What? How are you arriving at that conclusion?

Car safety = Uber knows the drivers, has real-time tracking for your entire trip, and lets you call for help quickly and silently. Taxis have none of this, and there are lots of bandit/underground cabs where you have no idea if it's legit.

Payment options/scams = Uber lets you pay however you want through the app/apple pay without any need for cash, with an upfront price. Most taxis only accept cash, have unclear pricing that you only know at the end, can easily pad the meter in various ways, and may extort you if you really need a ride.

Refusing pickups = Uber drivers don't know the destination until you get in the car, and get kicked off the network if they cancel too many rides or abuse riders. Taxis are notorious for ignoring people based on looks, destination, convenience and usually won't deal with any trip they deem is not worth their time.

The difference in service and safety is magnitudes better with ridesharing vs taxis, that's why they're so popular.

"Sorry, I don't go east of the river"

"Sorry, the meter is broken"

"Sorry, the card reader is broken, cash only"

"No, don't worry, this is really the fastest way"

Also your Uber driver doesn't know your race when he accepts your ride or not. Which is probably why I find it a lot easier to get an Uber than a taxi.

> Also your Uber driver doesn't know your race when he accepts your ride or not. Which is probably why I find it a lot easier to get an Uber than a taxi.

Not being able to hail a cab due to racist drivers is a problem. However, in your example, the Uber driven can see your name, which is a pretty reliable proxy for your race, unless it's highly generic like John Smith or something.

Taxi drivers have to accept cash and cannot force you to pre-pay for your ride like Uber can. That at least reduces the number of drivers who would otherwise refuse to pick you up because of a perception that you wouldn't pay.

Is this a serious question? Did you ever ride in a taxi in the US?

Executive salaries aren't the same thing as the surplus value extracted from your labor. If that was spread equally, each employee would make considerably more.

Surplus value extracted from labor is the literal definition of why you hire employees. If there wasn't surplus value, you wouldn't do it.

Why would it though? In every other industry, union workers make much more than non-union workers. And unions don't seem to drag the salaries of other high earners (actors, screenwriters) down.

>> And unions don't seem to drag the salaries of other high earners (actors, screenwriters) down.

This absolutely happens in MLB/MLBPA. Players are not allowed to negotiate most types of incentive-based contracts that would align interests of management and players to give them higher possible pay, amongst other methods of capping pay to improve standards for average professional athletes.

It seems no one has yet mentioned the potential illegality of this policy. The rights of employees to discuss their working conditions at work, a largely political discussion, is protected by the NLRA. Google got whacked by the NLRB for their ban on political discussion as well.

I wonder if this has a lot to do with the economic system we live under. Marx wrote a lot about the alienation of labor, and one form of alienation was alienation from fellow workers. I wonder if we surveyed company executives or small business owners whether you'd find a different breakdown.

>they might make it economically rational for Amazon to automate the jobs away

Any jobs that can be automated will be regardless.

People seem to think this is going to hurt workers, but it was gig economy workers who pushed for this law. Workers know their own conditions better than you do.

People often vote against their own interests and the fact that there were gig economy workers pushing for this does not mean they as a group want it.

Gig economy workers are not a whole. Some of them really do just want a bit of extra income on the side. That is very incompatible with this new law.

That doesn't mean they know the law or can think through the consequences. Kind of a like a genie wish situation.

Property crime is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. Consider this: wage theft results in over double the losses of all other property crimes COMBINED, yet we don't throw bosses who rob their workers of earned pay in jail.

But anecdotes can be misleading too. The only thing left then is ideology.

That's not the same thing as coming down on landlords. We could criminalize slumlording and use civil forfeiture to turn slumlord's properties into public housing. We could put a hefty property tax on all rental properties. We could create a vacancy tax on all unoccupied units that would force prices down. The problem is landlords and land owners and their rent-seeking and speculative behavior. The solution is to stop enabling them by protecting their property rights over the well-being of the population.