage hours, and walking their groceries 1/2 mile home in the freezing cold with their children after a 10 hour shift, and judged for not being able to get themselves out of a bad situation.
Whatever the cost of an uber ride is, can be earned back multiple time in the amount of time people could work more, or allow them to come home and spend more time with their children instead of keeping them in after school public welfare programs which is shown to decrease crime over time.
In general, unless you are in Boston or NYC, the option of a bus is really the only option, and it is a disgraceful and absurd option for poor people working long hours at minimal pay. Ive ridden the public bus system in my city. It's a joke. I feel sad for people who have to navigate to work using it everyday, especially considering the majority of jobs that provide any hope of economic mobility are on "the other side of town" taxing their time even more to navigate further.
It is unreasonable to assume the working poor who are more statistically likely to have kids are not at an exponential disadvantage when a 15minute ride to work takes roughly 25% of their waking day, when maximizing hours worked is important with less pay, and kids are left in understaffed public daycare programs or unsupervised in areas with high crime rates at home. What do we expect?
[1] In cities with good public transit (e.g., Boston, NYC), uber can seem more like a luxury but in cities that are very car centric (e.g., Detroit, Miami), Uber is actually cheaper than owning a car for many people. I live in Miami and use UberPool all the time and I meet people from all walks of life. Car insurance here is very expensive, so for a lot of people, using Uber saves them money.
Yes only wealthy people's routes are being data mined. However, if someone is going from P to U, you will still learn that R to T is a hot spot. Those hot spots are common to everyone.
I mean don't get me wrong, the data is valuable. But this is a company that constantly says "fuck you" to the law and fair work practices. Let's keep that in mind.
"Movement makes all insights available under the Creative Commons, Attribution Non-Commercial license."
The experience in Boston was that Uber anonymized the data too much for it to be useful[1]. I would be very skeptical of this as it seems to be a program publicly touted as useful, but the e-mails obtained via FOIA requests show it to not be. I'm not sure what the solution is since privacy should be a concern.
[1] https://www.boston.com/news/business/2016/06/16/bostons-uber...
> [Boston chief information officer Jascha Franklin-Hodge] said the data has been useful to show the volume of Uber rides in Boston and users’ typical wait times, but it has not done much to aid in city planning.
In other words, that was just a PR offensive. Maybe this new iteration will be something else, but I would be skeptical.
> What are the licensing terms?
> Movement makes all insights available under the Creative Commons, Attribution Non-Commercial license.
Now, that's pretty interesting.
I wonder if we'll have API level access in a way that we can build tools on this data.
NYC already releases this information for taxis. It might even include Uber rides since they all have TLC plates, though I'm not sure.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/about/trip_record_data.shtm...
Aggregation is a common method for anonymization. One approach is to only display trips that were made by at least 15 different people in a day.
EDIT: I think in the video they showed census tracts, which is one of many geographic units they could choose from.
[1] https://www.boston.com/news/business/2016/06/16/bostons-uber...
I think Google can't share the traffic data it shows users as it's probably an aggregation of multiple sources, and they probably don't have the rights give away that information. The Waze CCP is an opt-in service on Waze where people can share their information and input with cities.
[1] https://support.google.com/waze/partners/answer/6372611?hl=e...
Example technique: if you treat each record as a (src,dst) pair of (lat,lon) pairs or somesuch, you can then build a 4d grid whose cells you populate with (Laplace) noisy counts. This provides eps-differential privacy when the noise is roughly 1/eps.
Whenever counts are sufficiently large, you can refine the contents of the cell and ask again. If you do the refinement at most k times, you get k*eps-differential privacy. There are smarter ways that work even better.
These provide "trip privacy", meaning they mask the presence/absence of individual trips. Uber presumably has user identifiers, and could group all trips by one user together, and do the same counting where the weight of each trip is scaled down so that they sum to at most one for each user. This would then give "user privacy", meaning it masks the presence/absence of individual users.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-05/uber-does...
Good idea though, but not applicable everywhere
I'm personally very excited to get access and love that it's free, but cannot understand it from a business perspective.
This seems like a good move from the PR perspective.
I genuinely do not believe this. If they intended on making anonymized data open, they wouldn't have a marketing site up already.
There are actually very few things in life in which the quality and amount of it that can be afforded for the same price each year increase so much annually for someone with stagnant wages and little economic mobility, as hardware and software technology, and services that optimize their efficiency and prices based on it.
In general, the expanded use of something, especially with realistic competitors such as Lyft, results in the cost goes down and becomes more affordable over time.
Most new technology and services related to it are expensive in the beginning and become more affordable and common over time. Right now, a VR headset from Oculus Rift is expensive for most people and usually only tech geeks who work in the industry can afford the toys they make, but over time, everyone who has a tv will have it at an affordable price, and everyone will laugh at how expensive it use to be for such bad graphics compared to what they have access to in 40years.
If more Ubers, Lyft and other ride sharing organizations and companies are on the road but less cars overall because they solve traffic problems: a. competition for price goes up, cost goes down b. Traffic and therefore commute times and cost of fuel goes down, which also aids in driving price down.
This is the same thing for technology hardware manufactoring, if anything, Samsung is struggling not to go out of business in certain areas because the cost of a TV is so cheap now, and they actually make ridiculously expensive and luxurious tvs now to cater to the wealthy to help keep that sector afloat.
Cellphones now are in remote places in Africa, allowing farmers to develop their own trading systems via communication they never had before and an entire internal market for crop trading and development and business is now viable for people in third world countries because they have access to affordable phones now.
That would have never happened though if the first phone had to be affordable for everyone.
The first time someone does something, theres a lot of R&D time, waste inefficiency, testing cycles and messy feedback from customers through first iterations. The first time someone learns how to sew, they may waste lots of cloth trying to make a dress that is nice enough someone will pay for, and probably sell an ok dress for a price that does not exceed the amount of time and effort they put in, but it will still only be for rich women. It was very rare back in the late 1890's that someone could afford to buy premade clothing, and everyone had to learn how to sew their own clothes because it was too expensive. But its a good thing that very expensive market was sustained and not ousted just because only rich people could afford to buy a premade dress. Looking back, its clearly inefficient and a loss of time and money for everyone to have to be educated at that skill, the same way we will look back and find it particularly wasteful for anyone who spends the majority of their life in urban areas to have their own car and have to waste time navigating their own transportation, and if they need to venture out of the city for a day or the weekend, rental hubs will abound at the outskirts as they already do in NYC and other areas, for rental for an hour, 4hours or a day or more. This is kind of the cycle of development.
It's a good thing computers arent the size of small rooms or even small houses anymore or even that a small one cost an arm and a leg, we would all feel that to be ridiculous. in my mind, I think its ridiculous that families both rich and lower middle class are obligated to maintain 1-2 cars, usually two if both parents work, and then kids who get jobs before they move out and need to navigate themselves after school, have to invest thousands and thousands of dollars. If you are poor its even worse because you will have to buy a used car, and spend more time and money fixing your car when it breaks down, but in unpredictable spurts that costs anywhere from hundreds or thousands of dollars, making it even more chaotic for poor families to navigate through life.
As far as America's bus transportation in most cities. Give me a break. Barely anyone who is not on welfare uses my cities transportation, and its a 45minute ride minimum to get to the poorest area to the closest sector that offers them jobs. That's a lot of time each way minimum for a single working mother on welfare trying to get herself out of a bad situation, struggling between spending hours on a bus for a ten minute ride in a car for a better salary and affording rent.
I find usually liberal elite trying to make arguments for the lower working class and people struggling to get out of welfare usually end up shooting not themselves but the people they claim to be speaking for in the foot. Not surprisingly, in my area people on welfare are some of the largest and loudest demographics wanting Uber, because they lost all hope in their own public transportation system years ago. It's not just bad, its disgraceful, and when I find myself trying to schedule a cab (yes in my city you have to schedule and theres usually a 45minute wait minimum but thats rarely accurate) in person, which hopefully saves you bit more than calling, its crowded with people on welfare trying to get cabs with children in tow, and being robbed blind based on arbitrary taxi prices.
This may not be the case in the city, but actually rural poor and isolated economically struggling cities like Detroit and upstate NY who don't have subways can benefit greatly from Uber, much more so than the middle class.
Is there any product or service that has ever existed involving technology that was affordable for everyone the very first release of it?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Atlanta_Rapid_Tra...
We're all different, born into different situations, in different geographical areas, with different brains, different athletic abilities (or not), and different opportunities in life. Some people are able to make a better life for themselves than the one they were born into and others squander their initial advantages and end up on skid row.
I expect people to realize their current economic situation, whatever the reason, and have kids only when they can afford to support them. Having sex may be mandatory, but having kids isn't. The easiest way to make a difficult economic situation worse is to have a kid.
Really helps when you have kids too.
The convenience of hire cars and Uber covers a limited scope.
I do not believe Uber invests nearly as much in autonomous cars as it invests in challenging the law and making PR about their lobbying being a civic fight.
I do wonder if there any holes in this idea though: What if they released the data the number of cars per hour per segment of road (a segment meaning a continuous piece of road between two intersections) rounded to the nearest multiple of 10?
Uber is engaged in civil disobedience against unjust laws that exist to protect political insiders. When did this become a bad thing?
As MLK wrote, "One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law." [1]
That is manifestly not what Kalanick is doing. He broke laws for his own profit, has energetically avoided the penalties, demonstrates no particular interest in justice, and certainly doesn't care about the conscience of the community.
I also think the "political insiders" thing is just crocodile tears. From his behavior, Kalanick has no problem with industrial interests having outsized power; he just wants to be the one with that power.
[1] https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....
Many in the civil rights movement also broke laws for their own profit or other benefit; they wanted the right to work any job they were qualified for, live in any neighborhood, etc. What's wrong with that?
Does one need to be completely altruistic to oppose injustice? Victims cannot protest, only uninterested third parties?
Civil disobedience not only requires submission to the law, but is most effective when the threat of punishment is existential (e.g. lengthy incarceration or death). Since Uber’s existence depends on defiance of the current laws, it is manifestly impossible that the company’s actions are in any way a form of civil disobedience.
This is a strong indication that his argument is invalid, nothing more.
There may be adequate information now, but only because enough people bought in to Uber's marketing had poor experiences, and have talked about them.
I also don't think "enough readily available information" is a good standard to judge commerce by. There's enough readily available information out there for sufficiently prepared people to not get sucked into, say, a Ponzi scheme. But that does not absolve somebody running a scam, because they are doing their best to find people not yet prepared and then energetically deceive them. My standard is more like, "Does the entity with more power use that power in a way that the entity with less power later comes to find harmful?" By that metric, I don't think Uber scores particularly well.
Uber has always been clear about how it works for the drivers, and not reading/understanding terms and conditions isn't an excuse for not taking responsibility for yourself.
Their early marketing quite literally spelled out that this is something you can do with your own pre-existing car to make a bit of extra cash on the side. In fact this is STILL the prevailing message you get from their website, let me quote a few lines at you;
"Got a car? Turn it into a money machine. The city is buzzing and Uber makes it easy for you to cash in on the action. Plus, you've already got everything you need to get started."
"Need something outside the 9 to 5? As an independent contractor with Uber, you’ve got freedom and flexibility to drive whenever you have time."
Somehow, and I really cannot fathom how, some people have interpreted this as "Go out and buy/lease a car, we'll give you a full time job".
Second, having freelanced for years, Uber is nothing like that. Freelancing operates in a marketplace where you can shop your skills to many purchasers. Uber aspires to be a monopsony.
Third, you indulge in pretty typical "blame the victim" logic. Uber is the more powerful party here. A driver has some information; Uber has vastly more information. If a bunch of drivers just happen to all make the same mistake, one that benefits Uber, then sure, you could blame the drivers. But I think it's more reasonable to blame the entity who sets up the conditions from which they profit.
And your last paragraph would be much more plausible if Uber didn't actively promote car leasing: https://www.uber.com/drive/vehicle-solutions/
Also one would think that subsidizing drivers in their early days was not really the best way to make a honest impression on how rewarding the job would actually become.
http://image.et.xchangeleasing.com/lib/fe9412737265067b77/m/...
https://consumerist.com/2016/05/31/5-things-you-should-know-...
Are pay day loan patrons really making an informed decision because the interest percentage is written on the wall?
How exactly is this predatory? If you're only driving minimally, then it's definitely not a good deal, but it's not meant for those drivers. It's for drivers who drive full-time, ie. 40+ hrs a week.
If you can't understand what you're signing then you shouldn't be signing it, very simple really. For some people this leasing scheme would be fine, for other's it could lead to financial trouble - Uber doesn't have to work that out for people.
Not sure where pay day loans come into this? Uber has some kind of once off upfront pay advance incentive thing, but there's no interest and the terms are something quite generous like 15 weeks so it's not even remotely like a pay day loan.
Do you have an intellectual (rather than emotional) argument why my rephrasing is somehow invalid?
I do have an intellectual argument, but you're pretty clearly trolling, so there's no real point in presenting it. You're not stupid and you know what you're doing, so why prolong the pretense?
That is so messed up.
http://therideshareguy.com/uber-xchange-leasing-a-kinder-and...
Second, Uber is exactly like freelancing in a lot of ways - you get paid per job, you aren't entitled to paid leave, and running costs are your problem. Regardless of what you assume Uber aspires to be, the fact is there a whole range of ride sharing options out there so people can absolutely shop around.
Third - Blaming the victim requires a victim, for a victim to exist there also needs to be an offender. In your mind Uber is the offender because they are somehow the "more powerful party", which only really makes sense in a small number of cases. Uber is reliant on people signing on to drive for them, and unless said drivers are somehow indebted to Uber or contractually obligated to drive for them I fail to see how Uber has much power over them. Happy to change my mind on this if you can show me a situation in which Uber has some sort of excessive control over one or more of their drivers.
Uber "actively promote" car leasing in a small number of locations as an alternative to supplying your own car, and even then it's not the main message of their driver-focused advertising. At no point in signing up to be a driver will you be instructed to lease a car. Once again, people have all the numbers available and it's up to them to work out if it's financially viable for them to lease a car from Uber or from anyone else.
2) That is not "exactly like freelancing". It is more akin to the company town approach to things, where the nominal structure of freedom is used to wash away moral responsibility. And if you talk to ex-Uber drivers, they do not feel there is a "whole range of options". Uber claims 87% market share, making them by far the dominant company. And the notion that Uber aspires to be a monopsony is not my assumption; investment analysts looking at Uber are pretty clear that Uber's market valuation only makes sense if they end up totally dominating things. Really, I freelanced for years, and two of my parents did as well. Trying to tell me that Uber is particularly like freelancing is pissing on my leg and telling me it's raining.
3) Uber is clearly the more powerful party in both the contract law sense [1] and in the market sense. There's no "somehow" here. They are the ones who write the contract. They are the ones who set the terms. They are the one who can unilaterally change the terms. They are the more powerful party. So get out of here with your "somehow".
4) And as to the leasing thing, I begin to be concerned that you're not arguing in good faith here. Uber literally helps people lease cars full time, so I think it's reasonable for people to read that as Uber suggesting that full time is reasonable. You after all brought up leasing.
More broadly, you're making the sort of tendentious, over-narrow arguments that were used to justify all sorts of exploitative behavior before labor laws required people to be either employees (therefore deserving of protection) or true independent contractors (who are professionals and can deal with things on their own because they operate in a functional marketplace with multiple clients). The last couple decades have seen businesses creeping around those barriers because it lets them take advantage of power asymmetries. I think Uber used a weak economy and a technological change to further undermine those barriers.
If you want to make a serious argument here, you can't just sweep Uber's enormous advantages under the rug. There are giant asymmetries in information, legal resources, negotiation skill, market power, financial resources, manipulative skill, and political clout. If you'd like to make a might-makes-right, fuck-the-workers case, just go for it. But if you're going to continue to make an argument about fairness, you have to account for power. Otherwise you're just ignoring a century of labor and employment law history.
[1] See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscionability for how power is relevant to contract law.
I stand by what I said. I think that the distinction between our celebrated historical civil disobedience and the modern kind is not so clear. One happened 50 years ago and is part of our modern mythology, the other is a contemporary conflict and as such it obviously doesn't come with "applause-lights" [1].
[1] "Applause-lights" explained: http://lesswrong.com/lw/jb/applause_lights/
The value of an argument is not a pure function of its syntactic structure but also the specific details of the argument. Context matters. Intent even matters.
The details, context and intent so far suggest that you care more about being right on the Internet than about human beings' welfare.
My 2 cents: On the surface, disregard for law in order to pursue something considered as better for the greater good of the population/humans seems the same in your comparisons.
I think you're meeting so much resistance because we're not 100% rational beings. As mentioned elsewhere, intent and context absolutely affect how we view actions/statements ( debating that is beyond the scope of this argument imo).
At the human/emotional level, it _feels_ (and I'd argue that it is wrong) wrong to say someone disobeying the laws of the land to fight for the right to be treated as a human being is the same as someone disobeying the laws because they want to make more money (Travis). As a species, we hold actions with the intent to preserve/improve our collective good - the definition of which is perhaps shaped by our moral compass - as a higher, more worthwhile and noble aim than actions made solely in the interest of profit.
Even in the court of law, intent shapes an action (eg: murder vs manslaugher)
First, the folks who "fight for the right to be treated as a human being" also stand to gain monetarily (and otherwise) from that treatment.
Secondly, suppose Kalanick's desire to build Uber is ideological in nature rather than merely profit driven - i.e. suppose he views building Uber as a way to shape the world for the better. (I do believe he views the world this way.) Would that redeem his actions in your view?
Incidentally, I really appreciate the intellectual response. It's far more interesting than the general anger consuming this thread.
I miss the old days, when we discussed ideas even if they sounded stratnge.
I prefer an open environment where more strange ideas can be discussed, but you also have to make a good faith effort to see where most people are coming from. The remarks you made on the civil rights movement suggest you either don't take it seriously at all, or you don't care about it at all, or you have no understanding of what things like civil disobedience actually mean. The trouble with making a good faith effort to explain all of that to you is that in the end you probably won't change your mind, because it's not like any of this information is hard to find.
I understand that I've expressed disagreement on a topic you consider to be a sacred value. But have I done anything beyond that?
And note that you sought out a comment not addressed to you to perform the exact behavior in question: aggressively demanding that somebody educate you. Not because it looks like you're sincerely interested in learning anything, but because it's an argumentative technique.
If you actually want to understand this issue, find somebody whose job it is to teach you. Get a therapist versed in online culture, bring in a set of your discussions here, and pay her by the hour to help you see the pattern that is obvious to many other people.
I doubt you'll do that, though, because I don't think you're seriously trying to learn anything here.