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Comment by kartan | Hacker News Reader

Does this means that you are ok with breaking the law if some ones offers you something convenient? Don't you care about workers rights? Should that rights be removed so you can have cheaper services?

I think that Uber app can bring awesome things. But is still operates in the real world and should not break the law. And it also should respect workers rights. One think should not exclude the other.

French law doesn't forbids Uber to operate. It just asks it to have the correct licenses like any one else.

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Except that the taxi licenses are limited to a fixed quota that is much too low for a city like Paris. Taxi drivers must rent their license from a taxi company or buy it from former drivers for large sums of money and they will go on strike as soon as a government says that they want to loosen the system a bit, which would lower the value of their investment. Uber such a success because the taxi service is so inadequate.

> French law doesn't forbids Uber to operate. It just asks it to have the correct licenses like any one else.

You are being downvoted but that's a very good point, France isn't the wild west. Is Uber useful ? no doubt they are, but so are any other illegal taxi service. The french justice system just said Uber POP is illegal in France. other Uber services are just fine. Uber hasn't been outlawed in France.

> Is Uber useful ? no doubt they are, but so are any other illegal taxi service.

It is my understanding that Uber only has a problem with a single service of the many they provide: the rideshare one, where unlicensed and unregistered people get to provide the service for a fee.

This is not the only service provided by uber. Uber also offers transportation services provided by fully licensed and perfectly legal transport operators.

I care about worker's rights, but of all workers, not just of the privileged few who get the luck of the lottery while the others remain unemployed.

The system in France appears not to be that of lottery but of investing into taxi licenses´, the number of which the government keeps artificially low due to violent industrial action by licensed taxi entrepreneurs. It's more rent-seeking than lottery.

>Don't you care about workers rights?

As far as I can tell the only worker right you are talking about here is the right to not lose your job, and that's not a right that the law usually protects. You can be deeply concerned about worker rights and at the same time defend Uber. And in fact, in my opinion, Uber is much better for worker rights than taxis, prove of that is that there are many more women driving Ubers than taxis.

> Does this means that you are ok with breaking the law if some ones offers you something convenient?

The goal of business regulation is to protect the clients. If a regulation does nothing to protect the clients and only hinders their rights, that regulation is absurd and should be rethought.

> Don't you care about workers rights?

Imposing artificial restrictions on a market is not workers rights. It's corporativism, typical of totalitarian states, which abuses the rights of all citizens of a nation only to guarantee absurd priviledges to a minority.

>Does this means that you are ok with breaking the law if some ones offers you something convenient?

I doubt he's breaking the law by using Uber.

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