A new study out of MIT shows just how badly it sucks working as a driver for Uber or Lyft (https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/02/mit-study-shows-how-much-driving-for-uber-or-lyft-sucks/). These exploitative INTERMEDIARIES, do nothing for their drivers. Drivers are responsible for all of their costs and are subject to whatever bullshit rates the platform (read Uber or Lyft software) calculates to be the "going rate". All the while Uber or Lyft charges upwards 20% for the "privilege" of driving in their sweatshop fleet.
The result is that drivers, on average, earn a paltry $3.37/hr with 74% of drivers earning less than the minimum wage in which they operate. Unreal. Attempting to cover the high fixed costs of operating (car payment, insurance, maintenance, etc), drivers spend increasingly ridiculous amounts of time in their cars so as to no have said car repossessed due to lack of making their car payment. Uber, exploitative as it is, has successfully separated expenses from revenues by throwing all the expenses onto the driver, thereby mitigating all financial risk and essentially printing money by way of unimpeded revenue source.
THIS IS HOW HUGE CORPORATIONS EXPLOIT HUMAN LABOR!! This used to occur in crowded, hot buildings where bosses would brow beat employees who made a few cents/hour stitching up clothes. Nowadays, you don't even need to hire the browbeating middle managers (more cost elimination) as the technology is fully capable of holding tyranny over the drivers.
With decentralized public blockchains, people shouldn't have to deal with this shit for much longer (hopefully). Uber and Lyft provide no value for "their" drivers other than a simple platform. They (Uber) exists only to exploit the drivers for profit. Everything that Uber and Lyft do could be done as a series of smart contracts on a public blockchain thereby eliminating the slave-like INTERMEDIARIES and enabling drivers to be their own employees and compete directly with other drivers in their locality while not paying out 20% of their revenues to Uber or Lyft. In this scenario, the rate structure would be determined by bidding drivers, each of which would have a profile with their details on the blockchain so that consumers could choose the rate and quality best suited for them.
I'm waiting patiently for this crypto project to come along. Or, perhaps I've just missed it and it is being built right now (let me know!). Either way, these types of bullshit, gig-economy jobs need a reboot. The drivers in this slave-like business models need a better tool to free them from sweatshop overlords. These drivers need their workplace DECENTRALIZED!!
*the picture used for this article came from pixabay - creative commons