I had the same question, for what it's worth. Why make someone feel dumb for asking?
I wonder if HN would benefit from a guideline like, "If someone asks a question whose answer seems obvious, try to answer it in a straightforward way. For example, 'You really don't know what 2+2 is?' can be shortened to '2+2 is 4.'"
There are interesting followup questions on this topic, too. If Uber won't reimburse them, why not? On the other hand, would it even be legal for Uber to reimburse them, since Uber is doing so with the intent of "transferring" the penalty of the law from the driver to Uber? One reason to have laws is so that their penalties act as a deterrent. If Uber is preventing the deterrent from having an effect, then perhaps the legal system might take a dim view of this. Whether that'd be punishable, I have no idea; the point is simply that there are many interesting questions that can be derived from the starting point of "Will Uber be reimbursing the drivers?"
Because abandoning Uber operators at a time of transition, or industry revolution as it could be called, would in many ways undermine its expansion if potential operators have abandonment to fear.
Yeah, most of those are uber screwing over drivers.
Except the one you quoted, which really confuses me. It's not uber's fault if demand is low in a particular location. Heck, that's actually a pretty good rate, full-time minimum wage for only doing a ride every two hours.
The reason I included that one is because Uber pushes the fantasy that you can make enough money in a weekend of driving to replace your full time job. The reality is that competition is fierce, especially in larger markets, and unless you're a reckless, aggressive driver you'll never make enough in a full week to pay for the brand new car they require you to drive along with a living wage.
Basically, you end up an indentured servant, getting pennies on the dollar.
"Deplorable charade." Are they referring to their own actions? I mean "charade (n.) something that is done in order to pretend something is true when it is not really true." The PPA regulations are true, are they not? It's the legality of driving an UberX which is the charade, no?
Perhaps the "deplorable charade" is the argument that PPA regulation isn't necessary in the mobility space? Or overbearing?
I don't much care for Uber's practices, but I agree with the argument that taxi medallions are rent-seeking and all efforts to break down senseless regulation of the taxi industry should take place. Note I said "senseless" regulation. You should still require insurance, background checks/driver's license verification or drivers, and so forth.
Whether it's necessary or not doesn't change the fact that Uber knew the current state of the laws and told their drivers they were operating legally.
It looks like Uber set up the situation so that these drivers could be martyrs in Uber's PR cause. Uber can now say "look, how terrible the PPA is, we shall defend our drivers from this injustice!". They score some PR points at the cost of massively affecting the drivers' lives.
The non-shitty way to accomplish their goal would have been for them to organize the people who wanted the laws to change and to actually participate in the political process, rather than trying to end-run the system by just moving in to town and setting up shop.
> The non-shitty way to accomplish their goal would have been for them to organize the people who wanted the laws to change and to actually participate in the political process, rather than trying to end-run the system by just moving in to town and setting up shop.
Unfortunately, Uber's process is much more likely to evoke change than "participating in the political process". Consumers are much more interested in the interests than your average voter.
If the average voter doesn't want the system to change, should it?
I'm not sure I'm fully a fan of derailing this thread into a discussion of the disconnect between progress and true democracy, but if we allow the minority of the population to override the majority's decision because we "know better" than them, are we still being democratic?
Once the number of people using these P2P economy services reaches a critical mass, shouldn't voting with their dollars by using these services be seen indirectly as a vote supporting these changes?
Furthermore, there is absolutely no indication that the status quo is the "majority's decision". These days, which regulatory capture, the revolving door and pork barreling, it's pretty much impossible to tell what laws were passed because it's the majority decision and which were favors traded among members congress to support the interests of their biggest donors.
We have at best a quasi-democratic system; i.e. just enough democracy to maintain an illusion of a functioning democracy.
I don't think that's derailing it at all. It's at the very core of my ambivalent feelings about companies like Uber and AirBNB.
There aren't great social injustices at work here, overheated rhetoric aside.
At worst there's run of the mill corruption. The concepts of what these kinds of regulation do are well-founded and something society has clearly wanted. The exact implementations may well have been corrupted, but the stated intent of the laws and regulations are in the public interest, and the public has been happy-ish with them.
Does that then mean the fix is to throw out the whole regimen of rules? For example, someone mentioned Seattle hasn't issued new medallions in decades. So the solution is to do away with medallions? Why not just issue more?
What about county level food safety inspectors? Many of those regulatory agencies are also corrupt. And don't even start with alcohol licensing. But should we "disrupt" those too? Just ignore them because there's some corruption in the system?
When you get down to it, none of these companies want to increase consumer choice. In their perfect world, they'd be the only choice. So it's hard to accept they're really out for the public good.
And that makes it really difficult for me to cheer them on as they pick and choose which laws they accept as valid expressions of the people's will.
The people aren't really being given a vote here. Well, actually, they have been given a vote, and these companies are choosing to ignore it for their own benefit.
As I said, it's not some great social injustice at stake. Civil Rights leaders broke the law with greater purposes in mind than "So my company can be valued in the billions".
> I'm not sure I'm fully a fan of derailing this thread into a discussion of the disconnect between progress and true democracy, but if we allow the minority of the population to override the majority's decision because we "know better" than them, are we still being democratic?
The majority of the population (I speak US-centric here, as I'm a US citizen) wasn't for same-sex marriage nor healthcare reform, yet we "knew better" to enact both.
> If the average voter doesn't want the system to change, should it?
Yes. We should never cater to the lowest common denominator.
At a minimum, Uber could have advised the drivers that they were engaging in civil disobedience. They appear to have resorted to conscripting protesters.
If you pay someone to commit a crime, doesn't that make you criminally liable as well? How are they going to reimburse someone for being caught breaking the law? That seems less than sane.
Crime is a function of law, an action is only a crime if it breaks the law. So no legislating the law by lawfully elected individuals is not a crime. This is true even if you disagree with the laws that were written. I will be candid and share with you that I think what you asked is a stupid question on multiple levels. I assume you're riled up whenever the government does its job of governing, which yes, involves enforcing the law and taking things from people, like their freedom and or property.
There's a democratic process in place in our country that allows you to help decide who is in power, if you're unhappy with who is in power become more involved in elections.
It's not so simple. I'm not aware of all the laws that would apply in this particular case, which is why I asked the question, but I know that in many jurisdictions there are laws against abuse of power and corruption. If a political official were to explicitly say "I am supporting Proposition X because it will return some benefit to my benefactors," would that not be a criminal offense? Granted, it's well-accepted that such is the norm in politics, but I don't think that means that it's not criminal. Many politicians have been charged with crimes like abuse of official capacity, bribery, and fraud, for similar actions.
I disagree with and resent both your claim that my question is stupid and your claim that the recourse for a broken political system is becoming more involved in elections.
Corruption is illegal, but that isn't what you asked. I take back what I said about it being stupid though, I've given it more thought since then, and I was stupid for saying it was stupid. It's actually an interesting question.
That was the first thing that came to my mind too. The more I read about Uber, the more I dislike them. And it's really just that company I don't like; I think the idea of taxi alternatives like Uber and Lyft is a good one, but Uber has shown several times that they don't give a shit about their drivers, their riders, or the law. I see other companies like Lyft, who seem to be playing by the rules and treating their drivers and riders with respect, as the future of this industry.
What is involved in becoming a cab driver in Philly? Is it medallion costs, vehicle costs (buying or renting), tests, etc.?
Another example of backlash to Uber/Hailo etc. has been the London black taxis. Their operators study for years for very difficult tests in order to be licensed operators, and pay significant costs in doing so, and as such I can understand why they would be irritated by competition coming in without these conditions, but if these conditions don't exist then it's market protectionism at a cost to the consumer.
London black cabs can use a meter and don't need pre-booking. London private hire cabs must be pre-booked and they must arrange a price before travelling - they can't use a meter.
Uber is free to conform to either of those modes but choses not to.
I can certainly understand why people who have invested a ton into the current system are upset, but that just argues for a more orderly transition. The Knowledge is pretty well obsolete in the age of GPS. It'd be a sad thing to lose, though.
I can see why London operators would be upset. They're the most consistently professional and knowledgeable service force I've ever encountered. And London traffic I think is greatly improved by the road being taken up almost exclusively with taxis and buses, as they're all driving in optimal and intelligent ways.
Indeed, internationally London taxi drivers far outrank their competitors.
The only issue, I suppose, is that their base of knowledge - the studying they do, the tests they pass to be licensed, etc. - is already irrelevant in a time of modern GPS and Sat Nav, and will become increasingly so as we begin to move to an era of self-driving vehicles.
It seems like Uber does this just for the headlines. They know they need to have laws changed in order to break past government-sanctioned taxi monopolies. And they know they're going to get in trouble for breaking the current laws.
The headlines always end up as The Government sticking it to The Working Man, and Uber eats that stuff up.
Well, here, the PPA is deplored almost absolutely, for constant abuse of power. Over the weekend, an insurance company went bankrupt leaving about 1/3 of Philadelphia's taxi fleet without insurance. The PPA decide to allow taxis to continue to roll despite their insurance company being bankrupt[0] and then the next day did this to an UberX driver over insurance woes.
This is why it's a big deal here in Philly. The corruption of the PPA knows no bounds.
I think I'm the one person who likes the PPA (though I had no idea they regulated taxis before today). I don't usually park in the street, but when I do there's almost always a spot free because people actually move their cars when time is up. People hate getting caught, then transfer that hate to the PPA even though they should know the odds of slipping by are slim.
I don't know anything about the PPA, but that's not really a good comparison. The taxis that were without insurance were presumably working around the clock to get it sorted out, and had some communication with the PPA to let them know about the problem.
Uber on the other hand knew that what they were doing was illegal from the start, had been warned about it and had every opportunity to delay the launch of the service until the legal stuff was sorted out.
First Keystone Risk Retention Group Inc. It's in grandparent's reference link (emphasis mine):
"The taxi owners contend their existing insurance continues to provide coverage for 30 days, despite the insolvency of First Keystone Risk Retention Group Inc. ...
The insurance company was ordered liquidated Tuesday by a South Carolina judge at the request of the state insurance director"
I wouldn't say they do it just for the headlines. It's clearly also in their interest to offer service in major cities, and Philadelphia is one of them.
That said, I'm sure they're also aware of the possibility of good press from incidents like this. I don't have a problem with that.
Good for the PPA. Regardless of the laws being stuck in time or not, uber has repeatedly defied laws especially in California where they specifically are told your ride share is illegal shut it down, and they don't. Sad for the drivers but they themselves should also be more aware of the laws that apply. Bad on uber for not even explaining the possibility which of course they know about.
"If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so. -Thomas Jefferson
This has never been more true when it comes to ride sharing companies."
Seriously? Never been more true?
Prohibiting unlicensed rides-for-hire (it's not 'ride sharing') is more unjust than say...Jim Crow laws?
Your original comment is fine, waterlesscloud is mis-paraphrasing you to make a point.
>>This has never been more true when it comes to ride sharing companies.
___"WHEN IT COMES TO RIDE SHARING COMPANIES"___, that part of the sentence is important. As in, you didn't say "when it comes to human rights!" or something overly-dramatic like that. You reduced the scope to only ride sharing. And I'm assuming you didn't edit your comment after the replies.
>And I'm assuming you didn't edit your comment after the replies.
No, I did not. Thank you for backing me up there.
I was a bit confused as to his protest of my wording of the comment. I certainly did not mean to say that ride sharing is the most important debate of our time.
I only meant that the quote is perfectly fitting to the current situation surrounding ride sharing and the taxi monopolies.
I think you mentally inserted the word "than" between his words "true" and "when". If he had written it that way, then your indignation would be justified. As it is written, it means that when it comes to ride sharing companies, that quote rings true in a profound way.
The way you misread it, it would indeed seem to say that the situation with ride sharing companies violating the law is exactly what old Thomas Jefferson was talking about. But you misread it, obviously.
I probably did mentally insert "than", but that doesn't make it any less absurd to use a Jefferson quote in an attempt to elevate this to some sort of righteous crusade.
I'll respectfully disagree; the point was that civil disobedience is valid and necessary when a law is absurd or doesn't serve the good of the people. The fact that one of our founding fathers said it makes it no less relevant or profound today.
And I don't even like Uber; I think in general they treat their drivers like crap, and I realize that they are only flouting this law because it stands in the way of their business model. But just as with Tesla (a company I do respect), they are breaking new ground and showing the rest of the country that these archaic laws exist only to protect the establishment. The laws should be reexamined, and if the people find that the laws are incompatible with their needs, the laws should be changed.
Today I learned that I am obligated to sign up as an UberX driver. I don't really need the money and I'd rather do other things in my spare time, but if TJ says I've got to, then I've got to.
On one hand the taxi monopoly is certainly something which has to be reconsidered, on the other hand I'm not sure UberX screening and insurance is sufficient.
One of the things I like about taxi drivers is that they are accountable. If I see one behaving badly, I call up the city taxi commission and let 'em know. If the commission decides they shouldn't be driving a taxi, they will no longer be driving a taxi at all in this town. Good luck doing that with some rando driving for Uber, though.
For similar reasons, I'm also pretty sure the insurance situation is solid. In direct contrast to Uber, where they actively disclaim any responsibility for their cars and drivers.
There are a lot of problems with the taxi industry. It's in deep need of reform. But in my view, Uber's cure is worse than the disease.
If you see Uber driver behaving badly, you can call Uber.
>>> Good luck doing that with some rando driving for Uber, though.
Why? Every driver is identified and known, and Uber has a lot of incentive to weed out bad drivers, especially when they are just starting the service and couple of bad reviews can kill adoption for a whole market. What incentive Uber has to support bad service? I can tell one incentive for city politicians to do it - taxi lobbyists pay into their campaign funds, and you do not (at least not as much, unless you are Zuckerberg, in which case you probably have your own limo anyway), so who has more influence on them?
>>> For similar reasons, I'm also pretty sure the insurance situation is solid.
Because Uber just dreams about uninsured million-dollar lawsuit. Nothing inspires investors to invest into a young business as much as an uninsured risk of a million-dollar lawsuits, right? And Uber doesn't care about investors or risks - unlike city politicians whose very future is linked to the fact whether city would be sued or not, since lawsuit cost comes out of their pockets... Oh wait, I got it in reverse - city politician could not care less if the city is sued since taxpayers would pay it anyway, while Uber guys risk their own money and their investors money. Yet somehow you trust more the guy who uses your money to insure your risks and has zero incentive to preserve it and large incentive to follow lobby interests over guy who uses their own money and has large incentive to preserve it. I wonder how it works out for you.
>>> But in my view, Uber's cure is worse than the disease.
Worse in what? Of course, if you refuse to trust anything that does not say "State Commission" and is not rules by an unaccountable bureaucrat, then every cure would be worse than the disease for you. However, do not be very surprised if you find no cures at all, because you seem to be insisting on having the disease as a precondition to finding the cure.
Because every taxi is marked with a number that I can see. Uber cars are just random cars. And Uber is just one of many services employing any warm body they can find.
The rest seems like generic Argument From Libertarian Fantasy, with the apparently requisite bad grammar and bad-faith assumptions about my views. And of course it's from someone who won't publicly stand behind their arguments.
Every car is marked with a number you can see. And these numbers, just as driver names, are known to each Uber user and of course to Uber company. Did you ever use Uber? There's no anonymity there - you know who your driver is, and Uber knows too. Everything is recorded. It's not a fantasy, it's a fact that is obvious to anybody who used the service even once. And Uber asks every user at the end of the service for the rating. Uber may be employing a lot of people, but they are in no way anonymous or untrackable.
>>> with the apparently requisite bad grammar
Yes, English is not my native language. You caught me. This invalidates all my arguments, of course. You won, take a cookie.
Not in my city. And many Uber cars display no logo at all.
> Yes, English is not my native language. You caught me. This invalidates all my arguments, of course. You won, take a cookie.
It is regrettably also how loons write. When combined with their typical arguments, it is going to get you written off as a loon. One way to fix this is to stand behind your words and just say something about yourself in your profile.
Cars are (mostly) marked with license plates on the back. Taxis are also marked with big logos (telling me which company they're from) and taxi numbers on all sides of the vehicle (which are issued by the city).
I usually have no way to know which cars are Uber cars. Thus my point about lack of accountability.
If you're really having trouble understanding how this is a difference in accountability, I think I'm going back to my "anonymous loon" theory.
When you order Uber car, you immediately are told: drivers name, his picture, his car model and license plate. This is enough to identify both the car and the driver. Meaning, Uber knows all this and you know all this, the moment you have made your order. I do not know which more accountability you require - if any problem happens, the driver is uniquely identified by not one but two ways.
As for big logos, they are useless if you are not using the service - since then you have no reason to complain about it - and when you're using it you know how the specific car you're using looks like, so why you need the logo?
>>> I usually have no way to know which cars are Uber cars.
If you are using one, you do. If not, why would you need to know that?
>>> I think I'm going back to my "anonymous loon" theory.
If my arguments cause you mental anguish and you can not resolve it by finding counter arguments, it is always soothing to mark the opponent as "anonymous loon". I'm totally fine with it, if it makes you feel better. My arguments do not become worse because somebody on the internet failed to address them and resorted to name calling and focusing on my grammar, which is the lowest level of discussion above name calling.
> if you are not using the service - since then you have no reason to complain about it
It's almost like you didn't read my original comment here, the one where I said "If I see [a taxi driver] behaving badly, I call up the city taxi commission and let 'em know."
Which is an actual thing I actually do. Because it turns out private cars use public roads, ones other humans also have to get around on.
> My arguments do not become worse because somebody on the internet failed to address them
Statistically, they probably do. Sometimes people stop dialog because the thoughtful, reasoned, evidence-backed propositions make them realized they are wrong. Most of the time, though, it's people saying, "Well, I guess I have better things to do than argue with some anonymous goof with an axe to grind and no interest in understanding what I might have to say."
Your bad grammar doesn't make you wrong. But that plus the fundamentalist libertarian idiocy makes you look like a sort of wrong person common on Hacker News. If you don't want to be mistaken for one of those people, you'll have to try harder.
>>> If I see [a taxi driver] behaving badly, I call up the city taxi commission and let 'em know.
I thought you meant behaving badly while providing service. You mean just generally behaving badly, like spitting on puppies and cussing at nuns? Why you need to call taxi commission about it? If he's doing something illegal or disturbing the peace, call the police. If not, why you need to call anybody at all?
>>> Because it turns out private cars use public roads, ones other humans also have to get around on.
In other words, you like to control people around you, and not having everybody wear a number and a phone that you can use to tell on them disturbs you. I find that sentiment hard to sympathize with, sorry. People sometimes do behave badly, but they have no obligation to provide you with a phone number to tell on them.
>>> But that plus the fundamentalist libertarian idiocy
And here we are back to name calling. Take another cookie!
I like that in your world there is only "illegal" and "perfectly fine", with nothing in between. You should write about your homeland. Dystopian fantasy novels are so popular lately.
> People sometimes do behave badly, but they have no obligation to provide you with a phone number to tell on them.
People in general don't. People providing certain regulated services in fact do, at least around here. We like it that way.
> And here we are back to name calling. Take another cookie!
No, when I say "idiocy" I'm mocking your ridiculous ideas. If I'd meant to call you names, I would have said you were an idiot.
Uber providing the insurance would give them clear stats you could compare accidents, robberies, etc.. Uber vs taxis. Suspect Uber is going to compare favorably if we get to see the data. Then what is the need for current state regulation?
Govts are going to have to deal - there is huge demand for ride-sharing. Bash Uber if you want - they are right this time. Just declaring it illegal is the wrong approach - Govt and ride services need to be in negotiations to safely give people what they want for taxi services.
The government didn't just wake up this morning and declare Uber illegal. Their ridesharing service was illegal and they set up shop anyways. There are massive downsides to the current monopolistic state of taxis in areas like Philly, and I believe the laws need to be changed to accommodate the new state of transportation. But Uber ought to be working to change the law, not breaking it in the hopes that the government eventually just gives up.
What they're doing puts drivers in the position mentioned in the article: Uber has told them they're operating legally when they are not. Whether or not the law is valid doesn't change the fact that Uber knowingly put the drivers in this position.
A driver shouldn't be checking with Uber for their legality to operate, they need to check their local laws. As an independent contractor, you run your own business. If I set up an unregulated food cart they're going to shut me down, without regard to who my suppliers or partners are.
Could make the case Uber should be blacking out the app in illegal areas, they can modify the app down to very specific areas - try Ohare airport for instance.. Not shocked whats happening in Philly. They are in an uphill battle with governments for sure, not shocked their aggressiveness. But judge them on if they pay the driver fines - that would be an important gesture on their part.
Oh I agree, if I were the one driving the car I'd like to think I'd have read every bit of local regulation on ridesharing. But if your suppliers were the ones who talked you in to driving your food truck around and their enrollment process ensured you that you were part of the legal future to delicious burrito delivery, their behavior would be at least negligent, if not outright malicious.
> But Uber ought to be working to change the law, not breaking it in the hopes that the government eventually just gives up.
Very good point and well made.
Although, could one say this model has worked with regards to the legalisation of marijuana in Colorado and elsewhere? I.e. it's illegal, but we're going to do it anyway, so we may as well legalise it and regulate it?
Sort of. In my opinion the major difference there is that the change wasn't driven by a particular corporate interest. I expect I'd feel differently about stings on ridesharing if hundreds of people individually decided it would be cool to start organizing rideshare services, and the government started running stings on them.
A similar example is content sharing. Leaving aside the debate on whether or not it should be legal, the community as a whole changed how they interacted with content and the market has begun to shift in response, with more and more content providers realizing that they need to adapt. (I know that's not happening nearly as fast as we'd like, but it is happening).
I am not missing that: I do not believe that to be the case. My apologies for not addressing that directly in my original comment.
Uber isn't fighting against discrimination, they aren't fighting against poverty or famine or some global crisis.
They are a business engaged in political maneuvering as part of their goal of changing the regulations in their favor. Whether we think their end goal is good or not, we shouldn't pretend that they're doing this out of altruism.
Civil disobedience and similar acts are effective tools in protesting against injustices in the government. But in using such acts as tools against any inefficient or obsolete laws, we throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Please don't misunderstand. I don't mean to compare the nobility or importance of changing taxi regulations with the American civil rights movement, the Indian independence movement, or other notable historical instances of civil disobedience.
But I do not believe the civil disobedience is only effective for causes of that scale.
Sorry if I implied you were making that comparison. The comparison is my own: I do feel that civil disobedience should only be utilized for things of that scale.
For things where the dispute is over efficiency or cleaning out obsolete laws or correcting over/under-regulation, actual political involvement applies. Campaign vigorously, support and send candidates who feel passionately about your cause, withhold support from those who do not. Hold rallies, organize protests. Be involved.
But disobeying laws that were enacted via legal means and do not violate human rights crosses a line.
Imagine you're upset because your ISP charges massive prices and their quality of service is terrible (like this would ever happen). Contacting their support, reaching out to their corporate office, blogging about their poor service, and taking them to court over broken SLAs are all valid things to do. Refusing to pay your bill because the service is subpar is not.
It's not a perfect analogy, but hopefully it does a better job describing why I draw the line where I do.
The problem then is changing the regulatory framework - reduce barriers to entry and the need for Uber per se vanishes. That said, industrial-scale corporate civil disobedience is extremely unlikely to be the most socially-optimal way to achieve this.
> That said, industrial-scale corporate civil disobedience is extremely unlikely to be the most socially-optimal way to achieve this.
Might not be the most optimal way, but on the other hand, it might be the only way to change things. The traditional approach would be to go to regulators, hat in hand, and say "Please sir, can I disrupt the system?," and get the answer, "No, of course not. Now sod off." By demonstrating a working, superior system to consumers, you now have regulators in the position not of giving permission, but of taking away a preferred option.
From a licensing point of view, Philadelphia is interesting. The PPA manages the licensing of Taxi and Limo services in Philadelphia, but, outside of the county, it's all the PA Department of Transportation. Pennsylvania constables can work in any area of Pennsylvania once certified, but not in Philadelphia.
Am I surprised by this? Not in the least. It's possible that Uber got an ok by PennDOT and thought that it would be good throughout the state...or, this might be the PPA throwing their weight behind their revenue protection. Regardless by which one it is, I would hope that Uber will protect the drivers who took their advice (then again, independent contractors and the like) and drove.
I'm really starting to think that we generally need some sort of organization at city, county, state and county level whose sole purpose of existing is to identify governmental organizations/agencies to which Kevin Kelly's "Shirky Principle" apply
“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which
they are the solution.” — Clay Shirky
This isn't about agencies regulating transportation and ridesharing, but about many governmental agencies set up during the 19th and 20th century. There are a lot of useful organizations/agencies, but just as many if not more which have become zombies feeding off society to keep receiving paychecks while burdening us with unnecessary bureaucracy.
Such an agency would be the governmental equivalent of the consultants that come in and identify the dead weight in a company, which need to be let go for the company to stay relevant.
PS I suspect someone will point out the irony in creating organizations/agencies, whose sole purpose is identifying unnecessary agencies and proposing how to wind them down and eliminate them altogether, but I can't see how such an agency could ever reach the point where it would prefer the problem to which it is the solution. Furthermore, if that were the only agency left preserving itself, I could live with that.
I don't think all the blame belongs with the agencies. Certainly some, or most. But the legislative branch also tends to force agencies to regulate things they'd rather ignore. See also: the military declining orders for new tanks, but being forced to accept them because they're made in an important senator's state.
Totally agree. I guess what I had in mind was an agency that constantly re-evaluates other agencies and writes the legislation to wind down and then shut down needlessly bureaucratic agencies that preserve the problems to which they are the solution. At the end of the day, an act of law needs to be passed to shut down agencies which came into existence via acts of law.
The more I see how government is run, the more I see that lawmakers are commit generators that never take the time to re-factor all the code they've committed to production. Think of this agency as the ones that sit down and get their hands dirty refactoring the code and handing it off to the lawmakers for code review before being committed to the code base.
I appreciate that many laws are passed to solve genuine problems. I don't appreciate the fact that they are never checked to make sure they were effective or continue to be effective.
Regarding the specific military tank example, I'm certain that there must be a way to set things up so that stupid stuff like that can't pass. I honestly don't see how purchase orders for military equipment could ever be a law issue. The fact that the military can't make purchases according to their own needs and budgets is insane. The money spent on those tanks would be better off being spend on all the veteran's affairs programs that are often underfunded.
The Government Accountability Office (for the federal government, at least) does exactly what you describe. Too bad GAO studies are, at best, used as political footballs to make sitting politicians look bad at election time and at worst, are ignored completely.
"Originally, the Authority's Board of Directors was controlled by city officials, but the legislature, acting at the initiative of Representative John Perzel,[4] has shifted control to state officials, including the Governor and officers of the legislature."
Just so I'm clear is the current narrative that Uber, a multi-billion dollar private enterprise seeking to maximize its returns to a handful of shareholders, is single-handedly battling on our behalf against every democratically elected local authority, all of whom (despite regulating taxis through the advent of the engine, the radio, the telephone, the mobile phone and the internet) are running a corrupt, outdated licensing regime at the behest of the taxi industry and/or to preserve their own jobs. Is that the story here?
Or is the story that Uber wants to lock up the taxi market and build a two tier business: 0.1% of their operation earning multi-million dollar payouts, and the remaining 99.9% earning $COMMODITIZED_RATE [0] per hour driving passengers around with zero opportunity to manage drivers, open their own taxi firm, or form a collective.
The honest truth is I don't actually know. The times I've used Uber I've loved it, but I'm not sure, overall, how I feel about well-funded startups using VC money to basically buy their way around local regulation.
[0] We're seeing artificially low fares and high wages at the moment in this landgrab. Just look at eBay with fees that come to a good 10% of sales prices to see what a few more rounds of investment and a flotation will do.
I can safely say that the situation is complicated enough that neither you described is true.
Taxi regulation is corrupt and broken. I can't find a link but Seattle basically hasn't issued any new taxi medallions in 20 years. Suffice to say the area has grown significantly in that time.
Uber's business strategy is also derived from those medallions. I think they could offer a better service that is more efficient and higher margins if the drivers were Uber employees. Right now each drivers needs to be profitable by themselves. There's no room for loss leaders or any other kind of driver distribution strategy.
That's just two points. There are dozens more that could be made I'm sure.
I agree absolutely. I've no experience of medallion systems but they seem clearly ridiculous. I do see the argument for quota systems that enable limit licence numbers to keep wages at a level where drivers are incentivised to maintain their cars and work a 40-hour week.
I suppose my complaint is that every dispute seems to be unquestioningly painted as Good (Uber) vs Evil (Council, State, Government, Police).
If side X tries to bring new service wildly popular with customers, universally voluntarily chosen by providers, providing better prices and better service, and side Y tries to prevent them from doing this citing arbitrary laws and interests of entrenched lobbying rent-seekers, having nothing to do with actual service-providers and mostly relying on FUD and denying choice to the customers - is that big of a stretch to paint side X as "good" and side Y as "evil"?
If somebody tells me "you can not buy service from X because I compete with X and I want to charge you more while providing crappy service and I know you won't ever choose me voluntarily, so I'll buy a politician and make him take your choice away" - why would not I tell such a person "you are evil, go away!"?
> I can't find a link but Seattle basically hasn't issued any new taxi medallions in 20 years. Suffice to say the area has grown significantly in that time.
Medallions are largely a red herring. Municipalities vary, and I can't speak to Seattle, but for example, New York also is in a similar situation (the number of medallions has not increased commensurately with the increase in population since 1970).
However, you do not need to own a medallion in order to drive a car, just as you do not need to own storefront real estate in order to operate a retail business. You can rent medallions, and many (most?) drivers do this[1].
In addition, you don't need to either rent or own a medallion in order to drive a cab - you just can't take street hails. (These cabs are regulated as well, but differently from yellow[0] medallion cabs)
The medallions are a very common talking point, and it always irritates me because it's such a misleading statement. Medallions are not the barrier to entry for individuals who want to start driving professionally.
[0] Or green medallion cabs, which were introduced last year.
[1] They also often aren't driving their own cars, which is something that Uber/Lyft/etc. ignore - if you don't already have a car to drive (or in Uber's case, the right kind of car), you're out of luck.
Agreed. Here in Seattle, the biggest issues have been:
1. It's almost impossible to find a taxi outside of a couple specific areas of town (downtown, and the commercial cores of Capitol Hill and Fremont on weekend nights), which means you're going to have to call a dispatcher.
2. The unbelievable ineptitude and rudeness of the Yellow Cab dispatchers in Seattle.
3. The historical unwillingness of Seattle taxi drivers to accept credit cards, which bears some additional unpacking. Seattle is a very credit card-friendly city. I can go weeks without visiting an ATM and not change a thing about my daily routine. However, taxi drivers used to be very hostile to accepting credit cards. I've had a couple who refused to take plastic, and actually drove me to an ATM (on my dime) to make me get cash to pay them. To their credit, on the few occasions I've had to use a taxi since UberX launched, I've found them more than happy to accept credit cards through Square.
My use of Uber is almost entirely driven by my loathing for Seattle's Yellow Cab.
Those last two points really resonate with me and several other people I've spoken to about the topic.
I live next door to a hotel in downtown, so getting a taxi is even quicker and more convenient for me than calling Uber or Lyft. However, the incredible rudeness of cabbies and repeatedly being driven to an ATM because their credit card reader is mysteriously "broken" have pretty much dissuaded me from ever taking a regular cab again.
> and repeatedly being driven to an ATM because their credit card reader is mysteriously "broken" have pretty much dissuaded me from ever taking a regular cab again.
In most cities, (incl. SF and NYC), if their machine is broken and they do not tell you before your ride starts, your ride is free.
I've never had this issue in NYC, but in SF I found that reminding the drivers of this is the best way to magically "fix" the machine. And if that doesn't work, well, hey, free cab ride!
At least here in DC the drivers kinda got hosed on credit cards. they have to buy a machine + processor from an approved government vendor at above market rates. And it can take 45 days to actually get your money. That's a huge deal if you're living at or close to paycheck to paycheck.
Yes and no. For the first 45 days it'd suck. But after that, assuming you're working regularly, your income stream is about as steady as you'd expect - just delayed from the original date.
You do not need to own a medallion, and given current medallion prices, you probably can't since if you can afford a medallion you are a millionaire and millionaires rarely drive taxis. You have to rent one though. And to pay for it. And that creates an artificial limit to the market and artificial rent extracted by medallion owner - now you pay for taxi service proper and also pay the rent to medallion owner, who produces absolutely nothing and charges just for being there. Real estate is physically limited, but even then you can build your store in different places and people still can come there. Medallion means either you rent it or you are out of business. It's like all NY real estate would be build in 70s and after that, nobody would be allowed to build anything, despite growing population and expanding business. Can you imagine what that would do to a city?
Maybe, but I think taxi regulation is harder than it seems at first blush. My experience with Uber, in D.C., has been abysmal. The drivers just don't know what they're doing or where they're going. I'll punch in my location, the app will tell me a driver will pick me up in 4 minutes, and 15 minutes later after circling the block, I might be on my way. Yeah yeah, reputation economy or whatever, but it doesn't actually work. The Uber driver I get is whichever one accepts my hail. When the ETA immediately jumps 5 minutes longer after my hail is accepted, from what the app estimated, what am I supposed to do, cancel and find a better one and waste more time? After all, if I weren't in a hurry, I wouldn't be calling a cab!
The existing regulatory infrastructure isn't perfect, but I'm very skeptical of the ability of technology to ensure quality and safety in the taxi industry. The technology doesn't offer a good replacement for an old fashioned line of sight hail, and those drivers although rude at least know where the hell they're going.
The unpredictability of driver arrival time is starting to turn me off as well. I'm finding it highly inconsistent, in multiple countries.
The common driver also seems rather clueless lately. It used to be that you were getting guys who had a day job as a limo driver and they did Uber to make some extra cash. So, they basically knew their way around and how to handle things. Recently I get more drivers that are nice/helpful, but ultimately clueless about how to navigate the area they drive in effectively.
I wonder if DC is just "special" somehow. In SF, driver arrival time is very predictable, and it's rarely more than 2-3 minutes longer than the original estimate.
My only gripe is the slew of drivers who don't know their way around the city and end up taking sub-optimal routes (because they e.g. don't know where heavy traffic tends to congregate, and they're using a dumb GPS rather than something like Waze). It's also a little annoying to get in the car and wait a minute or two while they fiddle with their GPS. The recent feature that lets you enter your destination in pre-pickup has made this a little better, but not perfect.
The technology doesn't offer a good replacement for an old fashioned line of sight hail
For SF, it's completely the opposite. Trying to hail a cab, even in a heavily-trafficked area, is abysmally painful.
I've never tried to hail a cab in SF. In NYC/Chicago/Philly, catching a cab in the CBD or a major residential through fare takes a few minutes, and often just seconds. DC and Baltimore are sleepier, but in the CBD catching a cab during business hours is quick. In that context Uber isn't a replacement for cabs. It's an alternative to calling for a car when you're in a part of town without good cab service or after hours. Uber doesn't make the street hail cab system obsolete, at least as long as youre not talking about a dysfunctional place like SF.
As opposed to your mental narrative where the taxi industry represents democracy. Because the public collectively decided they can't handle the freedom of choosing their transportation. Why thank you wise regulators, for my brain is too little to understand the dangers of choice.
I just moved from Philadelphia (lived there for 4 years and nearby for my entire life). I always wanted UberX in the city from a convenience perspective, but I do feel bad for the Philly cab drivers here.
In my 4 years there I talked to probably 100+ cab drivers, most of the time talking about their job. I found ~95% of them to be hard-working and nice, definitely not 'corrupt' people or part of some larger scheme that needed to be disrupted. They also have it tough in a lot of ways. First of all, the medallions are very expensive and many go into debt getting them. Second of all, I've been told (can't confirm) by the cab drivers that they are forced to accept credit cards but then get hit with ~10% fees on those transactions by the processor. My only complaint with Philly cabs is that the dispatchers were generally rude and unhelpful if you were in a strange location.
So for the consumer it is great to have UberX, but I do feel bad for those cab drivers who invested in a legal system and are just trying to make a living. I guess this is just how markets work, but it seems like Uber is setting a dangerous precedent by using VC money to subvert local legislation at every turn. Sure they may be vindicated in the end, but it doesn't strike me as fair play.
> Second of all, I've been told (can't confirm) by the cab drivers that they are forced to accept credit cards but then get hit with ~10% fees on those transactions by the processor. My only complaint with Philly cabs is that the dispatchers were generally rude and unhelpful if you were in a strange location.
There are newsreports about drivers having to accept credit cards.
> In case you’re unaware, Philly cab drivers despise credit card payment, because they have to pay a service charge–like any business that accepts credit cards–and because they don’t get their money immediately
It sounds to me like the Philly cab drivers would be better of as Uber drivers. You said they go into debt to pay for the medallions. Where does that money go? Do these fees collected by the city provide a service for the community or does it disappear into a corrupt government?
If you want to help the drivers don't support a system that forces them into debt. Support an alternative.
I totally agree, however in the meantime they invested in the medallion and Uber is trying to make it worth nothing.
It would be nice if we could find a way to somehow compensate the drivers for that investment instead of saying "you're dumb and should not have bought into that system, now your medallion is worthless".
You just made a perfect argument for using Uber/Lyft. As far as I understand it. Neither of them requires their drivers to go into thousands of dollars of debt to become part of the system.
I totally agree, I am just saying that I feel bad for the drivers who already bought into that system and will lose rides to new drivers who didn't have to. It would be nice if the cities could work out something with Uber and Lyft to help the old taxi drivers get something out of their large investment.
Some people want to paint Uber as the heroes. Others want to put the the regulators and the taxi monopolies in that seat. I'm really getting the impression that both of them are assholes.
Uber may (sometimes) provide better service, but they certainly haven't shown any inclination towards responsibility. E.g., as we see here, when a municipality promises to impound Uber vehicles, Uber happily lies to their drivers that everything is sorted out, because manufacturing involuntary martyrs does a much better job of making Uber look victimized than proceeding through normal channels would.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 208 ms ] threadI wonder if HN would benefit from a guideline like, "If someone asks a question whose answer seems obvious, try to answer it in a straightforward way. For example, 'You really don't know what 2+2 is?' can be shortened to '2+2 is 4.'"
There are interesting followup questions on this topic, too. If Uber won't reimburse them, why not? On the other hand, would it even be legal for Uber to reimburse them, since Uber is doing so with the intent of "transferring" the penalty of the law from the driver to Uber? One reason to have laws is so that their penalties act as a deterrent. If Uber is preventing the deterrent from having an effect, then perhaps the legal system might take a dim view of this. Whether that'd be punishable, I have no idea; the point is simply that there are many interesting questions that can be derived from the starting point of "Will Uber be reimbursing the drivers?"
"We fully stand behind our partners and will cover all costs associated with this deplorable charade."
Because abandoning Uber operators at a time of transition, or industry revolution as it could be called, would in many ways undermine its expansion if potential operators have abandonment to fear.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/johanabhuiyan/uber-drivers-are-prote...
http://uberpeople.net/threads/deactivated-3rd-time-in-5-week...
"In a week of driving (24 rides), you'll only make $312 once Uber's taken its cut" - http://la.curbed.com/archives/2014/02/8_secrets_you_learn_be...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/07/uber-s-batt...
http://www.thewire.com/business/2014/06/uber-drivers-protest...
http://www.businessinsider.com/undercover-uber-driver-short-...
Except the one you quoted, which really confuses me. It's not uber's fault if demand is low in a particular location. Heck, that's actually a pretty good rate, full-time minimum wage for only doing a ride every two hours.
Basically, you end up an indentured servant, getting pennies on the dollar.
"Deplorable charade." Are they referring to their own actions? I mean "charade (n.) something that is done in order to pretend something is true when it is not really true." The PPA regulations are true, are they not? It's the legality of driving an UberX which is the charade, no?
I don't much care for Uber's practices, but I agree with the argument that taxi medallions are rent-seeking and all efforts to break down senseless regulation of the taxi industry should take place. Note I said "senseless" regulation. You should still require insurance, background checks/driver's license verification or drivers, and so forth.
It looks like Uber set up the situation so that these drivers could be martyrs in Uber's PR cause. Uber can now say "look, how terrible the PPA is, we shall defend our drivers from this injustice!". They score some PR points at the cost of massively affecting the drivers' lives.
The non-shitty way to accomplish their goal would have been for them to organize the people who wanted the laws to change and to actually participate in the political process, rather than trying to end-run the system by just moving in to town and setting up shop.
Unfortunately, Uber's process is much more likely to evoke change than "participating in the political process". Consumers are much more interested in the interests than your average voter.
I'm not sure I'm fully a fan of derailing this thread into a discussion of the disconnect between progress and true democracy, but if we allow the minority of the population to override the majority's decision because we "know better" than them, are we still being democratic?
Furthermore, there is absolutely no indication that the status quo is the "majority's decision". These days, which regulatory capture, the revolving door and pork barreling, it's pretty much impossible to tell what laws were passed because it's the majority decision and which were favors traded among members congress to support the interests of their biggest donors.
We have at best a quasi-democratic system; i.e. just enough democracy to maintain an illusion of a functioning democracy.
There aren't great social injustices at work here, overheated rhetoric aside.
At worst there's run of the mill corruption. The concepts of what these kinds of regulation do are well-founded and something society has clearly wanted. The exact implementations may well have been corrupted, but the stated intent of the laws and regulations are in the public interest, and the public has been happy-ish with them.
Does that then mean the fix is to throw out the whole regimen of rules? For example, someone mentioned Seattle hasn't issued new medallions in decades. So the solution is to do away with medallions? Why not just issue more?
What about county level food safety inspectors? Many of those regulatory agencies are also corrupt. And don't even start with alcohol licensing. But should we "disrupt" those too? Just ignore them because there's some corruption in the system?
When you get down to it, none of these companies want to increase consumer choice. In their perfect world, they'd be the only choice. So it's hard to accept they're really out for the public good.
And that makes it really difficult for me to cheer them on as they pick and choose which laws they accept as valid expressions of the people's will.
The people aren't really being given a vote here. Well, actually, they have been given a vote, and these companies are choosing to ignore it for their own benefit.
As I said, it's not some great social injustice at stake. Civil Rights leaders broke the law with greater purposes in mind than "So my company can be valued in the billions".
The majority of the population (I speak US-centric here, as I'm a US citizen) wasn't for same-sex marriage nor healthcare reform, yet we "knew better" to enact both.
> If the average voter doesn't want the system to change, should it?
Yes. We should never cater to the lowest common denominator.
Historically, there haven't been many vocal groups who thought they were on the wrong side of the cause they were championing.
How does society tell the difference between non-majority groups who are actually right and non-majority groups who just think they are?
That doesn't sound like a good description. The largest group doesn't care one way or the other, and should probably be excluded from the decision.
If some arbitrary issue has 80% uncaring, 15% for, 5% against, I would say it should definitely happen.
There's a democratic process in place in our country that allows you to help decide who is in power, if you're unhappy with who is in power become more involved in elections.
I disagree with and resent both your claim that my question is stupid and your claim that the recourse for a broken political system is becoming more involved in elections.
Another example of backlash to Uber/Hailo etc. has been the London black taxis. Their operators study for years for very difficult tests in order to be licensed operators, and pay significant costs in doing so, and as such I can understand why they would be irritated by competition coming in without these conditions, but if these conditions don't exist then it's market protectionism at a cost to the consumer.
Uber is free to conform to either of those modes but choses not to.
The only issue, I suppose, is that their base of knowledge - the studying they do, the tests they pass to be licensed, etc. - is already irrelevant in a time of modern GPS and Sat Nav, and will become increasingly so as we begin to move to an era of self-driving vehicles.
The headlines always end up as The Government sticking it to The Working Man, and Uber eats that stuff up.
This is why it's a big deal here in Philly. The corruption of the PPA knows no bounds.
[0] http://mobile.philly.com/business/?wss=/philly/business/tran...
Uber on the other hand knew that what they were doing was illegal from the start, had been warned about it and had every opportunity to delay the launch of the service until the legal stuff was sorted out.
"The taxi owners contend their existing insurance continues to provide coverage for 30 days, despite the insolvency of First Keystone Risk Retention Group Inc. ... The insurance company was ordered liquidated Tuesday by a South Carolina judge at the request of the state insurance director"
That said, I'm sure they're also aware of the possibility of good press from incidents like this. I don't have a problem with that.
This has never been more true when it comes to ride sharing companies.
Monopolies benefit next to nobody, while Uber benefits a lot of people.
Seriously? Never been more true?
Prohibiting unlicensed rides-for-hire (it's not 'ride sharing') is more unjust than say...Jim Crow laws?
Obviously defeating the taxi monopolies is less important than defeating slavery.
>>This has never been more true when it comes to ride sharing companies.
___"WHEN IT COMES TO RIDE SHARING COMPANIES"___, that part of the sentence is important. As in, you didn't say "when it comes to human rights!" or something overly-dramatic like that. You reduced the scope to only ride sharing. And I'm assuming you didn't edit your comment after the replies.
No, I did not. Thank you for backing me up there.
I was a bit confused as to his protest of my wording of the comment. I certainly did not mean to say that ride sharing is the most important debate of our time.
I only meant that the quote is perfectly fitting to the current situation surrounding ride sharing and the taxi monopolies.
The way you misread it, it would indeed seem to say that the situation with ride sharing companies violating the law is exactly what old Thomas Jefferson was talking about. But you misread it, obviously.
I'm totally missing any "profundity" here, sorry.
And I don't even like Uber; I think in general they treat their drivers like crap, and I realize that they are only flouting this law because it stands in the way of their business model. But just as with Tesla (a company I do respect), they are breaking new ground and showing the rest of the country that these archaic laws exist only to protect the establishment. The laws should be reexamined, and if the people find that the laws are incompatible with their needs, the laws should be changed.
I pay friends for "gas" when they come and pick me up drunk at the bar, for example. It's not really much different than hiring out UberX.
http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/spurious-quotations
For similar reasons, I'm also pretty sure the insurance situation is solid. In direct contrast to Uber, where they actively disclaim any responsibility for their cars and drivers.
There are a lot of problems with the taxi industry. It's in deep need of reform. But in my view, Uber's cure is worse than the disease.
>>> Good luck doing that with some rando driving for Uber, though.
Why? Every driver is identified and known, and Uber has a lot of incentive to weed out bad drivers, especially when they are just starting the service and couple of bad reviews can kill adoption for a whole market. What incentive Uber has to support bad service? I can tell one incentive for city politicians to do it - taxi lobbyists pay into their campaign funds, and you do not (at least not as much, unless you are Zuckerberg, in which case you probably have your own limo anyway), so who has more influence on them?
>>> For similar reasons, I'm also pretty sure the insurance situation is solid.
Because Uber just dreams about uninsured million-dollar lawsuit. Nothing inspires investors to invest into a young business as much as an uninsured risk of a million-dollar lawsuits, right? And Uber doesn't care about investors or risks - unlike city politicians whose very future is linked to the fact whether city would be sued or not, since lawsuit cost comes out of their pockets... Oh wait, I got it in reverse - city politician could not care less if the city is sued since taxpayers would pay it anyway, while Uber guys risk their own money and their investors money. Yet somehow you trust more the guy who uses your money to insure your risks and has zero incentive to preserve it and large incentive to follow lobby interests over guy who uses their own money and has large incentive to preserve it. I wonder how it works out for you.
>>> But in my view, Uber's cure is worse than the disease.
Worse in what? Of course, if you refuse to trust anything that does not say "State Commission" and is not rules by an unaccountable bureaucrat, then every cure would be worse than the disease for you. However, do not be very surprised if you find no cures at all, because you seem to be insisting on having the disease as a precondition to finding the cure.
Because every taxi is marked with a number that I can see. Uber cars are just random cars. And Uber is just one of many services employing any warm body they can find.
The rest seems like generic Argument From Libertarian Fantasy, with the apparently requisite bad grammar and bad-faith assumptions about my views. And of course it's from someone who won't publicly stand behind their arguments.
>>> with the apparently requisite bad grammar
Yes, English is not my native language. You caught me. This invalidates all my arguments, of course. You won, take a cookie.
Not in my city. And many Uber cars display no logo at all.
> Yes, English is not my native language. You caught me. This invalidates all my arguments, of course. You won, take a cookie.
It is regrettably also how loons write. When combined with their typical arguments, it is going to get you written off as a loon. One way to fix this is to stand behind your words and just say something about yourself in your profile.
Wait, in your city cars don't have license plates? Which city is that?
I usually have no way to know which cars are Uber cars. Thus my point about lack of accountability.
If you're really having trouble understanding how this is a difference in accountability, I think I'm going back to my "anonymous loon" theory.
As for big logos, they are useless if you are not using the service - since then you have no reason to complain about it - and when you're using it you know how the specific car you're using looks like, so why you need the logo?
>>> I usually have no way to know which cars are Uber cars.
If you are using one, you do. If not, why would you need to know that?
>>> I think I'm going back to my "anonymous loon" theory.
If my arguments cause you mental anguish and you can not resolve it by finding counter arguments, it is always soothing to mark the opponent as "anonymous loon". I'm totally fine with it, if it makes you feel better. My arguments do not become worse because somebody on the internet failed to address them and resorted to name calling and focusing on my grammar, which is the lowest level of discussion above name calling.
It's almost like you didn't read my original comment here, the one where I said "If I see [a taxi driver] behaving badly, I call up the city taxi commission and let 'em know."
Which is an actual thing I actually do. Because it turns out private cars use public roads, ones other humans also have to get around on.
> My arguments do not become worse because somebody on the internet failed to address them
Statistically, they probably do. Sometimes people stop dialog because the thoughtful, reasoned, evidence-backed propositions make them realized they are wrong. Most of the time, though, it's people saying, "Well, I guess I have better things to do than argue with some anonymous goof with an axe to grind and no interest in understanding what I might have to say."
Your bad grammar doesn't make you wrong. But that plus the fundamentalist libertarian idiocy makes you look like a sort of wrong person common on Hacker News. If you don't want to be mistaken for one of those people, you'll have to try harder.
I thought you meant behaving badly while providing service. You mean just generally behaving badly, like spitting on puppies and cussing at nuns? Why you need to call taxi commission about it? If he's doing something illegal or disturbing the peace, call the police. If not, why you need to call anybody at all?
>>> Because it turns out private cars use public roads, ones other humans also have to get around on.
In other words, you like to control people around you, and not having everybody wear a number and a phone that you can use to tell on them disturbs you. I find that sentiment hard to sympathize with, sorry. People sometimes do behave badly, but they have no obligation to provide you with a phone number to tell on them.
>>> But that plus the fundamentalist libertarian idiocy
And here we are back to name calling. Take another cookie!
I like that in your world there is only "illegal" and "perfectly fine", with nothing in between. You should write about your homeland. Dystopian fantasy novels are so popular lately.
> People sometimes do behave badly, but they have no obligation to provide you with a phone number to tell on them.
People in general don't. People providing certain regulated services in fact do, at least around here. We like it that way.
> And here we are back to name calling. Take another cookie!
No, when I say "idiocy" I'm mocking your ridiculous ideas. If I'd meant to call you names, I would have said you were an idiot.
Govts are going to have to deal - there is huge demand for ride-sharing. Bash Uber if you want - they are right this time. Just declaring it illegal is the wrong approach - Govt and ride services need to be in negotiations to safely give people what they want for taxi services.
What they're doing puts drivers in the position mentioned in the article: Uber has told them they're operating legally when they are not. Whether or not the law is valid doesn't change the fact that Uber knowingly put the drivers in this position.
Could make the case Uber should be blacking out the app in illegal areas, they can modify the app down to very specific areas - try Ohare airport for instance.. Not shocked whats happening in Philly. They are in an uphill battle with governments for sure, not shocked their aggressiveness. But judge them on if they pay the driver fines - that would be an important gesture on their part.
Very good point and well made.
Although, could one say this model has worked with regards to the legalisation of marijuana in Colorado and elsewhere? I.e. it's illegal, but we're going to do it anyway, so we may as well legalise it and regulate it?
A similar example is content sharing. Leaving aside the debate on whether or not it should be legal, the community as a whole changed how they interacted with content and the market has begun to shift in response, with more and more content providers realizing that they need to adapt. (I know that's not happening nearly as fast as we'd like, but it is happening).
You're missing the very real possibility that deliberately disobeying the laws is the most effective way to get the laws changed.
Uber isn't fighting against discrimination, they aren't fighting against poverty or famine or some global crisis.
They are a business engaged in political maneuvering as part of their goal of changing the regulations in their favor. Whether we think their end goal is good or not, we shouldn't pretend that they're doing this out of altruism.
Civil disobedience and similar acts are effective tools in protesting against injustices in the government. But in using such acts as tools against any inefficient or obsolete laws, we throw the baby out with the bathwater.
But I do not believe the civil disobedience is only effective for causes of that scale.
For things where the dispute is over efficiency or cleaning out obsolete laws or correcting over/under-regulation, actual political involvement applies. Campaign vigorously, support and send candidates who feel passionately about your cause, withhold support from those who do not. Hold rallies, organize protests. Be involved.
But disobeying laws that were enacted via legal means and do not violate human rights crosses a line.
Imagine you're upset because your ISP charges massive prices and their quality of service is terrible (like this would ever happen). Contacting their support, reaching out to their corporate office, blogging about their poor service, and taking them to court over broken SLAs are all valid things to do. Refusing to pay your bill because the service is subpar is not.
It's not a perfect analogy, but hopefully it does a better job describing why I draw the line where I do.
But I do think these taxi laws blatantly violate human rights.
Abiding by the law is not how any significant social movement has worked - ever.
The problem then is changing the regulatory framework - reduce barriers to entry and the need for Uber per se vanishes. That said, industrial-scale corporate civil disobedience is extremely unlikely to be the most socially-optimal way to achieve this.
Might not be the most optimal way, but on the other hand, it might be the only way to change things. The traditional approach would be to go to regulators, hat in hand, and say "Please sir, can I disrupt the system?," and get the answer, "No, of course not. Now sod off." By demonstrating a working, superior system to consumers, you now have regulators in the position not of giving permission, but of taking away a preferred option.
Am I surprised by this? Not in the least. It's possible that Uber got an ok by PennDOT and thought that it would be good throughout the state...or, this might be the PPA throwing their weight behind their revenue protection. Regardless by which one it is, I would hope that Uber will protect the drivers who took their advice (then again, independent contractors and the like) and drove.
*edit: grammar/spelling.
This isn't about agencies regulating transportation and ridesharing, but about many governmental agencies set up during the 19th and 20th century. There are a lot of useful organizations/agencies, but just as many if not more which have become zombies feeding off society to keep receiving paychecks while burdening us with unnecessary bureaucracy.
Such an agency would be the governmental equivalent of the consultants that come in and identify the dead weight in a company, which need to be let go for the company to stay relevant.
PS I suspect someone will point out the irony in creating organizations/agencies, whose sole purpose is identifying unnecessary agencies and proposing how to wind them down and eliminate them altogether, but I can't see how such an agency could ever reach the point where it would prefer the problem to which it is the solution. Furthermore, if that were the only agency left preserving itself, I could live with that.
The more I see how government is run, the more I see that lawmakers are commit generators that never take the time to re-factor all the code they've committed to production. Think of this agency as the ones that sit down and get their hands dirty refactoring the code and handing it off to the lawmakers for code review before being committed to the code base.
I appreciate that many laws are passed to solve genuine problems. I don't appreciate the fact that they are never checked to make sure they were effective or continue to be effective.
Regarding the specific military tank example, I'm certain that there must be a way to set things up so that stupid stuff like that can't pass. I honestly don't see how purchase orders for military equipment could ever be a law issue. The fact that the military can't make purchases according to their own needs and budgets is insane. The money spent on those tanks would be better off being spend on all the veteran's affairs programs that are often underfunded.
"Originally, the Authority's Board of Directors was controlled by city officials, but the legislature, acting at the initiative of Representative John Perzel,[4] has shifted control to state officials, including the Governor and officers of the legislature."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Parking_Authority
Or is the story that Uber wants to lock up the taxi market and build a two tier business: 0.1% of their operation earning multi-million dollar payouts, and the remaining 99.9% earning $COMMODITIZED_RATE [0] per hour driving passengers around with zero opportunity to manage drivers, open their own taxi firm, or form a collective.
The honest truth is I don't actually know. The times I've used Uber I've loved it, but I'm not sure, overall, how I feel about well-funded startups using VC money to basically buy their way around local regulation.
[0] We're seeing artificially low fares and high wages at the moment in this landgrab. Just look at eBay with fees that come to a good 10% of sales prices to see what a few more rounds of investment and a flotation will do.
Taxi regulation is corrupt and broken. I can't find a link but Seattle basically hasn't issued any new taxi medallions in 20 years. Suffice to say the area has grown significantly in that time.
Uber's business strategy is also derived from those medallions. I think they could offer a better service that is more efficient and higher margins if the drivers were Uber employees. Right now each drivers needs to be profitable by themselves. There's no room for loss leaders or any other kind of driver distribution strategy.
That's just two points. There are dozens more that could be made I'm sure.
I suppose my complaint is that every dispute seems to be unquestioningly painted as Good (Uber) vs Evil (Council, State, Government, Police).
If somebody tells me "you can not buy service from X because I compete with X and I want to charge you more while providing crappy service and I know you won't ever choose me voluntarily, so I'll buy a politician and make him take your choice away" - why would not I tell such a person "you are evil, go away!"?
Medallions are largely a red herring. Municipalities vary, and I can't speak to Seattle, but for example, New York also is in a similar situation (the number of medallions has not increased commensurately with the increase in population since 1970).
However, you do not need to own a medallion in order to drive a car, just as you do not need to own storefront real estate in order to operate a retail business. You can rent medallions, and many (most?) drivers do this[1].
In addition, you don't need to either rent or own a medallion in order to drive a cab - you just can't take street hails. (These cabs are regulated as well, but differently from yellow[0] medallion cabs)
The medallions are a very common talking point, and it always irritates me because it's such a misleading statement. Medallions are not the barrier to entry for individuals who want to start driving professionally.
[0] Or green medallion cabs, which were introduced last year.
[1] They also often aren't driving their own cars, which is something that Uber/Lyft/etc. ignore - if you don't already have a car to drive (or in Uber's case, the right kind of car), you're out of luck.
1. It's almost impossible to find a taxi outside of a couple specific areas of town (downtown, and the commercial cores of Capitol Hill and Fremont on weekend nights), which means you're going to have to call a dispatcher.
2. The unbelievable ineptitude and rudeness of the Yellow Cab dispatchers in Seattle.
3. The historical unwillingness of Seattle taxi drivers to accept credit cards, which bears some additional unpacking. Seattle is a very credit card-friendly city. I can go weeks without visiting an ATM and not change a thing about my daily routine. However, taxi drivers used to be very hostile to accepting credit cards. I've had a couple who refused to take plastic, and actually drove me to an ATM (on my dime) to make me get cash to pay them. To their credit, on the few occasions I've had to use a taxi since UberX launched, I've found them more than happy to accept credit cards through Square.
My use of Uber is almost entirely driven by my loathing for Seattle's Yellow Cab.
I live next door to a hotel in downtown, so getting a taxi is even quicker and more convenient for me than calling Uber or Lyft. However, the incredible rudeness of cabbies and repeatedly being driven to an ATM because their credit card reader is mysteriously "broken" have pretty much dissuaded me from ever taking a regular cab again.
In most cities, (incl. SF and NYC), if their machine is broken and they do not tell you before your ride starts, your ride is free.
I've never had this issue in NYC, but in SF I found that reminding the drivers of this is the best way to magically "fix" the machine. And if that doesn't work, well, hey, free cab ride!
Maybe, but I think taxi regulation is harder than it seems at first blush. My experience with Uber, in D.C., has been abysmal. The drivers just don't know what they're doing or where they're going. I'll punch in my location, the app will tell me a driver will pick me up in 4 minutes, and 15 minutes later after circling the block, I might be on my way. Yeah yeah, reputation economy or whatever, but it doesn't actually work. The Uber driver I get is whichever one accepts my hail. When the ETA immediately jumps 5 minutes longer after my hail is accepted, from what the app estimated, what am I supposed to do, cancel and find a better one and waste more time? After all, if I weren't in a hurry, I wouldn't be calling a cab!
The existing regulatory infrastructure isn't perfect, but I'm very skeptical of the ability of technology to ensure quality and safety in the taxi industry. The technology doesn't offer a good replacement for an old fashioned line of sight hail, and those drivers although rude at least know where the hell they're going.
The common driver also seems rather clueless lately. It used to be that you were getting guys who had a day job as a limo driver and they did Uber to make some extra cash. So, they basically knew their way around and how to handle things. Recently I get more drivers that are nice/helpful, but ultimately clueless about how to navigate the area they drive in effectively.
My only gripe is the slew of drivers who don't know their way around the city and end up taking sub-optimal routes (because they e.g. don't know where heavy traffic tends to congregate, and they're using a dumb GPS rather than something like Waze). It's also a little annoying to get in the car and wait a minute or two while they fiddle with their GPS. The recent feature that lets you enter your destination in pre-pickup has made this a little better, but not perfect.
The technology doesn't offer a good replacement for an old fashioned line of sight hail
For SF, it's completely the opposite. Trying to hail a cab, even in a heavily-trafficked area, is abysmally painful.
As opposed to your mental narrative where the taxi industry represents democracy. Because the public collectively decided they can't handle the freedom of choosing their transportation. Why thank you wise regulators, for my brain is too little to understand the dangers of choice.
That's not what he said.
https://www.uber.com/en-US/cities/philadelphia
But god beware you transport people to their destination and take money for it.
In my 4 years there I talked to probably 100+ cab drivers, most of the time talking about their job. I found ~95% of them to be hard-working and nice, definitely not 'corrupt' people or part of some larger scheme that needed to be disrupted. They also have it tough in a lot of ways. First of all, the medallions are very expensive and many go into debt getting them. Second of all, I've been told (can't confirm) by the cab drivers that they are forced to accept credit cards but then get hit with ~10% fees on those transactions by the processor. My only complaint with Philly cabs is that the dispatchers were generally rude and unhelpful if you were in a strange location.
So for the consumer it is great to have UberX, but I do feel bad for those cab drivers who invested in a legal system and are just trying to make a living. I guess this is just how markets work, but it seems like Uber is setting a dangerous precedent by using VC money to subvert local legislation at every turn. Sure they may be vindicated in the end, but it doesn't strike me as fair play.
There are newsreports about drivers having to accept credit cards.
Here's an unpleasant one about two drivers losing their jobs: http://www.phillymag.com/news/2013/05/30/philadelphia-parkin...
> In case you’re unaware, Philly cab drivers despise credit card payment, because they have to pay a service charge–like any business that accepts credit cards–and because they don’t get their money immediately
If you want to help the drivers don't support a system that forces them into debt. Support an alternative.
It would be nice if we could find a way to somehow compensate the drivers for that investment instead of saying "you're dumb and should not have bought into that system, now your medallion is worthless".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7WdSFS3SFI
Uber may (sometimes) provide better service, but they certainly haven't shown any inclination towards responsibility. E.g., as we see here, when a municipality promises to impound Uber vehicles, Uber happily lies to their drivers that everything is sorted out, because manufacturing involuntary martyrs does a much better job of making Uber look victimized than proceeding through normal channels would.