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Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

As someone who really relies on Uber for transportation in all the countries I travel to (no need to speak the local language) - I'm finally starting to appreciated the conflict associated with trying to be supportive of morally upstanding leaders versus desiring to deserve your fundamental needs.

Ironically, the Uber fiasco has now made me substantially more empathic to the single issue voters (Evangelicals, Right to Lifers, NRA Members, etc...) who voted for Trump regardless of his perceived faults.

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> I'm finally starting to appreciated the conflict associated with trying to be supportive of morally upstanding leaders versus desiring to deserve your fundamental needs.

Using an app that removes the friction of having to communicate with people whose language you do not speak is certainly nice, but it's not a fundamental need. It's a choice and like all choices you trade one thing for another: convenience vs. supporting a stance that you can align morally with.

> it's not a fundamental need

Reducing an argument to "needs" or "rights" is circular. Even across well-accepted cultures and moral systems, the lines between "needs" and non-"needs" is diverse (e.g. duty to god(s), duty to family honour, securing one's life, securing one's happiness through artistic expression, et cetera).

Oh, I'm not debating whether it's a need or a right - I take objection to the qualifier "fundamental".

"Fundamental" was not an important qualifier in either of your posts. OP did not define what that meant in their context, and therefore it's not fair to nitpick based on that alone. They might as well have said "ticklish" for all the difference it made to their overall point.

If that's really what your whole post is about, why take the take to argue definitions? What does fundamental mean to you exactly?

It's either Uber, a local driver, or a translator. Without one of those three, I literally am unable to go anywhere in locales that don't commonly see english speakers. I'm not sure how much more fundamental than "I'm unable to travel".

Learning a few words in a language spoken locally at your target destination really really goes a long long way. Doesn't need to be the native language spoken, but Spanish and/or Portuguese will get you pretty far in large parts of the world. I'm more the Africa person but quite a few friends of mine travelled china and Nepal without ever resorting to an uber. It's harder, granted, but not fundamentally impossible.

And this is how people become ever trapped in their safety and comfort bubbles.

Also learning how to say please and thank you in the local language never hurt anyone.

I'm a Polish expat. Last time I was in Poland I made an effort to speak friendly Polish to my taxi driver.

He could immediately tell I wasn't fully Polish and launched into a bigoted tirade about Americans and refused to drop me off unless I paid him a large tip, because as an "American pretending to be Polish", "I can afford it".

He was not a licensed taxi driver, of course. But sometimes keeping your mouth shut and staying in your comfort bubble is exactly what you want. Thinking that learning please and thank you never hurt anyone is itself something you can only do from inside of a bubble.

>> "He was not a licensed taxi driver, of course."

So it wasn't speaking Polish or being American that hurt you - it was getting in a strangers car instead of an actual taxi.

This may be of use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_danger

I found out only afterwards when I tried to file a police report. I don't think it's reasonable to expect travelers to know how to vet the legitimacy of taxis they are getting into in a foreign country.

This is one of Uber's value propositions.

I understand but in many countries licensed cabs are pretty obvious with huge plates showing their license number and/or other markings and in my experience that's true for Poland too. I agree though Uber does remove the need to pay attention so therefore removes the risk of mistakes.

You are stuck so far inside that bubble that you can't see the walls :D

Imagine srriving at an airport and seeing they have signs up advising tourists how to determine the validity of a taxi. All well and good, until you find out the signs were fake and erected illegally by one taxi company to steer people away from their competitor.

Or head over to somewhere like Tunisia for a while. The line between legitimate and illegitimate is so blurred as to be nonexistent.

Even in my home town of Canberra we have a tightly regulated but loosely policed taxi industry, and there is no guarantee that the person driving the taxi is the same as the person whose licence is displayed on the dash.

I recommend removing your opening statement. Even with the smiley, it unnecessarily adds negativity to your comment. The rest stands just fine without it.

This cuts the other way too. Uber may be able to hold drivers accountable but I can't even count the number of shitty, dangerous drivers I've had. I've been down one way streets (into heavy traffic) the wrong way more than a few times. I've been driven in the wrong direction adding 10-15 mins to a 40min journey because the driver was blindly following GPS. In my experience licensed drivers know where they are going and tend to be above average drivers. And again, ensuring a car is licensed - at least where I'm from - is pretty simple. I use Uber in certain places and licensed taxi's in others but pretending that Uber gets you a safe ride is ludicrous.

Because of one bad taxi experience, you now will only use Uber? Do you think his attitude would be different if you spoke only English? He would have found a different excuse to extort you. It's that simple.

Sorry to disappoint you, I've gotten a lot of bad taxis as well. My Polish taxi driver experience was stellar though.

But yeah, pay no attention when you ask for an Uber and you might get someone purporting to be an Uber driver or something else.

I've had good success with Grab in Vietnam and Philippines

I don't even bother with Uber in Singapore because Grab is such a better service. And cheaper.

Thirded. On a recent trip to Bangkok, we'd usually have an easier time finding a Grab car than an Uber. In both cases, the experience was positive, while Uber drivers seemed to have slightly newer cars, at a slightly higher price.

... And of course they speak English in Singapore. And the Taxis are awesome unless you are trying to find one during rush hour/shift change.

Same here; Grab worked fine in Kuala Lumpur (back then MyTeksi), with the added benefit of requiring the driver to use the meter.

It worked ok in a very touristic part of Thailand (Patong & Phuket City), with a lot of scammers (asking 700 THB for a ride that should be around 300).

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