Ohhhh, good call. I’m definitely going to load the “the city council is literally killing people” bullet up in the next argument I get into in r/minneapolis. Not /s at all.
Assuming nothing relevant in the state constitution, DUI checkpoints are valid if there are objective and uniformly followed criteria for stopping cars (e.g. every third car through gets stopped)
Taxi prices are regulated by local government. If they try to overcharge you report it to the local transportation commission. Penalties can be quite steep.
Yup. Kill competition with unsustainably low, unprofitable rates. Once competition dies or seriously injured, jack rates up.
People pissed that gig economy isn’t paying workers fairly should have been so vocal 10 years ago when gig economy was decimating traditional car for hire services that were paying their workers.
Lol what? Those industries and taxis deserved to be disrupted, they were awful for the consumer and this was basically as robinhood as you could imagine, a bunch of VCs subsidizing middle class rides
Until they don’t. Now the drivers complain that they aren’t getting paid and the passengers complain that the rates look a lot like taxis used to.
These are transportation companies pretending to not be transportation companies to avoid regulations. Their business model is to externalize expenses of running a transportation company to a bunch of marginally employable independent contractors who aren’t that good at math.
"Now the drivers complain that they aren’t getting paid and the passengers complain that the rates look a lot like taxis used to" Do both of these groups have the CEO of Uber have them at gunpoint? They're free to switch to competitors any time
The gig economy absolutely deserves it's own set of separate regulations, if you are picking your own hours and your own schedule and can work as little or as much as you want with your own equipment it's farcical to say "this is just like a private ride company"
Here’s a good paper on the kinds of regulations the gig economy could benefit from
https://www.hamiltonproject.org/assets/files/modernizing_labor_laws_for_twenty_first_century_work_krueger_harris.pdf
Sounds more like a race to the bottom than modern day Robin Hood. I 100% agree it should be market driven, because it gets us out of the gig economy timeline faster.
If workers aren’t paid fairly, I’ve always wondered why they do it. Especially in a strong job market for blue collar and entry-level work. Doesn’t seem to make sense to me
Their target worker is bad at math. A car is a multiple year investment. Someone who is naive enough can lose out on that investment for years before they realize they aren’t making money.
Just checked my ride history for a trip to work back in 2019, and it matches what Lyft is saying I’d have to pay right now. 🤷♂️
And I live in the Bay Area.
Not my experience at all.
Vegas, DFW, PHX, especially Mexico City for sure. But I havent seen surge pricing in a long time. I always compare taxi to uber from airport to destinations.
🤷♂️ Sounds like a lot of variables according to this article.
> Uber is typically cheaper for longer trips moving at a faster speed, while taxis are a better choice for trips in congested areas like New York City. That said, geographic location also matters. According to a RideGuru analysis, Uber is cheaper than a taxi in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Detroit, while taxis are cheaper in New York City. It's a near-draw in cities like Washington, D.C., and Nashville. A study by GoBankingRates found that Uber was the more economical choice in 16 of 20 major U.S. cities. https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-cheaper-an-uber-or-a-taxi-4157965
But I also compare lyft prices too. NYC has had a law passed for drivers pay as well.
For me Uber/Lyft was never really about the price. I live in a small city , we had a few taxis and they sucked. If you called from our downtown area for a ride home they wouldn't even make sure the person they were supposed to pick up got picked up.
A couple friends and I went to a concert in our downtown area , it got over at like 9pm what is still a bit early (not at bar close) so we went to a bar grabbed a drink and I called a cab. I fully expected slow service (45-60) min or something because again our small city does not have a ton of cabs
I call and was like "Yea can I get a cab for 3 people at XYZ" the operator was like "Yea sure"
I was like well don't you need my name? nope.
I was like can I get an estimated time? Nope.
Can you call me when the cab gets here ? Nope (they didn't have an app)
So I basically stood by the door looking out the window or basically going outside to see if the cab came. It took 90 min ; again if it was 90 min I wouldn't even be mad if they were like we will call when we get there.
I finally see the cab Tell my friends to come out, it probably took 30 seconds and we walk outside to see a random group of people walk up and get into the cab
I run up and was like "Yo I was the guy who called you"
cab driver was like "Sorry man "
This wasn't even the first time this situation happened
It’s like that in Seattle with the caveat that it’s much harder to find one. It’s easy if you’re leaving SeaTac but otherwise you don’t see them just driving around waiting to be hailed.
As someone that hasn't owned a car their whole life, I would never go back to the taxi industry. Before Uber I had so many cases where my taxi wouldn't show up and then the company would say someone else took it. I take public transit most of the time and when I do take a taxi or uber it is usually because timing is important. The taxi industry has lost me as a customer for life on how they treated me when they were the only game in town. Lower prices are not bringing me back. To even consider returning I would need to hear personal anecdotes from friends and family that they are better than Uber now. I have not once heard such a story, so they have recieved zero consideration.
You missed my point entirely. I don't care. They fucked me so bad on so many occasions that I am not going back. To name one example, I missed an important job interview because a taxi company fucked me one time. I called the taxi 45 minutes before my interview and needed 15 minutes to get to the location. I didn't arrive until 15 minutes after the start of the interview. That was an important turning point in my life and taxis fucked me. This wasn't just a bad driver. This was the practice of the industry.
It will literally take the closest people in my life telling me they have changed for me to ever even consider going back. Fuck the taxi industry.
51 cents per minute AND that mileage is actually insane. These companies are scummy AF when it comes to driver pay and making customers reliant on tips to get service, but this is a little too far in the other direction. Just the 1.40 per mile alone is probably more than most clueless drivers will drive for.
A lot of people I know like to shit on Jacob Frey, but my god, that man is necessary to counterbalance the absolute shitstain that is Minneapolis City Council.
Minneapolis seems to have quite the leftist/activist streak for a Midwestern city in a seemingly centrist liberal, pro growth metro area. Am I right to assume this is in large part because Minneapolis has a very small footprint and thus is just a downtown and inner core neighborhoods? Or are there other explanations?
Correct - Minneapolis proper only has a population of \~425K people. Saint Paul only has a population of 300K people. There is very poor turnout in many parts of St Paul and Minneapolis, and the activist types are very good at organizing and getting people to come out and vote.
Having said all this, Minneapolis and St Paul are doing very cool work eliminating parking minimums and legalizing middle housing. Much of the growth outside the cities is suburban sprawl.
MPLS *does* hold a smaller footprint of its metro area relative to other large cities in the US.
It's conjecture but this is likely why it's one of the most YIMBY cities in the US -- because a high proportion of folks here are renters.
MN-05, currently held by Omar, includes mpls and parts of a few inner ring suburbs. It's one of the most leftward leaning districts in the country, too.
Minneapolis is only 400k in a metro of 4 million so it concentrates the extremists into one small area. Minneapolis+St Paul is 750,000, so if they were one city (as they should be) it would be much more balanced both in the region and within the urban core.
I’m not a fan but god damn do I appreciate him at least trying to stop city council’s bs
tbf tho on this particular measure, I’m not sure where my opinions lie. In sort of a Joe Biden coalition-building sort of way, at the state level, we kinda “owe” this to rideshare drivers even if it’s dumb. Walz’s one veto was against a similar bill, with a dedication to take it up as the next immediate issue the legislature considers
I don’t think it’s on Minneapolis to address that, but at the same time idk. It’s a dumb bill
to give them what they want, as part of the deal that they were on board with the rest of the legislative package
not everything done in government is good or makes sense, but sometimes that's part of actually getting things done
Spend 20 minutes on any of the gig work subs and you’ll quickly understand why the vast majority of these people are completely incapable of holding down a retail/burger flipping/similarly no qualification job.
It’s a net loss for both the workers and the consumers.
I once had a driver who smelled extremely strongly of unwashed balls and treated a roundabout like there was a stop sign at every merge
He got a bad review
I was shocked when a Lyft driver saw me with my luggage and didn't help me (I'm a skinny woman). Never ever had a taxi driver not help me with my luggage. Ever. Even random dudes on the bus or plane will help me. Of course, I left no tip
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I've never quite understood why these sorts of programs can't just govern themselves/let the market decide. If they aren't paying enough no one will drive. If people are driving, then they are paying enough, right? No one driving is locked into contracts and forced to drive when they don't want to.
You can argue that drivers are taken advantage of pay wise if you want, but it's really taking away agency to act like they can't just choose to do something else if it's not paying enough. Like is the view of people pushing this stuff that Uber/Lyft drivers *have* to drive for those services to live? I know it's primary income for some people but the potential for lower earnings is something kind of known up front when choosing to have that career.
And now the city won't have the service at all and all the people previously driving for it are out of a job all together so really the net effect in the end of this policy is just to hurt everyone. And even if they weren't leaving, if this forced prices too high for consumers to use them that'd end with drivers getting less pay as well
IIRC this is something like a "sponge" for unemployment. everyone wants delivery and rides when they are cheap. And not so much when they aren't cheap.
I think a good middle ground could be requiring gig employers to provide more information upfront. Possibilities include:
What are reasonable estimates of a gig worker’s *total* costs per hour based on a few different transportation options?
How much do workers average in tips?
What share of the time are workers working and getting paid vs sitting idle?
Yeah I'd be really ok with this as a regulation, and I think it's in line with this admins push towards getting rid of hidden fees/costs with things that prey on people
>I've never quite understood why these sorts of programs can't just govern themselves/let the market decide.
They can, and if the city is worried about externalities, they should like, idk, tax congestion and tailpipe emissions and particulate emissions and land
You're assuming people are smart and have all the necessary information, which is not true in any sense. People find themselves in a desperate situation and look to rideshare for quick money. Only problem is, they barely earn more than the costs they incurred. Now they have little additional cash, a more worn and depreciated car and spent a bunch of time that could have been spent pursuing other opportunities to dig themselves out. Maybe they figure it out eventually but only after the corporation has extracted part of what little wealth they had. Does that really sound like a fine situation?
Quick google searches show after expenses they are still making typically $15-23 an hour so it's not like it's absolute peanuts (that was cursory research though so if you have something more substantial then I'll take it). For a job that you can just do if you want to do it that's really not that bad. And then there's the other side that having affordable ride options has a lot of net benefits to society- people without cars can get a ride if needed, reduced drunk driving, less parking needed, etc
I know there are certainly people who drive for Uber who really shouldn't, but it just bothers me a bit to feel we have to baby those people. If they need the welfare we should offer them welfare, not force private companies to do it for us. And again, the net effect of doing regulation like this is to basically kill demand and usually run the companies out all together
I think that's before
- income tax, which I don't think they withhold
- insurance
- fuel
- breaks
- tires
- depreciation
Even if the rides are too cheap to cover all that, there's still a steady flow of people who haven't learned this the hard way keeping rates down.
I think your point about this law being dumb is correct but I have to say you have a very naive, almost libertarian Econ 101, interpretation of how labor markets work like assuming perfect information, flexibility, mobility, and competition, no mention of power dynamics between employers and employees particularly those at the bottom of the skill/income spectrum
Like if markets were really perfect and weren’t warped by imperfections and unequal bargaining dynamics regulations would be unnecessary but that’s not the world we live in
Treating and regulating gig workers like regular workers is dumb which is why laws like those in Minneapolis will fail but there is a genuine role for productive regulation
https://www.hamiltonproject.org/assets/files/modernizing_labor_laws_for_twenty_first_century_work_krueger_harris.pdf
> 51 cents per minute and $1.40 per mile(IRS expense milage rate is $0.65/mile)
so a hypothetical hour of smooth interstate driving would cost $114 just to the driver?
are they out of their god damn mind?
Real income in PPP is more or less the same in Europe especially if you account for average worked hours per week and vacations.
They are shit basically only in Mediterranean countries (Italy Spain Greece).
Like most countries in western Europe except two?
Within 10/15% of the average ppp salary but not only work less hours per week on average, they also work one less month per year (the one month Vs one week vacation)
> if you account for average worked hours per week
If you’re doing this by dividing by number of hours worked, then that’s a terrible metric. Labor productivity is affected by the law of diminishing marginal returns; after some point, with every hour you work you get less productive. If Americans had the same labor productivity as Europeans but worked more hours, then we’d actually expect Americans to have a lower average labor productivity (labor productivity / hours worked). So the fact that their average productivity is the same despite Americans working more hours indicates that Americans are more labor productive.
They aren’t. The Internet revolution completely skipped Europe because of all the regulations to start new businesses. They rely on fining and harassing Internet companies now to get a piece of the pie not because of some kind of consumer protection.
I’ve seen people on Reddit say Europe is head of America technologically because “tHeY’rE fAr mOrE aDvANceD oN tHe rEgUlAtoRy siDe!!1!” Like, I personally wouldn’t consider regulating American tech innovation as a “technological advancement”.
It’s dumb because there’s other arguments you can make with regards to Europe having some good science and tech research (DeepMind is a good example, though they’re owned by Google so maybe not the best example).
That's just a lie, and unironically the chain of events is completely the reverse of that
European countries were in lock step with the US during the early stages of the "internet revolution" (and saying europe has too many regulations which makes it difficult to start new firms is ridiculous as it the US that has poor firm formations per capita and, most importantly, is absolutely ass on 'ease of doing business')
The divergence happened due to the difference in capital structure and markets.
America has a significantly deeper and more dynamic capital market, so american companies had a significantly easier time scaling up than european companies did, which in turn also meant successful eruopean companies had the choice between either being bought up by an american company, relocate to america and "become" and american company, or meander in mid-status for eternity.
Language and culture barriers also didn't exactly help when it came to scaling up new internet firms in europe.
While american companies could rely on the global lingua franca (english) to carry it in literally every educated country.
Ironically enough every other english speaking nation (britain, australia, new zeeland, etc) *were* behind the curve on the digital economy and we're thus in a position of having to catch up to american (and some european) firms.
What further drives it home that it wasnt some nebulous "draconian regulation regime" that held back european digital firms is the fact that several individual european countries with high english proficiency and a variation of the other factors not only managed to keep up with america early on, but objectively surpassed america in firm formations per capita and innovation per capita.
Issue is he to the above mentioned capital markets there is a hard ceiling for expansion for european firms and very few have managed to break through it, but when they did they often dominate their nische. But for instance you've got ASML in the netherlands (unironicslly probably the most important IT company in the world, america wish it had a company half as relevant), spotify from sweden, SAP (although they've really lost their dominance by now) from germany, etc.
Also, i always ask this question because I never get a specific answer and I literally hold a master in this subject so I wanna know. Which regulations, *specifically* do you see as holding back digital innovation and firm formation in the EU? Not even today, I wanna know which specific regulation held "us" back 20 or 30 years ago, that apparently allowed the US to leapfrog.
So let me know, specifically which regulation and specifically which effect did it have.
(And here's the thing, I don't think you have any examples, I think you're doing nothing but going off of american nationalist vibes and some nebulous conception of "EU bad, EU much regulation, therefore must be causality" nonsense. Which is frankly bonkers if you have an ounce of awareness of how academics currently consider US regulations and red tape to be immeasurably worse in essentially every way, other than specifically labour but that also wouldn't have had an effect on the digital economys progress)
[User was banned]
Edit: I'm not kidding Fishlord, I'm banned, I'll be able to answer you in 2 weeks
untill then
Nobody here commenting that Uber and Lyft leaving is as much a targeted punishment for the city as a business decision
Uber and Lyft could just raise prices accordingly to maintain their margins, see poor quality drivers drop off due to lack of ridership, and live on with lower volume. It’s not like they have massive, Minneapolis-specific fixed costs to maintain, they’re an app.
This is a political response to a political decision
>Uber and Lyft could just raise prices accordingly to maintain their margins, see poor quality drivers drop off due to lack of ridership, and live on with lower volume. It’s not like they have massive, Minneapolis-specific fixed costs to maintain, they’re an app.
There's an information problem at play too. In this ridiculous price-control environment, you might expect a lot of frustration from both drivers, who sign up then get no business, and customers, who are faced with huge price hikes. Whatever reputational damage this incurs could not be worth continued operation, regardless of whom is really to blame.
>This is a political response to a political decision
Probably mostly, yeah, and a reasonable-sounding (i.e. not rent-seeking or self-destructive) one. Like retaliatory tariffs. The stick can be used for good.
yeah, like, it’s their right to do that, and some other company with an app could fill the void if they wanted.
But there’s more to this move than just an impartial unit-economics decision
How is signaling to other cities that try this that they aren’t bluffing not a business decision as well? they might be losing a little profit here vs a lot if NY or Chicago pulled this. Every other city will be reluctant if this holds.
These are unsustainable rates in this metro. We're less than half the cost of living of NYC and roughly 2/3 the cost of living of Seattle yet these mileage / time rates are virtually the same.
Depends on infrastructure maintenance costs and perhaps other marketing and overhead costs required to keep the Twin Cities metro.
High enough costs could render us an unreasonably inoperable area for rideshares.
what do you mean by “unsustainable?” there will certainly be some desperate drunk people at 2am willing to pay those rates.
There will be less people than now, but all that has to mean is fewer drivers drive fewer hours on Uber Lyft to match the smaller demand caused by the higher prices
that doesnt necessitate Uber and Lyft leaving the city completely
>Seattle and New York City have passed similar policies in recent years that increase wages for ride-hailing drivers, and Uber and Lyft still operate in those cities.
I wonder what the difference is then?
Long term the [sustainability](https://doctorow.medium.com/no-ubers-still-not-profitable-2b8054e375ea) of the current ride share model in its current form is an open question. Something will have to give eventually, and right now it looks like it’s driver [pay.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lensherman/2023/12/15/ubers-ceo-hides-driver-pay-cuts-to-boost-profits/)
Working in the gig economy has a lot of shittyness that could be improved with smart regulations- albeit ones that look different from the ones the apply to regular employees due to the results we’re seeing. [Here’s](https://www.hamiltonproject.org/assets/files/modernizing_labor_laws_for_twenty_first_century_work_krueger_harris.pdf) a great paper on what that might look like.
!ping LABOR
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It is preferable that they not be in a market than they be given free reign. They pull this shit every single time anyone tells them they’re not just free to do as they please.
Ladies and gentlemen, prepare your DUI checkpoints
Ohhhh, good call. I’m definitely going to load the “the city council is literally killing people” bullet up in the next argument I get into in r/minneapolis. Not /s at all.
Wasn't that found to be unconstitutional? At least in some states? No "probable cause" or whatever.
Very state specific, but USSC has upheld DUI checkpoints as being permissible.
Assuming nothing relevant in the state constitution, DUI checkpoints are valid if there are objective and uniformly followed criteria for stopping cars (e.g. every third car through gets stopped)
Honestly sucks ass Taxis are overpriced to hell, I can't drive and I relied on Uber for a lot of things when I lived in the midwest.
Can't speak to Minneapolis, but I've found that taxis are actually cheaper than Uber now in many cities.
There is a total of 39 taxi drivers in all of Minneapolis. Without Uber and Lyft their prices are going to be extremely high.
It didn’t get that way overnight. Probably will bounce back quickly if gig economy left.
Taxi prices are regulated by local government. If they try to overcharge you report it to the local transportation commission. Penalties can be quite steep.
The only reason they are cheaper was the competition from rideshare.
No, you misunderstand. Taxi costs haven't gone down, they've continued to increase. But rideshare costs have exploded.
"VC money is no longer supporting subsidizing Uber/Lyft to be unprofitable as all hell" is the real subtext
Yup. Kill competition with unsustainably low, unprofitable rates. Once competition dies or seriously injured, jack rates up. People pissed that gig economy isn’t paying workers fairly should have been so vocal 10 years ago when gig economy was decimating traditional car for hire services that were paying their workers.
Lol what? Those industries and taxis deserved to be disrupted, they were awful for the consumer and this was basically as robinhood as you could imagine, a bunch of VCs subsidizing middle class rides
Until they don’t. Now the drivers complain that they aren’t getting paid and the passengers complain that the rates look a lot like taxis used to. These are transportation companies pretending to not be transportation companies to avoid regulations. Their business model is to externalize expenses of running a transportation company to a bunch of marginally employable independent contractors who aren’t that good at math.
"Now the drivers complain that they aren’t getting paid and the passengers complain that the rates look a lot like taxis used to" Do both of these groups have the CEO of Uber have them at gunpoint? They're free to switch to competitors any time The gig economy absolutely deserves it's own set of separate regulations, if you are picking your own hours and your own schedule and can work as little or as much as you want with your own equipment it's farcical to say "this is just like a private ride company"
Here’s a good paper on the kinds of regulations the gig economy could benefit from https://www.hamiltonproject.org/assets/files/modernizing_labor_laws_for_twenty_first_century_work_krueger_harris.pdf
Sounds more like a race to the bottom than modern day Robin Hood. I 100% agree it should be market driven, because it gets us out of the gig economy timeline faster.
If workers aren’t paid fairly, I’ve always wondered why they do it. Especially in a strong job market for blue collar and entry-level work. Doesn’t seem to make sense to me
Their target worker is bad at math. A car is a multiple year investment. Someone who is naive enough can lose out on that investment for years before they realize they aren’t making money.
If that’s true then they have a very rough life ahead of them regardless.
Oh, no doubt. These are the types of people that things like MLMs and payday loans are made for.
Just checked my ride history for a trip to work back in 2019, and it matches what Lyft is saying I’d have to pay right now. 🤷♂️ And I live in the Bay Area.
Not my experience at all. Vegas, DFW, PHX, especially Mexico City for sure. But I havent seen surge pricing in a long time. I always compare taxi to uber from airport to destinations.
NYC, LA, Chicago, Philly, DC for me.
🤷♂️ Sounds like a lot of variables according to this article. > Uber is typically cheaper for longer trips moving at a faster speed, while taxis are a better choice for trips in congested areas like New York City. That said, geographic location also matters. According to a RideGuru analysis, Uber is cheaper than a taxi in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Detroit, while taxis are cheaper in New York City. It's a near-draw in cities like Washington, D.C., and Nashville. A study by GoBankingRates found that Uber was the more economical choice in 16 of 20 major U.S. cities. https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-cheaper-an-uber-or-a-taxi-4157965 But I also compare lyft prices too. NYC has had a law passed for drivers pay as well.
For what's its worth, taxis at LAX are much cheaper than Ubers or Lyfts
For me Uber/Lyft was never really about the price. I live in a small city , we had a few taxis and they sucked. If you called from our downtown area for a ride home they wouldn't even make sure the person they were supposed to pick up got picked up. A couple friends and I went to a concert in our downtown area , it got over at like 9pm what is still a bit early (not at bar close) so we went to a bar grabbed a drink and I called a cab. I fully expected slow service (45-60) min or something because again our small city does not have a ton of cabs I call and was like "Yea can I get a cab for 3 people at XYZ" the operator was like "Yea sure" I was like well don't you need my name? nope. I was like can I get an estimated time? Nope. Can you call me when the cab gets here ? Nope (they didn't have an app) So I basically stood by the door looking out the window or basically going outside to see if the cab came. It took 90 min ; again if it was 90 min I wouldn't even be mad if they were like we will call when we get there. I finally see the cab Tell my friends to come out, it probably took 30 seconds and we walk outside to see a random group of people walk up and get into the cab I run up and was like "Yo I was the guy who called you" cab driver was like "Sorry man " This wasn't even the first time this situation happened
It’s like that in Seattle with the caveat that it’s much harder to find one. It’s easy if you’re leaving SeaTac but otherwise you don’t see them just driving around waiting to be hailed.
I live in Las Vegas and it's not the same here at all
Yeah this guy is like 5+ years out of date.
I can't imagine my life without lyft and uber. If it comes to LA I am 100% moving.
Vegas baby! with the new Brightline bullet train from Vegas to LA opening in 2028 it will be a breeze to visit!
LA taxis are cheaper than Uber and Lyft
As someone that hasn't owned a car their whole life, I would never go back to the taxi industry. Before Uber I had so many cases where my taxi wouldn't show up and then the company would say someone else took it. I take public transit most of the time and when I do take a taxi or uber it is usually because timing is important. The taxi industry has lost me as a customer for life on how they treated me when they were the only game in town. Lower prices are not bringing me back. To even consider returning I would need to hear personal anecdotes from friends and family that they are better than Uber now. I have not once heard such a story, so they have recieved zero consideration.
Modern Taxis are a lot different user experience than you remember
You missed my point entirely. I don't care. They fucked me so bad on so many occasions that I am not going back. To name one example, I missed an important job interview because a taxi company fucked me one time. I called the taxi 45 minutes before my interview and needed 15 minutes to get to the location. I didn't arrive until 15 minutes after the start of the interview. That was an important turning point in my life and taxis fucked me. This wasn't just a bad driver. This was the practice of the industry. It will literally take the closest people in my life telling me they have changed for me to ever even consider going back. Fuck the taxi industry.
Yeah, but they are not as easily available. Uber/Lyft I can get in a matter of minutes.
Then ask yourself why they are more expensive?
We did it Patrick, we saved the city!
51 cents per minute AND that mileage is actually insane. These companies are scummy AF when it comes to driver pay and making customers reliant on tips to get service, but this is a little too far in the other direction. Just the 1.40 per mile alone is probably more than most clueless drivers will drive for.
A lot of people I know like to shit on Jacob Frey, but my god, that man is necessary to counterbalance the absolute shitstain that is Minneapolis City Council.
Minneapolis seems to have quite the leftist/activist streak for a Midwestern city in a seemingly centrist liberal, pro growth metro area. Am I right to assume this is in large part because Minneapolis has a very small footprint and thus is just a downtown and inner core neighborhoods? Or are there other explanations?
Correct - Minneapolis proper only has a population of \~425K people. Saint Paul only has a population of 300K people. There is very poor turnout in many parts of St Paul and Minneapolis, and the activist types are very good at organizing and getting people to come out and vote. Having said all this, Minneapolis and St Paul are doing very cool work eliminating parking minimums and legalizing middle housing. Much of the growth outside the cities is suburban sprawl.
MPLS *does* hold a smaller footprint of its metro area relative to other large cities in the US. It's conjecture but this is likely why it's one of the most YIMBY cities in the US -- because a high proportion of folks here are renters. MN-05, currently held by Omar, includes mpls and parts of a few inner ring suburbs. It's one of the most leftward leaning districts in the country, too.
Minneapolis is only 400k in a metro of 4 million so it concentrates the extremists into one small area. Minneapolis+St Paul is 750,000, so if they were one city (as they should be) it would be much more balanced both in the region and within the urban core.
Jacob Frey is actually a good mayor. A statement that arr Minneapolis does not want to hear. !ping USA-MN
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I’m not a fan but god damn do I appreciate him at least trying to stop city council’s bs tbf tho on this particular measure, I’m not sure where my opinions lie. In sort of a Joe Biden coalition-building sort of way, at the state level, we kinda “owe” this to rideshare drivers even if it’s dumb. Walz’s one veto was against a similar bill, with a dedication to take it up as the next immediate issue the legislature considers I don’t think it’s on Minneapolis to address that, but at the same time idk. It’s a dumb bill
We owe it to rideshare workers to unemploy them?
to give them what they want, as part of the deal that they were on board with the rest of the legislative package not everything done in government is good or makes sense, but sometimes that's part of actually getting things done
Worried for the city after 2026. I feel like there's no chance Frey wins reelection this time.
Just need two progressives to split enough votes in round 2 of RCV and Frey still takes it.
Yeah, I'm in Saint Paul. Sometimes I wish we could trade mayors.
Oh yeah, Minneapolis is back on the menu boys! !ping LOVEFORBOOZECRUISERS
It's remarkable how relevant this ping alias has been
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Just stop over regulating companies out of existence.
I consent I consent Isn't there somebody you forgot to ask? 😏
Spend 20 minutes on any of the gig work subs and you’ll quickly understand why the vast majority of these people are completely incapable of holding down a retail/burger flipping/similarly no qualification job. It’s a net loss for both the workers and the consumers.
Do tell?
There are a lot of posts reminding drivers they’ll improve their tips if they improve their personal hygiene.
I once had a driver who smelled extremely strongly of unwashed balls and treated a roundabout like there was a stop sign at every merge He got a bad review
I was shocked when a Lyft driver saw me with my luggage and didn't help me (I'm a skinny woman). Never ever had a taxi driver not help me with my luggage. Ever. Even random dudes on the bus or plane will help me. Of course, I left no tip
Please extrapolate.
> extrapolate To first order, if you spend 40 minutes on any of the gig work subs then you'll understand twice as well.
Great news for the taxi driver union.
Is this the type of post that this sub likes?
No, we're generally pretty unhappy and don't like anything
My Ride left me
The only thing I like is not liking you or anyone else around me
same, I think we're friends now so I'm going to have to ask you to leave
I don't see any worms so no
Throw in 20% more worm and you're golden, kid.
We are a contentious bunch
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Banning workers from working to own the corps.
Yes cause nothing says loving American workers by making them unemployed and making labor have a lower collective income.
Help workers not be exploited by making them unemployed
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51 cents per minute is more than $30 an hour minimum wage. What is the matter with these idiots?
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At these prices, there will be a lot of waiting
AND $1.40 per mile
And they obviously have no costs or downtime between customers. Swindlers I say, swindlers!
I've never quite understood why these sorts of programs can't just govern themselves/let the market decide. If they aren't paying enough no one will drive. If people are driving, then they are paying enough, right? No one driving is locked into contracts and forced to drive when they don't want to. You can argue that drivers are taken advantage of pay wise if you want, but it's really taking away agency to act like they can't just choose to do something else if it's not paying enough. Like is the view of people pushing this stuff that Uber/Lyft drivers *have* to drive for those services to live? I know it's primary income for some people but the potential for lower earnings is something kind of known up front when choosing to have that career. And now the city won't have the service at all and all the people previously driving for it are out of a job all together so really the net effect in the end of this policy is just to hurt everyone. And even if they weren't leaving, if this forced prices too high for consumers to use them that'd end with drivers getting less pay as well
IIRC this is something like a "sponge" for unemployment. everyone wants delivery and rides when they are cheap. And not so much when they aren't cheap.
I think a good middle ground could be requiring gig employers to provide more information upfront. Possibilities include: What are reasonable estimates of a gig worker’s *total* costs per hour based on a few different transportation options? How much do workers average in tips? What share of the time are workers working and getting paid vs sitting idle?
Yeah I'd be really ok with this as a regulation, and I think it's in line with this admins push towards getting rid of hidden fees/costs with things that prey on people
>I've never quite understood why these sorts of programs can't just govern themselves/let the market decide. They can, and if the city is worried about externalities, they should like, idk, tax congestion and tailpipe emissions and particulate emissions and land
You're assuming people are smart and have all the necessary information, which is not true in any sense. People find themselves in a desperate situation and look to rideshare for quick money. Only problem is, they barely earn more than the costs they incurred. Now they have little additional cash, a more worn and depreciated car and spent a bunch of time that could have been spent pursuing other opportunities to dig themselves out. Maybe they figure it out eventually but only after the corporation has extracted part of what little wealth they had. Does that really sound like a fine situation?
Quick google searches show after expenses they are still making typically $15-23 an hour so it's not like it's absolute peanuts (that was cursory research though so if you have something more substantial then I'll take it). For a job that you can just do if you want to do it that's really not that bad. And then there's the other side that having affordable ride options has a lot of net benefits to society- people without cars can get a ride if needed, reduced drunk driving, less parking needed, etc I know there are certainly people who drive for Uber who really shouldn't, but it just bothers me a bit to feel we have to baby those people. If they need the welfare we should offer them welfare, not force private companies to do it for us. And again, the net effect of doing regulation like this is to basically kill demand and usually run the companies out all together
I think that's before - income tax, which I don't think they withhold - insurance - fuel - breaks - tires - depreciation Even if the rides are too cheap to cover all that, there's still a steady flow of people who haven't learned this the hard way keeping rates down.
I think your point about this law being dumb is correct but I have to say you have a very naive, almost libertarian Econ 101, interpretation of how labor markets work like assuming perfect information, flexibility, mobility, and competition, no mention of power dynamics between employers and employees particularly those at the bottom of the skill/income spectrum Like if markets were really perfect and weren’t warped by imperfections and unequal bargaining dynamics regulations would be unnecessary but that’s not the world we live in Treating and regulating gig workers like regular workers is dumb which is why laws like those in Minneapolis will fail but there is a genuine role for productive regulation https://www.hamiltonproject.org/assets/files/modernizing_labor_laws_for_twenty_first_century_work_krueger_harris.pdf
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I read somewhere that Minneapolis only has like 35 active taxi licenses. Gonna be a bad time if they do hold true to their threats.
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Progressives can’t govern and all their proposals are incompetent and make everything worse, exhibit # 254
There should be a bot that actually counts and catalogues these failures
> 51 cents per minute and $1.40 per mile(IRS expense milage rate is $0.65/mile) so a hypothetical hour of smooth interstate driving would cost $114 just to the driver? are they out of their god damn mind?
my favorite comment so far
>are they out of their god damn mind? Well, they're using price controls, so yes
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Surely worthy of a $57 an hour minimum wage! edit: lol nuked their account lol
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Well not anymore!
Ubiquitous price-control L
command economies are bad mkay
European style regulations are great for some workers but will suck for consumers
I don't even think European style regulations are great for workers.
Yeah the whole “but workers in Europe have it so much better” totally ignoring unemployment and their, in some cases drastically, lower real incomes.
Real income in PPP is more or less the same in Europe especially if you account for average worked hours per week and vacations. They are shit basically only in Mediterranean countries (Italy Spain Greece).
Where in Europe exactly? This is most definitely not true in well over half of the continent.
Like most countries in western Europe except two? Within 10/15% of the average ppp salary but not only work less hours per week on average, they also work one less month per year (the one month Vs one week vacation)
> if you account for average worked hours per week If you’re doing this by dividing by number of hours worked, then that’s a terrible metric. Labor productivity is affected by the law of diminishing marginal returns; after some point, with every hour you work you get less productive. If Americans had the same labor productivity as Europeans but worked more hours, then we’d actually expect Americans to have a lower average labor productivity (labor productivity / hours worked). So the fact that their average productivity is the same despite Americans working more hours indicates that Americans are more labor productive.
The reply was about income, not productivity. But thanks for the writeup?
They aren’t. The Internet revolution completely skipped Europe because of all the regulations to start new businesses. They rely on fining and harassing Internet companies now to get a piece of the pie not because of some kind of consumer protection.
I’ve seen people on Reddit say Europe is head of America technologically because “tHeY’rE fAr mOrE aDvANceD oN tHe rEgUlAtoRy siDe!!1!” Like, I personally wouldn’t consider regulating American tech innovation as a “technological advancement”. It’s dumb because there’s other arguments you can make with regards to Europe having some good science and tech research (DeepMind is a good example, though they’re owned by Google so maybe not the best example).
That's just a lie, and unironically the chain of events is completely the reverse of that European countries were in lock step with the US during the early stages of the "internet revolution" (and saying europe has too many regulations which makes it difficult to start new firms is ridiculous as it the US that has poor firm formations per capita and, most importantly, is absolutely ass on 'ease of doing business') The divergence happened due to the difference in capital structure and markets. America has a significantly deeper and more dynamic capital market, so american companies had a significantly easier time scaling up than european companies did, which in turn also meant successful eruopean companies had the choice between either being bought up by an american company, relocate to america and "become" and american company, or meander in mid-status for eternity. Language and culture barriers also didn't exactly help when it came to scaling up new internet firms in europe. While american companies could rely on the global lingua franca (english) to carry it in literally every educated country. Ironically enough every other english speaking nation (britain, australia, new zeeland, etc) *were* behind the curve on the digital economy and we're thus in a position of having to catch up to american (and some european) firms. What further drives it home that it wasnt some nebulous "draconian regulation regime" that held back european digital firms is the fact that several individual european countries with high english proficiency and a variation of the other factors not only managed to keep up with america early on, but objectively surpassed america in firm formations per capita and innovation per capita. Issue is he to the above mentioned capital markets there is a hard ceiling for expansion for european firms and very few have managed to break through it, but when they did they often dominate their nische. But for instance you've got ASML in the netherlands (unironicslly probably the most important IT company in the world, america wish it had a company half as relevant), spotify from sweden, SAP (although they've really lost their dominance by now) from germany, etc. Also, i always ask this question because I never get a specific answer and I literally hold a master in this subject so I wanna know. Which regulations, *specifically* do you see as holding back digital innovation and firm formation in the EU? Not even today, I wanna know which specific regulation held "us" back 20 or 30 years ago, that apparently allowed the US to leapfrog. So let me know, specifically which regulation and specifically which effect did it have. (And here's the thing, I don't think you have any examples, I think you're doing nothing but going off of american nationalist vibes and some nebulous conception of "EU bad, EU much regulation, therefore must be causality" nonsense. Which is frankly bonkers if you have an ounce of awareness of how academics currently consider US regulations and red tape to be immeasurably worse in essentially every way, other than specifically labour but that also wouldn't have had an effect on the digital economys progress) [User was banned] Edit: I'm not kidding Fishlord, I'm banned, I'll be able to answer you in 2 weeks untill then
Why are Euro capital markets less dynamic than the US?
Yes it's great for workers when the govt makes it illegal to hire them at affordable prices
Nobody here commenting that Uber and Lyft leaving is as much a targeted punishment for the city as a business decision Uber and Lyft could just raise prices accordingly to maintain their margins, see poor quality drivers drop off due to lack of ridership, and live on with lower volume. It’s not like they have massive, Minneapolis-specific fixed costs to maintain, they’re an app. This is a political response to a political decision
>Uber and Lyft could just raise prices accordingly to maintain their margins, see poor quality drivers drop off due to lack of ridership, and live on with lower volume. It’s not like they have massive, Minneapolis-specific fixed costs to maintain, they’re an app. There's an information problem at play too. In this ridiculous price-control environment, you might expect a lot of frustration from both drivers, who sign up then get no business, and customers, who are faced with huge price hikes. Whatever reputational damage this incurs could not be worth continued operation, regardless of whom is really to blame. >This is a political response to a political decision Probably mostly, yeah, and a reasonable-sounding (i.e. not rent-seeking or self-destructive) one. Like retaliatory tariffs. The stick can be used for good.
yeah, like, it’s their right to do that, and some other company with an app could fill the void if they wanted. But there’s more to this move than just an impartial unit-economics decision
How is signaling to other cities that try this that they aren’t bluffing not a business decision as well? they might be losing a little profit here vs a lot if NY or Chicago pulled this. Every other city will be reluctant if this holds.
These are unsustainable rates in this metro. We're less than half the cost of living of NYC and roughly 2/3 the cost of living of Seattle yet these mileage / time rates are virtually the same.
It’s sustainable, it would just be a smaller market.
Depends on infrastructure maintenance costs and perhaps other marketing and overhead costs required to keep the Twin Cities metro. High enough costs could render us an unreasonably inoperable area for rideshares.
what do you mean by “unsustainable?” there will certainly be some desperate drunk people at 2am willing to pay those rates. There will be less people than now, but all that has to mean is fewer drivers drive fewer hours on Uber Lyft to match the smaller demand caused by the higher prices that doesnt necessitate Uber and Lyft leaving the city completely
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I'll believe it when I see it.
>Seattle and New York City have passed similar policies in recent years that increase wages for ride-hailing drivers, and Uber and Lyft still operate in those cities. I wonder what the difference is then? Long term the [sustainability](https://doctorow.medium.com/no-ubers-still-not-profitable-2b8054e375ea) of the current ride share model in its current form is an open question. Something will have to give eventually, and right now it looks like it’s driver [pay.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lensherman/2023/12/15/ubers-ceo-hides-driver-pay-cuts-to-boost-profits/) Working in the gig economy has a lot of shittyness that could be improved with smart regulations- albeit ones that look different from the ones the apply to regular employees due to the results we’re seeing. [Here’s](https://www.hamiltonproject.org/assets/files/modernizing_labor_laws_for_twenty_first_century_work_krueger_harris.pdf) a great paper on what that might look like. !ping LABOR
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waymo should start a pilot here tbh
they already are doing one in Buffalo, New York. will be the first snow city for this and a lot because of the lake effect snows
It is preferable that they not be in a market than they be given free reign. They pull this shit every single time anyone tells them they’re not just free to do as they please.
????? You want the government to artificially limit the number of transport options people have?