I don’t freak out too much about Uber, because I think that, in the long run, it will either cease to exist or become indistinguishable from the cab companies it seeks to replace. Yes, it’s true, that it manages to get much of its profitability from–and there’s no other way to say it–exploiting workers. It pushes all the risk onto them that cab companies assume for their drivers. Such as, for example, not offering the sorts of benefits that come with a full-time job, like health insurance to pay for injuries incurred on the job, or drivers not being liable for damage to vehicles they drive, or driving others around for money without a commercial-grade insurance policy. Speaking of which, I was in a minor auto accident a few months back. I was the middle car in a three-car accident, and incurred pretty much all the damage–the others had no real damage, at worst a paint touch-up would have been needed. It worked out okay–I wasn’t at fault, nobody was injured, and I didn’t have to pay a dime for repairs, just a couple small incidentals like paying for the police report. But the cost of replacing front and rear bumpers (and, as was discovered later, repairing some damage to the chassis that wasn’t initially visible) wound up amounting to $4400. Seriously. Thanks, rentier capitalism! Which, again, I didn’t have to pay for. My out of pocket expenses were probably in the $20 range, which to me is annoying but bearable. But when I called my insurance company to report the accident, they must have asked me five different questions where the point of each was essentially, “Do you drive for Uber?” I do not, of course. But I can only imagine the poor guy who’s driving people around to afford San Francisco rents and gets his policy invalidated because he was driving for Uber, and then has to come up with that kind of scratch out of pocket. And if there were injuries? Forget about it. Game over. And for a second job? Who needs it?
This is why it simply isn’t going to last, at least not in its present form. Uber and its competitors are still quite new, and people in expensive urban centers who want some additional spending money are going to be drawn to the freedom of it at first. All the benefits of owning your own business with no capital investment needed! But it is ultimately the freedom of the temp worker, and eventually, they’re going to have a hard time getting people to sign up for a job that is, in fact, very dangerous and risky, and thus underpaid. Disagree? Just look at law school applications over the past decade. People eventually get wise to the con. Which means that Uber will have to assume much of that risk, or they’ll fall apart.
