this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
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I wonder if this would have happened if he was paid a decent wage in the first place.
Probably, shitty people will act shitty regardless
Like with most crime, there is a significant economic basis
Moat people would be way less shitty if they had access to their basic needs.
I agree there will always be a small percentage of the population that will act asocially
I'd argue that when you live in a society that values money above anything else, even having your basic needs covered would lead to this sort of behaviour
Good otherwise we wouldn't have anyone to be in government.
I don't think a poor relationship between an employer and employee is a good reason to try and scam random kids
Agreed we should blame the children
Yep exactly
Wtf, nobody is making him work at Lyft. “I am faking damage to my vehicle and charging riders false fees to supplement my income because my wage is crap.” is not acceptable. What a terrible take.
The other guy didn't say it was OK though, you're adding that part and then getting mad about it.
Fair point, the person I replied to didn’t explicitly say it was okay or that they said they felt it was ok. I took their comment as a kind of indirect victim blaming, similar to how you hear people say things like “I wonder if that would have happened if she was wearing something more conservative” — that’s a bad assumption on my part, and I appreciate your calling me out on it.
Um, okay? It isn't unreasonable for @anotherandrew@lemmy.mixdown.ca or anyone else to perceive it that way. "Maybe X wouldn't Y if Z wouldn't A" is always a classic logic chain putting the most blame on Z.
It could be a commentary on the type of people who gravitate towards jobs that don't provide enough compensation, Lyft certainly doesn't have that market cornered.
It's not an excuse just a statement of reality. A lot of crime is tied to economic stress
Sure feels like its not nobody when its "everybody" in the guise of societal murder if you don't work.
"If you're poor just get a better job bro. It's your own fault if you don't have a good job." What a terrible take.
More like “if your job sucks try to get a better job instead of committing crimes to make some extra cash” but you do you bro.
What a silly thing to say and think.
Is there some weird correlation between better morality and more money in your head?
Why aren't the billionaires paragons of virtue then?
It's not weird. Desperate people do desperate things, so too little money can lead to compromised morals as can too much. Do you really not see that?
In some cases yes, but I don’t see that here. Compromises morals out of desperation (to me, anyway) manifest more along the lines of stealing food to feed your family or wage theft perhaps.
That's a really self-destructive argument seeing as how easily it can be reused to justify overpolicing in impoverished areas.
You're basically proclaiming "Poor people commit more crimes, and that's just the natural order of things!"
Maybe think about what you're saying before you say it.
https://www.northwestcareercollege.edu/blog/the-relationship-between-poverty-and-crime/
Tl;dr: Poor people commit more crime
It's the natural order of things, but that doesn't mean its acceptable or should be the norm. I think its a very grounded argument to say that reducing poverty by improving social safety nets and ensuring that the lowest paying jobs can actually support someone would then decrease crime.
People in impoverished areas have also successfully reduced crime rates by using community-based initiatives. See Baltimore, for instance.
"Committing crimes" isn't some inherent quality of being poor, so writing people a pass for screwing others over just because that person was poor is an asinine take.
Especially if you're gonna try to argue that disproportionally policing poorer areas is an injustice with no evident/rational basis.
I ain't write a pass for shit, the article I linked said crime is a by-product of desparation and reducing desparation will reduce crime, being poor is a cause of desparation so a-b-c. I don't wamna type that all out because the middle piece didn't matter for the sake of the message "reducing poverty reduces the crime rate". Additionally, just because something has a traceable cause doesn't mean its excused or OK, don't draw that line on your own. I also didn't mention police once, so I don't wanna hear that either. That's a different conversation entirely that I feel we both also have a very similar opinion on. It seems you really just don't like the word poor being associated because you want to draw a line to me saying poor people are bad, but I'm not. I'm saying desperate people are more likely to take desperate measures. Doesn't matter what class you're in for that, but poor people are, hopefully unsurprisingly, a lot more likely to be in a desperate situation, and in there did I never say that this makes anyone a bad person nor did I excuse any behavior.
I literally just woke up, sorry for the extra sass.
There is a very strong correlation between poverty and crime. Are you not aware of that?
People that try to run scams often fall under the same profile as people that steal for the thrill of it. It's all about pulling one over on someone else, and the bonus is you get money out of the effort.
Trump gets paid a living wage, yet he still scams everyone on Earth. So right there your theory falls apart.
He should give his boss a real piece of his mind, then.
Depends. A lot of crime (in fact the majority of it) is driven by economic problems, but there's a not-insignificant amount of people who are just assholes and like making people look dumb.
Don’t you love when you play devil’s advocate and everyone assumes you support something? It’s called having a bit of perspective, people. Yes, it was a shitty thing to do. People generally don’t do shitty things without some kind of reason, usually a ‘selfish’ one.
The simplest explanation is that dude needed more money, couldn’t otherwise make it, so he tried to game the system. He failed, likely because he didn’t consider where that money was coming from. Had the company he’s driving for paid a decent wage in the first place, dude would likely not have been incentivized to game the system.
EDIT: I want to be really clear: I do not support what the dude did. At all. His reasoning for doing so may be valid, but his actions were not.
There are a lot of people in the world not being paid a livable wage. Most of them aren't going out of their way to defraud people for the purposes of monetary gain.
So the question becomes would making a livable wage make him less likely to do this? Is it the desperation that makes him commit fraud?
Was it not making a livable wage that made those idiots in CA fake bear attacks to get insurance payouts?
Was it not making a livable wage that makes porch pirates steal packages?
The problem is this is conjecture with no actual substance of fact behind it. Nothing in the article makes reference to him needing the money.
So you took your view that Lyft and Uber Drivers don't make a living wage and put it together with the headline and decided in your head that the most probable motive was he was strapped for cash because he doesn't make enough.
I want to remind you all of something. When you become a Lyft or Uber driver there are requirements including that a vehicle can't be older than a certain model year, and has to have no cosmetic damage. I don't own a vehicle that fits the requirements. Most people don't. To maintain a vehicle for 15 years or less with zero cosmetic damage plus meet the other requirements for driving for Uber, you'd have to have money to maintain your vehicle.
It has to have 4 doors. It has to seat 4 riders. It has to have a clean title that doesn't include rebuilt/salvage/reconstructed titles.
It's likely that based on the cleanliness requirements alone you have to either detail it yourself or have it detailed.
Some of these drivers provide snacks and water and stuff.
So while I will not dispute that these ride share companies don't pay what they should, I'm also going to point out that being poor doesn't make you a criminal. This person jumped through a lot of hoops (some of them probably fairly costly) in order to drive for this company. And they chose to try to defraud some teenagers and their family.
I'm going to blow your little mind here. Have you heard of loans? Maybe he took out loans to try to get himself into a better position?
You ever tried to take out a loan with no credit or collateral? You ever tried to get one with bad credit?
Did you think about this at all before you made your snarky response?
Do you understand how predatory loan companies operate? Their prime demographic is desperate people. Many will give out loans to people with bad credit, just with much higher interest etc.
I don't even understand why this is what you focused on from what I said but I'm not doing this.
The point quite clearly is that this person very likely could have used the money they used to get started working for Uber or Lyft to do something else.
But even if they hadn't that doesn't mean being poor makes you do criminal shit. You can do with this information whatever you want to. I don't care how you feel about what I said.
This isn't a case of "gaming the system" though. "Gaming the system" implies working within the boundaries of it, but in unforeseen (but legal, or at worst slightly questionable) ways, to min/max your output. This dude just committed plain fraud.