Two takes on Uber

Two recent articles about Uber suggest that the car service and others like it might destroy the taxi driving profession, with one stating plainly that that would be a good thing.

In "Will Uber Destroy the Driving Profession?" New Yorker writer Eric Goldwyn suggests that Uber's employment of "semi-professional drivers" may ultimately force traditional taxis out of business. If this happens, Goldwyn quotes New York Taxi Worker's Alliance chief Bhairavi Desai as saying that  the emergence of Uber is part of a long term undermining of labor:

 “Forty years ago, drivers went from laborers to independent contractors,” Desai explained. In the seventies, corporations lowered costs by hiring contract labor and leasing medallioned cabs to drivers. As contractors, drivers lost basic labor protections, like health insurance and paid vacations. 

Ed Rogoff, a professor at Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business (and a former New York City cab driver), tells Goldwyn, “The independent-contractor taxi model is like sharecropping. Previously, cabbies and garage owners split proceeds fifty-fifty, with drivers keeping tips. The new system totally changed the structure of the industry by shifting all of the risk to the drivers.”  

This discussion, like many concerning Uber, omits that taxi apps are used to summon both traditional taxi and, in other cases, non-taxis, with unlicensed drivers (that is, unlicensed to drive a taxi) driving their own cars rather than vehicles dedicated as cabs.

A few days earlier, the Boston Globe ran an opinion piece by John Sununu, "Uber isn’t the problem; taxi regulations are," arguing that "In most big American and European cities today, taxi services look more like a bureaucratic conspiracy than the product of a competitive marketplace. In London, regulators consider use of a taxi meter to be a privilege and have erected exorbitant barriers to protect that status."

Sununu, a former U.S. senator from New Hampshire, continues that Uber "operates more like an information broker than a transportation company. They own no vehicles or medallions, but vet local operators, manage the application connecting drivers with users, and provide a rating system for both."

This view is close to how Uber sees itself, as technology or information company, not  a taxi company subject to taxi regulations.  Many in the industry, including regulators, have disagreed at least in part. So does Sununu, who says: 

Uber’s success and popularity should inspire legislators to take a hard look at the wasteful mass of ancient taxi regulations already on the books. Ostensibly, they were intended to protect consumers. But now they block access to faster, more reliable service.