Don't all of these objections equally apply to driving in the city? Well, except hills. The link I gave, however, does point to maps for how to avoid the hills, and a route called "The Wiggle", at http://localwiki.net/sf/The_Wiggle .
I've never lived in SF. I have bike commuted in a city with hills. Low gears, go slow, and your leg muscles quickly build up to it.
The bike is the starship of the past and it is still a starship. You might try riding a bike around SF. It is an amazing super power.
Update: dalke above wrote "I thought it was going to end up that the author decided to ride a bike around the city. The starship of the past is still a starship." You seemed to ask for clarification about when you talked about a starship from the past. You didn't. dalke did. I clarified what he meant. You should reread this thread, take a step back and climb out of your own head. Read.
That's exactly what I meant. The piece uses parallel construction as a device to explain the sense of freedom. Uber is the starship of the present, compared to the the car or the taxi, in the same way that a bicycle is the starship of the past, compared to walking. No, it wasn't explicitly stated, but easily inferred that to the younger version of the author, the bicycle is a starship.
In reading the piece, I thought it would break the parallel construction by joining the present back to the past. It didn't. But it didn't explain why those couldn't be connected other than "We aren’t children anymore and things cost money."
I took that line to mean that the author recognized a need to separate the worlds of childhood and adulthood. I didn't like this explanation because bicycles do cost money. Eg, in the jwz link I posted, jwz points out that bicycles will get stolen, so use cheap bikes and don't get attached to it. If the mean time between thefts is 100 trips, then that's about $5/trip, or well below the cost of a car, taxi, and Uber.
The difference between the Forbes article and the Economist article is the Economist article cites facts and figures.
Economies tend to be more complicated than you think. For example: ATMs may have led to an increase in banking activity, and a perception of greater value for bank accounts, which may have actually led to a greater demand for local branches and thank tellers.
While I think you're being sarcastic, I believe the issue is this:
SF taxi rates are regulated. This can lead to scarcity for everyone.
Uber prices are not regulated. This can lead to scarcity for the poor.
(Morally speaking, which is better?)
So long as there's a linear (or perhaps "convex" might be a better term) response, then yes, more competition and lower barriers tends to drive prices down.
Traffic is not one of them. Adding a few percentage more drivers can drastically slow everyone down. If small vehicles are the only way to get from place to place, and since the price of the trip on average is a profit for the driver, then it's advantageous for paid drivers to have more drivers on the streets. This causes more congestion, which causes longer drive times, which in turn requires more drivers to meet the demand. This is a stable solution, so is an example where more competition and lower barriers to entry end up increasing transportation costs.
The city doesn't want congested streets. They make it hard to get business done, including goods deliveries and scheduling face-to-face meetings, and add pollution and more chances for accidents with serious injuries.
Instead, observe that my preconditions are incorrect. There are other modes of transportation, including walking, biking, and public or private mass transit. A city might introduce a medallion system as one way to limit congestion, and use the resulting artificial scarcity as a way to entice people to use other transportation schemes which are overall better for the city.
That's good in theory, but is it actually true that cities are currently full of mostly Uber cars to the point where it's a problem? Or unregulated cabs, in cities that don't have medallions.
The optimal economic solution would be to tax all traffic, have toll roads, or some kind of technological solution. I can't see any city ever doing that though. But it's only relevant if it really is a serious problem.
The parent comment was ridiculous. It asserted that eliminating $100k barrier to entry, eliminating a monopoly (their own words), and increasing competition would drive prices up. You could maybe argue that congestion would increase, but prices almost certainly would not.
Yes, mine is a mathematical model. I believe that only NYC is close to that point, but I have no evidence to prove it.
In any case, the SF mayor wants to raise the number of medallions as a source of revenue, so it's clear they are not limiting the number in order to influence transportation modality use. (The legislative history suggests that a goal of Prop K, which put the current regulations into place, was to prevent oligarchies in the local taxi cab industry.)
FWIW, http://www.emmanuelcombe.org/moor.pdf does an overview of what economists have written on the topic. Some papers conclude that taxi deregulation does what you think it would do, some papers conclude otherwise. There's no clear consensus.
but the entity that controls the use of the medallion in the end is the one assigning the price. that is important.
if you have problems with the number of taxis, you don't solve it by throwing the hole system in the garbage and going full liberal. you put the people doing the bad planning to answer for their bad work.
I know it is very hard for you to understand why taxi prices being regulated is a bad thing, you being a young yuppie in san francisco. but i hope you still have it when you are older, retired, with no close family, having to move around.
Sounds like the author has more money than time — which is not an insult, just a condition. For such people, Uber is a great service, like the others that allow one to pay for an increase in convenience and pleasantness. For people who have less money and don't care quite as much about such intangibles as rudeness, the savings are likely worthwhile.
Uber is under attack as being illegal. Why would a society that has created a product so clearly superior ever challenge it as being illegal?
It's not being "challenged" as being illegal, is it, though? The laws as written are simply being enforced — with some laxity in many places. And it was two different groups, not just one "society," that created the product and the laws under which it is illegal. Those laws will change, but it takes time, during which the service remains technically illegal. Marijuana was technically illegal here in Seattle until very recently, but the police chief publicly said it was the department's lowest priority. That's a tacit disavowal of the law in anticipation of it being changed — and I suspect it will be that way with Uber as well for some time, except where the laws prohibiting it are particularly strong.
I don't mean to nitpick, but I have to take exception to the line "don’t talk loudly on their cell phones about you in a foreign language".
Obviously talking loudly on a cell phone is an undesirable trait for a driver. No question. But I do question the assertion that they're talking about you. I speak a few common languages and have heard taxi drivers around the world speak on their phones and assuming that I only speak English. They very rarely talk about me and if they do, it's usually in a relatively professional context, i.e. "I just picked a guy up at the airport", not "this idiot doesn't know what I'm saying so I'm going to say insulting things about him".
I don't know quite why people who hear others speaking a foreign language tend to assume they are the topic of conversation. People usually have more important things to talk about. Of course, sometimes you do catch somebody talking about you and that tends to be hilariously awkward when you respond in his/her language!
People are for some reason really paranoid about that kind of stuff. Have you never experienced a group of people laughing and think they were laughing at you?
But I think the other was hyperbolizing to make his point.
I have experienced a group of people laughing and suspected they were laughing at me, but usually when there was some reason for it, like having a bad haircut! I don't assume groups of people laugh at/about me unprovoked. I hope I'm right... :)
But whispering is a deliberate attempt to conceal what you're saying. Speaking to somebody in another language is usually not an attempt at concealment, it's just about people communicating in the way they are most comfortable.
I guess I just am sensitive to the unfortunately common American assumption that everybody should speak English. My first time at SFO a hispanic woman was at the baggage carousel with her son. The son asked, in English, if he could lift the bag off the carousel when it arrived and his mother explained, in English, that he was too small to lift it. The kid didn't drop it and the mother lost her temper and scolded him in Spanish. At that point, a lady beside her turned to her and said "speak in English, please"! That blew my mind...
While there are many cogent points to take away from the OP, I feel that the attack and attribution of motives to very large, very faceless organizations is misguided at best. I'm sure there are some who value the revenue that comes in, especially given how many other large organizations duck their responsibility in supporting public infrastructure. But I'm also sure that there are people who voted for politicians to create these laws, precisely because there were issues with unlicensed, unregulated taxis. Take the OP as one data point; I'm sure that there are just as many horror stories about Uber experiences out there, some of which could have been prevented by regulations.
Not saying it's perfect, there's definitely room for improvement. But the broad brush strokes of this piece feel too broad, and not nearly deep enough.
37 comments
[ 1.2 ms ] story [ 82.7 ms ] threadAs jwz pointed out, at http://www.jwz.org/blog/2008/05/the-collected-jwz-bicycle-wi... , SF "is only 7 miles across. Nothing is as far away as you think it is."
I've never lived in SF. I have bike commuted in a city with hills. Low gears, go slow, and your leg muscles quickly build up to it.
Update: dalke above wrote "I thought it was going to end up that the author decided to ride a bike around the city. The starship of the past is still a starship." You seemed to ask for clarification about when you talked about a starship from the past. You didn't. dalke did. I clarified what he meant. You should reread this thread, take a step back and climb out of your own head. Read.
In reading the piece, I thought it would break the parallel construction by joining the present back to the past. It didn't. But it didn't explain why those couldn't be connected other than "We aren’t children anymore and things cost money."
I took that line to mean that the author recognized a need to separate the worlds of childhood and adulthood. I didn't like this explanation because bicycles do cost money. Eg, in the jwz link I posted, jwz points out that bicycles will get stolen, so use cheap bikes and don't get attached to it. If the mean time between thefts is 100 trips, then that's about $5/trip, or well below the cost of a car, taxi, and Uber.
On another note, I've never before experienced someone so vehemently excited about replacing taxis with ... other ... taxis.
@georgesibble
PS: I am currently unpublished and working on a book.
From 1985 to 2002, bank teller employment went up by over 40,000, and from 2002 to 2008 over 75,000 more on top of that[1].
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/06/te...
Economies tend to be more complicated than you think. For example: ATMs may have led to an increase in banking activity, and a perception of greater value for bank accounts, which may have actually led to a greater demand for local branches and thank tellers.
Thank you for making that clear. :)
Please go tell them that. I'm sure that will put them at ease.
Not a great parallel - those taxi drivers can become Uber (or lyft, or sidecar, etc) drivers
on the other hand, uber price will only go up. until only the rich is allowed to be driven in the city.
SF taxi rates are regulated. This can lead to scarcity for everyone.
Uber prices are not regulated. This can lead to scarcity for the poor.
(Morally speaking, which is better?)
So long as there's a linear (or perhaps "convex" might be a better term) response, then yes, more competition and lower barriers tends to drive prices down.
Traffic is not one of them. Adding a few percentage more drivers can drastically slow everyone down. If small vehicles are the only way to get from place to place, and since the price of the trip on average is a profit for the driver, then it's advantageous for paid drivers to have more drivers on the streets. This causes more congestion, which causes longer drive times, which in turn requires more drivers to meet the demand. This is a stable solution, so is an example where more competition and lower barriers to entry end up increasing transportation costs.
The city doesn't want congested streets. They make it hard to get business done, including goods deliveries and scheduling face-to-face meetings, and add pollution and more chances for accidents with serious injuries.
Instead, observe that my preconditions are incorrect. There are other modes of transportation, including walking, biking, and public or private mass transit. A city might introduce a medallion system as one way to limit congestion, and use the resulting artificial scarcity as a way to entice people to use other transportation schemes which are overall better for the city.
The optimal economic solution would be to tax all traffic, have toll roads, or some kind of technological solution. I can't see any city ever doing that though. But it's only relevant if it really is a serious problem.
The parent comment was ridiculous. It asserted that eliminating $100k barrier to entry, eliminating a monopoly (their own words), and increasing competition would drive prices up. You could maybe argue that congestion would increase, but prices almost certainly would not.
In any case, the SF mayor wants to raise the number of medallions as a source of revenue, so it's clear they are not limiting the number in order to influence transportation modality use. (The legislative history suggests that a goal of Prop K, which put the current regulations into place, was to prevent oligarchies in the local taxi cab industry.)
FWIW, http://www.emmanuelcombe.org/moor.pdf does an overview of what economists have written on the topic. Some papers conclude that taxi deregulation does what you think it would do, some papers conclude otherwise. There's no clear consensus.
See http://www.thelocal.se/20090112/16868 for some of the situations that occur in a deregulated taxi marketplace.
The history of taxi medallions in SF shows that Prop K was voted on to prevent oligarchies.
if you have problems with the number of taxis, you don't solve it by throwing the hole system in the garbage and going full liberal. you put the people doing the bad planning to answer for their bad work.
I know it is very hard for you to understand why taxi prices being regulated is a bad thing, you being a young yuppie in san francisco. but i hope you still have it when you are older, retired, with no close family, having to move around.
Uber is under attack as being illegal. Why would a society that has created a product so clearly superior ever challenge it as being illegal?
It's not being "challenged" as being illegal, is it, though? The laws as written are simply being enforced — with some laxity in many places. And it was two different groups, not just one "society," that created the product and the laws under which it is illegal. Those laws will change, but it takes time, during which the service remains technically illegal. Marijuana was technically illegal here in Seattle until very recently, but the police chief publicly said it was the department's lowest priority. That's a tacit disavowal of the law in anticipation of it being changed — and I suspect it will be that way with Uber as well for some time, except where the laws prohibiting it are particularly strong.
And time is money. I don't have enough of either.
Obviously talking loudly on a cell phone is an undesirable trait for a driver. No question. But I do question the assertion that they're talking about you. I speak a few common languages and have heard taxi drivers around the world speak on their phones and assuming that I only speak English. They very rarely talk about me and if they do, it's usually in a relatively professional context, i.e. "I just picked a guy up at the airport", not "this idiot doesn't know what I'm saying so I'm going to say insulting things about him".
I don't know quite why people who hear others speaking a foreign language tend to assume they are the topic of conversation. People usually have more important things to talk about. Of course, sometimes you do catch somebody talking about you and that tends to be hilariously awkward when you respond in his/her language!
But I think the other was hyperbolizing to make his point.
I guess I just am sensitive to the unfortunately common American assumption that everybody should speak English. My first time at SFO a hispanic woman was at the baggage carousel with her son. The son asked, in English, if he could lift the bag off the carousel when it arrived and his mother explained, in English, that he was too small to lift it. The kid didn't drop it and the mother lost her temper and scolded him in Spanish. At that point, a lady beside her turned to her and said "speak in English, please"! That blew my mind...
Not saying it's perfect, there's definitely room for improvement. But the broad brush strokes of this piece feel too broad, and not nearly deep enough.