Uber and Lyft Still Allow Racist Behavior, but Not as Much as Taxi Services

Driving a taxi is a last-resort job. It may flatter people with safer jobs to attribute racism to taxi drivers, but instead they should try to understand their decision-making.

From a 1997 column by black economist Thomas Sowell:

https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1997/0324/5906052a/ Trading blood for pizza "The city of San Francisco passed a law making it illegal to refuse to make deliveries in high-crime neighborhoods. It all started when someone wanted to order a pizza and the company said that it did not deliver in that part of town. This is not uncommon in other cities or for deliveries of other things besides pizza.

Back during the 1991 Gulf War, those opposed to sending American troops to the Middle East called our military action "trading blood for oil." But none of those people seems to have protested the San Francisco law as trading blood for pizza. ;

Since most people in high-crime neighborhoods are not criminals, it is of course unjust in some cosmic sense that they should be deprived of things that other law-abiding people have available to them. But vandals, hoodlums and murderers are expensive luxuries for their neighbors in many ways, including higher insurance rates, lower property values and fewer businesses to provide either services or jobs.

These costs are undeniable. The question is: Who should pay these costs? Should it be third parties, such as drivers delivering pizza, who might have to pay with their lives?"