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Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

Over regulation. He talks all around that word but its key to why. The barrier to entry becomes much more difficult to surmount.

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Europe historically had a problem where powerful nobility owned massive portions of the economy outright. Competition? Maybe with an army.

Today, it's a lot better than it was, but in many places the powerful noblility have been replaced by other powerful interests and some industries still operate like they have the God-given right to supply automobile tires to the French people and all good men must express solidarity to expel these upstart invaders... :(

Over regulation is not really a thing – the US has under regulation, especially in regards to data safety.

Over regulation is what the US does with taxis. Which is why in Germany companies that do essentially the same as Uber (but legal[1]) already existed before Uber was even founded.

What I see the "issue" is that as soon as some size is reached, we don't really care about expanding further. Why take a risk when you already have a pretty nice market?

[1] In Germany, where UberPop is currently banned, you can start a taxi company if your drivers are insured with commercial insurance. To make profit, your drivers need to have a 55€ license as taxi driver. Simple as that. UberPop is only banned because they did not want to insure the drivers (the license is less of an issue).

> UberPop is only banned because they did not want to insure the drivers.

Do you have a source for this? Uber insures its UberX drivers in both Canada and the U.S. so I don't see why they would be opposed in Germany. There must be something else.

Yes there is, the fare is regulated - no matter the demand, the area of the source or destination, or how drunk the passenger is.

Uber does heavy demand-based price adjusting, and well, fuck that. Better have the assurance of always paying 20€ for my trip home, than the variability of an Uber with 10-50€.

> variability of an Uber

You know when booking the trip what the cost is, it's not a mystery.

> the fare is regulated - no matter the demand, the area of the source or destination

Does Germany not have supply problems caused by this policy?

I know it's impossible to get a cab in Toronto on New Year's, whether you're coming home from a party or your wife is going into labour. I'd personally rather know for sure there is a ride available if I need it than be stranded by the side of the road because nobody is allowed to take my money.

There are almost never supply problems, but this is to make sure taxi companies don't scam people as it's usual in southern europe.

Well, that’s not necessarily true. Uber can offer chauffeur services at any price, but as soon as they pick people off of the streets, it becomes a taxi service, which has the maximum fare limitation. Well, at least according to what I could find about the rules and regulations in Kiel.

Please give one example of a company that couldn't be setup in a European country because of over regulation but was successful setup in the US.

This is very variable across Europe (of course that could be an issue on its own). The Heritage Foundation's Economic Freedom indexes consistently place some European countries higher than the US (e.g. Switzerland and Denmark rank higher overall). In many areas, many European countries have less regulation than the United States.

I agree with that. And I would add: over regulation "imposed" by the old unicorns this article mentions. They don't want new, disruptive players enter their well stablished monopolies / oligopolies. In EU they have lots of administration levels they can lobby and it's easy to increase barriers to entry. I can assure this is absolutely true in Spain.

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