And if you’re really such a bleeding heart for safety, I suggest you read THIS article that makes a good argument for why Uber is safer than a taxi.
Nice conflation of two completely different things.
The financial responsibility is for the $20 or whatever that I’m paid. The customer can get it back if my service was bad enough, and if it becomes a pattern I lose my job. It’s a much bigger deal for me than the passenger, which means it’s very much in my interest to provide a good experience.
The moral responsibility is not one iota different from when I carry any non-paying passenger. I’m responsible for anyone that gets in my car: paying or not, whether I like them or not, young or old.
What you’re claiming (without evidence), effectively, is that taxi drivers are trained to be on their best behavior when they have paying customers in the car. That’s deeply immoral. Drivers should be on their best behavior all the time. Payment shouldn’t even enter into it.
The anti Uber types do know that this process of ridesharing has been around since at minimum, the 1950s, right?
Back, pre internet, you’d go to you local grocery store, take an index card and write “Ride wanted daily/MWF/Sundays from Location X to Location Y. Need to get to work/church/whatever by 8:00 am. Also need ride home at 5:00 pm. Happy to split gas, etc. Contact me at BUtterfield 8-5429”
Exactly the same thing, if the store had taken a nickle for every Ride Wanted or Ride Available index card listed.
And yet, despite this having existed for 60+ years, we haven’t descended into Smapti’s psychotic fever-dream of anarchy, chaos and death.
Are you saying that taxi companies offer health insurance for their drivers?
So you’re saying that paying for a ride and not paying for a ride are the same thing?
That asking someone for a ride is the same as offering to transport someone?
Uber is not “sharing” anything. Uber drivers aren’t “sharing” anything. They are providing a service for a fee.
Calling Uber (and Lyft and similar services) “ridesharing” is so deliberately disingenuous that if you were to do it IRL in front of me, I’d laugh so long and loud that you’d never be able to finish your sentence.
If Uber is “ridesharing” how are taxi/livery companies not also “ridesharing”? It’s a term with no meaning, designed to deflect attention away from the facts at hand and to try and give an impression that what Uber does is somehow different than what taxi/livery companies do: transport people from place to another for a fee. “Ridesharing” is a self-serving lie.
Wait, you honestly believe that’s what Uber is?
ETA: Seriously?
It is a contract-based freelance cab company. It is a cab company. Try to wrap your mind around this: it is a cab company. It is going after the high-margin portion of the cab company (the dispatching portion, which is very high margin, if you can get computers to do it for you) without putting up capital or dealing with local regulations.
You might think that good or bad, and that’s fine, but…it’s not the ride sharing you are talking about. It is a dispatcher for unlicensed (in the sense of unmedallioned) cabs. Not some carpool hookup service.
Actually, they deal with/within local regulations all the time. Like any other corporation, when restricted by regulations, they lobby to change regulations to allow their service. And, just like any other industry, entrenched companies lobby and fight for the status quo. After all, why innovate when you can litigate?
Or when you can just break the law (they will be appearing in court here in Ontario in May - that may be shading my views of them).
That other cab companies are bad (and, really, as I said in my other post, here, they’re pretty good, which certainly contributes to bias on my part) doesn’t mean that Uber isn’t a cab company. Uber is a cab company. Some are suggesting, or seem to be suggesting, that it’s a “ridesharing” service. It only is a ride sharing service if by “ride sharing” you mean “Carrying customers for a fee”, which is…not the first thing I’d think of.
Not here in Nevada they didn’t.
This is the other attitude that, really, just shows incredible ignorance on the part of the people who espouse it.
I’m in Toronto, so I hope you don’t mind my using those numbers. In a lot of places, none of this will be relevant. If you live in one of those places where this just isn’t important, ignore it (and send my some of your warm. We need it).
A taxi plate here costs $250,000. There are good reasons for that: mainly, to limit competition to a low enough level to get people into cabs, which, as has been pointed out, can, in a big city, fill a gap between walking and public transportation. So, they limit the cabs, so the drivers can make a living.
No one is going to read this part, but I’m going to post it anyway:
THERE ARE LOTS OF PROBLEMS WITH THIS
I’m not claiming it’s good. I’m not claiming it’s bad. I’m certainly not going to state that the money wouldn’t have been better spent on maintaining cars rather than paying for the right to drive them.
However, people did buy those licenses, and they did obey the rules, and they did make something of a living.
What Uber has done here isn’t write and app and be all disruptive and innovative and stuff. What Uber did is say “oh, those laws? Oh, fuck those laws”.
They didn’t offer a ridesharing/carpooling service for gas and Timmies (which, it may surprise you, was always legal). They just said “oh, that idea of people making a living and not just ignoring the law? How quaint.”
Why obey the rules when you can just pay a fine?
Now, would the world be better if Uber could compete, be regulated (safe cars, background checks, 17 days a year of training for drivers)? Hell, maybe, sure, I don’t know. Could be. But, and this is important; those people who bought those license? Someone has to deal with them.
I’m not saying they (license holders) deserve any compensation. I’m saying whether that existing system is dismantled should be left to…well, tell you what, let’s find someone, and agree on who should deal with that legislation. Let’s have a big old vote about the matter.
Or, we could just say “well, fuck that, Uber is providing something and that’s good enough for me, so let’s ignore the laws. Innovate disruptive I can never get a cab grumble grumble grumble app!”
I’m going with the election route. You are going with the other one. That’s fine.
But don’t pretend this is some clever innovation.
I guess I’m not familiar with the situation in Toronto specifically, but generally the reason why taxi medallions cost so much is because they’re traded on the open market and there’s way too few of them compared to the actual demand for taxi service. It was certainly never the intention of the politicians who originally set the system up that a taxi license should be a house-sized investment. Maybe in Manhattan or London the prices are driven by genuine scarcity due to traffic congestion, but in most cities the problem is just that the people who already have the licenses have so much invested in them that they have a huge financial incentive to prevent more from being issued.
Like I mentioned a few pages ago, I think that’s part of the reason why Uber is being tolerated in most of the markets it’s in. There’s this Gordian Knot of a political problem with all the taxi operators who have millions of dollars invested in their taxi licences that they stand to lose if more of them are issued, and yet there’s a drastic shortage of taxis. By letting Uber operate (and pretending they’re not a taxi service) they can alleviate the taxi shortages while at least for the moment sidestepping the political mess around the taxi licenses.
That’s pretty much it, yeah. Toronto issues Ambassador Plates (no idea how much they cost, but a lot less) that have all sorts of restrictions on them - basically, they have to be owner-operated (although, from what I understand, if I have the plate, I can show up at Beck and put it on their car, and get dispatched. I think) for exactly that reason. It’s my (possibly incorrect) understanding that NY is actually one of the worst places for the heritage-cab-plate thing, where there just aren’t enough of the medallions to serve the demand.
My point is, it is a Gordian Knot, and there are a lot of vested interests (some of whom, surprisingly, are neither evil cab companies with ill-kept cabs; nor huge law-ignoring companies, but actual people), and merely siding with Uber because “App Disruptive Cabs are yucky” (I’m not saying you are saying that, by the way), or, for that matter, with cabs because we’ve always done it that way is correct.
All that said, Lyft operates here in Toronto and does so well within the law. And they don’t seem to have some of the problems that Uber seems to have (or not have, depending on who you talk to). Then there is the bit where people keep calling Uber a ride sharing service, when it’s clearly a ride-for-hire service. That does sort of make me distrust them a little.
The shortage of cabs in some places really does need to be addressed, as does the value of the medallions. It should probably be done slowly. I continue to assert that that’s the job of legislators, maybe economists, probably lawyers.
I work in tech, and have for a long time. I’ve seen lots of bright ideas implemented very quickly that had lots of unintended consequences, and lots of ideas that had negative externalities (my brothers and sisters in software development are wicked smart. They aren’t always so much with the wise). I’m okay with the idea that sometimes “innovative” and “disruptive” have to slow down a little bit. This looks like one of those times.
Rule of law and all that. It’s a really good pitch.
The problem is that it massively favors the entrenched interests. As we’ve established, the existing rules are set up to favor the existing taxi companies.
So Uber, et al should lobby to change the regulations before doing anything that might skirt the edges of the law, right?
But who is going to support them? Until they have a service to actually try and compete against existing taxis, the general public has only insane scaremongers like Smapti to listen to. The scaremongering actually sounds pretty good in the absence of a reality to compare to. But it turns out that concerns about safety, fares and all that are a complete non-issue.
In your hypothetical reality, what happens is that Uber lobbies for change, and taxis claim that Uber will kill thousands with their unlicensed drivers, and destroy mass transit, and generally cause mayhem. Uber will claim otherwise, and the public will say “prove it,” which is of course impossible without actually providing said service. So they are stuck in a Catch-22 and their lobbying efforts will go nowhere.
So I am perfectly happy with Uber skirting around the edges of the law. The law will catch up sooner or later. If there were really a huge safety problem, they’d get shut down in no time regardless. Since that hasn’t happened, they at least have a fighting chance against the entrenched interests. People realize how bad they had it with taxis, and that the right answer is to find a regulatory framework that allows Uber-like services to exist while tying off any loose ends.
I can’t think of any examples of disruptive technologies succeeding only after their promoters went successfully through the process of lobbying against the existing regulations. Can you? As they say, “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.” Works in business as well as anywhere.
Hm. I wonder if you read the part I bolded? The bit about entrenched interests is certainly a big part of the problem.
No, I am willing to cut Uber a lot of slack for the laws they’ve broken until now (nor is the City of Toronto - Mayor Tory* invited Uber to come in to discuss regulations. As far as I know, they have declined). But seeing them as being bad guys isn’t totally unreasonable.
And then there is another interesting question. According to the Globe and Mail:
(source: Inside Toronto's Uber investigation - The Globe and Mail )
One wonders if the cost of that regulation also increases fare prices.
You are, though, entirely correct: rule of law favours entrenched interests. It disproportionately appears to do so with cab companies, which have grown into an unmanageable mess. If (and when) Uber was some little upstart, I would doubtless have cheered for them. Now it’s time for them to grow up, and until they do, I’m going to lean toward the yeah, I can see that it sort of is a kind of fair to see them as a little bit evil.
The question, now, is, if, since Uber is an entrenched interest, too, if they are willing to abide by the rules (rules, which, again, in Toronto, they have been invited to help craft).
And, yes, I can think of a few disruptive businesses that got that way without breaking laws, threatening journalists, and generally being doucebags. Okay, I take back the last bit. But yeah, willing to cut them some slack for what they’ve done. If they continue to not grow up…not so much.
Mostly, and this is important to me: they are a cab company. Not the ridesharing company some people are making them out to be. That’s how I got drawn into this. I’ve been pretty clear about admitting my ambivalence (and admitting that, if we didn’t have a pretty damn good cab industry here, I would probably be more in favour of them).
- He’s less famous than our last mayor.
I can’t believe this discussion is still going. Uber should be required to pay and treat its employees better. Other than the way they treat their drivers, they are fucking amazing.
And that’s it. All other perspectives are moronic. Allowing people to drive a cab part-time during peak times only, to make extra cash, is fucking brilliant. Don’t like it? Improve the current system in your city. Otherwise, shut the holy fuck up already.
I’m a NYer. A medallion here cost $805,000 in January (down from a high of $1.05 million in June 2013). Even with mass transit to every corner of the city (though not always necessarily convenient), tons of yellow taxis AND livery drivers, Uber is still able to find business here. There was, and still is, a lot of hemming and hawing, but they’re operating legally.
While vested interests want to protect themselves, it’s not governments job to protect them from disruptive innovation. Disruptive isn’t a bad word.
Honest question: Do you know what Lyft is doing differently? Or could it be that the litigants are waiting to find out if they’ll be successful before taking on Lyft?
They’re not the ones that will draft the laws (well, maybe the lawyers). Uber lobbyists will draft Uber friendly laws, existing medallion lobbyists will push for no change, donations will be made, and things may (or may not) change locality by locality.
So we are clear, I’m agreeing with you here. The medallions cost too much in NY (that’s what I meant by it being one of the worst). I referred to them as “heritage plates” because it is my understanding that they are passed down, and that’s one of the problems.
No, it isn’t. That said, slow managing of a transition (and dropping the price of medallions 20% is a slow transition) is government’s job. As is balancing needs.
Government does not want to be in the position of saying “Thanks for obeying the law. You really didn’t have to and if you don’t want to, well, look at Uber: you don’t have to”. Social contract, stuff like that.
And “disruptive” is a bad word, now. Just because I’ve heard it too many times in the last five years of mobile development (look. I admit that’s a persona problem).
No idea. It might be due to my sources. I know and follow on twitter a lot of feminists, who are unthrilled with Uber culture. It is possible that is where I’m getting all the knowledge of them.
And, again, I’ve got bias here, too. With a few noteworthy exceptions, Toronto has decent and even fairly honest politicians. I don’t envy them having to deal with this, but I’d rather they did so that Uber having free rein to simply ignore the rules (although, as I said in a different post, that they did so to get a toe hold in is fine).
Rob Ford for President of America!
Broadly I agree but in this case at least where I live there is no doubt that the taxi companies run a monopoly which is so lucrative they are able to buy politicians. The political system simply will not work to change the poor current state of the law.
The cab monopoly is not a vote changing issue so politicians will not do anything about the monopoly no matter how many concerned citizens write them polite letters, in the face of a company that has and does fund a substantial proportion of politicians’ election campaigns.
Further, the type of scaremongering campaign that the cab companies are running finds a lot of favour with amygdala controlled dumbasses (as Smapti so ably demonstrates). The only way Lyfft and Uber are going to combat that is by operating and showing people that they are not going to get tortured and raped by using their service. But they can’t do that entirely legally (at least in this jurisdiction, and in a lot of others as I understand it).
I am very concerned about "Big corporations breaking the law “because they don’t like them” where that is demonstrably hurting people but in this case all the “Big corporation” is doing is offering a service that a lot of people seem to want. I’m not seeing who the victim is here.
To sort of clarify a bit… the problem with the medallions is almost completely beside the point of the general economics of running a cab. The medallions are only expensive because they’re scarce, not because running a cab in a medallion city is particularly lucrative. Cabbies of modest means can buy them because people are willing to lend them money on the assumption that they can always sell the medallion on later. That’s also a lot of cabbies’ retirement plan. If the government decided to start issuing a lot more of them or retired the system altogether, that would pull the rug out from under a whole little financial system that exists around buying and selling them.
The problem of how to extricate the taxi business out of that bind without completely ruining the cabbies who have huge dollars invested in their licenses is a separate issue from whether those cabbies will be able to continue to make an operating profit in the market with more players, including ridesharing (or part-time cabbies or whatever you want to call Uber) services.