text:
Ruger 1 - Order, May 29, 2012
Order, May 29, 2012
In the Matter of the Integration of Interests Pursuant to
Environmental Conservation Law ("ECL") § 23‑0901(3)
Within an Individual Spacing Unit Known As
Well Name: Ruger 1
API Number: 31‑015‑26304‑00‑00
Well Operator: Anschutz Exploration Corp.
Order No. DMN 09‑32
1. The Department of Environmental Conservation ("Department") issued a well permit as defined by ECL 23‑0501(1)(b)(3) for the subject well on January 26, 2009, establishing a spacing unit for the Black River formation. A map of the spacing unit is attached as Exhibit A, and a tabulation of tracts therein is attached as Exhibit B-1.
2. In accordance with ECL 23‑0901(3), the matter of integration of interests within the spacing unit was heard at a compulsory integration hearing before the Department on June 3, 2009, at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, 625 Broadway, Room PA‑129, Albany, New York 12233 ("integration hearing"). The affidavit of publication attached as Exhibit C attests that notice of this hearing was provided pursuant to ECL 23‑0901(3)(c) and DEC Program Policy DMN‑1.
3. Owners in the spacing unit who have not reached a voluntary agreement with the well operator are subject to compulsory integration, and prior to compulsory integration are referred to as "uncontrolled owners." Pursuant to ECL 23‑0901(3)(c), notice to each uncontrolled owner wholly or partially within the spacing unit included an election form and an Authorization for Expenditure detailing the estimated well costs, including a fixed rate charge for supervision of the activities listed in ECL 23‑0901(3)(a)(5), attributable to the uncontrolled owner's acreage within the unit. Each uncontrolled owner was provided the opportunity to elect integration as a royalty owner, integration as a participating owner, or integration as a non‑participating owner, as such terms are defined by ECL 23‑0901(3)(a). Pursuant to ECL 23‑0901(3)(c)(2), elections were due to the well operator and the Department twenty-one days after the date the notice was published.
4. The elections as set forth on Exhibit D were reviewed at the integration hearing.
5. Based upon objections raised at the compulsory integration hearing, pursuant to ECL 23-0901(3)(d), the matter was referred to the Department's Office of Hearings and Mediation Services for adjudicatory proceedings under 6 NYCRR part 624.
6. A legislative hearing and issues conference were duly noticed and conducted before Chief Administrative Law Judge ("ALJ") James T. McClymonds on July 14, 2010. After the issues conference, the Chief ALJ issued a ruling on issues and party status dated December 22, 2011. In that ruling, the Chief ALJ found no substantive and significant issues requiring adjudication. No appeal was taken from the Chief ALJ's ruling. Accordingly, this Order may be issued without any further hearing.
NOW, THEREFORE, having found that due, proper and sufficient notice was given; that no substantive and significant issues have been raised; and that compulsory integration of interests in the spacing unit as set forth on Exhibit D will serve to protect correlative rights and is necessary to carry out the policy provisions of ECL 23‑0301, it is hereby ORDERED that:
I. The subject spacing unit is integrated pursuant to ECL 23‑0901(3) with respect to the Black River formation and includes the whole or partial tracts listed on Exhibit B. All operations including, but not limited to, the commencement, drilling, sampling, logging, testing, completion, reworking, sidetracking, deepening, re‑completing, plugging, plugging back or operation of a well or the existence of a shut‑in well upon any portion of the spacing unit shall be deemed for all purposes the conduct of such operations upon each separately owned tract wholly or partially within the spacing unit, as listed on Exhibit B, by the owner or several owners thereof. That portion of production allocated to each tract in the spacing unit shall, when produced, be deemed for all purposes to have been produced from such tract by a well drilled thereon. A mineral interest owner's right to well data from the operator and access to the well site are subject to the following provisions:
A. Integrated royalty owners, participating owners, and non-participating owners shall have access to well data pursuant to the time periods and confidentiality protections in ECL 23-0313.
B. The operator shall provide each integrated participating and non-participating owner reasonable access to the well site. Site access provided by this Order shall not be exercised in a manner interfering with the well operator's conduct of an operation.
II. The well operator indicated in the caption on page 1 of this Order is the operator of the spacing unit.
III. The well operator shall file a copy of this Order, including the Exhibits thereto, in the office of the County Clerk in the county or counties where the spacing unit is wholly or partially located. The Order shall be filed against all tracts in the spacing unit. The well operator shall also file, in the same manner, any updates to Exhibit D which result after the date of this Order from ownership changes, tax map revisions or corrections, resolution of title disputes and/or other revisions to property and ownership descriptions, provided that the unit boundary as shown on Exhibit A has not changed. The well operator must provide a copy of any such update to the Department, by certified mail, post‑marked on the same date that such is filed in the office of the County Clerk. The updated Exhibit D shall be accepted and deemed incorporated into this Order; no further order of the Department shall be required.
IV. Tracts listed on Exhibit D are hereby integrated, on a non‑surface entry basis, as set forth therein. Any person taking title by operation of law to any oil and gas interests listed on Exhibit D shall take such interests subject to the terms and conditions of this Order, and shall be subject to all liabilities and benefits associated therewith, unless such person, within sixty days of the taking of such interest, elects to be an integrated royalty owner, as defined at ECL 23‑0901(3)(a)(3), and notifies the well operator of such election.
V. The following provisions shall apply to all integrated participating owners and integrated non‑participating owners in the spacing unit:
A. The owner shall be liable for its proportionate share of all costs and expenses, including taxes, and claims of third parties related to the well, operations thereon and in conjunction therewith, and shall be entitled to its proportionate share of all benefits therefrom. If an owner`s share of production is subject to a risk penalty as defined by ECL 23‑0901(3)(a)(4), the well operator shall establish a risk penalty account for such owner and all costs, expenses and benefits attributable to such owner shall be reflected in the penalty account;
B. The well operator shall hold any funds paid by the owner or recouped through the risk penalty attributable to the plugging and abandonment costs of the well, as estimated prior to the drilling of the well, in an interest bearing account until such funds are required and utilized for such purpose;
C. The owner shall be liable for and shall indemnify all other persons participating in the development of the well, whether participating owners, non‑participating owners or otherwise, including the well operator, from and against all claims arising out of the owner`s non‑payment of rentals, royalties and other payments or burdens on the oil and gas rights that such owner contributes to the spacing unit and from and against all claims associated with the loss or failure of title to the oil and gas rights the owner contributes to the spacing unit;
D. The well operator shall have a first lien on the production of the owner to pay any outstanding costs, expenses or claims and the well operator shall be entitled to withhold and retain for the purposes of set off any revenue or production owed or due to the owner under an order of integration. Nothing in this paragraph shall affect the well operator`s right to collect any outstanding amounts incurred nor the right of any fee owner of oil and gas interests to collect any amounts owed under the terms of any lease from such owner. The exercise of any remedy shall not preclude the well operator from seeking any other remedies available under the law;
E. Whether or not the owner is subject to a risk penalty, the well operator shall submit to the owner a written authority for expenditure of the estimated costs associated with the construction of any facilities not included in well costs beyond the surface equipment at the wellhead to the first point of interconnection with other facilities that commingle production from a group of wells that includes the well, including, but not limited to, pipe, compression, processing, treating, dehydrating or separating equipment, fixtures, related buildings and other equipment. The owner shall have thirty days to elect to participate and pay its proportionate share of such estimated cost, the failure of which shall be deemed to be an election by the owner not to participate. If the owner elects not to participate or is deemed to have elected not to participate, the well operator shall be entitled to retain for its own account all of the owner`s share of production from the well until the well operator has recouped from the net proceeds of the owner`s share of production the owner`s share of the actual costs of the facilities, plus a risk penalty of one hundred percent of such costs. Any such amounts shall be added to the risk penalty account for such owner;
F. If the owner is not subject to a risk penalty, the owner shall have the right to take its share of gas or oil production in kind and shall be responsible for its transportation and marketing arrangements downstream of the facilities constructed pursuant to paragraph E of this section. The owner`s election to take in kind must be conveyed to the well operator no later than fourteen days prior to first production from the well or upon seventy‑five days written notice to well operator at any time following first production from the well subject to the expiration of any existing contracts;
G. If the owner is not subject to a risk penalty and does not take its share of gas or oil production in kind, the well operator shall market the owner`s share of production from the well ratably with its own share of production from the well for the account of the owner. The well operator shall pay the owner based on the price received by the well operator for production in the general area less (1) the owner`s proportionate share of all costs incurred by the well operator for transporting, treating, processing, or otherwise making the production marketable, and (2) a marketing fee not to exceed five percent of the sales price of the production;
H. The well operator shall be entitled to propose and conduct a subsequent operation on a well, meaning any reworking, sidetracking, deepening, re‑completing or plugging back of the well or the drilling of a lateral or an infill well in the formation for which the unit was created. Owners shall be provided with a written authorization for expenditure of the estimated costs of the subsequent operation. An owner shall not be entitled to participate in a subsequent operation as long as the owner is in a risk penalty phase. If a subsequent operation is proposed while an owner is in a risk penalty phase, the owner`s proportionate share of the actual cost of the subsequent operation plus two hundred percent of such actual costs shall be added to the risk penalty account for such owner. The owner not in a risk penalty phase shall have thirty days to elect and pay its proportionate share of the estimated costs, unless a drilling rig is on location, in which event notice of a subsequent operation may be given by telephone and the owner shall have forty‑eight hours, exclusive of Saturday, Sunday and legal holidays, to make an election and thirty days to pay the owner`s proportionate share of costs. The failure of any such owner to elect and pay in a timely manner shall be deemed an election by the owner not to participate in the subsequent operation. If such owner elects or is deemed to have elected not to participate in the subsequent operation, the well operator shall be entitled to retain all of the owner`s proportionate share of production from the well until the well operator has recouped the proportionate share of the actual costs of the subsequent operation attributable to such owner, plus two hundred percent of such actual costs; and
I. The well operator, on behalf of the owner, shall be entitled to conduct all acts associated with the well and necessary facilities related thereto, including without limitation: conducting title examination and curative work on the tracts included in the spacing unit; arranging for contract services or employees of the well operator, at the customary salaries, wages and benefits of such employees, to oversee the operation and maintenance of the well and the facilities in the production unit associated with the well; arranging for and maintaining required financial security for well bonds and insurance; discharging litigation, claims of third parties and disputing tax assessments; developing and implementing emergency responses and dealing with catastrophic events; and arranging for the storage, transporting and disposal of produced water, by‑products or refuse associated with production and maintenance facilities.
VI. The following additional provisions shall apply to the well operator:
A. The well operator shall hold any funds paid by integrated participating owners for estimated well costs in an interest bearing account until such funds are required and utilized to pay actual well costs. Accrued interest shall be applied to each participating owner's share of additional costs, or refunded pursuant to Paragraph C of this Section.
B. Within ninety days of the earliest of the following events, the well operator shall provide integrated participating and non‑participating owners with an itemized statement, no less detailed than the Authorization for Expenditure that was provided prior to the integration hearing, of actual well costs incurred.
1. The well is permanently plugged and abandoned, or
2. The well is temporarily abandoned pursuant to 6 NYCRR 555.3(a), or
3. The well commences production.
If production commences prior to the effective date of this order, the well operator shall provide the itemized statement of actual well costs within ninety days of the date of this order.
C. On the date of the statement required by Paragraph B of this Section, the well operator shall refund to the integrated participating owners any amount paid by the integrated participating owners which, as of the statement date, exceeds the total of actual well costs incurred plus any estimated plugging and abandonment costs which may be held in escrow pursuant to Paragraph B of Section V of this Order.
VII. The well operator may charge participating and non‑participating owners a customary fixed rate for supervision of ongoing operations. Supervision includes the following:
A. Wages, benefits and expenses of field personnel directly employed in well operations or while in transit to or from the well, and
B. Transportation of company labor, contract personnel and material necessary for well operations, subject to standard industry limitations on transportation as set forth in Section III.4 of the Council of Petroleum Accountants Societies (COPAS) - 1995 Accounting Procedure, Joint Operations.
VIII. Written communications required by this Order shall be transmitted by United States Postal Service, private courier service or hand‑delivered as follows.
A. Communication from integrated owners, the well operator and other interested persons to the Department shall be made to:
Director, Bureau of Oil and Gas Permitting and Management
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
Division of Mineral Resources
625 Broadway, 3rd Floor
Albany, NY 12233‑6500
Phone: (518) 402‑8056
B. Communication from integrated owners and the Department to the well operator shall be made as stated below, unless the well operator has informed the integrated owners and the Department of a change in writing in accordance with this Section.
Pamela S. Kalstrom
Vice President-Land
Anschutz Exploration Corporation
555 Seventeenth Street, Suite 2505
Denver, CO 80202
Phone: (303) 298-1000
C. Communication from the well operator and the Department to integrated owners shall be made to the addresses listed on Exhibit D, unless the integrated owners have informed the well operator and the Department of address changes in writing in accordance with this Section.
IX. This order is effective on the date it is signed, and is final and binding upon the well operator, all integrated owners, and their heirs, successors and assigns.
by: /s/
Joseph J. Martens
Dated: May 29, 2012
Albany, New York


text:
Cut the Rope: Time Travel GAME
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Nourishing Bone Broth
Amanda Love's Cooking
"Indeed, stock is everything in cooking . . . without it nothing can be done." Auguste Escoffier
Broth or stock as some call it is one of the most nutritious of foods. In many cultures it is consumed almost daily. Ancient cultures would not think of throwing out the bones, the place that holds the essence of the animal. They knew to slowly cook them with water and maybe other herbs and ingredients to extract the precious life giving nutrients from them. Chinese medicine says that the bones hold "jing", also thought of as our essence. Once depleted by stress and poor diet, it is hard to replenish.
Consuming things like broth on a regular basis helps to balance and replenish this. Not only does broth warm the digestive fire and ready it for more food, but it provides minerals and gelatin. Gelatin, often just thought of only for dessert, is extremely nutritious and healing. It helps us to build strong bones, hair, teeth, and fingernails and is also very good for digestion. It is hydrophilic which helps to keep the mucosal lining of the intestines in good shape. You can use any kind of bones you have access to. The traditional bones we most commonly use to make broth are beef and chicken bones, but you may also use lamb, turkey, fish, seafood, duck, venison, buffalo or any other bones you can find.
Bones – preferably soup, shank, ribs, marrow, oxtail or knuckle bones; if using chicken – try to salvage the feet and head along with the other bones for an extra rich broth; extra tough cuts of meat will give extra flavor as well as
Filtered Cold Water to cover
1 Tablespoon Salt
1 Tablespoon Apple Cider Vinegar
(Optional) – veggies like potatoes, onions, carrots, celery, parsley, thyme, rosemary, nettle or any other medicinal herb
You can ignore this first step to save time, but for a more robust flavor, it is best to roast the bones first. Simply place the bones on a large baking pan or casserole dish and bake at 400 degrees for about 1 hour or until browned.
Give your broth the best start by roasting the bones before adding to water
Transfer the roasted bones to a large crock pot or stock pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil and skim off the foam that will rise to the top.
Turn down to a simmer or low. Add the vinegar and salt. If you can, let this broth cook for 36-72 hours. (Consider using a crock pot at this stage.) Watch the water level - you may need to add more water as it evaporates.
The minimum amount of cooking time is 6 hours, but overnight is best. The longer you cook the bones, the more medicinal your broth will be. Store the broth in pint or 1-quart mason jars and pour a little bit of fat on top of each jar of broth. This will help preserve the broth.
Once your broth cools, it may become jelled. This means you have a gelatin rich broth. It will liquefy when heated. The broth will keep for about 5 days in the refrigerator or can be frozen for several months. You can freeze glass jars as long as you leave 2 inches of air space at the top. Use to make soups, stews and sauces, to cook your grains, and to just simply drink before meals or anytime. Enjoy!
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text:
Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, 8/23/2012
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
August 23, 2012
Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, 8/23/2012
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room
MR. CARNEY: Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for being here. I have no announcements, so let's get started.
Associated Press -- Ken.
Q Thanks, Jay. Governor Romney's campaign is promoting a number of steps on energy today. Some of the goals that they're laying out are creating more than 3 million jobs through increased energy production, energy independence by 2020. Does the President think that some of these goals are feasible?
MR. CARNEY: Well, what the President believes is that we need to pursue a policy that embraces a bold and robust all-of-the-above approach to energy. And what we know is that the policy the President has pursued has led already to the doubling of production of renewable energy from sources like wind and solar since the President took office. We know that under his leadership and during his presidency domestic production of oil and gas -- natural gas -- has increased, and our reliance on imports of foreign oil has decreased to its lowest level in I think something like 16 years.
And I think what distinguishes the President's approach, all-of-the-above approach to our energy future from the Republican approach is that the Republican approach is essentially one that is written by or dictated by big oil and focuses almost entirely on oil and fossil fuels.
This President believes we need to embrace all forms of domestic energy production, including oil, including natural gas, including nuclear energy -- which, as you know, this administration has invested in for the first time in 30 years -- including renewables like wind and solar. And while the Republican approach denigrates forms of energy like wind, this President believes that investing in renewable energy is essential to enhancing our energy independence.
And I would note, as the President did last week, that I think Congressman Ryan has called wind energy a fad, and I think maybe Mitt Romney -- Governor Romney called it imaginary. This is a narrow view and a dangerous view if you think about how important energy security is and domestic production of energy is to our national security interests.
So this President will continue to push for an all-of-the-above energy approach that ensures that we aggressively pursue domestic oil and gas production, that we aggressively pursue renewable energy production and make the investments necessary to secure our future.
Q Some of the components include increased drilling off the coast of Virginia or Florida, increased energy production on federal lands. Is there -- does the President think there's a place in an American energy policy for some of these ideas that Governor Romney is proposing today?
MR. CARNEY: Well, I can tell you that, as you know, Ken, under the President, we have increased production on federal waters and lands. The administration just finalized a plan that will build on the millions of acres we have made available for production offshore in the last year alone by making 75 percent -- 75 percent of offshore resources available for production.
I think, again, if you look at the President's record, he has been very aggressive in pursuing ways to increase domestic production of energy. He has done it also in a way that is mindful of the need to produce in a safe and reliable fashion.
One other point that I would note is that, again, representative of the President's approach, all-of-the-above approach on energy is that we have now more coal miners employed in this country than we have had in the past 15 years.
So this President believes that America's national security and energy independence depends on a complete all-of-the-above approach. And it depends not on focusing solely on domestic oil and gas production and big oil, and insisting on continuing oil and gas subsidies while ending, for example, the production tax credit -- the wind energy tax credit that is so important to the development of the wind energy industry in this country, as the President talked about last week and which, as you know, his opponents in this election oppose, despite the fact that Republicans in key states where wind energy is important support extending that wind energy tax credit.
Q Thanks. So I wanted to ask you about the report yesterday from the CBO about the fiscal cliff, which said that Americans should expect a significant recession and 2 million job losses if the spending cuts and tax hikes go through. We've heard you say that the President believes in a need for a balanced approach to resolving this question and that Congress needs to act because it's an important one. What I wanted to ask was whether you anticipate any kind of formal process to get that rolling ahead of the election, maybe similar to what the Vice President led on the Hill last year, or if the President is comfortable or thinks it's more practical to wait until after the election to do so.
MR. CARNEY: I think the President has been ready and remains ready to come to an agreement on a balanced approach to our fiscal challenges at any time that Republicans demonstrate a willingness to accept the simple proposition that, in addition to spending cuts and in addition to entitlement reforms, revenue has to be part of it, as the Simpson-Bowles commission made clear, as the Domenici-Rivlin commission made clear, the Gang of Six and every other bipartisan group that has looked at this has made clear. Unfortunately, Republican intransigence, their insistence that millionaires and billionaires get tax cuts, has prevented the completion of an agreement on a balanced plan.
What we do know, however, going to the CBO report, is that the single biggest component of the so-called fiscal cliff is the middle-class tax cuts that Republicans and Democrats all agree ought to be extended. The Senate passed a bill that extends these middle-class tax cuts -- tax cuts for 98 percent of the American people. The House ought to do the same. And just by doing that, we could alleviate some of the concern about the so-called fiscal cliff -- which should not, regardless, take any pressure off Congress from the absolute need to act, but it should demonstrate to the American people the ability of Congress to come together and pass something that everyone says they agree on and the President agrees on.
So, again, that would -- that is the single biggest component that makes up the so-called fiscal cliff. If they pass that tax cut tomorrow, that would go a significant way towards alleviating concerns about the fiscal cliff.
Q But I think given everyone is very busy campaigning and so on, and the absence of a formal setting to discuss it --
MR. CARNEY: Well, I think the President told you earlier this week when he stood right here that it is -- he recognizes the fact that because Congress I believe will be in town for less than two weeks between now and the election, that significant progress with Congress may not be all that likely.
There are things, however, that Congress absolutely must do -- steps to ensure that we pass a continuing resolution that the government continues to function, there are no threats of shutdowns, and other things they can do. But they could also -- because so much work has been done on it already and the Senate has already passed it -- they could pass this tax cut in a moment's notice. The House could do it when they come back and demonstrate to the American people that there is a seriousness of purpose here when it comes to recognizing the need to address some of the issues that were presented by the CBO report yesterday.
Q And so just a final thing, just to clarify -- so then the idea is then after the election will be the time to address the rest of the fiscal cliff?
MR. CARNEY: I think the President is open to -- and has said so -- any indication from Republicans that they are willing to drop their intransigence on this fundamental issue of whether or not we will move forward with a balanced plan. Because it's not just a point of argument and it's not just well, the President believes we have to have a balanced plan and these bipartisan commissions all believe we have to have a balanced plan, every expert out there who's independent believes that that's the right approach.
The reason why everyone agrees on this is because the consequences of not having a balanced plan are embodied in the Republican budget proposal, which in order to achieve the kind of deficit savings that are needed, would unfairly burden America's seniors by voucherizing Medicare, and cause huge reductions and investments in education and innovation, research and development -- the kinds of things that are fundamentally important to our further economic growth in this century.
So we don't need to pursue that. We don't need to ask seniors to pay $6,400 a year -- per annum -- unless we believe that the right approach is to adopt a Republican plan that asks seniors to pay $6,400 a year, on average, extra to cover their health care costs because we're voucherizing Medicare so that we can pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest among us. That's not sound economic policy. We can't afford it. We don't need to do it. We need a balanced plan.
Q Thanks, Jay. It was announced this week that Cardinal Timothy Dolan will be delivering a prayer at the RNC, and I know that he's someone that the White House has reached out to on various issues. Do you feel it's appropriate that he be speaking at the Republican Convention, or do you have any feelings on how it might affect the working relationship with the Cardinal or the association he represents moving forward?
MR. CARNEY: I think there's a tradition of religious leaders giving prayers or invocations at conventions. I don't see a problem with that.
Q I also had a question -- there's some article circulating around DHS and the FBI about some possible anarchist activity at both the RNC and the DNC. I know this is probably something that should be handled by the law enforcement community, but is there advice that the White House is giving to members who live -- residents who live in the area or anything that -- in relation to activities who aren't attending the convention?
MR. CARNEY: I'm not aware of the reports that you mentioned, and certainly it wouldn't be for the White House to issue law enforcement guidance. I would point you to local law enforcement officials as well as federal law enforcement.
Q And finally, I know that this is -- I think you were asked about this earlier in the week, but there's been a push from the online Homebrewers Association for the White House to release its beer recipes. I believe there are three, at least, White House beers brewed here. Does the White House have any plans to release its beer recipes? (Laughter.)
MR. CARNEY: Not that I'm aware of. It's true that -- (laughter) -- it's true I don't always bring water out here. (Laughter.)
Q The paper cup.
MR. CARNEY: Yes. Not that I'm aware. I think the President and First Lady were asked about this a little bit in an interview last week, which I believe is published or broadcast, about how the White House beer came about. But I don't -- I'm not aware of any plans at this time to --
Q What about transparency? (Laughter.)
MR. CARNEY: -- divulge the secret recipes.
Q I believe there have been Freedom of Information Act filed on this issue. (Laughter.)
MR. CARNEY: I'll have to take the question -- examine it, taste it. (Laughter.)
Q The Congressional Budget Office report is a pretty dire warning about what this nation faces, and yet I didn't hear the President mention it yesterday. Is there a reason why?
MR. CARNEY: Well, I think I put out a statement, which is the White House's view and the President's view. The President talks every day that he's out there, as he was yesterday, about what we need to do to help build our economy, help it to continue to grow, help it to continue to create jobs. And yesterday and the day before, he was focusing on the need to continue investments in education because he firmly believes that education is a matter of our economy, that it is an economic issue, and --
Q I understand, but that's not really what the Congressional Budget Office was addressing. They were talking about --
MR. CARNEY: No, no, sure, about the --
Q But I heard the President -- yes, the President talked about education, he talked about Todd Akin, he talked about Michael Jordan, he talked about a lot --
MR. CARNEY: Well, and he talks, as you know, all the time about what we need to do specifically to help the economy grow and create jobs, and his belief that we need to take a balanced approach to address the kinds of fiscal challenges that are necessary. I mean, the so-called fiscal cliff that the CBO report addressed, as you know, is being brought about by a vote of Congress, with bipartisan majorities in each house, to enact the Budget Control Act, which the President signed into law, which is --
Q Sure, but he's not an innocent bystander here. He's the President of the United States.
MR. CARNEY: No, I'm not suggesting he is.
Q I guess here's the question: Do you think the President is showing as much economic leadership on this issue as he could be?
MR. CARNEY: Yes. And I think that what I talked about in answer to an earlier question is that, look, we recognize that there is an enormous debate, a big conflict between the President and the Republican leadership in particular over whether or not we need to extend and, in some plans, give even greater tax cuts to the top 2 percent of American earners, the most well-to-do Americans. That debate is unlikely to be resolved between now and the election. The President talks about how in many ways the voters will help resolve it by the election.
But what we can agree on -- and this goes right to the issue of the fiscal cliff -- is that we should absolutely extend tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans and 97 of American small businesses tomorrow, or the day that Congress gets back. And that would demonstrate to the American people and to people around the world that despite our differences on some very important issues, we can come together and do the practical thing and the sensible thing to help our economy grow, to avert some of the concern over the so-called fiscal cliff.
And I think that would give people a lot of reassurance about the capacity of their leaders in Washington, after the election, to continue to address the challenges and to ensure that we don't have to -- that the sequester does not come about -- because it was never designed to take effect. It was designed to be so onerous that it would force action, and hopefully that will take place.
But what we do know is that we agree on this: The middle-class tax cuts -- which I think this is a little-known fact -- are the single biggest component of the so-called fiscal cliff. If we pass that, that would have a very positive impact on both -- in the raw number sense, but also I think psychologically, because it would demonstrate that Washington is willing, despite the partisan differences here, to do the right thing by the American people and by the American economy.
Q So why isn't the President on Capitol Hill telling --
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I'm not aware that anybody is up on Capitol Hill, but the President's position --
Q Why isn't the President talking -- even talking about this?
THE PRESIDENT: He has -- he talks about this frequently. He talks about it all the time. I mean, he was focusing on education the last couple of days, but numerous speeches in the last several weeks he talks very much about -- I mean, you saw him repeatedly talk about the need to extend middle-class tax cuts. And he'll continue to do that. I'm standing here today speaking for him and for the White House and the administration, talking about the need to do that. And we would welcome in a heartbeat a willingness by Republican leaders in the House to schedule and pass -- schedule a vote on and pass an extension of the middle-class tax cuts.
And then we could all agree that our differences on the remaining 2 percent remain, that we don't agree on that issue, and that that might have to be dealt with after the election. But if we took that action on the 98 percent, it would demonstrate a seriousness of purpose, and it would be very helpful to both the American people who would have that assurance and certainty about their tax cuts -- 98 percent of the American people -- and to the economy writ large.
Q I wanted to follow up on the energy question. Why do you and the President continue to refer to it as an all-of-the-above energy approach when there are certainly components that Republicans are pushing for that you reject, such as the Keystone pipeline or other things?
MR. CARNEY: Well, first of all, the Keystone pipeline is a -- we haven't rejected anything. It's a process that's underway at the State Department that was delayed for two reasons: one, because of concern by folks in Nebraska, including a Republican governor, about the original proposed route; and then because of Congress's -- the House Republicans' insistence on including it as part of the payroll tax cut extension. That is a specific issue.
The all-of-the-above approach is -- as you know, this administration has approved other pipelines, including transnational pipelines. It has approved expanded drilling, both on water and on land, federal and public. It has approved --
Q But you mean types of energy, you don't mean --
MR. CARNEY: Well, I don't mean that every single project imaginable that would require some sort of federal approval has necessarily. But every form of energy has enjoyed the very aggressive support of this administration, and that includes nuclear, wind, solar, and biodiesel and, as you know, oil and gas.
Q Can I just follow up on Jake's question on CBO saying we might be on the verge of another recession? To his point, with nothing on the President's public schedule today, why no meetings at all with congressional leaders? He hasn't had meetings with them in weeks if not months.
MR. CARNEY: Ed, I think you know that congressional leaders have been -- Republican leaders have been very clear that they will hold hostage tax cuts for 98 percent of the American people to their insistence that millionaires and billionaires get tax cuts, too. They could change their mind about that, agree with not just the President and not just Democrats, but the vast majority of people -- and my guess is 98 percent would like to have their tax cut next year -- if they simply said, okay, let's agree to disagree on the 2 percent, let's pass the 98 percent -- let's get it done. And that would, in a single stroke, address a significant portion of the concern about the so-called fiscal cliff. It would not entirely deal with it, but it would have a significant impact.
And the President was out there and will continue to be out there calling on Congress to take action on the middle-class tax cut, extending it for 98 percent of American taxpayers. And I think that, hopefully, Republicans will, for two reasons -- one, because it's the right thing to do for the economy and for the American people, and two, because of political pressure -- reevaluate their position, take advantage of the few days that they're actually back in Washington, when they are back, to pass this bill that we all agree should be passed and made law.
Q The President himself has previously said, why raise taxes on people during an economic slowdown? And so, while you're talking about the ones for the middle class and the 98 percent there, there is still -- the Republican view has been again and again that you say they're hardened on is that if you raise taxes on the wealthy then you're going to add to the economic slowdown. So we know what their view is, we know what your view is. My question is, why are they not in a room trying to negotiate, which is what Presidents and leaders normally do?
MR. CARNEY: Well, look, I think what -- again, we are clearly at loggerheads when it comes to the top 2 percent. We are in total agreement when it comes to the 98 percent. It stands to reason that we should be able to agree on what we agree on and then continue to debate on what we disagree on. And it is I think unhelpful to the economy and certainly not useful for the American people to insist that 98 percent of you won't get a tax cut unless the top 2 percent of the well-to-do Americans get a tax cut.
And in terms of the President's position on this, you know his position. It's been his position for a long time. The fact of the matter is -- and economists will tell you this -- that a tax cut for middle-class Americans has far greater positive economic impact than a tax cut to people in the top 2 percent. They don't necessarily spend it and inject it back into the economy. It just does not have the same macroeconomic impact.
And when you're weighing what we need to do to help the economy grow as we deal with our deficits, we simply can't afford to spend that extra trillion dollars over what would be 10 years, potentially, on another tax cut for the wealthiest 2 percent of the American people.
I mean, here's the thing. Some of the very leaders in Congress today, Republican leaders in the House, stood before us -- I was a reporter then -- and declared on the eve of the vote for the Clinton budget, the Bill Clinton budget in 1993 that raised marginal tax rates on wealthier Americans, that it would cause a recession if they passed that bill and signed it into law, that it would cause economic decline, it would cause job loss.
I think we can all agree that they were wrong -- because what we got instead was sustained economic growth, significant job creation -- 23 million, 24 million jobs, and the only time in our lifetimes when the budget has been balanced. And millionaires and billionaires coined at a rapid pace.
So the President's position is you have to have a balanced approach. We need tax cuts for the middle class. We can't afford tax cuts for the wealthiest.
Q Last thing. Does the White House have a view on this book by a Navy SEAL who is going to come out and talk about the bin Laden raid? The book is going to be published I believe on the 9/11 anniversary. There seems to be some concern at the Pentagon and the CIA that somebody who's got that kind of intimate knowledge is going to put it into a book. Does the White House share that concern?
MR. CARNEY: Well, as I think one of my colleagues here noted yesterday, we were unaware of this book until yesterday and the press reports about it. So I don't know what's in it, and would refer you to the Defense Department, since it's apparently or supposedly written by someone in the military or retired. But I just don't know anything else about it.
Q Jay, thanks. The New York Times is reporting today that this administration has close ties to Exelon, which may have helped foster greater access to the upper reaches of this administration, may have been proven helpful in terms of securing some grants and loans. Do you have a reaction to this report? Is it a fair report?
MR. CARNEY: Well, I would say a couple of things. The truth is that Exelon has a long history of supporting politicians of both sides of the aisle. And as you -- most of your who have covered the rule-making process, you know that these decisions on grants are made on the merits. And as Cass Sunstein said in the story, it would be a huge mistake to draw any link between the number of meetings that OIRA, the agency that he headed until recently, holds with outsiders and the outcome of any rule. In fact, OIRA meets with any entity that asks for a meeting. That is there policy. And for the standards listed, OIRA also met four times with the Sierra Club, three times with the American Lung Association, and three times with the American Academy of Pediatrics.
So, again, it is standard policy at OIRA to meet with anyone who asks for a meeting who has an interest in any of these issues that come before OIRA.
Q Does the assertion, though, create a negative optic for the President as he heads into kind of the final stretch --
MR. CARNEY: I think the President's support for an all-of-the-above approach to energy and to renewable energy is an issue in this campaign. It's one that he's proud to have be an issue, as you noted when he was out in Iowa last week and has spoken about elsewhere. He firmly believes that our energy future in this country will be more secure, and therefore our national security will be enhanced if we pursue policies that expand domestic oil and gas production, that aggressively invest in and expand renewable energy sources, that make investments, as this administration has, in nuclear energy -- that this is the way -- this is an approach that we have to take.
And obviously Republicans have made an issue of this and it is one that he is very happy to debate.
Q But this story doesn't necessarily call into question his views on an all-of-the-above approach, but more so his ties to --
MR. CARNEY: My reading of the story, the story simply said -- the big assertion in the story is that people from this company had meetings at OIRA. And what I'm telling you is that any entity that asks for a meeting with OIRA, that has an interest in or is a stakeholder in any of these standards or rules, gets a meeting. So I'm not sure what the issue is, frankly.
Q And, Jay, I just want to ask you -- yesterday, Josh Earnest said of Ban Ki-moon's visit to Iran to attend the meetings there, that he hopes that he will encourage the Iranian regime to live up to their international obligations. Has the White House encouraged the Secretary General to directly voice this concern with the Iranian regime?
MR. CARNEY: Well, I don't know if that conversation has taken place. I think that what Josh said yesterday -- and I'll reiterate today -- is certainly our position, and it is well known, which is that we believe that the Iranians use this kind of forum for propaganda purposes and we would ask participants to take advantage of that forum to press upon Iran the need to abide by its international obligations or face further isolation and further sanctions for refusing to abide by their international obligations.
Scott -- and then, Roger.
Q Two things, Jay -- one, do the differences between the administration and the GOP on energy also extend to the demand side?
MR. CARNEY: Well, I don't know about demand, per se. But one thing I did not bring up -- one step this President took, standing with the CEOs of more than a dozen automobile companies, was to raise fuel-efficiency standards, double them over the course of a number of years.
Now, that will have a tremendous impact not just on Americans and their pocketbooks and wallets in terms of the cost of fuel and how much they spend on it, and that will be significant savings for the American people -- it will also enhance our energy independence by reducing our demand on oil and, therefore, demands for foreign oil imports.
And I think leading Republicans, let's say, have been very critical of this decision, despite the fact that it was reached in agreement with -- voluntarily by more than a dozen automobile manufacturers.
Q And also, did the CBO report yesterday tell us anything about the fiscal situation that we haven't known really since the super committee failed?
MR. CARNEY: Well, I think it -- they make periodic revisions. And I think that they have now taken into account since the last time they looked at this all the economic data that has been provided and what's happened in the economy since. But I don't think that it tells us anything surprising in the sense that we know we have to take action to address our fiscal challenges in a balanced way.
We know we need to take action to ensure that the so-called sequester doesn't take effect. And it requires a little will and backbone by Congress to agree to the fundamental premise that is widely supported around the country that we need to tackle these issues in a balanced way. And at least prior to that, even as we acknowledge that we will debate some of these issues beyond the election, we can take action immediately to pass the tax cuts for 98 percent of the American people that would go a significant distance down the road towards addressing the fiscal cliff.
Q Ken mentioned this at the top, but I wanted to get a little further. One of Romney's energy plans today has to do with giving states control of oil and gas on federal lands. What does the President think of that?
MR. CARNEY: Well, I'm not aware of that specific proposal and I'm not, frankly, as steeped in the details in terms of how these processes work. I know that this President has aggressively expanded oil and gas production in this country, but in a way that he believes protects the health and safety of our lands and waters and, of course, of the American people. And he'll continue to do that.
Q I guess I was getting at the state --
MR. CARNEY: I'm not aware of that particular provision in the Governor's proposal.
Q Jay, I want to ask you some questions about Isaac as it relates to Haiti and as it relates to the United States. The United States, along with the world body, are working to try to fortify, rebuild Haiti, and Haiti is right in the path of Isaac. What is this administration doing as it relates to preparing for Haiti with Isaac's approach upon the country?
MR. CARNEY: Well, right now the administration through FEMA has been in close contact with local officials and emergency managers in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as the Florida Emergency Management Agency. And, obviously, that's because these are American lands and territories.
We are monitoring the storm -- FEMA is and NOAA -- and are very mindful of the suffering that Haiti has endured because of the earthquake, and will I'm sure be prepared to assist Haiti if it does suffer under this hurricane. But I think we need to step back and acknowledge that we don't know what direction the hurricane -- or the tropical storm, if it becomes a hurricane, will take.
And I think I saw Administrator Fugate on television discuss this and say we need to make sure that everyone who could potentially be affected by the storm, whether it's in Puerto Rico or the Florida Keys or anywhere on other U.S. coastland, be prepared and make sure they're paying attention to updates on where the storm is and how strong it is and where it's headed. And FEMA is working very closely with all the appropriate agencies to do that.
Q But you understand why I ask about Haiti, because Haiti is still trying to come back just to the basic piece of where they were before they had that massive earthquake. And you still have people living in camps. I mean, Haiti is still --
MR. CARNEY: I completely appreciate the question and agree with the assessment of Haiti -- what it has endured and what its vulnerabilities are. Perhaps the State Department can help you with more on what Haiti might be doing to prepare for a potential storm. And, again, I'm not briefed well enough to know what the odds are that Haiti would be affected.
Q But does the President still get updates on Haiti, even though I mean we're several years out now from the earthquake? Does he get regular updates on Haiti?
MR. CARNEY: I would have to take the question. I know that he does periodically from the NSC and the director within the NSC that has that -- has Haiti within its area of responsibility. But I couldn't tell you when the last time he got an update on it was or the situation there.
Let's see, all the way -- yes, in the back. Sorry, almost in the back, three from the back.
Q Thank you, Jay. The President has understandably been talking a whole lot about education and the economy. But we haven't heard much about the plan for the next four years for the war in Afghanistan. And so I guess I wanted to ask a two-part question. First of all, what is the plan for the next four years? And, second of all, there's some chatter that the reason it hasn't been discussed is because Governor Romney and the President essentially agree.
MR. CARNEY: Well, I can't speak for Governor Romney. I think that he has been critical of what the President has made very explicit is his strategy and his policy in Afghanistan, which is, having kept his promise to end the war in Iraq and bring our troops home, he has refocused -- he refocused attention on the effort in Afghanistan, which, after all, we entered -- U.S. troops entered because of the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. He refocused attention. He plussed-up our forces there. He developed a strategy that made clear that our number-one priority, the reason why we are in Afghanistan, is because of al Qaeda, and that our number-one objective for our mission in Afghanistan is to disrupt, dismantle, and ultimately defeat al Qaeda, and that all other objectives that are secondary to that help support the primary objective.
As part of the very detailed proposal that he's put forward and that has been endorsed by our ISAF partners, we are now beginning to draw down U.S. forces from Afghanistan. And that process continues. And as you know, by 2014, we will have fully transferred security lead to Afghan security forces. And this President believes that's the right policy. It's his policy. And I would refer you to Governor Romney for Governor Romney's policy, if he has one.
MR. CARNEY: Dick.
Q Jay, does the White House have any comment about the lawsuit filed today by immigration agents in federal court in Texas, trying to stop the President's non-deportation policy?
MR. CARNEY: I'm not aware of it. I'd have to take the question. And it's probably one that the Department of Justice would take.
Q Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin is going to be the Democratic nominee running for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin. It will be historic if she wins because she will be the first openly gay person elected to the U.S. Senate. It looks like she is facing an uphill battle against Tommy Thompson. Will the President campaign with Tammy Baldwin in her state?
MR. CARNEY: I have no campaign announcements, scheduling announcements to make on behalf of the President. The President himself has an election, as you know, in a few short months. But I have no campaign announcements to make.
Q Do you have anything to say about the significance of Tammy Baldwin's candidacy, though?
MR. CARNEY: Well, I think it is very significant. I think that what is most significant is that someone qualified, like Ms. Baldwin, is running for that office and would make an excellent senator if elected.
Thank you all very much.
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text:
The secretive ride-hailing giant Uber rarely discusses internal matters in public. But in March, facing crises on multiple fronts, top officials convened a call for reporters to insist that Uber was changing its culture and would no longer tolerate "brilliant jerks."
Notably, the company also announced that it would fix its troubled relationship with drivers, who have complained for years about falling pay and arbitrary treatment.
"We've underinvested in the driver experience," a senior official said. "We are now re-examining everything we do in order to rebuild that love."
And yet even as Uber talks up its determination to treat drivers more humanely, it is engaged in an extraordinary behind-the-scenes experiment in behavioral science to manipulate them in the service of its corporate growth — an effort whose dimensions became evident in interviews with several dozen current and former Uber officials, drivers and social scientists, as well as a review of behavioral research.
Uber's innovations reflect the changing ways companies are managing workers amid the rise of the freelance-based "gig economy." Its drivers are officially independent business owners rather than traditional employees with set schedules. This allows Uber to minimize labor costs, but means it cannot compel drivers to show up at a specific place and time. And this lack of control can wreak havoc on a service whose goal is to seamlessly transport passengers whenever and wherever they want.
Uber helps solve this fundamental problem by using psychological inducements and other techniques unearthed by social science to influence when, where and how long drivers work. It's a quest for a perfectly efficient system: a balance between rider demand and driver supply at the lowest cost to passengers and the company.
Employing hundreds of social scientists and data scientists, Uber has experimented with video game techniques, graphics and noncash rewards of little value that can prod drivers into working longer and harder — and sometimes at hours and locations that are less lucrative for them.
To keep drivers on the road, the company has exploited some people's tendency to set earnings goals — alerting them that they are ever so close to hitting a precious target when they try to log off. It has even concocted an algorithm similar to a Netflix feature that automatically loads the next program, which many experts believe encourages binge-watching. In Uber's case, this means sending drivers their next fare opportunity before their current ride is even over.
And most of this happens without giving off a whiff of coercion.
"We show drivers areas of high demand or incentivize them to drive more," said Michael Amodeo, an Uber spokesman. "But any driver can stop work literally at the tap of a button — the decision whether or not to drive is 100 percent theirs."
Uber's recent emphasis on drivers is no accident. As problems have mounted at the company, from an allegation of sexual harassment in its offices to revelations that it created a tool to deliberately evade regulatory scrutiny, Uber has made softening its posture toward drivers a litmus test of its ability to become a better corporate citizen. The tension was particularly evident after its chief executive, Travis Kalanick, engaged in a heated argument with a driver that was captured in a viral video obtained by Bloomberg and that prompted an abject apology.
But an examination by The New York Times found that Uber is continuing apace in its struggle to wield the upper hand with drivers. And as platform-mediated work like driving for Uber increasingly becomes the way people make a living, the company's example illustrates that pulling psychological levers may eventually become the reigning approach to managing the American worker. While Uber is arguably the biggest and most sophisticated player in inducing workers to serve its corporate goals, other "gig economy" platforms are also involved. Uber's main competitor, Lyft, and popular delivery services like Postmates rely on similar approaches. So do companies and individuals posting assignments on crowdsourcing sites like Amazon Mechanical Turk, where hundreds of thousands of workers earn piece-rate wages by completing discrete tasks.
Of course, many companies try to nudge consumers into buying their products and services using psychological tricks. But extending these efforts to the work force is potentially transformative.
Though employers have long borrowed insights from social science to get more out of their workers — tech companies like Google have calculated that employees interact more with unfamiliar colleagues when they can graze together at snack bars — they are constrained in doing so. A large body of law and custom in the United States holds that because employers have far more power over their employees than businesses do over their customers, they must provide them with far greater protections — not least, a minimum wage and overtime pay.
Uber exists in a kind of legal and ethical purgatory, however. Because its drivers are independent contractors, they lack most of the protections associated with employment. By mastering their workers' mental circuitry, Uber and the like may be taking the economy back toward a pre-New Deal era when businesses had enormous power over workers and few checks on their ability to exploit it.
"We're talking about this kind of manipulation that literally affects people's income," said Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington who studies the way companies use data and algorithms to exploit psychological weaknesses. Uber officials, he said, are "using what they know about drivers, their control over the interface and the terms of transaction to channel the behavior of the driver in the direction they want it to go."
An Empathy Question
In early 2016, a group of roughly 100 Uber employees responsible for signing up drivers and getting them to drive more voted to change its name — from "supply growth" to "driver growth."
The vote was not unprompted. For much of the previous year, Uber executives had agonized over how to lower the rate at which drivers were deserting the platform.
Alongside Uber's already daunting targets for expanding its pool of drivers to meet mounting demand, the high turnover threatened to cap the company's growth and throw it into crisis.
Uber conducted interviews and focus groups while executives peppered employees with questions like "What are we doing to have more empathy for the driver side of the equation?"
Underlying the tension was the fact that Uber's interests and those of drivers are at odds on some level. Drivers, who typically keep what's left of their gross fare after Uber takes a roughly 25 percent commission, prefer some scarcity in their ranks to keep them busier and push up earnings. For its part, Uber is desperate to avoid shortages, seeking instead to serve every customer quickly, ideally in five minutes or less.
This is particularly true of shortages so pronounced as to create a "surge" — that is, a higher fare than normal. While surges do mitigate shortages, they do so in part by repelling passengers, something directly at odds with Uber's long-term goal of dominating the industry. "For us, it's better not to surge," said Daniel Graf, Uber's vice president of product. "If we don't surge, we can produce more rides."
As a result, much of Uber's communication with drivers over the years has aimed at combating shortages by advising drivers to move to areas where they exist, or where they might arise. Uber encouraged its local managers to experiment with ways of achieving this.
"It was all day long, every day — texts, emails, pop-ups: 'Hey, the morning rush has started. Get to this area, that's where demand is biggest,'" said Ed Frantzen, a veteran Uber driver in the Chicago area. "It was always, constantly, trying to get you into a certain direction."
Some local managers who were men went so far as to adopt a female persona for texting drivers, having found that the uptake was higher when they did.
"'Laura' would tell drivers: 'Hey, the concert's about to let out. You should head over there,'" said John P. Parker, a manager in Uber's Dallas office in 2014 and 2015, referring to one of the personas. "We have an overwhelmingly male driver population."
Uber acknowledged that it had experimented with female personas to increase engagement with drivers.
The friction over meeting demand was compounded by complaints about arrangements like aggressive car leases that required many drivers to work upward of 50 or 60 hours each week to eke out a profit. Uber officials began to worry that a driver backlash was putting them at a strategic disadvantage in their competition with Lyft, which had cultivated a reputation for being more driver-friendly. Uber had long been a reflection of Kalanick, its charismatic and hard-charging chief, who has often involved himself in corporate minutiae. According to an article in The Information, Kalanick had complained to subordinates that he was not informed sooner about a glitch with the company's push notifications and had personally weighed in on the time at which employees could receive free dinner.
Now Uber began a process of, in effect, becoming a little less like Kalanick, and a little more like Lyft.
It rethought a lease program, softened the hectoring tone of its messages and limited their volume. At times it became positively cheery.
During roughly the same period, Uber was increasingly concerned that many new drivers were leaving the platform before completing the 25 rides that would earn them a signing bonus. To stem that tide, Uber officials in some cities began experimenting with simple encouragement: You're almost halfway there, congratulations!
While the experiment seemed warm and innocuous, it had in fact been exquisitely calibrated. The company's data scientists had previously discovered that once drivers reached the 25-ride threshold, their rate of attrition fell sharply.
And psychologists and video game designers have long known that encouragement toward a concrete goal can motivate people to complete a task.
"It's getting you to internalize the company's goals," said Chelsea Howe, a prominent video game designer who has spoken out against coercive psychological techniques deployed in games. "Internalized motivation is the most powerful kind."
Amodeo, the Uber spokesman, defended the practice. "We try to make the early experience as good as possible, but also as realistic as possible," he said. "We want people to decide for themselves if driving is right for them." That making drivers feel good could be compatible with treating them as lab subjects was no surprise. None other than Lyft itself had shown as much several years earlier.
In 2013, the company hired a consulting firm to figure out how to encourage more driving during the platform's busiest hours.
At the time, Lyft drivers could voluntarily sign up in advance for shifts. The consultants devised an experiment in which the company showed one group of inexperienced drivers how much more they would make by moving from a slow period like Tuesday morning to a busy time like Friday night — about $15 more per hour.
For another group, Lyft reversed the calculation, displaying how much drivers were losing by sticking with Tuesdays.
The latter had a more significant effect on increasing the hours drivers scheduled during busy periods.
Kristen Berman, one of the consultants, explained at a presentation in 2014 that the experiment had roots in the field of behavioral economics, which studies the cognitive hang-ups that frequently skew decision-making. Its central finding derived from a concept known as loss aversion, which holds that people "dislike losing more than they like gaining," Berman said.
Still, Berman disclosed in an interview, Lyft eventually decided against using the loss-aversion approach, suggesting that the company has drawn brighter lines when it comes to potential manipulation.
Almost There
As he tried to log off at 7:13 a.m. on New Year's Day last year, Josh Streeter, then an Uber driver in the Tampa, Florida, area, received a message on the company's driver app with the headline "Make it to $330." The text then explained: "You're $10 away from making $330 in net earnings. Are you sure you want to go offline?" Below were two prompts: "Go offline" and "Keep driving." The latter was already highlighted.
"I've got screen shots with dozens of these messages," said Streeter, who began driving full time for Lyft and then Uber in 2014 but quit last year to invest in real estate.
Streeter was not alone. For months, when drivers tried to log out, the app would frequently tell them they were only a certain amount away from making a seemingly arbitrary sum for the day, or from matching their earnings from that point one week earlier.
The messages were intended to exploit another relatively widespread behavioral tic — people's preoccupation with goals — to nudge them into driving longer.
Over the past 20 years, behavioral economists have found evidence for a phenomenon known as income targeting, in which workers who can decide how long to work each day, like cabdrivers, do so with a goal in mind — say, $100 — much the way marathon runners try to get their time below four hours or three hours. While there is debate among economists as to how widespread the practice is and how strictly cabdrivers follow such targets, top officials at Uber and Lyft have certainly concluded that many of their drivers set income goals. "Others are motivated by an income target for sure," said Brian Hsu, the Lyft vice president in charge of supply. "You hear stories about people who want to buy that next thing." He added, "We've started to allow drivers to set up those goals as well in the app."
Uber even published a study last year, using its vast pile of data on drivers' rides and hours, finding that a "substantial, although not most, fraction of partners" practice an extreme form of income targeting when they start on the platform, though they abandon it as they gain more experience. Strict income targeting is highly inefficient because it leads drivers to work long hours on days when business is slow and their hourly take is low, and to knock off early on days when business is brisk.
The beauty of the messages Uber sent Streeter and his fellow drivers is that the drivers need not have even had a specific income goal in mind for the messages to work. Some of the most addictive games ever made, like the 1980s and '90s hit Tetris, rely on a feeling of progress toward a goal that is always just beyond the player's grasp. As the psychologist Adam Alter writes in his book "Irresistible," video game designers even have a name for this mental state: the "ludic loop."
Uber, for its part, appears to be aware of the ludic loop. In its messages to drivers, it included a graphic of an engine gauge with a needle that came tantalizingly close to, but was still short of, a dollar sign. And the ludic loop is far from the only video game feature that Uber has adapted as a way of keeping drivers on the road.
At any moment, the app shows drivers how many trips they have taken in the current week, how much money they have made, how much time they have spent logged on and what their overall rating from passengers is. All of these metrics can stimulate the competitive juices that drive compulsive game-playing.
"The whole thing is like a video game," said Eli Solomon, a veteran Uber and Lyft driver in the Chicago area, who said he sometimes had to fight the urge to work more after glancing at his data.
Sometimes the gamification is quite literal. Like players on video game platforms such as Xbox, PlayStation and Pogo, Uber drivers can earn badges for achievements like Above and Beyond (denoted on the app by a cartoon of a rocket blasting off), Excellent Service (marked by a picture of a sparkling diamond) and Entertaining Drive (a pair of Groucho Marx glasses with nose and eyebrows).
Of course, managers have been borrowing from the logic of games for generations, as when they set up contests and competition among workers. More overt forms of gamification have proliferated during the past decade. For example, Microsoft has used the approach to entice workers to perform the otherwise sleep-inducing task of software debugging.
But Uber can go much further. Because it mediates its drivers' entire work experience through an app, there are few limits to the elements it can gamify. Uber collects staggering amounts of data that allow it to discard game features that do not work and refine those that do. And because its workers are contractors, the gamification strategies are not hemmed in by employment law.
Kevin Werbach, a business professor who has written extensively on the subject, said that while gamification could be a force for good in the gig economy — for example, by creating bonds among workers who do not share a physical space — there was a danger of abuse. "If what you're doing is basically saying, 'We've found a cheap way to get you to do work without paying you for it, we'll pay you in badges that don't cost anything,' that's a manipulative way to go about it," he said.
For some drivers, that is precisely the effect. Scott Weber said he drove full time most weeks last year, picking up passengers in the Tampa area for both Uber and Lyft, yet made less than $20,000 before expenses like gas and maintenance. "I was a business that had a loss," said Weber, who is looking for another job. "I'm using payday loans."
Still, when asked about the badges he earns while driving for Uber, Weber practically gushed. "I've got currently 12 excellent-service and nine great-conversation badges," he said in an interview in early March. "It tells me where I'm at."
'Constantly Busy'
When asked whether Uber's product managers and data scientists were akin to developers at a social gaming company like Zynga, Jonathan Hall, Uber's head of economic and policy research, accepted the analogy but rejected the implication.
"I think there's something to that, but ultimately Zynga should worry mostly about how fun its games are rather than trying to get you to play a little bit more by some trick," he said.He argued that exploiting people's psychological tics was unlikely to have more than a marginal effect on how long they played Zynga's games or drove for Uber. It is "icing on the cake," he said.
Hall is clearly right about the effects of certain techniques, like those pitched at drivers' tendency to set income targets or to focus more on losses than gains. On the other hand, even features that produce relatively small changes in driving patterns can become quite important to a company like Uber.
According to Parker, the former Uber manager in Dallas, increasing the number of drivers on the road by 20 percent at certain hours of the day, or in a busy part of town, can rein in a large fare surge.
More important, some of the psychological levers that Uber pulls to increase the supply of drivers have quite powerful effects.
Consider an algorithm called forward dispatch — Lyft has a similar one — that dispatches a new ride to a driver before the current one ends.
Forward dispatch shortens waiting times for passengers, who may no longer have to wait for a driver 10 minutes away when a second driver is dropping off a passenger two minutes away.
Perhaps no less important, forward dispatch causes drivers to stay on the road substantially longer during busy periods — a key goal for both companies.
Uber and Lyft explain this in essentially the same way. "Drivers keep telling us the worst thing is when they're idle for a long time," said Kevin Fan, director of product at Lyft. "If it's slow, they're going to go sign off. We want to make sure they're constantly busy."
While this is unquestionably true, there is another way to think of the logic of forward dispatch: It overrides self-control.
Perhaps the most prominent example is that such automatic queuing appears to have fostered the rise of binge-watching on Netflix. "When one program is nearing the end of its running time, Netflix will automatically cue up the next episode in that series for you," the scholars Matthew Pittman and Kim Sheehan wrote in a 2015 study of the phenomenon. "It requires very little effort to binge on Netflix; in fact, it takes more effort to stop than to keep going."
As with viewers and binge-watching, many drivers appear to enjoy the forward-dispatch feature, which can increase earnings by keeping them busier. But it can also work against their interests by increasing the number of drivers on the road and defusing fare surges. And whether they enjoy it is separate from the question of agency — whether they have it, or whether the company does.
Uber officials say the feature initially produced so many rides at times that drivers began to experience a chronic Netflix ailment — the inability to stop for a bathroom break. Amid the uproar, Uber introduced a pause button.
"Drivers were saying: 'I can never go offline. I'm on just continuous trips. This is a problem.' So we redesigned it," said Maya Choksi, a senior Uber official in charge of building products that help drivers. "In the middle of the trip, you can say, 'Stop giving me requests.' So you can have more control over when you want to stop driving." It is true that drivers can pause the services' automatic queuing feature if they need to refill their tanks, or empty them, as the case may be. Yet once they log back in and accept their next ride, the feature kicks in again. To disable it, they would have to pause it every time they picked up a new passenger. By contrast, even Netflix allows users to permanently turn off its automatic queuing feature, known as Post-Play.
This pre-emptive hard-wiring can have a huge influence on behavior, said David Laibson, chairman of the economics department at Harvard and a leading behavioral economist. Perhaps most notably, as the researchers Alex Rosenblat and Luke Stark observed in an influential paper on these practices, Uber's app does not let drivers see where a passenger is going before accepting the ride, making it hard to judge how profitable a trip will be.
Sometimes all that is necessary is the mere setting of a default. Because humans tend to be governed by inertia, automatically enrolling them in retirement savings plans and then allowing them to opt out results in far higher participation than letting them opt in. Making Post-Play the default can have the same effect.
"If done right, these things can be socially beneficial," Laibson said. "But you can think of all sorts of choice architecture that are quite contrary to human well-being."
Even Hall, the Uber research director who radiates skepticism toward behavioral economics, did make at least one concession to the field. "The optimal default we set is that we want you to do as much work as there is to do," he said of the company's app. "You're not required to by any means. But that's the default."
Imagining the Future
There are aspects of the platforms that genuinely do increase drivers' control over their work lives, as Uber frequently points out. Unlike most workers, an Uber driver can put in a few hours each day between dropping children off at school and picking them up in the afternoon.
Uber is even in the process of developing a feature that allows drivers to tell the app in advance that they need to arrive at a given location at a given time. "If you need to pick up your kids at soccer practice at 6 p.m.," said Nundu Janakiram, the Uber official in charge of products that improve drivers' experiences, "it will start to give you trips to take you in the general direction to get to a specific place in time."
There is also the possibility that as the online gig economy matures, companies like Uber may adopt a set of norms that limit their ability to manipulate workers through cleverly designed apps.
Kelly Peters, chief executive of BEworks, a management consulting firm specializing in behavioral science, argued that the same data that makes it easier for Uber to nudge drivers into working an additional 30 or 60 minutes also makes it hard to escape the obligation to look after them.
For example, the company has access to a variety of metrics, like braking and acceleration speed, that indicate whether someone is driving erratically and may need to rest. "The next step may be individualized targeting and nudging in the moment," Peters said. "'Hey, you just got three passengers in a row who said they felt unsafe. Go home.'" Uber has rolled out efforts in this vein in numerous cities. That moment of maturity does not appear to have arrived yet, however. Consider a prompt that Uber rolled out this year, inviting drivers to press a large box if they want the app to navigate them to an area where they have a "higher chance" of finding passengers. The accompanying graphic resembles the one that indicates that an area's fares are "surging," except in this case fares are not necessarily higher.
Some drivers believe that the intent is to trick them into driving where Uber wants them to go, rather than where driving would be most profitable, by implying that they will find a surge there. "They're trying to move people where they want them," said Weber, the Tampa-area driver. "But you get there and it's nothing. It happens all the time." Weber noted that the design of the graphic makes the prompt much easier to accept than decline, which requires pressing a small rectangle in the top left corner.
Uber said that the feature was an experiment intended primarily to help new drivers who frequently say they do not know where to find passengers, and that it could be changed if drivers were dissatisfied.
Individual features aside, the broader question of how much Uber seeks to influence drivers through behavioral science may come down to how much its business model requires it.
While the company has made no secret of its investment in self-driving cars, it could be a decade or more before they completely replace human drivers. In the meantime, as long as Uber continues to set growth and passenger volume as critical goals, it will have an incentive to make wringing more hours out of drivers a higher priority than the drivers' bottom line whenever it faces a close call between the two.
It will also have an incentive to obtain these hours as cheaply as possible. And there is simply no cheaper way than hiring contractors and nudging them to drive when and where they are needed. Industry insiders estimate that relying on independent contractors rather than employees can lower direct costs by roughly 25 percent.
Moreover, the contractor model itself provides a strong impetus for companies like Uber to grow. Many companies in the gig economy simply do not have enough workers, or rich enough data about their workers' behavior, to navigate busy periods using nudges and the like. To avoid chronic understaffing, they have switched to an employee model that allows them to compel workers to log in when the companies most need them.
Once companies achieve a certain scale, on the other hand, they enter a virtuous cycle: The risk of understaffing drops with a big enough pool of workers, and the cost savings of using contractors begins to outweigh the inefficiencies. This in turn frees up money to enter new markets and acquire new customers, which makes the contractor model still more efficient, and throws off still more savings.
It is, as a result, not too hard to imagine a future in which massive digital platforms like Uber have an appetite for tens of millions of workers — not only for ferrying people, but also for delivering food and retail goods. Nor is it hard to imagine workers' obliging them, perhaps because their skills do not match the needs of more traditional employers, or because they need to supplement their wages.
In such an economy, experts say, using big data and algorithms to manage workers will not simply be a niche phenomenon. It may become one of the most common ways of managing the American labor force.
"You have all these players entering into this space, and the assumption is they'll do it through vast armies of underemployed people looking for extra hours, and we can control every nuance about what they do but not have to pay them," said David Weil, the top wage-and-hour official under President Barack Obama. When you stop to consider the enormous cost advantages, Weil said, "it says to me this is an area that will grow fast."