>They certainly can offer flexible hours to full time employees

They can't guarantee flexibility and full-time employment. That's the point.

>"Americans shalt work from nine until five so sayeth we the founders".

If there is no demand or there is over-supply at some particular time in some particular area, you can't will a job into existence.

>They're just griping that they need to start paying benefits.

Are they griping? The costs are going to be passed down to the consumer. They will still be more competitive than taxis (which are still abysmal with customer service). And by raising regulatory costs and requirements, you're making it harder for any new entrants to come in and compete. Sounds like Uber and Left break-even, and everyone else loses. Alternatively, if this new regulation kills Uber and Lyft, then everyone loses.

They are both just placeholders until we have robotaxi networks. 5-10 years max.

Do you really believe those aren't decades away for door-to-door?

Waymo started publicly testing level 4 cars last year, and reportedly has 600 cars testing level 5. It isn't decades away anymore.

I find it somewhat amusing there are still people bought into the self-driving hype other than in limited circumstances.

Does anyone actually believe these companies at this point? Who actually aren't saying much any longer.

I'd be far less surprised if Google shutdown Waymo in a year or two than if they actually introduced a door-to-door driving service in an urban area without a safety driver present.

You lack imagination. Only 66 years passed between the first manned flight on Earth and man stepping foot on the Moon.

And technology is accelerating at a much faster rate today.

Would you believe someone who in 1970 said, "We landed a man on the moon. In 50 years we'll surely have flying cars!"

I'm sure a lot of people believed that in 1970 but look where we are now. Technology accelerates at a much faster pace but often times in ways that you don't expect. The people in 1970 probably didn't imagine smartphones with a global 4G network but instead of flying cars we got this.

Or fusion power. Or natural language conversations with computers (as opposed to largely rote voice recognition).

Deep learning/machine learning have made remarkable advances in recent years--primarily because of both computational (esp. GPU) and storage/data advances.

However, in spite of a lot of money and talent expended on understanding organic brains and human-level cognition over the decades, progress has been slow and there's a general belief among scientists who work in AI spanning CS and neuroscience that there are aspects to human learning and reasoning that we just don't really understand yet.

And that more deep learning, data, and programmed rules won't get you to autonomous vehicles outside of some limited domains. (Which is valuable by itself; it just doesn't get you to robo-taxies.)

The problem isn't in the availability of technology but the (lack of) problem it solves. People can barely drive on roads safely and there are infinitely more regulations and skills required for flying, even with the relative little amount of air traffic. If anything, autonomous vehicles could be precursor for individual aerial transport.

I would actually love to be wrong but nothing I can see convinces me that I am. I don't see the path to getting door-to-door in congested areas with pedestrians and cyclists that isn't even more dangerous for them than it is today.

I actually do think highway driving can be automated relatively easily but that still assumes a competent licensed driver behind the wheel.

There's a difference between believing in start up hype and looking at the evidence on the ground. It's an even larger leap in claiming it's decades away while the technology is in testing right now.

Most driving is in limited circumstances, of course they're not going to offer self-driving rides when it's snowy or raining heavily.

Self-driving in good weather on specific roads (probably limited access highways) is indeed a very useful goal for both convenience and safety. It just won't satisfy the people who want to be driven everywhere and never have to even own a car.

Yes, and when a robotaxi crashes and kills people they’ll just write it off as a business expense.

> Yes, and when a robotaxi crashes and kills people they’ll just write it off as a business expense.

Ok?

We already do that when human driven taxis do that, so I don't see the problem.

>They certainly can offer flexible hours to full time employees - no where does it say "Americans shalt work from nine until five so sayeth we the founders".

I don't think you understand how a business like this works. For a customer serving business, they need to make sure they are staffed appropriately.

Would it make sense for a restaurant to offer all of their staffs "flexible hours"? Is it ok for the waiter to show up at 3am when he has trouble sleeping and just get paid doing nothing?

It's not about 9-5, but it's about when the customers show up.

I seriously doubt there's anything in labor law which would prevent Uber from allowing flexible (fractional) hours to their workers, so long as those hours pay at least minimum wage.

Uber isn't against this because it would make it impossible to run their business, they're against this because they're being forced to pay into things like unemployment which will make it more difficult for them to be profitable.

Yeah but drivers currently are free to choose their hours however they like. Surely allowing them to continue to do the thing they already do and the platform is designed to allow them to do isn't going to cause the same problems as a waiter not showing up during normal meal hours...

Sorry, I'm really confused, how is moving from contractors to employees supposed to make covering certain periods of the day harder for uber?

Normal businesses with normal benefits that hire for off-normal shifts generally pay higher for those shift slots or find an employee that values that shift higher than mid-day and employers absolutely can have an expectation of business hours and fire people for failing to meet that. They can also choose to allow their employees to work more flexible hours but this choice is entirely disconnected from contractor vs. FTE.

In the service industry in particular (as you noted above) showing up to work outside of core hours isn't likely to result in any productive work - maybe that waiter could run inventory or do some prep (and actually 3 AM isn't insanely early if you get a big breakfast rush) but that's entirely disconnected from uber saying: "Darn - we wanted to give them flexible hours, but now that they're employees I guess we can't let anyone work after 5PM" that's just BS PR from the company.