What Uber (and Taxi) Drivers Think About the Politics of Ride Sharing
Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar are all part of the ridesharing economy loved by urban-dwelling millennials and distrusted by Democratic politicians like Hillary Clinton and NYC mayor Bill de Blasio, taxi cab associations, and Salon.com headline writers.
A California administrative court recently ruled that Uber must pay a hefty fine and share more of its data with state regulators or shut down. So, Reason TV's Zach Weissmueller spent a day riding around Los Angeles in Ubers, talking to drivers about some of the rumors swirling around the company: That it doesn't pay its drivers well, that it runs shoddy background checks that put riders at risk, and that its drivers fail to pick up people in bad neighborhoods. He also made a stop at Yellow Cab headquarters to talk with William Rouse, the general manager of Yellow Cab Los Angeles and an outspoken critic of Uber. And for his final leg of the journey, Weissmueller jumped into a good old-fashioned yellow taxi.
To find out what happened, watch the video above.
Approximately 10 minutes. Produced by Zach Weissmueller and Justin Monticello. Camera by Monticello.
Scroll down for downloadable versions of this video, and don't forget to subscribe to Reason TV's YouTube channel for daily content like this.
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The early bird gets the worm! First post! Leave to politicians to stand in the way of innovation. Uber is a revolutionary breath of new life into an aging public transportation system.
Leave it*
Pretty shoddy QA you got there. Rush to market much?
I can only hope that we stop these monsters from enabling people to voluntarily provide quality services at lower costs than cab companies. That's not the America I want to live in...
Also by WE I mean our benevolent masters in Washington that represent us so well
Sounds like an inverted royal we.
Wait, is there actual journalism going on here? What is Trump's stand on UBER?
So that women drives for Uber and thinks she does not get paid enough...but she still drives for them. Did I miss something? You know like the part where Uber holds a gun to her head and forces her to drive for them.
A lot of people are probably in that same position, believing they aren't paid enough for what they do. It may be true, may be delusion, but it's not contained to Uber. Yet, they don't quit their jobs either.
There is some value in not having to look for another job.
That's a pretty human thing to do. She was just offering a mild complaint about the money, not engaging in bitter whinging.
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