[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.

Slate: The Ride-Hail Strike Got Just Enough Attention to Terrify Uber: It was likely the largest-ever gig worker protest to date—and politicians noticed.

Drivers for Uber and Lyft got out of their cars on Wednesday. In major U.S. cities (and a few other places around the world), workers for the ride-hail services organized protests ahead of Uber’s initial public offering on Friday. The company expects to be valued at more than $90 billion. It isn’t profitable right now, hemorrhaging more than $1 billion a year as it subsidizes its service, which is why Uber has been squeezing driver earnings in recent months as it’s made its case to investors. That’s also why the gig workers who make up Uber’s driving fleet chose this of all weeks to make a very loud point.

Their point was that Uber needs to pay up. At a protest in front of Uber’s Market Street headquarters in San Francisco, a driver named Vinni told me that when he started driving for Uber in 2013, he was paid about $2.20 a mile. Now, he says, he gets about 92 cents a mile. At most jobs, he lamented, you’d think that you’d be making more after six years, not less.

Given their platform's complexity I don't discount its an expensive proposition to continue to run/maintain/improve. But their overhead across the board is ridiculously low compared to other non gig worker based businesses. Yet they still manage to lose $1B a year doing probably ridiculously needless "Tech Bro" things.

Uber (and Lyft) are not Hi-Tech companies. They are taxi services, nothing more, and quite often with less training, less safety measures and a fancy app instead of a dispatcher.

I think the biggest disconnect is that the labor and material expenses (gas, wear on the cars, etc.) are a significant chunk of the costs of taxi rides, and while an app helps with the get-access-to-a-taxi problem it doesn't reduce the main cost-sinks so Uber and Lyft are always going to be subsidizing rides until they eliminate taxis and public transportation and can jack the prices up. (And even then there's not as much of a barrier to new apps entering the market...)

Taxi medallions were creating artificial scarcity, but only up to a point: a city has to balance the demand for transportation with the space on the roads, and that's even before we get to the question of whether there are drivers and cars available. A city can balance it with a market, which is good at seeking a level but vulnerable to being affected by other factors, meaning they often end up optimizing the wrong metric. (Medallions are a capitalistic solution, albeit less of a free market solution. But, then, capitalism is often about destroying the free market in favor of the monopolistic owners of capital.) Or they can use investment in public transit to satisfy some of the demand more efficiently. Or any number of ways--but there's a limit to how much Uber can skim off the top.

At the moment, that limit is negative: they lose money on every ride. Even after massively cutting driver compensation.

So no, their overhead isn't low. They're literally selling the product at a loss and trying to make it up with volume.

Gremlin wrote:

So no, their overhead isn't low. They're literally selling the product at a loss and trying to make it up with volume.

They're just ripping off First Citywide Change Bank's strategy.

What is Bolton’s beef with Iran? He has been banging that drum forever and I don’t get it. Was he wronged in some way by that country?

JC wrote:

What is Bolton’s beef with Iran? He has been banging that drum forever and I don’t get it. Was he wronged in some way by that country?

For starters he’s received money from the group that wants control of Iran

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.the...

JC wrote:

What is Bolton’s beef with Iran? He has been banging that drum forever and I don’t get it. Was he wronged in some way by that country?

My take: He’s just an extreme chickenhawk who thinks US military intervention is the answer to all the world’s problems. It’s not so much that he has a particular interest in Iran specifically. It’s that circumstances have long made it the most promising target for him in terms of actually getting a war started. North Korea was pretty high on his list too, but Trump’s buddying up to Kim has put a damper on that (for now).

Is Putin going to call the White House again? That'd put the kibosh on anything going on with Iran real quick.

I wouldn't put it past Putin to be fine with 'losing' Iran*, in exchange for US dragging itself into another endless and expensive war.

*Until US left again anyway

Ohio middle school closed after radioactive contamination detected in building

And by radioactive, they mean enriched uranium.

Coincidentally,

The school grounds are within four miles of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which is in the process of decommissioning.

IMAGE(https://marcel-oehler.marcellosendos.ch/comics/ch/1987/06/19870609.gif)

Caught in the Middle of the Trade War

It's a 25-minute podcast interview, but I found it really interesting.

@mikiebarb wrote:

If you listen to today’s Daily the message from these two thoughtful voters who are being HURT by Trump’s trade war is that he possesses a quality that is more compelling to them than their own financial self interest.

One of the men interviewed compares his role in this trade war to the troops, and that kinda says a lot, I think. (I believe this was the take Tom Cotton went with on TV this week as well.) It also made me think of Brexit.

EDIT: Listened to it again, it's really, really great and enlightening.

Dolce et decorum est pro patria mori.

Placing other values over your own immediate financial self-interest seems like a good thing.
Just not placing Trump above anything.

Placing other values over your own immediate financial self-interest to hurt others seems like a not good thing.

FIXED.

Prederick wrote:

Caught in the Middle of the Trade War

It's a 25-minute podcast interview, but I found it really interesting.

@mikiebarb wrote:

If you listen to today’s Daily the message from these two thoughtful voters who are being HURT by Trump’s trade war is that he possesses a quality that is more compelling to them than their own financial self interest.

One of the men interviewed compares his role in this trade war to the troops, and that kinda says a lot, I think. (I believe this was the take Tom Cotton went with on TV this week as well.) It also made me think of Brexit.

EDIT: Listened to it again, it's really, really great and enlightening.

"I never thought the leopards would eat MY face"

Prederick wrote:

Caught in the Middle of the Trade War

It's a 25-minute podcast interview, but I found it really interesting.

@mikiebarb wrote:

If you listen to today’s Daily the message from these two thoughtful voters who are being HURT by Trump’s trade war is that he possesses a quality that is more compelling to them than their own financial self interest.

One of the men interviewed compares his role in this trade war to the troops, and that kinda says a lot, I think. (I believe this was the take Tom Cotton went with on TV this week as well.) It also made me think of Brexit.

EDIT: Listened to it again, it's really, really great and enlightening.

Neither men could articulate what the trade war with China was about or what Trump's was trying to achieve.

The dump truck manufacturer stated he was absolutely fine with trading with China before Trump's launched his trade war and, later, admitted he wished things would go back to how they were before.

He tried to compare the trade war with the end of stagflation and got everything wrong about that analogy. Reagan didn't raise interest rates. Paul Volcker, who Carter appointed to the head of the Fed in August 1979, raised interest rates in 1979 and continued to do so for the first two months of the Reagan administration. Reagan did nothing except continue what Carter started.

He believes Trump doesn't understand the trade situation and that his advisers have "led him down the wrong path." The former is absolutely true, and the later is absolutely not because Trump *always* campaigned on blowing up existing trade agreements in an attempt to correct an "imbalance of trade" something that any economist will tell you is OK because countries specialize and American consumers benefit from cheaper, Chinese-made goods.

The farmer believed nearly the opposite about Trump. He liked the fact that Trump was a "businessman" and not a politician, but then immediately contradicted himself and said that Trump should listen to his political advisers, especially "people who've been around Washington before." It was very interesting that Trump's position on trade was the only thing he didn't like about him during 2016.

He rightly should be concerned about how Trump's tariffs might cause "long-term demand destruction," because that's already happening with China buying more and more from countries like Brazil. He was also completely wrong when he said that "global markets don't change on dime." US soybean trade with China went from more than $10 billion a year--something that took over two decades to build up--to zero practically overnight because of Trump. He only took a 20% hit because he grew other crops and wasn't trading his hogs with China as well.

Neither man was "thoughtful." They actually believed contradictory things about Trump and yet still both supported him. That they're willing to take personal financial hits over Trump means they believe in something greater and the only bigger picture Trump is pushing is that America should turn back the clock to the days when white men were always on top. This, of course, has been repeated validated since 2016 by multiple academic studies that showed Trump's support was greatest among racists and sexists, and not the "economically anxious."

Trump's lawlessness has a broader appeal than racists and sexists.
His ignoring of laws means that those interested in running amok for personal benefit don't have to even lobby congress to roll back protections. They can just ignore them or breath easier knowing that their prior illegal actions won't be prosecuted and can be increased.

It is the reason why he is so popular with evangelical Christians and why the flurry of extreme anti-abortion laws. The judicial branch of government either won't prosecute them or they can push it high enough to reach Barr who will turn a blind eye. This is free for all raping of America.

"Rape is kinda like the weather. If it's inevitable, relax and enjoy it."
Clayton Williams (R-TX)

Losing an election is kind like the weather, motherf*cker.

Wow, are those all legitimate quotes? It's extraordinarily difficult not to wish some lived experience on those despicable pieces of sh*t if so. That's a whole new level of public discourse that should immediately disqualify anyone from holding any form of public office for the term of their unnatural life. Where's a vast expanse of hostile, unpeopled wasteland to banish someone from civilisation to when you need one?

DC Malleus wrote:

Where's a vast expanse of hostile, unpeopled wasteland to banish someone from civilisation to when you need one?

North Dakota is right there. Rude.

Ha, I knew someone with superior local knowledge would correct me on that one

DC Malleus wrote:

Wow, are those all legitimate quotes? It's extraordinarily difficult not to wish some lived experience on those despicable pieces of sh*t if so. That's a whole new level of public discourse that should immediately disqualify anyone from holding any form of public office for the term of their unnatural life. Where's a vast expanse of hostile, unpeopled wasteland to banish someone from civilisation to when you need one?

Sounds like things perpetrators might have said....

Jonman wrote:
DC Malleus wrote:

Where's a vast expanse of hostile, unpeopled wasteland to banish someone from civilisation to when you need one?

North Dakota is right there. Rude.

I dunno... I hear Death Valley is nice...

https://www.designnews.com/electroni...

Such figures aren’t just confined to GM, however. Most of the industry is simultaneously burning through cash. Ford, for example, invested $1 billion in Argo AI; Toyota put $1 billion in Toyota Research Institute; GM invested $500 million in Lyft,Inc.; Volvo entered into a $300 million joint venture with Uber Technologies Inc., and Intel is said to have spent $15.3 billion to acquire Mobileye.

Can we just get back to investing in public transit?

If they invested in public transit, they wouldn't own it when all was said and done.

DSGamer wrote:

https://www.designnews.com/electroni...

Such figures aren’t just confined to GM, however. Most of the industry is simultaneously burning through cash. Ford, for example, invested $1 billion in Argo AI; Toyota put $1 billion in Toyota Research Institute; GM invested $500 million in Lyft,Inc.; Volvo entered into a $300 million joint venture with Uber Technologies Inc., and Intel is said to have spent $15.3 billion to acquire Mobileye.

Can we just get back to investing in public transit?

I realize it is hip around this joint to go with the all corporations are evil mindset, however I think you completely missed the point of the linked article.

Garrcia wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

https://www.designnews.com/electroni...

Such figures aren’t just confined to GM, however. Most of the industry is simultaneously burning through cash. Ford, for example, invested $1 billion in Argo AI; Toyota put $1 billion in Toyota Research Institute; GM invested $500 million in Lyft,Inc.; Volvo entered into a $300 million joint venture with Uber Technologies Inc., and Intel is said to have spent $15.3 billion to acquire Mobileye.

Can we just get back to investing in public transit?

I realize it is hip around this joint to go with the all corporations are evil mindset, however I think you completely missed the point of the linked article.

The subject DS brought up is barely even subtext. These companies are dodging their tax liabilities and using the money to fund private solutions to problems that are more easily and successfully solved by ubiquitous public transportation. Yes, the article is about how difficult autonomous vehicles are, and how much money has been spent so far, but it's a small step to get to this other conversation.

Garrcia wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

https://www.designnews.com/electroni...

Such figures aren’t just confined to GM, however. Most of the industry is simultaneously burning through cash. Ford, for example, invested $1 billion in Argo AI; Toyota put $1 billion in Toyota Research Institute; GM invested $500 million in Lyft,Inc.; Volvo entered into a $300 million joint venture with Uber Technologies Inc., and Intel is said to have spent $15.3 billion to acquire Mobileye.

Can we just get back to investing in public transit?

I realize it is hip around this joint to go with the all corporations are evil mindset, however I think you completely missed the point of the linked article.

How so? The article basically says they’re spending billions of dollars on a problem they underestimated and that it may take decades for them to reach their goal.

In the meantime we have climate change bearing down on us threatening the entirety of humanity and millions of animals species. From my perspective it’s looking like automobiles are the single most destructive invention in human history, including the atom bomb.

And yet we’re charging ahead with individual self-driven cars, even though the problem is really difficult (of course it is) and expensive.

I’ve been a public transportation advocate (and user) my entire life. And a cyclist for much of it. I promise you this doesn’t come from a place of wanting to be hip and hate companies. I believe we should use our resources wisely and save humanity and in light of that self driving cars feel like a vanity project to me.