Explaining The Internet to My Mom

Part 1: Uber

Hey Mom. You’re pretty hip. The other day, you asked if we “Uber” to work. I answered you with a quick “sometimes”, but in retrospect, I don’t think I appropriately applauded your knowledge of emerging tech trends. Good work! You know about Uber, but have yet to experience an exhilarating, occasionally terrifying car ride with a total stranger. Here’s a handy primer for if and when you take a spin in someone’s lemon-pine scented 2006 Honda Civic.

Uber began in California by small group of men, notably a guy named Travis. Travis and his colleagues wanted to create an alternative to taxis, which regularly prove unreliable, unavailable, or expensive.

So Uber developed an app which connects drivers (anyone who has keys to a car and smartphone), with riders. Riders submit a trip request, and the software automatically notifies nearby drivers. Enter your destination (“train station”, “airport”), and you’ll soon see a slick map with little black cars scurrying around the streets, like matchbox cars on a rug. A little number above your location indicates the minutes until a car will reach you.

When you book this trip, Uber calculates the price and displays it as an estimate. Kind of like booking plane ticket. But unlike a flight, the amount you’re charged after your ride can differ from the estimate. While taxis charge a standard rate based on mileage, Uber’s rates fluctuate wildly throughout the day based on supply and demand (though how the price is actually calculated remains opaque. It’s the coca cola recipe of Uber). As a study in supply side economics, it’s fascinating. Only trouble being: Uber could raise prices whenever they please, regardless of supply.

Uber can also lower prices whenever they please. This summer, our city’s commuter train lines underwent extensive emergency repairs. The remaining trains were overwhelmed with passengers, and many commuters watched idly as overflowing trains passed by their stops, unable to accommodate any more riders. In a seemingly benevolent act of goodwill, Uber lowered prices city wide. For two months, more and more riders transitioned away from public transportation and toward Uber. Now that commuter trains are fully repaired and back on the tracks, their ridership has markedly decreased. Each day, our public transportation system, which delivers safe, equitable rides to all people and provides a living wage to its workers, loses revenue to a billon dollar tech company that doesn’t pay taxes.

Your ride approaches. On your phone, you see the license plate number, make, and model that will be picking you up, so you can easily identify the car when it arrives. Once inside, your driver will likely offer you a warm greeting, and if you’re lucky, a Werther’s Original. Your driver wants to make a good impression, since you’ll be rating her after the trip. Since all Uber drivers work as independent contractors and not employees, Uber relies on ratings to ferret out unwanted drivers. Let’s hope that an African American female driver operating in a white, working class neighborhood will receive fair and just ratings.

Likewise, your driver will also give you a rating. Again, let’s hope you’re not a minority rider traveling in unfriendly territory (as many may begin to experience when Uber increasingly replaces public transportation). Sometimes, when I’m asked to rate a driver, I wonder what rating Rosa Park’s bus driver would’ve given her, had he the option.

And now your in the car. Hurray! You’ll arrive at your destination much more quickly than if you were traveling via bus, and much less expensively than if you were traveling via taxi. And if your ride includes other passengers, the price will be even cheaper still. Uber Pool allows multiple riders traveling to roughly the same destination to ride together. Your son in law frequently travels to work in an Uber Pool. Last week while riding in one to work, his driver picked up a man carrying an infant. There was no car seat. And no discussion. The father held the infant in his lap for the ten minute car ride downtown. I wish I could say this was the only time I’d heard about this type of violation. Unfortunately, in the quest to pick up as many passengers as possible, many safety concerns fall by the wayside.

Uber is the ringleader in what the kids these days are calling the “sharing” economy. For companies like Uber, their goal to reduce perceived market inefficiencies (regulation, insurance) often dovetails perfectly with their desire to outsource labor and risk to individual consumers. The sharing economy — vigorously defended by powerful lobbying groups — isn’t some fairer, communitarian system of barter and exchange, as it’s advocates claim. It’s more like an extreme form of capitalism in which everyone is an entrepreneur and no one is employed. Since every driver is on their own — for insurance, maintenance, etc. — Uber decouples itself not only from its workers, but also from its responsibilities to society. When you were young, most companies offered pensions. These days, workers are lucky to get a pee break. What a wild ride.