The secret to the Uber economy is wealth inequality

[Newsjock]

http://qz.com/312537/the-secret-to-the-uber-economy-is-wealth-inequality/

Of the many attractions offered by my hometown, a west coast peninsula famed for its deep natural harbor, perhaps the most striking is that you never have to leave the house. With nothing more technologically advanced than a phone, you can arrange to have delivered to your doorstep, often in less than an hour, takeaway food, your weekly groceries, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs (over-the-counter, prescription, proscribed), books, newspapers, a dozen eggs, half a dozen eggs, a single egg. I once had a single bottle of Coke sent to my home at the same price I would have paid had I gone to shop myself.

... These luxuries are not new. I took advantage of them long before Uber became a verb, before the world saw the first iPhone in 2007, even before the first submarine fibre-optic cable landed on our shores in 1997. In my hometown of Mumbai, we have had many of these conveniences for at least as long as we have had landlines—and some even earlier than that.

It did not take technology to spur the on-demand economy. It took masses of poor people.

... There are only two requirements for an on-demand service economy to work, and neither is an iPhone. First, the market being addressed needs to be big enough to scale—food, laundry, taxi rides. Without that, it’s just a concierge service for the rich rather than a disruptive paradigm shift, as a venture capitalist might say. Second, and perhaps more importantly, there needs to be a large enough labor class willing to work at wages that customers consider affordable and that the middlemen consider worthwhile for their profit margins.

... All that modern technology has done is make it easier, through omnipresent smartphones, to amass a fleet of increasingly desperate jobseekers eager to take whatever work they can get.

[ND-Dem]

1. k&R: US economy comes to resemble Indian economy = mass of desperate

[mrmpa]

2. I'm a driver .......

for both Lyft & Uber. I work 4 ten hour days. My mortgage is paid, there's food on the table and bills are paid. I am 58 years old, with a Master's degree. I couldn't find a "normal" job for the past 4 years.

I have a some problems with the Uber and Lyft attitudes to its drivers, but not enough to quit, unless they lower their rates & then it won't be profitable for me.

Drivers can be compared to Taxi Drivers, in that their dispatcher is a real person, and my dispatcher is a smart phone. The Taxi driver is my town pays the Cab Company owner $800 a week to lease the vehicle (I got that number from a reporter for the local paper) plus 20% of each fare, plus he pays for gas on his/her own, and 8% of each transaction via credit card. I pay 20% of each fare to the company plus gas. My gas costs have never been more than 22% of my weekly pay.

My passengers run the gamut from the rich, to college students, recent owners of a DUI arrest, teenagers and seniors. From suburbanites to urban residents, to rural folk.

I am running a successful business, I was not a desperate job seeker.