So, if Uber screwed over taxi drivers - say, said that if you buy a new car then we’ll pay you well, the new was bought and the pay didn’t arrive - then OK, I can see the case for compensation. That would be breaking one’s word, breach of contract and all that. But at least as far as this is being reported that’s not the case here at all. Rather, the claim is that Uber lowered taxi incomes by competing with them. For which compensation must be paid.
Uber will cough up almost $272m to compensate taxi and hire-car drivers who lost out when the rideshare company “aggressively” moved into the Australian market.
A class action against Uber was expected to go to trial in the supreme court of Victoria on Monday but judge Lisa Nichols vacated it after the rideshare giant agreed to the $271.8m settlement.
It was the fifth-largest class-action settlement in Australia’s history and came after what Maurice Blackburn Lawyers described as five “gruelling” years since it launched the legal battle on behalf of more than 8,000 taxi and hire-car owners and drivers.
The drivers and car owners lost income and licence values because of Uber’s aggressive arrival into the market and the company tried to deny them compensation at every turn, Maurice Blackburn principal lawyer Michael Donelly said.
The aim and purpose of every technological advance is to kill jobs. This is exactly the manner in which technological advance makes us all richer. It’s the whole point of the damn system in fact. Why we have markets and capitalism in the first place. So the idea that the purveyors of the new tech have to compensate the purveyors of the old is simply insane.
So, the claim is - as far as I understand it - that Uber meant that taxi drivers earned less than they had. This also meant that the value of taxi licences went down and so on. OK, I can well believe that happening.
But this is what we want from a new technology. Specifically, Uber lowers the amount of time deadheading looking for a fare. Therefore the same number of drivers, cars, can provide more rides. Or, of course, the cost can come down and given the usual demand curves more people can have rides as more people can afford the new and lower costs of a ride. We’ve certainly seen at least some of that second - everywhere Uber’s done the result has been more people taking rides.
So, we’re all richer - more people are able to take rides.
But even if it turned out the other way we’d still be richer. Same number of rides, less deadheading, so therefore we require fewer taxi drivers. Some stop being taxi drivers and go do something else - start providing opinions on GB News say. We’re not richer by whatever value we ascribe to more views on GB News.
The aim and purpose of every and any technological advance is to reduce the amount of human labour necessary to deliver the product or service. To kill jobs that is.
Now we seem to have an insistence that the new guys circling the block must compensate those they put out of business. Which is, as I say, insane.
The idea that society as a whole might smooth the passage from one activity to another is fine - nothing wrong with unemployment pay, retraining grants and all that. But direct compensation from the new to the old?
Well, think on it. Did motor vehicle taxi drivers compensate the old hackney cab coachmen when they arrived? No? So why in buggery the compensation on this turn of the technological wheel?
Lawyers argued Uber X launched in Australia with the intention of hurting local taxi and hire-car drivers.
Yep, that’s the whole damn point. Folk who launch calculators are trying to put the abaci makers out of business. The TV dinner maker is trying to put the housekeeper out of business. This is the whole and entire damn point.
Compensation? They’re mad.
The aim and purpose of every technological advance is to kill costs.
"The aim and purpose of every technological advance is to kill jobs."
Your regular readers know what you mean, but that is the kind of quote some people will find to hit you over the head.
Although certainly not as snappy, I think the complete thought is that the aim and purpose of every technological advance is to kill some jobs but, by cutting costs allowing the business to cut prices to gain market share, that saves customers money which they can spend or invest elsewhere and thereby increase other jobs.
Best example is that 200 years ago a large portion, let's say 80%, of the population had to be farmers to produce enough food, and many people didn't get enough to eat anyway. The percentage of agricultural workers now in the population is tiny due to technological advances that slashed jobs, but there certainly isn't mass unemployment as a result - lower cost of food means people have more money for other goods and services, which require jobs to create.
If technology reduces jobs in one industry, by increasing productivity (which also increases wages) it creates other jobs to more than replace what was cut.