Uber is more than an app. It’s a metonym. For well-to-do chaps whose hair is styled per former politician Wyatt Roy, the company name has come to signify those acts of innovation and free exchange unhindered by any law less “natural” than capitalism. For thinkers whose thought is less utopian, the name Uber has come to mean that unnatural coercion to which much human labour is subject.
(If you fancy a look at the latter case against this “sharing economy”, read Tom Slee’s What’s Yours is Mine. If you fancy a defence of corporate power, just read The Australian any time, most particularly when it’s ruining the reputation of Emma Alberici without basis.)
Uber is more than a metonym. It’s often a means of transport so efficient and inexpensive, one simply cannot afford a boycott. Ethics are for people with nice cars or Cabcharge vouchers. Uber is a commodity for insecure workers, and is itself a site, and a rationale, for work that is even more insecure.
Uber is more than transport. It’s a place in which chatty persons, such as your reporter, learn what other insecure workers most ardently believe. In an informal study, over rides of a number greater than I care to disclose, I have found this is not chiefly batshit-crazy, moon-landing stuff. Rather, a majority of drivers prefer to talk so rationally, I began taking notes about a year ago.
Sure, there’s been the occasional anti-vaxxer, and my attendant urge to leave a one-star review. Uber has otherwise provided me with amusing and/or useful knowledge. Here, I describe four exchanges, and by extension propose that many of our nation’s Uber drivers could together form a vanguard that will crush the very oligarchs who keep them destitute.
1. Zhang. March 2016. Five Stars. To Melbourne CBD.
Zhang was not a good driver. Not at all. He took me over the Westgate twice, but this was largely due to a commitment to conversation so complete, he had no time for Google Maps. We spoke of the ascension of China, the place of his birth, and his belief that the current accelerated period of state capitalism was planned and true to the ultimate dream of stateless communism — a perspective only otherwise held in the West by bold theoreticians.
Still. This wasn’t the best thing about Zhang. He gave me a free lesson in Mandarin to make up for his shit driving. I paid him for future lessons, but he has refused to teach me again until I get my stupid mouth around at least two of the five tones.
2. Parsa. October 2015. Five Stars. To Brunswick.
Parsa was a navigator of exceptional skill. This may have been due to an extreme youth spent in flight. Born and orphaned in Afghanistan, this guy made his way to a UNHCR camp alone at 12 and arrived in Australia just before our national vow to liberate that place from, um, its existence.
Somehow, this guy got himself a Masters in IT. Somehow, this guy had interests that exceeded PC networking. I had never before known of the extraordinary power likely held by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and he totally saved me the trouble of reading Jacobin or The Intercept that week.
3. Michael. May 2015. Five Stars. To Open Gardens event.
Michael, a white Australian millennial, was broke. This disappointment, he explained, had turned him into a “citizen economist”. I prepared myself for some David Icke-type rot about our Reptilian Overlords, or similar anti-Semitism dressed up as lizards. Instead, I got what the Grattan Institute neglected yesterday in its report on house prices: an account of a financialised market that does not appear in economic modelling.
Michael’s view, which has been formed in some part by the work of Steve Keen, was one I found extraordinarily useful. The idea that “the market” sets a price for a commodity based only on “the laws of supply and demand” makes no sense when one considers how much banks profit from lending. The idea that houses cost what we are prepared to pay rests on an equilibrium understanding of capitalism and does not consider that we pay what banks are prepared to lend.
Whether this is a predatory loan, per the GFC, or one offered to comfortable investors, the macro result is the same: house prices ascend. And, I end up reading Ann Pettifor.
4. Mohamod. Yesterday. Five Stars. To my shrink.
Born and raised in Iraq, Mohamod keeps close watch on wars of that region. He commits to read accounts in English as well as Arabic, largely so he can help the kids with their homework. But, he is frustrated with the dearth of English reporting he deems trustworthy.
Iraq, he says, was falsely reported enough. Syria is enough to make him believe that Australia is not a country, but an office of the US State Department. If Mohamod reads one more article praising the White Helmets with no interest in their likely affiliations, he will give up reading English. “I am not saying Assad is a good guy,” he says, before making his unnecessary case for a five-star rating (I always award five stars). “I know,” I say. And we agree that fake news facilitates real proxy war, but, what can you do?
So many Drivers. So many stars.
Uber has managed to convince many suggestible governments that its product is technology, not transport. The men and women who provide this transport know that this is false just as surely as they know that the GST and income tax they pay is far in excess of that paid by the company to the Australian government.
This week, a report from MIT calculates the median wage for a US ride-share driver at $3.37 per hour. An Australian study has not yet, to my knowledge, been commissioned. However, one local financial services comparison site places estimates at around or below minimum wage. Many Uber drivers, some of whom feel that they were coerced into recruitment and car leasing — I have no evidence of outreach in vulnerable communities, just front seat anecdotes — estimate the pay lower.
Behind the wheel, I see a revolutionary class, or, at least, a curious one. This may mean that the meds my shrink gave me are working. This may mean that this is a time for shared optimism. Either way, Uber is likely to remain one of my news sources.
I’ve always regarded my boycott of Uber (et al) as a noble, principled stand against exploitative, race to the bottom, non-wage slavery. Your piece gives me pause, but I’m still not sure about wanting to support the beast who devours unsuspecting cabbies.
Of course I have the relative luxury of not needing taxis very often, and not being on the cutting edge of penury (although home ownership is well beyond me).
I can however recommend boycotting Menulog (et al). This Jeff Goldblum endorsed juggernaut takes a sizeable cut out of every order, to the point that it’s barely profitable to sell the food. However, if they don’t get on board, they lose business. Catch-22 in the Rye, or something. So, instead, I use Menulog up to the point where I place an order, then call the restaurant directly, so every last shekel goes to Mr. Singh.
Hopefully this qualifies me for some sort of Red Medal of Lenin, or whatever.
A true comrade, in the terms of personal ethics. Well done.
But, I do think that it is impossible to boycott everything objectionable. Because, really, it’s all objectionable. Compassionate commodities are a myth. None of which stops me, though, from paying a cent for The Australian. Like being vegetarian, this choice largely serves to make me feel better.
But, really, our instrumental actions aren’t the same as our individual ones. Unless we believe in that key liberal tenet: you have the power to change the world.
Nah. Not unless large numbers of folks do the same thing as me. And, if I am ever going to encourage this, I won’t waste my efforts on a single boycott of a company. A boycott of an entire nation-state would be worth it, though.
(This may seem like a cop-out. But, is based on the advice of an old lecturer which stayed with me: think about where your breakfast came from, he said. Now, can you really tell me that its entire supply chain was clean? Also, I don’t have the choice to refuse goods made in slave conditions. If I did, I would be off the internet and naked. And, what’s the good in nakedness offline?)
I don’t think I’m ready to boycott food and clothes just yet. Sure, boycotting Menulog doesn’t change the world, bruh. But it might make an appreciable difference to Mr. Singh and his family if a few people followed my example. Which in turn might lead him to eschew cheaper food sources and use better, more ethical suppliers? It’s a bit on the Clifton Hill side of Mary Poppins-ism, but hey. A bit like setting up a community garden in the face of the modern industrial “food” machine. Probably more a signal of middle-class affluence than anything else.
Sorry MzRaz, you’ve gone too far – or not far enough – through the looking Glass.
“Not unless large numbers of folks do the same thing as me.”
If not you, who? If not now, when?
This is NOT directed just at the author, just every wanker with latte in their veins.
Radical Raz says “Viva la revolution, but don’t expect me to join until everyone else has” ! Yeah, fight the power Helz !!
Following on with the logic that lecturer left you, whaddaya reckon we ditch all this equality for women & people of colour stuff ? Y’know, our Saudi sisters aren’t doin’ it for themselves yet and it’s not like black lives really matter in the U.S. these days.
I’d love to stay and chat but I need a dump and I’ve gotta find someone on Air Tasker who’ll wipe my arse (at an affordable gig economy below the minimum wage rate of course) because D.I.Y. in the dunny is so “last week” don’t ya think ?
The best way to gauge colleagues’ commitment to equality & sharing is where they are on the latrine roster.
Yay for shared houses.
nice recourse
Note: I drive for Uber on weekends. I have a 4.84 rating and have Platinum status.
You cannot understand Uber, the company, without looking at where they spend their money, and management effort.
This is focussed heavily on driverless cars. They clearly see drivers as an unfortunate, but temporary, necessity.
The management believe they are a technology company, not a service company.
But they are a service company.
They are so obsessed with this idea that they will do anything but ever pay attention to their drivers.
To give you an idea of how obsessed they are, they will not even attempt to address the basic flaws in setting the pick-up location. Around 50% of pick-up locations (higher in dense and/or high rise locations) are wrong, and require drivers to verbally communicate with customers to find the right location. If they cannot get the pick-up location correct, what difference does it make if they can ever get a driverless car to get to a customer in a place like Barangaroo on a Friday evening. [Sydney office work rs will know how ridiculous that would be]
The management of Uber clearly have no idea that they run a service company, and tbat their drivers are what makes the company successful.
The only good decision the management ever made was the rating system for drivers.
To illustrate the obsession of the management, one only has to see what it is like to drive in a surge. Usually you can be in the middle of a surge, and be getting no jobs. This is because the algorithm to set surge pricing is based on demand, not supply. Makes no sense when you have drivers, but makes perfect sense when there are a fleet of driverless cars available.
That algorithm perfectly illustrates the disconnect between management and what their company actually does.
Yep, the bright young digital entrepreneurs (or $$$blind ME generation) & their Utopian future of automation has no need for the majority of the population.
Yes, D. It is a treat to read the tale Uber tells to mainstream journalists, and contrast it with the one reserved for finance industry press. “We are creating jobs” is one story and “we are going driverless” is for investors.
FWIW, “the tendency of the rate of profit to fall” (due to decreased human labour) might be something interesting for you to read about. Please don’t make me explain “organic capital” as I will only embarrass myself. Long story short (and I apologise if a clearly erudite person like yourself has already read this Marxist theory) is that there is a mathematical case for the inevitable loss of profit due to the inevitable loss of human labour. There are plenty of social/social democrat ones, too, as in the Wal-mart Effect. (Big labour-defining company pushes wages down, wage-earners have less money to spend. Big company sells nothing.)
Luckily for Walmart, not everybody works at Walmart. They took in 486b last financial year. That’s about $1500 per capita, which means the average Joe Six-pack spends a lot more, given how many people can’t shop, or would die of shame if they were spotted there. There aren’t any cheaper places to fill the car with stuff, and people do love stuff.
Incredible, as an ex taxi driver I didn’t realise that Uber could be that terrible
The only thing Uber got right was the rating system for Drivers. The drivers are therefore dependent on getting good feedback from customers.
Taxi drivers, on the other hand, suffer for the sins of their fellow taxi drivers.
If the taxi industry had introduced a method of rating drivers, Uber would have never had a chance to get started.
Bring on a world federal government in which Uber is publicly owned by said government.
Baby step for worker protection would be to create a new class of worker by statute in employment law – “dependent contractor” as is recognised in the UK.
We even use Uber as a courier service for our business (sending broken PCs to our IT people), quicker, cheaper and more reliable.
And Uber drivers tend to have something better to say than Taxi drivers. My anecdotal evidence suggests there rate is $15-25 hour
My anecdata tallies with yours. Uber drivers earn about the same as non-owner taxi drivers. But, they have less scrutiny. (Greater costs, possibly diminished insurance and more administrative tasks, though.)
Why not give Uber to the people that make it productive: the drivers? Pay these people dividends and bring ’em on to the board. We will need the state to enforce this, I guess. But, it could be a fun experiment.
you will need a world government state to enforce that (and many other worthwhile matters e.g environment), a new topic for your memoirs perhaps?
Look. A short period of international totalitarian rule is okay IF it rids us of carbon emissions, real WMD and private property. Otherwise, no dice.
Idealistic, benevolent totalitarian rule? Has that ever been tried before?
not sure the totalitarian part is necessary, re private property – need some carrots to go with sticks and competition helps gets rid of fat. Need locks/checks and balances on streams (Scandinavian/Viking democracy), your trying to reverse the flow of a stream – it is against human nature not to be able to own something of your own.
Highly recommend reading Monbiot’s – Age of Consent Manifesto for a New World Order…
though his recent writing is getting a bit too panic merchant, western civilisation is doomed
So that would suggest benevolent dictatorship tempered by assassination.
Fing with “a (short) period of totalitarianism” is that it is rearely ‘short’.
Kinda-sorta, one vote, one time thangy.
But worth the experiment, given the lethargic ennui which engulfs hoi polloi, they do need their lard arses kicked.
Why do you need to involve the state at all? There are already models of driver-run taxi co-ops with phone apps out there, such as the Union Taxi Co-operative in Denver, Colorado. Why not just set them up here in opposition to Uber, then organise a mass walk-out of Uber customers; off that death star platform and onto the shiny new worker-run ones, where all the ex-Uber drivers would be welcomed with open arms?
Helen, re your difficulty picking up the tones of Mandarin: I once lived in southern Thailand for a couple of years and one of my Thai friends had an Apple laptop with a program for reading English words aloud. If you get the tone wrong in a tonal language you have a different word so you do have to get them right. They taught me a tongue twister, “kraai kai kai kai,” which, when you put the tones in, means “does anyone here sell chicken eggs?” I played about with the computer, remembering it read English spelling and punctuation, and typed something like, “cry. kye, kye? kye! and got close enough to the Thai tones for it to be intelligible in Thai. It was nearly 20 years ago so a Thai speaker reading this might correct it but this is basically what I did. My point is that we have something in English that sounds like tones, we just use it for emphasis rather than to distinguish different words. If you think of it this way it may be easier to distinguish (kai?) from (kai!) from (kai,) etc.
This is immensely helpful. Thanks for this approach.
I do know the lesson that we use emphases in English, but I had never thought to try out a “tongue-twister” in Mandarin. I will seek one out.
Fun name-dropping story: I made the mistake of asking the writer, translator and Sinologist Linda Jaivin to help me out with beginner Mandarin. She is a very lovely and generous person. She is also so fluent that (a) she works directly with Wong Kar-wai on subtitles and (b) she probably cannot imagine being as bad at language as me.
Tongue-twister is a darn good idea.
First step is to realise there are four, not five, tones in Mandarin.
Oops
Sometimes your articles really piss me off and sometimes they make me want to bow down to you 🙂 This one is very a bow down !! Thank you. 🙂
Second favourite cririque, Di. “I normally hate Razer” is number one!
Nah, definitely wouldn’t say that Hahaha!!