In Colorado, a law went into effect at the beginning of 2025 that showed you how much of the actual fare the driver gets. I took an Uber ride to the airport last week and the total cost was ~$98 before tip, and the drivers share of that was reported as ~$41. I don't see how it makes sense that Uber for connecting me to a driver gets close to 60% of the fare, while the driver who does all the work, puts miles onto their car, etc, gets less than half of the fare.
I seem to remember Uber’s tilt to profitability coinciding with a move to extend their “dynamic pricing” to a driver-side reverse auction for fares, which they called “Trip Radar.”
Mysteriously I’m having trouble finding much reference to it now, although I remember it being discussed at the time… the only real discussion I can find now is recent and vaguely agenda-flavored [0]. Complete with extra-weaselly non-denial denials from Uber’s PR.
> In 2024, American media non-profit More Perfect Union conducted an experiment to discover whether Uber’s algorithms facilitate wage discrimination. It gathered seven experienced Uber drivers together in a high-traffic area in Los Angeles and asked each of them to open up the app and place their phones on a table next to each other. It found that Uber offered the same rides 46 times to multiple drivers, and that there was discrepancy between fares for 63% of those trips. Uber refuted that this was discrimination, saying in a blog post that differing pay was due to GPS discrepancies.
So the drivers bid each other down, while the riders bid each other up through “surge pricing” (even as they’re individually priced according to their willingness to pay). Nice market position if you can get it…
It’s a good party trick if they’ve clocked you, like they apparently have me, as a total cheapskate. As a rider I routinely see prices 50%-70% of those Uber offers to my richer and less price-sensitive friends when we call for the exact same ride from the same place at the same time, whether I call first or second…
Except at some level you do obviously believe that using the app was worth $57, because you didn't end the story by saying you called a cab company and got a big discount by doing it the old fashioned way.
OR could it be that the scheduling, summoning, and advertising infrastructure is actually close to 60% of the cost, and the added convenience of the app is in fact worth the difference in price?
> Except at some level you do obviously believe that using the app was worth $57
That's ridiculous. "because you didn't end the story by saying you called a cab company and got a big discount by doing it the old fashioned way." is just bad-faith weaseling. Uber is worse in every way than the taxi stands that used to be at airports; now you hail a car via an expensive app and have to wait for them to all jockey to where you are if they don't bail on the way.
Taxi stands still make the most sense at events and leaving mass transit and that's even before considering the ridiculous cost. Visiting europe felt like a breath of fresh air in comparison—technically they have uber, but there was no point in using it because taxis were so prevalent, reliable, and cheap.
Or it could be that a massive influx of VC money into the for-hire transportation market allowed for a player (Uber) to more-or-less set prices as it found desirable.
OC has something they must do: get from point A to point B. If your choices for doing so have been restricted by anticompetitive behavior on the part of a market player, you will have to do so by a less consumer-friendly set of rules.
Why would the old fashioned way be a big discount? Old fashioned taxi companies are not taking 0%.
> scheduling, summoning, and advertising infrastructure is actually close to 60% of the cost
Funny story about that - "pre-booking" an Uber for a future date costs something like an additional 20% on top of the actual fare. Made that mistake once and never again.
I remember reading about the law going into effect but had never seen the split broken out until last week.
I highly doubt the scheduling, summoning, and advertising infra is close to 60% of the cost. I like Uber, I've been a customer for a long time. It's invaluable when visiting a new place imo. I also think they can and should pay their drivers more.
Taxi could be more expensive than Uber for the same reason AirBnB is cheaper than hotels: they do not respect the same standards (e.g. insurance, worker rights, etc).
Not same this is the case, but there's more than convenience embedded in markets.
We live in a society where the largest and most successful companies got that way by NOT making a profit, and now you're going to bring out the free market arguments?
It's hard to find a specific number, but that seems like it's even more than "traditional" taxi companies take.
So the enshittification has come full circle - Uber is now priced basically the same as traditional taxis and takes a possibly bigger cut for themselves without any of the overhead or capex of a traditional taxi company. Filing this away under: don't ever believe tech company hype.
What they never were, was "the underdog fighting taxi mafia". That's just propaganda. They beat "taxi mafias", plural, with divide-and-conquer, market after market, and they did that as a multinational corporation with ~infinite money supply thanks to VC funding.
Uber is a story of the Goliath going from town to town and beating everyone's Davids.
Uber is still better than a Taxi from the consumer side. Transparent and low friction interactions are worth a modest premium, especially when traveling in places where you don’t speak the language very well.
And as for Colorado, I’ve had my share of Uber bills there. It’s 30% tolls, 40% Uber, 30% Driver in my experience.
IANAL (also, not from Colorado; never used a rideshare); it seems that this would provide benefit to both drivers and riders.
My nephew used to commute to work via rideshare, and would usually work outside deals with regular drivers. Knowing how much each person in the rideshare might save would definitely incentivize out-of-network rides.
The issue with gig economy is that, the provider side is either doing it for some extra cash for as a short stint is fine, but people relying on it for survival do not want to shake the boat as they are desperate and have bills to pay and food to put on the table.
Consultants and contractors charge a fixed rate dictated by the work and contract. Gig economy pushes all liabilities on the consultants minus paying for that privilege. The bargaining power is heavily skewed in favor of then platform, hence nothing will change.
Gig companies violate a lot of things, though workers' rights may well be at the top of the list. They are profoundly unaccountable. Doordash driver screws up your order (or takes part of it)? They'll credit you via an automated system. It is never, ever, ever the fault of Uber, Lyft, or the rest when something goes wrong, and there are no mechanisms for you, as a customer, to express anything other than transactional frustration other than not using the platform entirely. Given there is real value for me in having someone else do my shopping sometimes, it's unfortunate it's essentially my sole risk if something goes wrong.
There is some pushback happening. A significant US grocery chain has recently launched its in-house grocery delivery where I live, and they have been astonishingly good. They have actual customer service, employees driving liveried vehicles. It's a weird throwback and it works.
>Six of the seven companies use algorithms with opaque rules to assign jobs and determine wages, meaning that workers do not know how much they will be paid until after completing the job.
This seems like the low hanging fruit that should be resolved immediately.
Though Uber does show how much someone will make before taking a ride, I'm not sure how one would legislate forcing a user to only accept a ride if it's profitable for them after taking gas+depreciation of the vehicle into account. And if someone wants to trade life of the vehicle for income now (pretty much no one takes their car to it's manufactured limit, it's usually age that kills it), shouldn't we allow that?
If drivers are supposed to be contractors the pricing should work opposite to the way it does. Drivers should bid on rides, the same way a contractor bids on a job. Uber then selects the low bid and computes the price for the customer.
In that case however, drivers would need to have the tools to accurately estimate their costs, such as knowing the time and mileage from where they are to where the rider is and then to where the rider wants to go, just as a contractor needs to know how much lumber he'll need before he bids on framing an addition to a house. And if he's wrong, he generally needs to eat the cost of his mistake.
Or just make app show list of bids. Which user can then sort on some criteria. Like inserting their estimation of time and distance.
This would allow drivers to set fees on things like base fare or cancelation fee. And make clear list of penalties like cleaning the car and damages. And possibly any suitable small print legalese too.
I don't see how that would improve the worker's lives in any way, shape or form. To me, this feels like insane Gilded Age practices.
In fact, I'm pretty sure you can find this exact same scene of desperate workers bidding on how little they'd take to do a job in Bioshock, as a jab against Objectivism.
>> Though Uber does show how much someone will make before taking a ride
I think the problem was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_mileage
I took an Uber from Newark Airport an hour south to Princeton NJ -- the Uber driver, which being compensated nicely for that ride, now has to get back an hour north, and no rides are "guaranteed" for this trip, so they go back uncompensated. Traditional Taxi services built in the cost of that return trip, but Uber does not from what I can see.
The same way you or I would by entering the starting address and destination address and getting a route from any of the plethora of options available for this very task
My theory is that it is counterproductive to have a difference between employees and entrepreneurs. There should be a shall we say type A minimum wage for employees who have full time contracts for unlimited duration, healthcare, unemployment savings, paid sick leave, vacations, pension and are members of a union etc etc. This would be the lowest minimum wage available. Employers should be free to drop any of the above for a fee. You might for example want to hire someone for only 6 months or for the duration of a project. This would both require a considerably higher salary and payments into some unemployment fund. The difference should be such that it is financially exciting for an employer to replace the 6 month contract with one for unlimited time.
The main idea is that you need help right now and shouldn't be obstructed with pensions and healthcare puzzles. I just want you to mow my lawn. Maybe mow it at all my 700 properties. What is the difference?
How about, like just about every other country in the developed world, we build a social safety net and welfare system that isn't tied to employment, and then employers don't have to worry about any of those things that aren't "does this person's labor provide value in excess of the amount I (and/or anyone else) am willing to pay them".
this whole episode is a proof that anything that is too good to be true, remains so
though as has also been true forever, driving cab can be a great way to hustle any number of other side hustles, as all passengers are a self selecting group of people open to suggestions of other services.....which the drivers cousin just so happens to provide, which is essentialy a network, within the network.,......which then folds over into turf wars, and towtruck gangs operating in toronto that are proving to be ferociously tenatious even in the face of widespread outrage and police action...,so what will work and is implimentable?
I used to gig for a bay area startup which connected runners with task seekers (had recently added a bunny to its name...). This was a long time ago, well before they changed their matching system to be more algorythmic/generic.
Honestly, my twentysomething brain thought I was making $bigtime$, when in reality I was whoring my life away underbidding even the least-sane of co-giggers. The company consistently sided against its 1099 contractors, often ending arrangements without justification nor input from its workers.
To this day, I do not use gig platforms, and despise when family rents in AirBNB neighborhoods (I think quite possibly the worst for humanity Y-Combinator-funded idea). After my couple years scrapping by the bayarea, I eventually completed an IBEW apprenticeship and became a full-time electrician (the antithesis of gig work).
Although I still hope things have improved for current gig-workers, I know they likely have not.
Readit News
Mysteriously I’m having trouble finding much reference to it now, although I remember it being discussed at the time… the only real discussion I can find now is recent and vaguely agenda-flavored [0]. Complete with extra-weaselly non-denial denials from Uber’s PR.
> In 2024, American media non-profit More Perfect Union conducted an experiment to discover whether Uber’s algorithms facilitate wage discrimination. It gathered seven experienced Uber drivers together in a high-traffic area in Los Angeles and asked each of them to open up the app and place their phones on a table next to each other. It found that Uber offered the same rides 46 times to multiple drivers, and that there was discrepancy between fares for 63% of those trips. Uber refuted that this was discrimination, saying in a blog post that differing pay was due to GPS discrepancies.
So the drivers bid each other down, while the riders bid each other up through “surge pricing” (even as they’re individually priced according to their willingness to pay). Nice market position if you can get it…
It’s a good party trick if they’ve clocked you, like they apparently have me, as a total cheapskate. As a rider I routinely see prices 50%-70% of those Uber offers to my richer and less price-sensitive friends when we call for the exact same ride from the same place at the same time, whether I call first or second…
[0] https://novaramedia.com/2025/03/06/taken-for-a-ride-inside-u...
Yea, natural monopolies that are somehow allowed to exist will do that.
OR could it be that the scheduling, summoning, and advertising infrastructure is actually close to 60% of the cost, and the added convenience of the app is in fact worth the difference in price?
That's ridiculous. "because you didn't end the story by saying you called a cab company and got a big discount by doing it the old fashioned way." is just bad-faith weaseling. Uber is worse in every way than the taxi stands that used to be at airports; now you hail a car via an expensive app and have to wait for them to all jockey to where you are if they don't bail on the way.
Taxi stands still make the most sense at events and leaving mass transit and that's even before considering the ridiculous cost. Visiting europe felt like a breath of fresh air in comparison—technically they have uber, but there was no point in using it because taxis were so prevalent, reliable, and cheap.
OC has something they must do: get from point A to point B. If your choices for doing so have been restricted by anticompetitive behavior on the part of a market player, you will have to do so by a less consumer-friendly set of rules.
> scheduling, summoning, and advertising infrastructure is actually close to 60% of the cost
Funny story about that - "pre-booking" an Uber for a future date costs something like an additional 20% on top of the actual fare. Made that mistake once and never again.
I highly doubt the scheduling, summoning, and advertising infra is close to 60% of the cost. I like Uber, I've been a customer for a long time. It's invaluable when visiting a new place imo. I also think they can and should pay their drivers more.
Not same this is the case, but there's more than convenience embedded in markets.
So the enshittification has come full circle - Uber is now priced basically the same as traditional taxis and takes a possibly bigger cut for themselves without any of the overhead or capex of a traditional taxi company. Filing this away under: don't ever believe tech company hype.
What they never were, was "the underdog fighting taxi mafia". That's just propaganda. They beat "taxi mafias", plural, with divide-and-conquer, market after market, and they did that as a multinational corporation with ~infinite money supply thanks to VC funding.
Uber is a story of the Goliath going from town to town and beating everyone's Davids.
It's incomparable. I talked local taxi drivers and they told me they just paid a flat monthly rate like €200-€300/month.
And as for Colorado, I’ve had my share of Uber bills there. It’s 30% tolls, 40% Uber, 30% Driver in my experience.
Ebay fees are upwards of 10-15%. Amazon fees can be as high as 45% Apple's app store fee can be 15 to 30%
Uber wants to get you coming and going by charging a Sub on the front end and splitting fees on the backend... it's like the worst of capitalism
More info: https://www.senatedems.co/newsroom/icymi-bill-to-improve-gig...
My nephew used to commute to work via rideshare, and would usually work outside deals with regular drivers. Knowing how much each person in the rideshare might save would definitely incentivize out-of-network rides.
The issue with gig economy is that, the provider side is either doing it for some extra cash for as a short stint is fine, but people relying on it for survival do not want to shake the boat as they are desperate and have bills to pay and food to put on the table.
Consultants and contractors charge a fixed rate dictated by the work and contract. Gig economy pushes all liabilities on the consultants minus paying for that privilege. The bargaining power is heavily skewed in favor of then platform, hence nothing will change.
There is some pushback happening. A significant US grocery chain has recently launched its in-house grocery delivery where I live, and they have been astonishingly good. They have actual customer service, employees driving liveried vehicles. It's a weird throwback and it works.
This seems like the low hanging fruit that should be resolved immediately.
Though Uber does show how much someone will make before taking a ride, I'm not sure how one would legislate forcing a user to only accept a ride if it's profitable for them after taking gas+depreciation of the vehicle into account. And if someone wants to trade life of the vehicle for income now (pretty much no one takes their car to it's manufactured limit, it's usually age that kills it), shouldn't we allow that?
In that case however, drivers would need to have the tools to accurately estimate their costs, such as knowing the time and mileage from where they are to where the rider is and then to where the rider wants to go, just as a contractor needs to know how much lumber he'll need before he bids on framing an addition to a house. And if he's wrong, he generally needs to eat the cost of his mistake.
This would allow drivers to set fees on things like base fare or cancelation fee. And make clear list of penalties like cleaning the car and damages. And possibly any suitable small print legalese too.
In fact, I'm pretty sure you can find this exact same scene of desperate workers bidding on how little they'd take to do a job in Bioshock, as a jab against Objectivism.
I think the problem was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_mileage I took an Uber from Newark Airport an hour south to Princeton NJ -- the Uber driver, which being compensated nicely for that ride, now has to get back an hour north, and no rides are "guaranteed" for this trip, so they go back uncompensated. Traditional Taxi services built in the cost of that return trip, but Uber does not from what I can see.
The main idea is that you need help right now and shouldn't be obstructed with pensions and healthcare puzzles. I just want you to mow my lawn. Maybe mow it at all my 700 properties. What is the difference?
Honestly, my twentysomething brain thought I was making $bigtime$, when in reality I was whoring my life away underbidding even the least-sane of co-giggers. The company consistently sided against its 1099 contractors, often ending arrangements without justification nor input from its workers.
To this day, I do not use gig platforms, and despise when family rents in AirBNB neighborhoods (I think quite possibly the worst for humanity Y-Combinator-funded idea). After my couple years scrapping by the bayarea, I eventually completed an IBEW apprenticeship and became a full-time electrician (the antithesis of gig work).
Although I still hope things have improved for current gig-workers, I know they likely have not.