In an email to customers late Thursday, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said Uber Eats will promote black-owned restaurants on its app, and that the service will not charge delivery fees to those restaurants “for the remainder of the year.”
“I wish that the lives of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and countless others weren’t so violently cut short,” the 51-year-old CEO wrote. “I wish that institutional racism, and the police violence it gives rise to, didn’t cause their deaths.”
Let’s ignore for a moment how it is just for a “black-owned restaurant” (would Dolezal’s Pub count?) to be spared Uber’s rapacious fees on December 31, 2020 and also just for a “black-owned restaurant” to be hit with those fees on January 1, 2021. (Maybe the problem of racial injustice will be completely solved by January 1?)
If it is unjust to collect fees from “black” (in Uber’s judgment) restaurant owners, how can it be just for Uber drivers who identify as “black” to give up a massive slice of the revenue collected from customers as a fee to Uber? If Uber is measuring restaurant-owner skin color and not charging those it deems to be sufficiently “black,” why isn’t Uber doing the same with drivers? Presumably a typical Uber driver has less wealth than a typical restaurant owner.
An incredibly intelligent friend of mine retired early from his career as a patent litigator and abandoned high-tax New York City for no-income-tax Nevada. He’s now walking distance from about 15 partly-open casinos and multiple shut-down convention facilities.
In a recent FaceTime, he was shockingly (to me) optimistic regarding the city’s future, predicting a bounce-back to normal within a few months.
I would expect Vegas to suffer one of the biggest shocks among U.S. cities. Casino customers are older than average (see this Harvard thesis) and therefore more likely to be concerned about catching coronavirus either on a flight to Vegas or within a casino. Given the essentially pointless nature of the typical convention, will companies still want to send people to these multi-thousand- (or 170,000 for CES) person gatherings? If people don’t show up for conventions, they can’t be lured into paying for hotels, restaurants, gambling, etc.
One countervailing factor is the meltdown of California. Since the economy of California has shrunk while the government hasn’t, tax rates in California will need to be raised. In the meantime, a lot more employers in California are allowing work-from-home. The tax-averse might decide to work from home from Nevada and pay an income tax rate of 0% as well as enjoy a larger house for less money. But I don’t see the influx of people coming to work from home outweighing the loss of business from people who don’t want to get on an international airline flight and sit directly next to someone in a middle seat, masked or not masked.
Readers: What do you think? Is Vegas going to suffer the kind of epic decline that it did in 2008-9?
Here is one Karen’s report on the extent to which Americans are complying with the new mask laws. This is based on a May 30-June 3 trip from Boston to Minneapolis via Cirrus SR20 (“only a little slower, door-to-door, than a Honda Accord”). Stops included the following:
Massachusetts
Upstate New York (Syracuse, Niagara Falls)
Michigan
Wisconsin
Minnesota
Indiana
Ohio
Upstate New York (Elmira)
Massachusetts
The first thing to note is that travel in the U.S. today is a lot like travel within Europe in the Middle Ages. Every state has its own rules and every city within a state may have additional rules. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, people are supposed to wear masks when walking on a deserted sidewalk or in an empty park. In other parts of Massachusetts, the rule is to wear a mask when in a store or in a crowded outdoor space. In Niagara Falls, the law requires a mask indoors, but not outdoors. In Minnesota, the state recommends that people wear masks in stores, but it is not required. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, on the other hand, masks are required indoors (except for Black Lives Matter protesters entering stores?).
Our hotel in Niagara Falls, New York was typical. There was a sign on the door saying that everyone had to wear a mask in the lobby. Half the employees were wearing masks. Among the guests, compliance was 100 percent for Asians, 30 percent for whites, 10 percent for Hispanics, and 0 percent for African-Americans. In the adjacent state park, some of the employees had masks on, but almost none of the people walking around did (except at a few key viewpoints and when passing on bridges, people were at least 6′ apart most of the time).
FBOs had signs on the door saying that masks were required. Employees were hanging out inside unmasked, however. The arrival of a NetJets Phenom 300 was always a great occasion for mask display among both crew and passengers. The FBO in Michigan told us that the governor, Gretchen Whitmer, had recently come through. She’s a passionate advocate for lockdown and masks, but came off her private aircraft unmasked and, without any TV cameras around, came through the narrow FBO building unmasked.
Wisconsin? The state offers the same guidance as the W.H.O. (formerly “experts” but no longer worthy of the title due to their anti-mask heresy): don’t wear a mask unless you know what you’re doing and are washing your hands all the time (“Do not touch your mask while wearing it; if you do, clean your hands with soap and water or an alcohol-based hand rub. Replace the mask with a new one as soon as it is damp.”) No sign at the door of the FBO. Nobody wearing a mask inside or outside.
Eden Prairie, Minnesota: some signs recommending masks, but mostly official state advice signs to stay away if you have flu-like symptoms. Inside the Target, the employees were masked, but only about 40 percent of the customers. Mask use was low for the older shoppers. Ethnicity was a good predictor, as in New York: Asians were 100 percent masked. Muslim women who were otherwise covered from head to toe? 0 percent masked. Restaurants are open for outdoor dining; we enjoyed a meal under a tent and our young waitress had a mask… just underneath her nose.
Indiana: No masks at the FBO.
Ohio: Retail and restaurant workers were masked. Restaurants are open for dine-in, so we took advantage and had lunch at Tony Packo’s of M*A*S*H fame.
Upstate New York: No masks at any of the three FBO stops.
Return to Massachusetts: No masks at the FBO that had been an exemplary masked environment not even a week earlier. “Did you give up on masks?” I asked the guy behind the front desk. “There is a crowd of 20,000 protesting in downtown Boston right now. What’s the point?”
On walks around our neighborhood, which adopted a “You must have a mask around your neck at the ready whenever you’re out in public” rule, compliance with the law had fallen from 80 percent (a month ago, when the rule was new) to 20 percent.
Conclusion: Americans are capable of following an inconvenient rule for about a month.
One hand on the yoke and one hand on the life raft while crossing the 50-degree waters of Huron and Michigan:
“Nice Beaver” (Flying Cloud, KFCM, Minnesota):
I had planned to stay in downtown Minneapolis and walk around, but the civil unrest made it seem wiser to hole up in Eden Prairie. After two nights locked into the Hampton Inn, with only the occasional trip to a nearby strip mall for exercise and necessities, I had no difficulty understanding how people who’d been locked down for three months might riot. Midwestern cuisine:
Good news: outdoor dining is open. Bad news: Applebee’s is open.
Trip highlight: Hungarian(?) food amidst signed plastic foam hot dog buns. Where else can Alice Cooper and Neil Sedaka be next to each other? Or Nancy Reagan and Jimmy Carter? For the younger readers: Sam Kinison on British TV. (here’s where he asked an inconvenient question about an earlier plague)
Approaching beautiful Cleveland with the super-wide lens:
My 14-year-old daughter (who knows that I check her phone) went on what was supposed to be a socially distanced walk with her pal. Afterward, I found a TikTok draft of their attempt at a “social distance” dance, which ended up in a pile of giggles and bumping into each other. I’m disappointed, and am wondering what I should do when she asks to see her friends again.
Karen the NYT therapist:
Given this, when your daughter next asks to see her friends, you might say, “I’ve thought it over, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect that you’ll be able to stay at least six feet away from your friends, especially when you miss them so much.” You might also let her know that, even though she might plan to respect the social distancing guidelines, you don’t feel good about putting her in the likely situation of needing to rebuff a dear friend’s spontaneous and enthusiastic hug.
For example, if local restrictions and the health factors in your household permit, you might see if she wants to invite her friends for an outdoor “six feet a-party” at your home or while you tag along at a public location. They’ll need to be where you can see them, even if at a distance or through a window, so that your daughter can blame you for her good behavior while enjoying the company of her friends.
Beyond coming up with practical, albeit frustrating, compromises, we can offer empathy. This often goes farther that we think. You might say, “I know that this is not what you want, and I cannot tell you how much I wish things were different. We’ll do the best we can with the options we have, but I get it if you’re really unhappy about it.”
Given that it looks like we may be in for a long haul with Covid-19, we parents will need to get accustomed to coming up with creative solutions when possible and providing generous support and compassion for the painful situations that are beyond our control. It’s not as much as we want to offer, but it’s likely to be enough to get us through.
Reader comments are almost all from like-minded Karens. If we assume the questioning Karen is the mother of the 14-year-old rebel-without-a-mask, nobody points out that anyone young enough to be the biological mother of a 14-year-old is unlikely to herself be seriously victimized by Covid-19 (if the family formerly visited elderly/vulnerable relatives in a nursing home, presumably that isn’t possible now regardless of the 14-year-old’s vigilance).
I find this interesting because parents used to be worried about 14-year-olds risking the teenager’s own welfare, e.g., by drinking alcohol (legal in much of Europe), having sex (legal in much of Europe), and taking drugs. Since 14-year-olds are essentially invulnerable to Covid-19, what we now have are parents who aren’t even bothering to try to hide the fact that they’re primarily interested in themselves (i.e., reducing an already extremely low risk of a serious consequence from an encounter between the coronavirus and a middle-aged person).
Folks seem to be debating the best way to define “A Karen”. What about this definition-by-example?
I’m generally not an activist, but I just wrote to the University of Colorado Dean of Students to tell her how I felt that the blatant lack of mask wearing by students on hiking trails reflected poorly on the university. I suggested that her office do an education campaign.
I’ve been hiking daily, and in north Boulder nearly everyone is wearing masks on trails, but near the university almost no student-age people are.
It was actually posted by someone who, I think, identifies as a “man” and is about 40 years old, but nonetheless can this be considered the quintessential Karen quote?
(Of course, if they’re healthy enough to go for a hike, a 40-year-old Karen and a 20-year-old student are both more likely to be killed in a car accident on the way to said hike than they are to die from Covid-19.)
What kind of political beliefs does Ultimate Karen espouse? Excerpts from his Facebook status just after the darkest day in U.S. history:
I voted for Clinton because I thought she was the more qualified candidate, and because I looked forward to our kids sharing the experience of electing the first female president. …
and because he’s also quite intelligent:
To Facebook and much of social media: By enabling people to stuff their channels with self-selected and algorithmically filtered content sources as opposed to the free press of yesteryear, you essentially helped obscure the truth and mask the accuracy of what was really building.
and because he cares about Planet Earth:
To Florida: … have fun under water. Your landmass will be 25% smaller by the time our kids are in college.
(Why isn’t it insulting to “women” (however you want to define that term) if someone says “I voted for Clinton … because I looked forward to our kids sharing the experience of electing the first female president”? Did people who voted for Margaret Thatcher or Angela Merkel need to add anything to “I believed she was the best qualified person for the job”?)
“Suddenly, Public Health Officials Say Social Justice Matters More Than Social Distance” (Politico): For months, health experts told Americans to stay home. Now, many are encouraging the public to join mass protests. … “We should always evaluate the risks and benefits of efforts to control the virus,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, tweeted on Tuesday. “In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.” … Some members of the medical community acknowledged they’re grappling with the U-turn in public health advice, too. “It makes it clear that all along there were trade-offs between details of lockdowns and social distancing and other factors that the experts previously discounted and have now decided to reconsider and rebalance,” said Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School. Flier pointed out that the protesters were also engaging in behaviors, like loud singing in close proximity, which CDC has repeatedly suggested could be linked to spreading the virus. “At least for me, the sudden change in views of the danger of mass gatherings has been disorienting, and I suspect it has been for many Americans,” he told me. … Those protests against stay-at-home orders “not only oppose public health interventions, but are also rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives,” according to the letter’s nearly 1,300 signatories. “Protests against systemic racism, which fosters the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 on Black communities and also perpetuates police violence, must be supported.”
Judging by the contents of my inbox, America is truly the land of goodwill and brotherhood. A typical recent example has a subject line of “Uber stands with the Black community”:
I wish that the lives of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and countless others weren’t so violently cut short. I wish that institutional racism, and the police violence it gives rise to, didn’t cause their deaths. I wish that all members of our Black community felt safe enough to move around their cities without fear. I wish that I didn’t have to try to find the words to explain all of this to my two young sons.
But I’ve been given hope this week by hundreds of thousands of peaceful protestors demanding change. I am committed to being part of that change.
We know this isn’t enough. It won’t be enough until we see true racial justice. But we plan to work day in and day out to improve, learn, and grow as a company.
Dara Khosrowshahi CEO
(From the fact that riots and looting give him hope, I think it is safe to infer that he’s explaining everything to his two young sons while safely enroute in the family Gulfstream from fenced airport to fenced airport.)
The Uber Diversity and Inclusion Report for 2019 shows that standing with the Black community can be done by “tech leaders” who are 51 percent white and 47.5 percent Asian (“Black of African American” people hold 0.8 percent of these jobs; “Hispanic or Latinx” are also at 0.8 percent).
Readers: What would Travis Kalanick have written about recent events?
By touching off riots throughout the U.S., the incompetence of the Minneapolis city government has cost Americans who live elsewhere at least billions of dollars (insurance industry estimate; some color from the Daily Mail) in the short run. Owners of property in other cities may be out tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in the long run, as people decide that they’d rather live and work in suburbs and/or small towns, thus escaping both Covid-19 and civil unrest.
Imagine if the Minneapolis police department had been a Roman legion. After the killing of Justine Diamond (“Noor had been lauded in the past by Minneapolis mayor Betsy Hodges and the local Somali community as one of the first Somali-American police officers in the area”), it would have been time for decimation (every tenth officer killed by others in the legion). After the murder of George Floyd, surely it would have been time to kill the entire legion due to the disgrace and costs imposed on the Republic/Empire.
Of course, justice isn’t as harsh today as it was in Ancient Rome. However, given the above-market wages, health care, and pension benefits paid, the entire Minneapolis Police Department could be easily replaced at a substantial savings to taxpayers. Why not fire the entire force immediately as a modern-day substitute for how these people would have been punished in the time of Trajan? State police and National Guard units can fill in until the city has had a chance to hire the next class. Also fire anyone in city politics with any supervisory responsibility for the police, right up to and including the mayor. Maybe it would take a replacement police force a few years to become fully effective, but the example would be helpful to other cities and maybe people around the U.S. wouldn’t be angry enough to keep rioting if they saw that the people responsible for the Minneapolis murder had faced some actual consequences.
(As it happens, I was in Minneapolis this week! Glorious plans to hang out downtown were revised in favor of holing up in the Hampton Inn, Eden Prairie. After two nights locked into my room (one of 6 occupied out of 105), with only occasional escapes to nearby strip malls, I had little trouble understanding why those who’ve been locked down in small apartments are rioting. Except for the nice Beaver below (Flying Cloud Airport), the scenery was bleak (leavened slightly by the fact that restaurants are now open for outdoor dining). There was a nightly curfew even in suburban Eden Prairie.)
Readers: What do you think? Should the Minneapolis Police Department be warmly told “Thanks for your service” and sent home with two weeks of severance pay? Also, should Minneapolis be cut off from Federal funds for the next 5-10 years? U.S. taxpayers will have to pay $billions to rebuild the cities trashed as a consequence of what happened in Minneapolis. Why can’t the folks there (“some very fine people”) pay for their own services with local and state $$ for the next 5-10 years?
All of my friends in the new work-from-home economy say that coworkers with newly unskooled children to manage are “useless”. Employers who fire their least productive employees, therefore, in an age-neutral manner, may actually be firing an older-than-average population (and, coincidentally, saving a ton of money on employer-provided health care for both these older adults and their children!).
I’m wondering if the new “wear a mask 8 hours/day” policies will also winnow the older workers out of the U.S. labor force. Older people have reduced lung capacity and muscular strength compared to the young, so they are going to be more impaired by the masks. Already in retail stores I have noticed some older workers struggling and, in some cases, wearing the mask around their necks, even when interacting fairly closely with customers.
Finally, you have the actual risk of coronaplague. As workers get closer to the average age of a Covid-19-tagged death (82 in Massachusetts), they might not want to take the risk of coming into contact with a lot of co-workers, customers, etc.
Related:
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (EEOC): “The ADEA prohibits employment discrimination against persons 40 years of age or older.” (i.e., employers wouldn’t hire people over 40 without the threat of lawsuits and coercion by the government)
“Lung Capacity and Aging” (American Lung Association): “Your lungs mature by the time you are about 20-25 years old. After about the age of 35, it is normal for your lung function to decline gradually as you age. This can make breathing slightly more difficult as you get older.”
Nicole Vandelaar Battjes is the founder, CEO, and Chief Pilot of Novictor Helicopters, a Robinson R44 tour operator in Hawaii. Now she has launched a cosmetics company too! Nicol Cosmetics (pilot/founder is in the middle):
It is rare for me to get excited about cosmetics, but I am hoping this company is a big success.
Loyal readers of this blog (i.e., both of you!) will recall that I have regularly asked whether the lockdown cure is worse than the coronavirus disease. I anticipated deaths in the U.S. due to the shutdown of health care for non-Covid issues, due to poverty and unemployment, due to the shutdown of clinical trials for new/improved medicines, and due to the shutdown of clinical training for medical doctors (post). I anticipated a vast number of deaths in poor countries that were our trading partners.
I did not anticipate civil unrest and the destruction of American cities, but of course in hindsight it seems obvious that locking the poorest Americans into their crummy tiny urban apartments for months, while taking away jobs from most of those who formerly worked, would lead to them eventually emerging and entertaining themselves in ways that wouldn’t be entertaining for the mansion-dwelling governors who ordered the lockdowns. (see “Your lockdown may vary”)
Police departments in the U.S. murder citizens on a regular basis (and why not, since they are generally immune from being fired). The typical police murder does not bother too many Americans or even make the news. This one was unusually disturbing and unusually thoroughly documented on video, of course, but I still don’t think it would have been enough to trigger nationwide riots back in, say, 2019.
In addition to the lockdown itself having put non-mansion-dwelling Americans into a bad mood, I wonder if the lockdown created a general environment of lawlessness. Unlike in Sweden, for example, Americans were told that everything had changed due to the killer virus and therefore their Constitutional rights were inoperative. Since the old laws didn’t apply to the government, maybe the old laws against looting didn’t apply to the subjects?
Is it fair to say that a lot of Americans actually did anticipate this kind of breakdown of society? There was a huge run on guns and ammo back in March, right? I discovered that several of my friends had become new gun owners. These included female physicians in their 40s, for example, living alone in cities. I scoffed at them, saying that the militarized U.S. police state would keep the ghetto-dwellers quietly imprisoned, watching TV while consuming alcohol and opioids purchased via Medicaid.
Readers: Were these riots easy to foresee?
Bonus: Some pictures from a recent helicopter trip over Dover, Massachusetts. #WeAreAllinThisTogether #StayHomeSaveLives
(The house is at 36 Farm Street. Trulia says that the annual property tax is $141,000 per year, i.e., not enough to pay the pension for one retired senior police officer or school administrator. It may belong to Kevin Rollins, former CEO of Dell.)
Related:
official WHO data showing that Sweden, which never locked down, has suffered approximately 4,400 deaths among those who tested positive for Covid-19 (they automatically record any death as a “Covid death” if there was a positive test within the preceding 30 days).
After 2.5 months of lockdown, Massachusetts official reports indicate more than 7,000 deaths (2.27X higher death rate in locked-down MA versus never-locked Sweden, adjusted for population)
