Hurray.
Edit: due to aggressive rate limiting on HN's part, I'm not able to respond to those who have chosen to reply rather than downvote. What I'd say in such a reply is this: despite all of the advantages of regulated taxi services that people are citing, rideshare services are still winning in the marketplace. Have you ever thought about possible reasons for that?
Clearly people aren't being forced to use Uber, and just as clearly, they shouldn't be forced not to.
Obviously this is all city specific but I think a valid counter point to the 'unnecessary regulation' argument at least where I live.
What exactly is it about a taxi license that would affect that behavior? And shouldn't those regulations apply to _every_ driver?
If all these rules and regulations are so awesome, then consumers will overwhelming choose to buy from companies that follow them.
Thats how markets work.
People will simply use whatever's cheapest and easiest without much thought into anything else.
It seems that the people who determine what does and does not "benefit society" have a significant amount of unwarranted power. If this weren't true, we wouldn't be seeing cases like this one where the people -- the same ones that supposedly make up the democracy in question -- insist on using unauthorized/illegal rideshare services.
If your response to my reasoning is, "Well, it's a democracy after all, they're getting what they voted for," then the contradiction is too obvious to bother pointing out.
> So, all I have to do to impose my will on you is to insist, backed by little to no evidence, that highly-regulated taxis "benefit society" more than less-regulated rideshare services do. Correct?
No, the regulations predate Uber. Uber needs to either change the law through lobbying or adhere to it.
> It seems that the people who determine what does and does not "benefit society" have a significant amount of unwarranted power. If this weren't true, we wouldn't be seeing cases like this one where the people -- the same ones that supposedly make up the democracy in question -- insist on using unauthorized/illegal rideshare services.
> If your response to my reasoning is, "Well, it's a democracy after all, they're getting what they voted for," then the contradiction is too obvious to bother pointing out.
What we have isn't democracy, it's representative democracy, which addresses exactly the problem I was originally making. The masses can't be expected to make informed decisions on everything that concerns them, so they elect a few people who can on their behalf.
When an average person decides Uber vs. Taxi, in the 10s or so they spend thinking about it, they're not considering the impact it'll have on the local economy, the safety features of the vehicle, the qualifications the driver is required to have or the regulations they're required to adhere to. All your average person thinks about is that the Uber app is already on their phone, the car will arrive quickly and in the grand scheme of things, the likelihood of something bad happening is small.
Elected representatives will listen to experts, consider the wider impacts of their decision and do their best to make a decision that benefits their constituents. Sometimes that decision will conflict with what their constituents would choose themselves.
Just because you can regulate something doesn't mean it's always a net win for society to do so. The EU definitely seems to have missed this particular clue.
No, that's how markets are _supposed_ to work but we don't live in a world of perfect competition where completely free markets work without flaws.
It's pretty simple why they win in the marketplace: They're cheaper and easier to use.
There are a number of problems that riders aren't likely to think about though:
- Uber drivers can earn less than minimum wage
- They don't have to pass the same tests and adhere to the same regulations as taxis
- Their vehicles aren't built with the same safety features as taxis (for example the screen protecting the driver or the camera in the back)
It's the role of government to act in the people's best interest and that will often mean acting against the market.
Uber could likely operate without breaking the law by simply calling taxis with their app (and from memory it actually did exactly that in Germany once) but that wouldn't make them nearly as much money.
(You actually refer to the street hail thing in one of your other comments, surprised you didn't mention that here.)
It doesn't matter whether you hail it on the street or book it elsewhere. Taxi is a paid car. By that definition in NYC all black cars, yellow cabs, Ubers etc are Taxis.
That weird US regional laws have made a whole family of terms for this simple service just makes this discussion muddy (as you might have noticed).
What this news article is about and what is already obvious is that Uber is Taxi because they take people places for money.
Saying Uber should follow regulations that other taxi companies follow is just common sense imho. That includes minimum pay, insurance regulation, background checks, training requirements, employment security etc.
That some cities regulate the number of taxis via medallions or monopolies is a related but different topic. I find that practice very strange, and that I hope will be gone in most places soon. The irony though is that cities that don't have medallion systems are tougher markets for Uber because there Uber doesn't have the same obvious edge.