One thing that seems to entertain my colleagues no end is how averse I am to getting in a taxi. I'm not a big fan of taxis, the only reason I can think for this is that I don't like being beholden to a single stranger on a one-to-one basis and being forced to spend my time in what is essentially their space. In a train, the driver has their own personal space and they are not there solely to transport me personally. I don't have to have an awkward conversation with a train driver, I don't have to quietly ignore the fact that I disagree strongly with many of their views for fear that disagreement will stop the train from reaching its destination. If the Brexit vote has shown me anything, it is that I am generally happier being ignorant to what most of my fellow citizens think, and fortunately what's left of British reserve still displays itself on public transport where I may remain essentially anonymous and untroubled by the opinions of others. Also I like driving (although this may have something to do with how infrequently I actually do it), so having to pay someone to do something that I'd rather be doing myself - my way - seems fairly masochistic to me.
So you can probably guess that I'm not the biggest Uber fan to start with. I mean it's like someone looked at all the things I don't like about taking taxis and thought "how can we make him just a little bit more uncomfortable?" The answer of course is:
a) make it clear that you really are just sat in someone else's car
b) make it explicit that your driver is judging you and that judgement has consequences beyond the current journey.
That is not to say that I haven't used Uber at all, I have the app and in an emergency I'll use it. About a year ago I was stood outside the lobby of my hotel in Hong Kong at 5.30am waiting for a taxi to take me to the airport. A typhoon was heading for the city and the T8 (the point at which you are not supposed to travel - the signal everyone wants before office hours, but not during) was expected just after 6am. It was already getting wet and pretty windy and all the regular taxis were heading in the opposite direction with their lights turned off. After a few minutes of the porters trying in vain to flag me a taxi, I turned to Uber. Of course the app dutifully told me that due to demand the price of my journey had doubled, but I wasn't that bothered: free market economics, supply and demand, and (ahem) it was going in expenses anyway. So five minutes later a Prius turned up with a young driver only to happy to race a typhoon to the airport. The T8 was raised about halfway to the airport, but we made it fine and my plane left on time (one of the last to do so that day I believe). In such circumstances I couldn't help but be grateful for the pure market force that Uber unleashes, regardless of the potential risk the driver would be taking on his return journey, a risk he essentially balanced against a reward of effectively an extra £20. Of course you can't rule out the possibility that he was doing it for the kicks. People in Hong Kong often drive for Uber as a hobby, meaning that it's not uncommon to hail a regular Uber and get a ride in a Tesla. I guess it's an excuse to do more driving in a car that is unlikely ever to leave the city, plus it earns them a little petty cash. I can't imagine that, in a city that expensive, many people earn their primary living driving for Uber.
In London, of course, is is a different matter and there are plenty of people who now rely on Uber to make a living. I'm sure many of them are thankful for many of the light touch aspects of their relationship with their employer, although obviously Uber would argue that it is not their employer, so as not to have to take responsibility for their welfare. Indeed Uber seemingly doesn't like to take responsibility for anyone's welfare, as it turns out they've been a little sketchy about doing their drivers' background checks, and perhaps more disturbingly about reporting incidents in their drivers' cars to the police. Basically they're not keen on dealing with anything that would involve taking responsibility for the processes that generate their revenue in the way that a normal company would have to. Uber is like the teenage younger brother of the tech giants, it sees that they get away with dodging taxes and not taking responsibility for nazi propaganda on their servers and thinks "the world owes me a living for my genius, I basically don't have to do anything in return, they should thank me for making the world a better place." And this is the problem, tech companies are so pleased with themselves for changing the world that they think that means they don't have to think about the consequences of that change. Of course the biggest problem is that we don't expect them to.
Uber have famously run into problems in London, with TFL refusing to renew their license. This seems fair enough to me. We wouldn't allow an airline to fly planes if they didn't comply with CAA regulations, so why would we let a taxi firm operate in a city if they don't conform to the local transport regulator's guidelines? Of course Uber would argue that they are not a taxi firm, but a platform that allows individual taxi drivers to connect with customers. Be that as it may, to the user it is Uber that offers the service and it is a regulated seruyvice. Even if they treat both their drivers and passengers as customers (which they don't) they are still the company providing that service within a regulated space. Just because they have managed to find a way to avoid paying most of the costs of operating a taxi firm, doesn't mean that they can avoid the responsibilities.
Of course this being the internet age, Uber instantly set up an online petition and half a million people were only too happy to sign it, because never mind a government selling arms to repressive regimes or a thousand other things you could add your digital signature to petitions against, never mind the fact that regulations around transport are designed to keep people safe (just like regulations around fire safety in buildings), people want stuff that's cheap and convenient, and that's what they'll sign a petition for. So if you signed that petition and your Uber catches fire and burns you to death, or your Uber driver attacks you because he's a psychopath and his background checks were incomplete, or your Uber is involved in a crash in which you're injured but you have no recourse to compensation because it turns out it wasn't properly insured, just remember that's what you wanted, you signed a petition asking for it. Well done you.
I am not saying any of these things will happen if you get an Uber, but without proper regulation, there is no way of knowing they won't. Increasingly companies rely on us prizing convenience over pretty much everything else to justify a world in which they have no responsibilities. Every day we sacrifice a little more of our privacy, our safety or our children's future for a marginal increase in convenience and large corporations use our ambivalence to the consequences to justify taking no responsibility. Indeed it seems they can rely on us rallying to their defence when upstart public bodies try and do something in our better interest. It turns out that we'll do more in the name of convenience than we will in the name of safety, social justice or humanity. Not only do we ignore things that may be in our best interests, but we resent them, we actively work against them. When you think about it, it's hard not to conclude that we deserve whatever is coming our way in the near future, when we've become utterly infantilised fat blobs staring at our phones, waiting for our pizza/taxi/blowjob to turn up whilst the forest fires/hurricanes/floods carry off our worthless, useless bodies.
