Uber's Troubling Practices, The Too-Secret Service, and Justice?
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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss President Joe Biden contracting Covid and what the virus means to the country as a whole. They then pull apart the mess of a relationship between former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe and Uber, before wringing their hands over the Secret Service and what Merrick Garland intends to do.
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This is the Weekender edition of the Mic Break podcast.
I'm here with Nick Halsman.
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Nick, how you doing, bud?
How was your weekend?
The weekend was great.
I am doing well.
I've been working out.
I just got back from vacation, so I'm getting into the swing of things, and that's been a smooth transition.
So I am happy.
I feel good about at least this little That's all you need.
And let's look on the bright side, my man.
You've also walled off COVID.
of the bad stuff out there so far that's all you need and let's look on the bright side my man you've also walled off kovat which we got to say makes you one better than the most powerful man in the free world oh Oh, yeah.
I mean, picture me as Neo dodging bullets.
That's basically what COVID is like.
Dodging spores.
But yes, unfortunately, the leader of the free world is not immune, unfortunately.
But apparently it's, you know, the symptoms are mild as far as I understand it.
So President Joe Biden has tested positive for COVID-19.
This is one of those situations where if you are constantly around people, this is the kind of thing that happens.
A lot of people in his sphere have tested positive many times over, actually.
Word on the street is that Biden is quote-unquote resting, congested, a little bit of a runny nose, but is staying busy as he has COVID.
I think in the post-vaccine era, I don't know how you feel about this, I'm not particularly worried about his well-being, but I think it speaks more about where we are with COVID right now, late July 2022.
Well it makes you wonder why all those age articles had come out like the week before.
Obviously they can't look into the future and obviously he didn't test positive and it was hushed or whatever but the age thing is a big factor anyway still with this with COVID and you know it's some some people are mild after they get the vaccination and whatever but It doesn't sound that mild to a lot of people.
Certainly, anecdotally, on Twitter, it looks kind of brutal to people, to what I've seen, and people, how they're feeling, and it could easily do that that way.
Now, they do have Paxlivid, and if you do get it, Paxlivid should be on your radar.
In fact, in California, assuming across the country, you can go to certain drugstores and tell them, I tested positive, I want Paxlivid, and they'll give it to you, short of, if you had no symptoms.
If they had symptoms, they'll give it to you, and that really seems to help mitigate that.
And I don't know about you, Jared, but I can't handle sore throats.
Coughs, any kind of congestion in the nasal area, I really get so miserable from that.
I'm so afraid of just that, having a sore throat.
The bane of my existence for the past, man, 15 years has been the sinus infection.
I get pretty regular sinus infections and they knock me on my ass.
Before that, man, I used to get strep throat constantly.
It was the thing that just always found me.
Brutal, awful stuff.
And everybody that I know who has been getting this strand of COVID, I want to say it's not even BA5 now, it's BA5+.
Metrasaurus, I don't even know.
Everybody I know who's got this, it has been miserable.
But I think it's also really notable that numbers are way up.
And it's obvious that we have kind of silently, without saying it out loud, decided to live with it.
Um, you know, people are being hospitalized.
People are dying from this thing.
It continues to absolutely plague us.
But I mean, it is such a strange thing to watch a society.
And by the way, if that wasn't enough for you, we got the monkey pox.
If the COVID doesn't interest you, maybe we got some monkey pox for you.
And it's reaching that level as well.
I just find it I want to say fascinating, but also disturbing how this country is able to tune this stuff out.
But isn't it so nice that we don't have to see those videos on social media of people hounding others for wearing a mask?
That doesn't happen anymore, right?
No one's like, hey, take off that mask, you sheep!
So that's nice.
We don't have to deal with that anymore.
I mean, I guess the consequence is that the reason we don't have it is because no one is wearing the mask anymore.
Here's a little hint for everybody out there.
The N95 and the KN95 masks, they work!
Now, it's not 100%, but they really help.
And if you don't want to wear those, then at this point, you know what it is?
This is what Trump wanted.
Trump wanted it to wash over everybody.
Remember the notion of herd immunity?
Remember that thing?
You are replaying some absolute putrid hits right now.
I gotta tell you, everything from these viral videos of calling people sheep and Kmart, you know, to the herd immunity washing over.
Jeez, just for good measure, why don't you say it'll probably disappear by Easter?
Yeah, right.
No, how about it gets a flashlight and shine it up where the sun don't shine?
Oh my god!
Or bleach.
Yeah, sorry, but hey, let's go there, man.
It'll be like disco.
So here in about 20 years, we'll all be talking about taking hydroxychloroquine, you know, and being airlifted to the hospital and then taking a victory lap in our big giant beast.
I'm out.
I'm good on that.
All right.
Good.
Good.
You know, hydroxy parties with the ball, the spinning ball.
So best of luck, Joseph Robinette Biden.
Rest up.
Feel better.
God, I just realized we're probably a couple hours from hearing, you know, conspiracy theories that he's been replaced by a clone or a body double.
I'm excited.
I mean, let's kick this weekend off in style.
Yeah.
Well, at least they told us, and at least we feel relatively confident that the medical information we're getting is, I think, is right.
Versus, you know, okay, let's bring out another hit.
I mean, remember what happened with Trump when they had to rush him to the hospital?
They never explained that.
Which, by the way, will attach to the Secret Service segment of the episode.
We'll have to talk about it in a little bit.
Yeah, don't worry, guys.
We've got a big Secret Service segment coming up here in just a second.
So, yeah, we unfortunately have to talk about that.
But before we do, we want to do a little bit of a dive.
I think there's something to be learned from this story that's coming out.
So, they're calling it the Uber Files.
In the past couple of weeks, 124,000 documents were leaked to The Guardian and other publications and other organizations by one of the former executives of Uber named Mark McGann.
You love to see disgruntled former employees being like, hey, I was involved in some shit, but now I'm gonna let everybody know about it.
Love it.
AKA whistleblower.
AKA whistleblower.
We love it.
We love the whistleblowers.
And here's the thing.
You know, we were talking about this before we started recording.
And Nick, you had said that you were a little underwhelmed by these files.
But also, I think part of that is we just kind of expect corporations to do this kind of nasty shit that we're getting ready to talk about.
And I want to talk about that environment.
And I want to talk about how Uber is a really good representation of not just Corporate tech mentality, but also neoliberalism in sort of amber.
It's almost like one of those mosquitoes that you're going to create dinosaurs out of.
Right.
You know, it's funny because we've romanticized the tech industry, even though this isn't really tech, but like the startup and the entrepreneurship, and this is what America is about.
And of course, you know, you've got to maybe like, you know, stuff a shirt into a hole in the wall and like patch it up and hide that hole like this so you can make it look better.
Like, yeah, you got to do that.
And then people, it's like romantic, you know, the old, just like we're going to talk about COVID for 20 years, right?
That old story.
Hey, remember when we had to, you know, dupe the investigators by having our screens turn black when they walk in?
Like, that kind of stuff is underwhelming to me.
I really don't know if I feel like, you know, they're breaking some serious laws here.
Yeah, they are.
So before we get ahead, to give a little bit of background before we get going, Uber, of course, Between that and Lyft is the thing on your phone where if you need a ride, maybe you're going out get a couple drinks with people.
You want to make sure you don't have to leave your car behind.
Maybe you don't have a car, but this is of course a ride-sharing service that was founded in 2009.
It has blossomed into a multi-billion dollar corporation.
It's active in 80 plus countries.
I want to say if not every continent, you know close to every continent.
Basically, what we have found at this point is, it's almost like the pictures of the icebergs, where just a little bit is above the surface and everything is underneath.
Uber has had problems for a very long time, and because they are a tech company, they pride themselves on disruption.
Right?
Which is sort of a catch-all.
You know, it's the Mark Zuckerberg ideology of move fast and break things.
And if you're disrupting, then what are you doing?
You're destroying the old world, which needs destroyed and replaced.
And meanwhile, what do you have at Uber?
You have a lot of unethical practices that have been very obvious that didn't need a whistleblower to point out.
We've had sexual harassment, constant sexual harassment, that's either been papered over or just not dealt with at all.
We've seen a company that has knowingly broken laws left and right.
I would go ahead and make the argument, before we get into the actual reveal from these files, that one of the most lasting and probably substantive things that Uber has done is it has popularized the idea of employees as not being employees, but as being contractors.
Which means that these are people you can bring in for certain jobs.
And if you have an Uber driver, who knows how many hours they're working, right?
It's up to you, the worker.
It's your initiative, right?
You're choosing your own hours.
You're doing this, you're doing that.
But as a contractor, Nick, I have to assume there's some sort of protection there for you, right?
There's some sort of a safety net.
Yeah, nothing.
Proverbial.
There is nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
And in the past, if you were an employee, and I don't know, let's say that you worked for 40 hours, what did that bring you?
If you were working for a company 40 hours a week?
Like, you know, a full-time employee, you might get a little health insurance.
Maybe.
You know, you might get just protection from being fired for no reason.
You might maybe there's a union.
I don't know like and eventually maybe some retirement Back for you, but I want to point out that this contractor idea is the very essence of neoliberalism It's beautiful in that regard because it says it's your initiative worker You get to choose what you do You're in charge of yourself and meanwhile none of the onus is on the employer and a fun fact in all of this is
One of the places that this idea of the contractor, the independent contractor, where it came from, and by the way, it's where a lot of employment in the United States of America, and possibly the civilized world, is going to go.
Because it's an ingenious piece of imagination and an invention.
Do you have any idea where it started?
Where Uber started?
No, no, no.
Where the idea of the independent contract company gained a lot of traction.
Jeez.
Enlighten me.
Professional wrestling.
Shut up.
Professional wrestlers are most often considered independent contractors.
Which means that if you are a WWE superstar, and you're making God knows how much money going to WrestleMania, you might even be in the main event of the biggest show in the world.
And by the way, quick little shout out to the episode on Tuesday, maybe you're going to Saudi Arabia and performing in front of authoritarians.
But WrestleMania is not like Super Bowl for them, right?
Oh yeah, WrestleMania is tip top.
But they have more than one a year, don't they?
No, WrestleMania is number one.
Then you got like your Summer Slams, your Royal Rumbles.
Yeah, people right now are losing their minds, Nick, listening to this.
But guess what?
They're not going to cover your medical expenses.
And it's not like you need them when you're a wrestler, right?
It's not like getting a folding chair bashed over your head, you know, 300 nights a year might lead to some sort of a need.
This was popularized particularly in professional wrestling.
And since then, And there are other places, too.
People have figured this out as a workaround.
But this has now become, I would say, one of the most substantial inventions in labor.
And it's going to have long-term ramifications.
Yes, I agree.
Here's the thing about Uber, and it was a necessary, it was a need, right?
Because whatever you're describing, you can make the case that taxi cabs and that business was even worse, and it was in a more old-school model, as bad if not worse and corrupt as anything else.
I mean, it should tell you something that Michael Cohen's family... Can we also go ahead, and while we're having this conversation, you're exactly right, can we go ahead and make it a muckrake official stance that, like, Servers, waiters, and waitresses should have minimum wage and shouldn't be, like, absolutely dependent on tips.
Like, all of these ideas that make it to where you don't have to pay your employees are bullshit.
Yeah.
Well, it's like, you know, it's funny.
At some point, let's just say Nixon and what he did in the White House opened up people's eyes to what the government really was like.
Maybe even before that, but no one wants to recognize it.
Well, you know, what happened with COVID, and certainly with the service industry, that is now happening.
Like, they can't get people to come back to those jobs, and they're now having to actually pay a wage and an hourly rate that is somewhat competitive, and they're probably still struggling big time to try and get people to come back.
So that could be good, eventually, overall.
You know, we have to squeeze a few lean years out of this.
You know, getting into a taxicab, people won't remember, like, you know, the young'uns aren't going to remember how That could be an awful situation for you.
Awful?
No!
No, taxi rides were not fun.
Oh, I'm actually even picturing, like, Chicago, New Year's Eve, you know, we are at a party, we can't drive, so we're trying to get a taxi at, like, 1 in the morning, and it's about negative 10 degrees.
Like, I'll never forget that.
That was as traumatic as having to deal with the ex-girlfriend that night, too.
I mean, like, I can't figure out which was worse.
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