Academic paper presented at the Canadian Communication Association (CCA) Conference at Calgary, Canada. June, 2016.

1. ACCELERATING SHARING
ECONOMY
UBER’S DYSFUNCTIONAL DISCOURSE OF
TECHNOLOGICAL DISRUPTION
LUCIANO FRIZZERA
PHD STUDENT
CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY

2. INTRO
YOUR RIDE, ON DEMAND
BETTER, FASTER, AND CHEAPER THAN A TAXI
YOUR SCHEDULE. YOUR MOVE

3. INTRO

4. INTRO
UBER
▸ January 2015: 150,000 active Uber drivers in the U.S.
▸ December 2015: Uber reached 1 billion rides
▸ Aggressive economic model
▸ Problematic relation to local governments have been a
pressuring issue in many cities around the globe.

5. INTRO
UBER
▸ US$ 8.21 billion from venture capital investments
▸ Baidu, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Benchmark, Jeff
Bezos, AITV and Foundation Capital.
▸ Market Value: US$ 60 billion
US$ 60,000,000,000.00

6. INTRO
NOT REALLY DISRUPTIVE.
▸ Constrain productive forces of technology
▸ Absorption and corruption of immaterial and cultural
ideals
▸ Precarious of workforce
▸ Strong discourse for deregulation of the economy

7. ACCELERATIONISM
ACCELERATIONISM
▸ Supposedly intrinsic link between technological
transformative forces and the axiomatic of exchange value
and capital accumulation that formats our society.
▸ The only radical political response to capitalism is not to
protest or critique, but to accelerate and exacerbate.

8. ▸ Politics as we know it will lose
relevance
▸ Jobs will be made obsolete by
code and robots, and
▸ “the rich will … be first in line for
new experiences, but otherwise
there will be no differences
among people; inequality will
increase but cease to matter”
(Frank, 2015)
TECHNOLOGICAL UTOPIA

9. ▸ “There might be some
civil wars, there might be
many new nations, but
the stabilizing force will
be corporations, which
will become even more
like parts of a global
government than they
are today.”
(Frank, 2015)
TECHNOLOGICAL UTOPIA

10. ACCELERATIONISM
ACCELERATIONISM
▸ Capitalism as the only solution is socially determined by
capital itself.
▸ Technological discourse produced on the track of the high
level of investments on STEM disciplines (Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Math)

11. ACCELERATIONISM
How innovative is Uber?
…
Technological breakthrough?
…
Alternative economic model?
…

12. TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION
E-commerce Geolocation
Instant Messaging
User ProfilingDispatching
Network Connection
MOST OF THE FEATURES USED BY UBER HAS BEEN
AROUND FOR SOME TIME NOW.

13. THE ‘CULTURE INDUSTRY”
PRESENTATION OF SILICON
VALLEY SEEMS … TO
[BLEND] QUITE NICELY
WITH THE OVERALL STORY
OF EXCEPTIONALISM THAT
THESE GUYS LIKE TO TELL
ABOUT THEMSELVES
Summers, 2015

14. SHARING ECONOMY
SHARING
▸ Ideas and hugs
▸ Food and shelter
▸ Language and desire

15. SHARING ECONOMY
SHARING ECONOMY
▸ Economic activities based on digital peer-to-peer
platforms
▸ No longer about a feeling good or being kind
▸ Sharing lost its “aura”

16. SHARING ECONOMY
SHARING ECONOMY
▸ Uber’s dysfunctional discourse: the goal is to overcome
the coercive power of the state, disrupt regulations, and
strengthening of capitalist social relations.

17. PRECARIOUSNESS OF WORKFORCE
APPARENT REASONS TO WORK FOR UBER
▸ No boss
▸ Freedom to decide your own schedule
▸ Less labour regulations
▸ The level of compensation
▸ Earnings per hour do not vary much with hours worked

18. PRECARIOUSNESS OF WORKFORCE
PROBLEMS WHEN WORKING FOR UBER
▸ Uber extract substantial amount of money from the
transactions (20-30%)
▸ No transparency
▸ Lower hourly rate
▸ No benefits
▸ No protection
▸ No reimbursement

19. PRECARIOUSNESS OF WORKFORCE
HOURLY RATE
$0.00
$5.00
$10.00
$15.00
$20.00
$25.00
Chicago Los Angeles San Francisco Average
Minimum wage (average) Uber Uber (Independent analysts) Taxi
Source: Hall, J. V., & Krueger, A. B. (2015); Glassdoor (2015); SheparShare (2015)

20. PRECARIOUSNESS OF WORKFORCE
UBER IS A TEMP AGENCY
▸ “Uber is a lot more like turn of the century
sweatshops” (O’Brien, 2015), due to the lack of benefits,
unable to unionize, and no privacy protection.
▸ Does it really make sense to work for a company that pays
less than the minimum wage but demands drivers to
bring a $20,000 – $30,000 piece of equipment to the job?

21. UNREGULATED AND DISORGANIZED MARKET
OUTLAW
▸ Uber does not pay taxes or licensing fees
▸ does not pay benefits to the drivers
▸ take no responsibility for passengers’ safety
▸ hire untrained, unlicensed and uninsured drivers
▸ Breaks local laws
▸ Requires drivers to put their own personal assets at risk

22. THESE TERMS SHALL BE
EXCLUSIVELY GOVERNED
BY AND CONSTRUED IN
ACCORDANCE WITH THE
LAWS OF THE
NETHERLANDS,
EXCLUDING ITS RULES ON
CONFLICTS OF LAWS
Uber Terms and Conditions

23. UNREGULATED AND DISORGANIZED MARKET
PROBLEMATIC RELATIONS
▸ Taxi drivers demonstrations
and protests in France,
Brazil, Spain, Canada.
▸ Many cities are imposing a
ban in Uber operations.

24. UNREGULATED AND DISORGANIZED MARKET
SURGING PRICES
▸ Whenever the demand for a ride increases to a point that
exceeds the drivers’ capacity to supply a fast and effective
service, the company “surge” the prices, sometimes
several times the base rate.
▸ New Year’s Eve 2016: 9.9x times the base rate in many
cities
▸ Cad$ 118.00 for a ride that normally costs
Cad$ 20.00 in Montreal (CBC News, 2016).

26. CONCLUSION
DYSFUNCTIONAL DISCOURSE OF TECHNOLOGICAL DISRUPTION
▸ Technological disruption as way to transform processes
without changing productions relations.
▸ Late capitalism “nurtures, exploits, and exhausts its labor
force and its cultural and affective production … it is
technically impossible to separate neatly the digital
economy of the Net from the larger network economy of
late capitalism” (Terranova, 2003).

27. CONCLUSION
DYSFUNCTIONAL DISCOURSE OF TECHNOLOGICAL DISRUPTION
▸ Frank (2015): Institutions are opaque with too much power
in their hands, so it is “better to formalize our values
forthrightly in code” in order to overcome the coercive
power of the state.
▸ Leary (2015): “the discourse of innovation celebrates
creativity, but just as another form of capital; it aims for the
mystery of spiritual life, but summons only its reverence for
authority; and it lionizes collaboration, but only for profit”.

28. ACCELERATING SHARING ECONOMY
UBER’S DYSFUNCTIONAL DISCOURSE OF TECHNOLOGICAL DISRUPTION
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LUCIANO FRIZZERA | LUCAJU@ME.COM