More ways to extract more money from you! More scams to look out for, constantly every single day.
this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
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The audacity of some people... I simply cannot comprehend it. I'd feel so ashamed of myself.
People see examples of assholes grifting all around them, especially in Florida.
When the king and his minstrels do it all day…
Man they did that guy dirty. The headline and picture makes it look like he's the Lyft driver.
I wonder if this would have happened if he was paid a decent wage in the first place.
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
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
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?
Is there some weird correlation between better morality and more money in your head?
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.
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.
It's not an excuse just a statement of reality. A lot of crime is tied to economic stress
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.
Sure feels like its not nobody when its "everybody" in the guise of societal murder if you don't work.
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.
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.
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.
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.