Most of western europe actually, but it's not so much about XYZ services but more about saying your employees aren't employees but contractors so you can skip taxes and other annoying things like sick leaves, unemployment benefits, &c.
How was the cab experience in general in Spain before the influx of Uber and other tide sharing services.
Was it like the you could fail a can and it would take you where you wanted to go for a reasonable fare or would cabbie in general cancel rides, ask for more fare than the allowable maximum etc.
It was pretty good, most taxi drivers were self employed but associated to a guild that you could call to request a ride. The prices were set by law and there are enough taxis that flagging down one near a city center was pretty quick, and there are established taxi stops where there is always a queue of taxis waiting. Now there are taxi apps but if you are traveling it's a bit of a mess because they are usually only city wide and you need to figure out which one to download.
In fact, it is usually cheaper to take a taxi instead of Uber or Cabify if there is the slightest amount of demand pricing in action. The Cabify app also is able to request rides from taxis alongside their own service, but I suspect this is for regulatory compliance.
In my opinion, the success of ridesharing apps in Spain is due to knowing upfront how much the trip is going to cost (handy outside your hometown, some less honest taxi drivers would take the, ahem, touristic route, anyway taxi apps offer upfront price now as well) and clean vehicles with well dressed drivers that defer to the passenger. The rude, sweaty taxi driver chain smoking and blasting right wing radio stereotype is still very prevalent in the Spanish collective memory...
Not the services themselves but their job model. JustEst is pretty popular, has a somewhat nice model and does not have problems with the laws.
Glovo is trying to install a job model that does not fit our view of what the relation on employer and employee should be, and because of that has been fined several times.
The case for Uber or Cabify is a bit different. There is a well established Taxi guild which will fight to keep others from taking part of their business, and in that case, each region makes their own decissions and regulations, not the central government.
In my country, Uber promised drivers sky high wages, offered cheap credit, and encouraged them to buy cars on loan and drive for Uber full time.
Of course, the income started going down once the incentives were removed. Drivers could not pay their loans and got their vehicles repossessed. Sit in a Uber in my city and you’ll not hear a single driver say anything good about Uber.
Sure, I know that drivers should have known what they were doing, but if your business model depends on exploiting desperate, poorly educated workers by dangling shiny golden carrots (all with a slick presentation and weapons grade persuasion), then maybe your business can f itself.
Not in this case. The social democrats would be another party (PSOE). She is part of the Communist Party of Spain, a Marxist-Leninist party. They are part of the government in coalition with PSOE (through Izquierda Unida and Podemos, both hard-left parties).
Having adopted socially progressive issues does not make IU or Podemos less communist. As in the name - United Left. They unite everyone from Anarcho syndicalists to Marxist-Leninist. That's a communist party, a united front like how the united front was invented 100 years ago at the turn of the century.
I repeat, I'm from Spain. I know perfectly my politics. Actual commies, the Marxist-Leninist ones do not stay aside with Izquierda Unida. Even less with Podemos.
You seem to think that 'being from somewhere' makes you an expert. I also know Spanish politics. And from what I know, you are basically saying that you are a social conservative. That's the argument of the left who criticise those two parties for 'not being left enough'. I personally know some of them.
I see quite a lot of proper Marxist-Leninists among the ranks of both parties. As I said, them not being conservative enough or allying with social progressives does not make them any less ML, leave aside any less communist.
I guess they are No True Scotsman, but according to themselves [0], to the EU parliament group they belong [1] and my own personal observations, they can mostly be classified as social democrats.
Isn't voting for this party a bit like voting for Hitler or Stalin? What I mean here is, their party sounds like it's ideologically opposed to democracy, so once they have power, they'll simply turn authoritarian, and your country won't be democratic any more.
The European 'united front' type parties include all communist varieties and they are not social democrats. They include everyone from Anarcho Syndicalists to Stalinists to Maoists to plain Marxist-Leninists and all the other varieties.
For social democrats, you look at center-left (or actually, center) parties. They use the name 'socialist' in the name. Whenever you see one, you are looking at centrist social democrats.
The reason why this left coalition with majority centrists is able to do pro-people reforms and fight big money is because the communist coalition partner is pushing hard for it. (And also all of these was signed in the pre-coalition agreement).
So its probably the most successful left wing government in West Europe in the last 40 yeras for that reason. They were able to pass major reforms ranging from the labor reform that now protects 'contractors' to raising the minimum wage two times, from rent control to the new minimum income law among many others. I totally did not expect that they would be able to succeed in that much. It was quite a surprise.
>So its probably the most successful left wing government in West Europe in the last 40 yeras for that reason. They were able to pass major reforms ranging from the labor reform that now protects 'contractors' to raising the minimum wage two times, from rent control to the new minimum income law among many others. I totally did not expect that they would be able to succeed in that much. It was quite a surprise.
This same government pretty much bankrupted most small restaurants in the country, with many only surviving thanks to Glovo and the likes. Win some, lose some, I guess.
> This same government pretty much bankrupted most small restaurants in the country,
Don't you think that Covid could had played some major role in that?.
In any case, your mileage may vary. I see plenty of small restaurants still opened and doing fine. Glovo was being warned several times that had 7000 workers in a precarious illegal situation and that they had to fix it. The company opted for not fixing it, and was fined. Don't blame communists for Glovo's wrong choices, or the government for a global pandemic that nobody asked for.
Only at the start for not reacting fast, and that was due to them getting fooled by the incessant propaganda that was coming from the US and the UK saying that 'there was no pandemic'. For months, the US state department and media lambasted China for 'exaggerating', that there was nothing to worry about and it was just a flu.
They were doing this to protect the Western stock markets. All the Western European governments were totally deceived by this propaganda. Spain's government was the second one in Europe after Italy to take drastic measures and implement a quarantine. In an environment were nations started to backstab each other to acquire masks and pandemic supplies - like how the US robbed a lot of countries' supplies -...
... the Spanish government cooperated with other countries, foremost China, to take rapid action without backstabbing anyone. It immediately implemented economic measures to protect both people and businesses during the pandemic, diverting cash to small businesses, creating minimum income, postponing taxes and giving pandemic stimulus whereas the US and the UK etc literally hung out their people to dry in the pandemic.
I'd say that Spain has been incredibly lucky to have entered the pandemic with this government. Many countries' people suffered a lot in the hands of 'free market' types, who openly declared that they would 'let the pandemic run its course' - to protect corporate tax breaks, of course - no need to spend money for the people.
So aside from getting deceived by the US/UK at the start of the pandemic like every single Western European government, I'd say that this Spanish government has handled the pandemic in an exemplary fashion. That they were ALSO able to achieve some major reforms in the middle of a pandemic goes WAY beyond what anyone could expect...
This would all be much more reasonable if literature genuinely supported lockdowns, but in reality it's a toss-up.
Studies looking at quality-adjusted life years have not discovered a meaningful COVID-related benefit from the lockdowns. The most charitable takes will note that lockdowns did indeed drastically reduce traffic deaths, but it's hard to view that as a genuine pro-lockdown argument.
Lockdowns and masks worked in Asia since forever. They have been fighting outbreaks successfully in the past two decades. They worked for covid too. They 'did not work' in the US because certain circles wanted people to go back outside as fast as possible to bail out the sinking service sector and the stock market.
This is without delving into the fact that the lockdowns' main objective was to prevent healthcare systems from choking. Spain had much more luck than any other European country since it has a high volume of trade with China and also had a left-wing government at the time, prompting and allowing China to come and set up a field hospital too boost hospital capacity in Madrid etc. But still, without lockdowns there was great risk as can be seen from what happened to the likes of the UK...
You have no idea how bad it was. Since everyone concentrated on their own issues, little news of the state of other countries made it into other countries' press.
First, British Tories (the conservative free market types) denied that any pandemic existed. They kept the country open still after Italy, Spain started their lockdowns. They said they would go for 'herd immunity'. Ie, let those who will die die out. After much protest they started a quarantine. Even when they started the quarantine, it was limited at the start. They said it was 'okay' because covid affected mostly the elderly. (so not a problem for 'the economy'). Then things got really bad and they started a lockdown. In which they left everyone fend for themselves. No support like how the Spanish government gave to the businesses and the people. During the quarantine they totally ignored and hush-hushed what happened in retirement homes. Its unknown how many died there. I think there was a lawsuit resulting from that. Then they rushed to open early for the sake of 'the economy', saying that 'herd immunity' would take care of the problem (again). During all this time they were privatizing their social healthcare system, the NHS by defunding it and selling parts of it to US corporations. So at the end of the quarantine when the new waves started, the NHS was flooded and under capacity. They started overworking the underpaid doctors and nurses to the point of breaking. Now even with the strikes the government refuses to pay them more or fund the health system more and instead is planning on laws to prevent the strikes. It is said that an unprecedented number of people are dying as a result of the defunding and privatization of the NHS. People cant even get ambulances. There arent hospital beds and so on.
I lived between Barcelona and London through the lockdowns.
As far as I can tell, current studies indicate that in all likelihood only the first lockdown in the UK may have been "worth it" (and even then, it should have happened earlier and not lasted nearly as long as it did)
Similar sources like the ones who advocated that covid affected mostly the elderly so 'it was okay'. ~200 years of capitalism fostered institutions that propagate its interests. 'The literature' that opposed lockdowns came from mainly Angloamerica. Not even France, Germany or Greece. Not China. Not Korea. Not India.
And with Angloamerica, we mean the US and the UK, really. The others arent even second bananas in the affair. These two countries where deregulated capitalism rides on the stock market, any disruption to the economy is less desirable than the lives of people. Worse, this mentality is normalized. Only in such an environment prominent figures could come up saying 'Covid affects the elderly so its ok'. In any other country on the planet someone saying this would be socially and politically castrated. Not in the US or the UK.
Quarantines were and are always worth it during epidemics and pandemics. Asia had been using them for decades to combat many lesser epidemics until covid. This 'quarantines are not worth it' is a nonsense that has originated from the financial establishment in the Anglosphere only because it was detrimental to stock prices. For no other reason. From the same place comes 'masks dont work' and 'covid is just a flu'.
One must remember that even 'neutral' science has problems with funding bias in an ideal setting...
...whereas private think tanks in Anglosphere literally produce whatever 'research' to support whatever view you want for the right price. Really, at this point the Anglosphere and its institutions cannot be taken as references for anything with their ultra sold-out, principle-free state...
All the small restaurants I knew are still here, despite the pandemic even. And it's necessary because Spanish people eat out for lunch a lot. Prices are usually much lower at lunch, with a special menu of varied choices for a set price.
There is a problem with local people retiring from the restaurant business and selling off to (usually) Chinese which usually means the quality and variety of food and atmosphere suffers. The old owners usually cared about great food for a good price. Nothing wrong with the Chinese as such but they're more business-like, they don't generally take as much pride in their business.
My favorite place was just taken over like that and I miss the old owner who would tell something proud about the food he procured that day, or come over and give us some shots or biscuits after. If he knew you'd really like something he'd serve a little bit extra. He'd serve an amazing three course lunch with drink all for 12€. Service included because tipping is hardly a thing here. The new Chinese just don't care as much, the food is pretty meh and they don't engage with the customers like that. You don't feel as welcome like going to friends for dinner.
But it's not caused by policy. It's just not a popular job anymore for Spanish people. It's hard work. People rather go to college than take over the family restaurant. So other people pick it up. It is what it is, but it's kinda sad that the real neighbourly community places are disappearing. Because it's happening to pretty much every small family restaurant now.
> This same government pretty much bankrupted most small restaurants in the country, with many only surviving thanks to Glovo and the likes
Its not that the government had allowed such companies into the Spanish market. They entered long before. This government is the one which started to take action against such destructive companies for the first time.
Additionally you miss the effects of the pandemic. The pandemic killed small stores and businesses everywhere - or rather, it killed the ones that couldnt branch into selling online...
Uber, Glovo, Airbnb etc are global problems now. The only solution to them is keeping electing governments like this insistently and giving them time to hammer those corporations down.
Pandemic did kill those businesses, statistically. It actually still is killing restaurants and entertainment sector because people's behaviors during the pandemic changed and they go out to shop less and use online entertainment and shopping more.
Europe in general, and Spain in particular, has a more diverse political spectrum beyond the narrow choices that the US voters had. More freedom of choice is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Democracy consists also in allowing other people to vote a party that we don't like and accepting the result as valid. Not always easy, and frustrating sometimes, but it is how it is. You use it, or lose it.
46 comments
[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 105 ms ] threadWas it like the you could fail a can and it would take you where you wanted to go for a reasonable fare or would cabbie in general cancel rides, ask for more fare than the allowable maximum etc.
In fact, it is usually cheaper to take a taxi instead of Uber or Cabify if there is the slightest amount of demand pricing in action. The Cabify app also is able to request rides from taxis alongside their own service, but I suspect this is for regulatory compliance.
In my opinion, the success of ridesharing apps in Spain is due to knowing upfront how much the trip is going to cost (handy outside your hometown, some less honest taxi drivers would take the, ahem, touristic route, anyway taxi apps offer upfront price now as well) and clean vehicles with well dressed drivers that defer to the passenger. The rude, sweaty taxi driver chain smoking and blasting right wing radio stereotype is still very prevalent in the Spanish collective memory...
Glovo is trying to install a job model that does not fit our view of what the relation on employer and employee should be, and because of that has been fined several times.
The case for Uber or Cabify is a bit different. There is a well established Taxi guild which will fight to keep others from taking part of their business, and in that case, each region makes their own decissions and regulations, not the central government.
Of course, the income started going down once the incentives were removed. Drivers could not pay their loans and got their vehicles repossessed. Sit in a Uber in my city and you’ll not hear a single driver say anything good about Uber.
Sure, I know that drivers should have known what they were doing, but if your business model depends on exploiting desperate, poorly educated workers by dangling shiny golden carrots (all with a slick presentation and weapons grade persuasion), then maybe your business can f itself.
The actual Social Democrats are from IU/Podemos.
I see quite a lot of proper Marxist-Leninists among the ranks of both parties. As I said, them not being conservative enough or allying with social progressives does not make them any less ML, leave aside any less communist.
[0] https://www.psoe.es/el-socialista/reflexiones-sobre-la-nueva... [1] https://www.socialistsanddemocrats.eu/who-we-are/our-presenc...
For social democrats, you look at center-left (or actually, center) parties. They use the name 'socialist' in the name. Whenever you see one, you are looking at centrist social democrats.
The reason why this left coalition with majority centrists is able to do pro-people reforms and fight big money is because the communist coalition partner is pushing hard for it. (And also all of these was signed in the pre-coalition agreement).
So its probably the most successful left wing government in West Europe in the last 40 yeras for that reason. They were able to pass major reforms ranging from the labor reform that now protects 'contractors' to raising the minimum wage two times, from rent control to the new minimum income law among many others. I totally did not expect that they would be able to succeed in that much. It was quite a surprise.
If any, a Marxist would vote them as the "least wrong" choice.
This same government pretty much bankrupted most small restaurants in the country, with many only surviving thanks to Glovo and the likes. Win some, lose some, I guess.
Don't you think that Covid could had played some major role in that?.
In any case, your mileage may vary. I see plenty of small restaurants still opened and doing fine. Glovo was being warned several times that had 7000 workers in a precarious illegal situation and that they had to fix it. The company opted for not fixing it, and was fined. Don't blame communists for Glovo's wrong choices, or the government for a global pandemic that nobody asked for.
https://i.imgur.com/0MNniYD.jpg
They were doing this to protect the Western stock markets. All the Western European governments were totally deceived by this propaganda. Spain's government was the second one in Europe after Italy to take drastic measures and implement a quarantine. In an environment were nations started to backstab each other to acquire masks and pandemic supplies - like how the US robbed a lot of countries' supplies -...
https://nypost.com/2020/04/04/us-accused-of-piracy-as-mask-s...
... the Spanish government cooperated with other countries, foremost China, to take rapid action without backstabbing anyone. It immediately implemented economic measures to protect both people and businesses during the pandemic, diverting cash to small businesses, creating minimum income, postponing taxes and giving pandemic stimulus whereas the US and the UK etc literally hung out their people to dry in the pandemic.
I'd say that Spain has been incredibly lucky to have entered the pandemic with this government. Many countries' people suffered a lot in the hands of 'free market' types, who openly declared that they would 'let the pandemic run its course' - to protect corporate tax breaks, of course - no need to spend money for the people.
So aside from getting deceived by the US/UK at the start of the pandemic like every single Western European government, I'd say that this Spanish government has handled the pandemic in an exemplary fashion. That they were ALSO able to achieve some major reforms in the middle of a pandemic goes WAY beyond what anyone could expect...
Studies looking at quality-adjusted life years have not discovered a meaningful COVID-related benefit from the lockdowns. The most charitable takes will note that lockdowns did indeed drastically reduce traffic deaths, but it's hard to view that as a genuine pro-lockdown argument.
This is without delving into the fact that the lockdowns' main objective was to prevent healthcare systems from choking. Spain had much more luck than any other European country since it has a high volume of trade with China and also had a left-wing government at the time, prompting and allowing China to come and set up a field hospital too boost hospital capacity in Madrid etc. But still, without lockdowns there was great risk as can be seen from what happened to the likes of the UK...
Uh, what exactly happened in the UK?
First, British Tories (the conservative free market types) denied that any pandemic existed. They kept the country open still after Italy, Spain started their lockdowns. They said they would go for 'herd immunity'. Ie, let those who will die die out. After much protest they started a quarantine. Even when they started the quarantine, it was limited at the start. They said it was 'okay' because covid affected mostly the elderly. (so not a problem for 'the economy'). Then things got really bad and they started a lockdown. In which they left everyone fend for themselves. No support like how the Spanish government gave to the businesses and the people. During the quarantine they totally ignored and hush-hushed what happened in retirement homes. Its unknown how many died there. I think there was a lawsuit resulting from that. Then they rushed to open early for the sake of 'the economy', saying that 'herd immunity' would take care of the problem (again). During all this time they were privatizing their social healthcare system, the NHS by defunding it and selling parts of it to US corporations. So at the end of the quarantine when the new waves started, the NHS was flooded and under capacity. They started overworking the underpaid doctors and nurses to the point of breaking. Now even with the strikes the government refuses to pay them more or fund the health system more and instead is planning on laws to prevent the strikes. It is said that an unprecedented number of people are dying as a result of the defunding and privatization of the NHS. People cant even get ambulances. There arent hospital beds and so on.
https://eand.co/welcome-to-dickensian-britain-97bf9e7fe93a
https://eand.co/why-britains-nhs-is-dying-and-why-it-s-a-war...
What the Brits are doing to themselves through these Toff governments defies description.
As far as I can tell, current studies indicate that in all likelihood only the first lockdown in the UK may have been "worth it" (and even then, it should have happened earlier and not lasted nearly as long as it did)
You'll easily find a bunch of rather credible literature on the subject, e.g. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/d.miles/document/7583/Mile...
Or more folksy news articles like https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/14/coronavirus-co...
Are you aware of conflicting literature?
And with Angloamerica, we mean the US and the UK, really. The others arent even second bananas in the affair. These two countries where deregulated capitalism rides on the stock market, any disruption to the economy is less desirable than the lives of people. Worse, this mentality is normalized. Only in such an environment prominent figures could come up saying 'Covid affects the elderly so its ok'. In any other country on the planet someone saying this would be socially and politically castrated. Not in the US or the UK.
Quarantines were and are always worth it during epidemics and pandemics. Asia had been using them for decades to combat many lesser epidemics until covid. This 'quarantines are not worth it' is a nonsense that has originated from the financial establishment in the Anglosphere only because it was detrimental to stock prices. For no other reason. From the same place comes 'masks dont work' and 'covid is just a flu'.
One must remember that even 'neutral' science has problems with funding bias in an ideal setting...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_bias
...whereas private think tanks in Anglosphere literally produce whatever 'research' to support whatever view you want for the right price. Really, at this point the Anglosphere and its institutions cannot be taken as references for anything with their ultra sold-out, principle-free state...
So, we're just supposed to believe without evidence that the lockdowns were good because ... ?
There is a problem with local people retiring from the restaurant business and selling off to (usually) Chinese which usually means the quality and variety of food and atmosphere suffers. The old owners usually cared about great food for a good price. Nothing wrong with the Chinese as such but they're more business-like, they don't generally take as much pride in their business.
My favorite place was just taken over like that and I miss the old owner who would tell something proud about the food he procured that day, or come over and give us some shots or biscuits after. If he knew you'd really like something he'd serve a little bit extra. He'd serve an amazing three course lunch with drink all for 12€. Service included because tipping is hardly a thing here. The new Chinese just don't care as much, the food is pretty meh and they don't engage with the customers like that. You don't feel as welcome like going to friends for dinner.
But it's not caused by policy. It's just not a popular job anymore for Spanish people. It's hard work. People rather go to college than take over the family restaurant. So other people pick it up. It is what it is, but it's kinda sad that the real neighbourly community places are disappearing. Because it's happening to pretty much every small family restaurant now.
Its not that the government had allowed such companies into the Spanish market. They entered long before. This government is the one which started to take action against such destructive companies for the first time.
Additionally you miss the effects of the pandemic. The pandemic killed small stores and businesses everywhere - or rather, it killed the ones that couldnt branch into selling online...
Uber, Glovo, Airbnb etc are global problems now. The only solution to them is keeping electing governments like this insistently and giving them time to hammer those corporations down.
Democracy consists also in allowing other people to vote a party that we don't like and accepting the result as valid. Not always easy, and frustrating sometimes, but it is how it is. You use it, or lose it.
So nothing to do with the fine