Hacker News Reader

Comment by Punoxysm | Hacker News Reader

I use and enjoy the services that uber offers. That said, it uses dubious loopholes to evade the (misguided, anti-competitive) regulations taxi companies operate under.

Letting uber evade the bad regulations instead of fixing them is a poor solution (same with tesla and dealerships).

View on HN

Whenever a market gets too distorted or even shut down, shady things (either illegal or in legal gray areas) start popping up that allow people to evade the distorted market. Alcohol prohibition, printer cartridges, keurig and nespresso capsules, taxis, even the war on drugs, you can all boil it down to this simple principle. At the end this is how change happens when at some point the attempts to crack down on it are either given up or it leads to such a severe police state that at some point a revolution happens. So I'd say don't blame the player, blame the game - but still hold up the player to the moral standards you'd like to see yourself (e.g. try to give your money to a better organization than Uber).

When it comes down to these things I like to go back to Immanuel Kant: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction.". I care much more about this than about the law, especially laws that clearly don't have an actual democratic process at their basis. Laws that come into place because of lobbies pressuring or influencing politicians through money or other means, where there is no real possibility for the people to overturn it, are in my opinion not morally just. Unfortunately this means that there are almost no laws I find just, other than those in my home country, Switzerland.

Well said. I find it absurd how much local governments interfere with local markets, like with taxis. I see no good reason (that will survive scrutiny with Kant's Categorical Imperative) to legislate the number of taxis in a certain area, like with medallions, or charge a high price for them. It's effectively corruption and regulatory capture. It's anti-competitive and has, by my analysis, no redeeming qualities that could not be accomplished better another way.

I don't see a reasonable avenue for a company like Uber to change the laws ahead of time. They only have the traction and resources that they do because of their bias for action. A no-name startup petitioning the city to drop their taxi legislation because the model is "wrong" will get nowhere. I don't see how Uber could ever have come about with that approach.

Additionally, I am also not convinced that Uber's model falls under taxi legislation by writing or intent. I do not believe that taxi legislation is attempting to control for the same problems. Taxis pick up random people on the streets, with effectively zero relationship ahead of time, and lots of opportunity for individual consumer ripoff. People who use Uber have established a relationship with the company ahead of time, before they need a ride. They have chosen to use Uber specifically. The same choice and discrimination is not part of hailing a cab on the street. Uber offers a consistent price to people in an area, and its well-known brand has a reputation to which people can associate bad or good experiences: for the company as a whole, through their speech, and for specific drivers, with the ratings system.

That said, I do also have concerns about Uber's attitude and their intimidating and disruptive tactics toward the press, competitors, etc. They have not comported themselves well enough to deserve the moral high ground, though I will tend to side with them anyway on these legislative issues because taxis are so dysfunctional.

That's a good point - if Uber should fall under Taxi law, so should SuperShuttle and various other airport shuttle services. Once there is already a consumer relationship in place, there is no need to protect consumers more than with the normal anti fraud protection.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com