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Comment by ryanf | Hacker News Reader

It's bizarre that they're trying to spin this as pro-taxi-driver. I can't tell if they really believe taxi drivers would be happy with them for doing this, or if they're just cynically positioning themselves as "for the people" to erode public support for the union (or score PR points from public disdain for the union, I guess).

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Their drivers aren't taxi drivers in the sense that they don't drive medallion cabs. Medallions in major cities are a scarce, and outrageously expensive on secondary markets. Uber's interests here are aligned with their drivers, not traditional hackney carriage drivers.

Edit: I'm a dope. See child.

Right, but the text of this blog post claims in multiple places that they're supporting traditional cab drivers somehow.

"Taxi drivers are going on strike, and while they circle City Hall in hopes of getting a better deal..."

"...making sure ordinary folks can get around the city while the taxi drivers strike to get a fair deal."

"Furthermore, we want to put a word of support out there to the hard working taxi drivers in San Francisco..."

As far as I can tell, the reality is that they're deliberately undercutting the strike and profiting by it. Which may or may not be justifiable (I don't know anything about the strike), but it's certainly not supportive.

I think they mean "better deal" to be taken ironically by the readers, who likely have little sympathy for cab drivers. Unlike most public unions who are paid by taxes, the electorate is directly and visibly affected by taxi price hikes. So public support for them is naturally much lower than the unions the rich people pay for. Probably anyone reading this is laughing along. They are thinking that fifty cents per thousand feet driven is more than a fair fare (that is the current rate for SF cabs).

Edit: it appears the strike is more about the credit card fees companies charge the cabbies, digital tracking of the cabs, tvs in the back seats which show adverts to passengers, and various other anti-consumer and anti-driver practices. In this case, I can see that public support might be a little higher. I don't like either cabbies or cab companies, but if I had to pick which I like least, it's obviously the companies. In this case, the fair deal bit might be meant unironically.

This strike is not intended to inconvenience the cab customers (voters!).

They intend to prevent vehicular access to City Hall. A few percent of the cabs will be involved in shutting down the streets at City Hall and if Uber takes up enough slack so the customers aren't inconvenienced that could be helping the cab industry. They don't want pissed off voters.

(Personally, it seems ill advised. The core seems to be the cab companies keeping a 5% transaction fee on credit card processing, which isn't far from the cost. Some cabbies also don't want GPS trackers on the company's cars or LCDs playing advertisements to their riders.)

They're supporting the drivers, not the medallion owners, who are the ones renting the cabs to drivers 6 days a week at an outrageous markup and preventing the city issuing any new medallions. The average taxi driver, who does not own a medallion, gets screwed by the current arrangement and would be far better off working for Uber IMO.

> not the medallion owners, who are the ones renting the cabs to drivers 6 days a week at an outrageous markup and preventing the city issuing any new medallions.

Umm, no. The medallion owners are NOT preventing the city from issuing new medallions. Yes, the medallion owners have consistently convinced the relevant authorities to not issue new medallions, but the responsibility for that choice rests with said authorities, not the current medallion owner.

If you can't figure out who is responsibile, you can't fix things....

Anamax, you can't say the government exists in a vacuum when business is often buying the votes in the regulatory body. I do not like the way city hall is run either, but it's a two-way street.

> you can't say the government exists in a vacuum

I'm not saying that govt exists in a vacuum. I'm saying who is responsible for what it does.

> I do not like the way city hall is run either, but it's a two-way street.

No, it's not. The way City Hall works in SF is entirely the responsibility of the voters of SF. As long as they insist on setting it up so it can be bought off, it will be, and that's their fault.

No, it isn't the fault of the people buying. Not one little bit.

Yes it is partly their fault, because they are the ones corrupting the political process at the electoral level. There are so many different factors that go into electing people at city hall, and the public is no more a monolithic entity than the government. Rather, it includes multiple groups some of whose interests are aligned on some issues and conflict on others. The electorate can't, and shouldn't, build the entire election around the taxi issue; that would be irrational. But it's not obvious what the most effective leverage point for change is; this is a basic lesson of public choice theory.

The people buying influence (and today, holding the public interest hostage by blockading city hall) are also a part of the problem. You can't sensibly object to rent-seeking and then give the rent-seekers a free pass when they kick back some of their extracted rents in the form of political lobbying.

> You can't sensibly object to rent-seeking and then give the rent-seekers a free pass when they kick back some of their extracted rents in the form of political lobbying.

I'm not objecting to rent-seeking; that would be like objecting to gravity.

I'm objecting to folks who set up opportunities for rent-seeking and then complain when it happens. I'm blaming folks who set up said opportunities for the rent-seeking that occurs.

Once again, the electorate is not monolithic, but highly fragmented. To pretend otherwise is to endorse the divide-and-conquer approach of professional lobbyists. Whenever someone proposes reforms it's billed as an attack on freedom, whenever someone complains about the absence of reforms, it's billed as the electorate's own silly fault. This has been pointed out to you before, and you're an intelligent person, so I think it's rather disingenuous of you to keep trotting out the naive form of the argument.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice_theory

> Once again, the electorate is not monolithic, but highly fragmented.

That's irrelevant to my point.

I'm not making a public choice theory argument. Yes, public choice theory discusses rent-seeking, but it isn't the only basis for doing so.

It's entirely relevant; your whole argument on the notion of unitary agency. Public choice theory explains why this line of reasoning is fundamentally flawed. If you don't understand this then all I can suggest is that you spend some time thinking it over, because you have certainly not articulated a coherent argument in defense of your position and I grow tired of explaining the obvious.

> It's entirely relevant; your whole argument on the notion of unitary agency.

No, it doesn't, even if your argument requires that it does.

Yes, some folks support structures that make rent-seeking easy while others oppose. In both groups, you have folks who want govt to provide a particular good and some folks opposed. All of thse are still responsible for the resulting rent-seeking, even though clearly they're not "unitary".

> I grow tired of explaining the obvious.

You haven't explained anything. You've dropped a buzz-word that is only tangentially related and made some false assumptions.

I like public choice theory, but it isn't a complete explanation of everything in govt. In particular, while it talks about treating govt as an economic problem, it makes some assumptions about govt that aren't necessary.

So the people who are opposed to rent-seeking are just as responsible for the phenomenon as the people who are supportive of it, even if the former have voted against it. Riiiiight.

There are lots of ways to oppose rent-seeking. One is to oppose situations where it is inevitable. The other is to support measures "intended" to limit it. Since the latter don't work, said support is meaningless.

And yes, an unsuccessful opposition bears some responsibility.

Surely you're not arguing that all responsiblity is the same....

I'm not sure I understand what is cynical about it. The union represents a small number of taxi drivers and tries to improve their economic position at the expense of that of everybody else in the city. Moreover, basic price theory shows that the union is likely to hurt "the people" (i.e. everybody else) more than it helps the drivers, because they don't just increase the fare (which would be a pure transfer from customers to providers -- fair or not, it's not a net loss) but they also decrease the number of rides. If it weren't for people imagining that their own economic well-being was somehow wound up with the taxicab union, they'd be better off, and thus eroding public support for the taxicab union is a public service.

Sincerely, your friendly neighborhood economist.

Agreed. It's a great play either way in my opinion. I have a feeling Uber is going to get a lot of new customers tomorrow.

I left this comment at Uber:

What drives people crazy is insincerity . Why not to call spades, spades? Uber is in the business, an innovative and disrupting and customer-centric business. Your business is good, as it was carved by hard work of Uber team, and your livelihood and success depends on it.

So, why not to tell your customers that you are there for them, when they need you. You don't have to mention "we love taxi, unions, taxes and strikes" BS, or you can stand for your business, and say "f%$# taxi drivers, look at us, we are better, and here's our discount!"

Good luck with Uber, and, please, be sincere.

They're cynically acting as vultures, taking taxi business and eroding the leverage the taxi drivers get by striking. They know what they're doing. Hopefully it backfires on them.

How exactly is this discount eroding leverage?

Strikes create leverage by withholding a service. A discount that put their service on par with taxis in effect provides replacement taxi service.

So what the taxi companies no longer have a pressure to restore their service? It does not compute...

"How exactly is this discount eroding leverage?" ... "the taxi companies no longer have a pressure to restore their service".

The pressure to restore the service would also get directed towards those they're bargaining with. That's part of how strikes work.

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