Around 200 Uber drivers in Cape Town, South Africa went on strike in April of this year.
The reason for the drivers’ disgruntlement was their bottom line: Uber temporarily dropped riding costs by 20% in an attempt to lure more customers, a tactic the company said has paid off in other cities around the globe. But the direct hit to drivers’ payouts felt substantial. Many drivers I spoke to during that time attested to working more hours to make up for the loss of income (some drivers told me that Uber later agreed to compensate them for the difference, subsidizing their incomes up to a certain value depending on hours worked).
The drivers aren’t Uber’s only source of rancor. Privately-held taxi corporations have historically been annoyed when Uber rolls into town, and South Africa is no exception. Some cities, like Eugene, Oregon, and Berlin have issued bans on rider apps, citing local interests.
Even in places where rider apps flourish freely there is a sense of diminishment. Speaking to Uber drivers in Denver, Colorado last November, many spoke of nights when they could make upwards of several hundred dollars for a few hours of driving as the "golden days" of years gone by, citing an uptick in new drivers (and more riding apps) spreading the customer base more thinly.
But if drivers are getting irked over depreciating funds and consumer bases, and local taxi companies are fed up with shifting loyalties, the bad news is that the world’s driver economy has no light at the end of the tunnel: Uber’s research and development, along with that of Lyft (Uber’s main U.S.-based competitor), is going towards driverless vehicles.
The evolution of the global economy is one that is rife with stories of padded industries and cobbled attempts to increase jobs--look no further than fuel station attendants, once a mainstay and now mostly a relic, with such service provided by law in only two remaining U.S. states and countries such as South Africa, Brazil and Indonesia. New economies have laid waste to many previously-important jobs, replacing grocery tills with automated machines (automated grocery checkouts have started arriving in South Africa) and bankers with ATMs. For those who are money conscious, jobs that used to be billed to professionals are often taken care of by people themselves or by students on the prowl for summer or part-time jobs (gardening, house cleaning and nannying). Eventually, an economy morphs to accept the fact that as things become more automated and free time proliferates (thanks to shorter commutes and machinery), most of us can now also be our own cooks and cleaners, drivers and photographers--and in the future, technology might eliminate our need to do even these.
Some would consider a driverless world a dismal future, though it’s hard to justify the demise of one profession when we happily replace others (no one complains that they can now take their family photos with their phones instead of trucking the kids and the matching turtlenecks to a department store studio every Christmas). Economists argue that where one industry collapses, another rises up in its stead--the kids of taxi drivers can study to be app developers and driverless car programmers--and that we’re all better for it, eventually.
While it is hard to prove that new industries will continue to create new jobs indefinitely, history thus far has aligned with this belief. More than jobs, however, the lack of taxi drivers will be a loss for journalists everywhere, quipped The Economist several years ago. Where will we get the information to write our stories and form our opinions? After three years of carless living I now have a vehicle at my disposal, but I lament that I take taxis and Ubers with increasing infrequency precisely because of the interesting drivers I encountered on my routes. Their reputation for giving striking insight into society is well merited, and will perhaps be the greatest intangible loss.
But maybe no industry is perfectly safe from technology's arm; soon enough even the journalists may be replaced.