Hacker News Reader

Comment by lpolovets | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know why laws like this exist? What's the value of regulating carpool ride-sharing and single-user ride-sharing, and what's the additional value of having separate regulations for each.

View on HN

This particular law is consumer protection. Taxis are required to charge per trip, not per passenger. If you are standing on a street corner, hail a cab and say 'anyone else going uptown?', that is purely between you and the other passengers, and not between you and the driver.

I suspect that if Uber had a second app, or maybe a second marketplace within the same app, which matched Uber passengers with each other -- instead of multiple passengers with a single driver -- it probably would have been legal.

You didn't answer the question, "why?".

Yes, they did. This particular law is consumer protection.

It's a law designed to protect an existing marketplace.

When you take a taxi, you pay a fare, plain and simple. This farce of calling it ridesharing via an independent contractor with a mobile app that happens to connect you all is exactly that: a farce. If we want to redefine what a taxi service is, that's another conversation.

Super Shuttle is legal, pay per passenger. As are buses.

If you want to look into it, the field that studies these things is called "public choice theory". It basically boils down to the fact that concentrated interests can impose diffuse costs (which they partially harvest in the form of rents) quite easily.

Lots of laws are only there because established companies of lobbied for them. A large chunk of laws are anti consumer and anti worker

this law however, is to protect consumers. it prevents taxis from charging multiple people for the same ride (as separate fares). this law actually makes sense and should stay in place.

No it doesnt. If the law stated that it was not possible to ask the full price, then it would protect consumers. But now it includes cases where the price is halved, which means I can't get cheap transport.

how do you separate jitneys from paying rideshares?

I'm basically wondering why the government thinks it needs to get involved in this kind of stuff at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com