Why Lyft and Uber Need to go Out of Business

At near 70 years of age, Uber and Lyft are the worst companies I’ve ever chosen to be employed by, and I’ve worked for a plethora of companies since I was seventeen. Almost any bad word you can think of, I apply to Lyft and Uber and their Boards of Directors, Founders and current CEOs. And since both companies are too long in the tooth by today’s accelerated standards to be fixed, they simply need to go away to make room for safer and more honest rideshare companies that have officers with actual moral compasses.?With the duopoly’s disappearance, there will still be a huge (if not bigger) rideshare market complete with passengers and drivers.?And no, driverless cars are no where near ready for primetime and therefore shouldn’t even try to take up the slack. ?

Uber and Lyft are the taxi “duopoly” here in the United States and with similar competition in foreign countries. Since their lawbreaking founding, both state regulated companies have been unworthy to lead the giga revolution for the sleepy (and also state regulated) taxi industry. The duopoly’s founders were essentially sleazy marketing men who sold a product that lived outside reality and the truth. Investors bought into it hook line and sinker thinking that they were the greatest inventions since the bagel slicer.?The companies were founded on lies and an avoidance of the law. And yes, that’s right, Lyft and Uber are nothing more than technically advanced taxi services, still doing the same basic function of transporting individuals from point A to point B and beyond.?Add to that, the delivery of food and products.?

The taxi and delivery industries have been around since at least Roman times and technological improvements don’t change their basic nature anymore than the Internet and iPhone changed man’s.?In fact, Uber was originally called Uber Taxi. ?

In the recent century, the taxi industry, up to the addition of Uber and Lyft, had fallen out of favor with a penny hoarding public always looking for a cheaper, if not subsidized, way to get around.?Dirty and unreliable, taxis as ad carriers, were becoming more and more of a necessary evil in our modern alcohol abusing lifestyles. Lyft and Uber simply addressed those three issues of cleanliness, reliability and driving under the influence with cars that lacked the advertising and feeling that you were riding around in a moving billboard. Through technology, the payment for such rides was also made easier.

Most travel has always been an expensive and often dangerous undertaking.?But I’m asking for once, why can’t things be better?

One of the reasons for such poorly paid drivers doing such deadly work is obviously economic. Rideshare’s main competitor other than normal taxis is public transportation which actually runs at a loss.?It seems cheaper to the passenger, but in fact, the cost is socially distributed among all taxpayers whether they personally depend on using the services or not.?Even gasoline is often subsidized by governments and therefore again by public taxes in one form or another.?All together, these subsidies amount to billions, if not trillions, of dollars each year. Again, travel is expensive, whether you think about it or not.

An “awoke” public needs to remember that going from point A to B is expensive and dangerous and a huge part of our sometimes hidden monthly budget, especially when we choose to work further than we can walk.?As responsible people, we need to factor in the cost and associated dangers. Unfortunately, most of us do not.?We accept death by automobile as a part of life.

Nowadays, companies are starting to realize that working from home, when possible, is one way to cut corporate costs as long as you can measure and enforce productivity. This lowers the need for many transportation services and can save lives. In a work from home world, traffic can be less, and those that still choose to use the roads will find that they don’t have to spend so much time on them.?Drivers that drive 100,000 miles a year are bucking the odds of a fatal or catastrophic accident, one where they might even be at fault killing someone else’s child.?Think about that the next time you “almost” fall asleep at the wheel.

Here in Sacramento, California, Uber takes between 50 and 80 percent of the ride fare to cover its growing legal settlements and regulatory expenses.?Therefore, in order to keep rider costs competitive, the gap between what a driver makes (which is often well below his or her own costs), and what the passenger pays to Uber, is so great, that we have a growing black market of private rides, especially for longer trips and consistent trips. Meanwhile, the drivers expenses in time and money to purchase, maintain, and insure their vehicles continues to go up exponentially with a lack of blue collar workers to fix their vehicles and the current government caused inflation.?Driving is simply too dangerous for too little money. ?

A driver must be pretty desperate to work for Lyft or Uber, and fortunately for the hiring practices of the blood thirsty duopoly, there are a lot of desperate people in the world.?Last night there were over 250 rideshare drivers waiting to take folks from the San Francisco airport, enabling the duopoly to pay each driver less to do so. When one driver dies (or his car dies), there’s always another desperate sucker ready to take his place.

This flooding of markets with desperate drivers is a natural response to the modern economic deterioration of the middle classes as too many fall between the cracks in a race towards unemployment, underemployment, and homelessness. I would guess that 60 percent of drivers live in their cars at least some of the time.?After all, real estate is expensive and that affects rents and hotel rates, too.?Massive car rentals and automobile costs, having to be paid by necessity. Why not sleep in them? In a sense, that would mean that your home becomes included in your automobile costs—there's no more need to pay utilities and property taxes.

A sleepy ignorant public that used to be in awe of drivers theoretically grossing a dishonest and overstated $100,000 a year in select markets, now tends to look down on or feel sorry for rideshare drivers, knowing that most eat their cars and call it income.?

Sympathy and empathy might be reaons that the silver lining of tipping is up.?Thank God for that!?

But still, the job is usually not worth the pain and suffering. The other day, I had a whole family angry because I wouldn’t cram 8 people into a 7 passenger car.?In California, you can’t have more riders than seat belts.?It’s logically simple. In my case, after leaving his daddy behind while taking mom and the kids to the destination, one of their kids stole my courtesy charging cable from the back seat, and of course, there was no tip from the “entitled” parents after the almost half hour it took for them to get their people and car seats situated?in my car. It resulted in a total loss and my car and I again made Uber our charity. From now on, ?I will not accept rides in their immediate neighborhood again.?It was my second bad experience there.

Between attacks by gangs, drunk passengers, and bi-polar individuals, I have to say that after 8 years, I’m lucky to even be alive. Yet having been rear ended by a sleepy or distracted driver would have more likely led to my demise. I’m even more blessed to be here after all that.?Fortunately, I don’t have kids to take care of.?I always wonder what causes a parent, who’s family is dependent on them, to risk driving for Lyft and Uber.

As I’m writing this article, my Uber app has been on for hours.?No rides have been available, meaning there were either too few requests or too many drivers competing in a small market. The only reason I drive for Uber is to finish my book on them and to take their passengers for my own customers for mostly future long distance rides.?My commercial insurance for that went from $700 to $1000 per month.?It’s understandable when you consider that my market was rated number one by the auto insurance industry for having “the worst drivers in America” a few years back. That means more tickets and more accidents. Many go unreported. Some are hit and run.

A driver trying to make ends meet, may get up everyday taking a private fare to work, and end everyday taking the same rider back home.?The black market is a natural occurrence in any industry where this disparity between customer payments and employee earnings is too great.?While in this industry’s case, it doesn’t go much towards profit.?

Both Lyft and Uber run in the red most of the time while indirect partners like GM and Tesla keep bailing them out.?The founders, selling shares to a naive public and even more naive angel investors, made millions and billions off an unsuspecting society.?When all else fails, go public!?Nothing is dumber than a public investor.?

Since working for Uber as an illegal contractor vs an employee is so dangerous and for so little money, the lawsuit settlements that the duopoly pays out are probably all well deserved. Furthermore, it’s a great target for the additional frivolous lawsuits, too. It’s also a key reason why driverless cars won’t be ready for primetime for awhile.?

Sadly, the duopoly of Uber and Lyft, aided by its partners, investors, and corrupt government practices, keep new and better companies from rising to the surface by putting them out of business.?The natural business flow has been further impeded by the California inefficient and corrupt system of legislation and courts.?In a fast moving technical economy, governments are badly prepared to respond, let alone in a timely manner.?Too much “would be” driver money goes to lawyers, lobbyists, legislators, government advisors, and a gaggle of State funded intermediaries. It doesn’t get applied towards making rideshare safer and more profitable for drivers.

Low paid drivers dependent on recruitment bounties and ride quantity based bonuses in order to survive, end up being sleepy and erratic drivers. The number one cause of death on the highways is distracted driving.?Lyft and Uber are the drivers’ number one distraction, interupting the driver process with requests and messages all day and night. Accepting a new ride is a stressful and rushed process open to algorithmic obfuscation. Accidents stem from this process alone.

The number two cause of death on the highways is sleepy driving, another Lyft and Uber incentivized specialty.?Drivers are encouraged by the duopoly to constantly accept and fulfill ride requests, often accidentally, through the extremely corrupt Lyft and Uber algorithm process that drives the importance of ride quantity over safety and reliability.

The number three cause of death on the highway is “driving under the influence” of alcohol, illegal drugs, and even prescription medications that cause drowsiness, hyperactivity, or are designed to treat things like diabetes, which of itself can be a cause of accidents. ?

Lyft and Uber can’t possibly be unaware of how low paid drivers are an indirect cause of all the above. Homelessness, where drivers live in their cars after being tossed by the algorithms to far away locations as they become too tired to drive home, can actually save lives or get you killed.

Desperate people do desperate things and often Uber and Lyft are a potential way to have a car in the first place through their car rental programs.?A person who could never qualify to own a car on their own can rent one for between $300 and $400 a week, with little or no credit, and then work it off through the job itself.?If you sleep in your car and clean up at the gym, you can avoid things like rent, utilities and other housing expenses.?I pay about $29 a month as I waltz past all the other homeless drivers asleep in their cars as I enter my gym. So many restrooms are closed nowadays, that a 24 hour gym membership is almost a driver necessity even if you’re not homeless.

Other drivers that need more money each month than their regular jobs pay them, also add to their working hours by driving tired for Lyft and Uber.?Often, they start out tired after their real jobs.

It wouldn’t be so bad if Lyft and Uber, fully aware of their abuses and all the accidents caused by them, did an about face and started paying their drivers a simple set hourly amount of $20 or more per hour plus their auto expenses.?However, the industry is based on “best prices” over safety and reliability.?The public ridesharing community and the government of California are also aware of this new kind of death on the highway, but, as you can only imagine, little gets accomplished there.?The failed system itself is flawed.

Unions are jump starting with little success, and better companies like ALTO in the San Francisco Bay Area, are trying hard to compete against the duopoly by obeying current laws that Lyft and Uber ignore.?In fact, I still get a private contractor’s 1099 tax form vs a W-2 from Uber, even though the law is very clear that I’m an employee with all the protections that come with employment, including overtime, sick leave, vacations, and pay to pick up fares.?

Reporting on their abuse and illegality has even affected me personally. The driver abusive Lyft, knowing full well of my whistleblower status, found an excuse to deactivate me for “alleged” racism, one of many creative ways they have to “fire” experienced drivers without good cause, but for exposing the truth about the corporations.

So here we are killing and maiming passengers, drivers, and innocent bystanders without anybody taking meaningful action.?I like to say that the boards of directors of the duopoly need to be deported to the middle of the Pacific Ocean.?That would inevitably make the world a better place for the rest of us. But hey, who’s listening to me?