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Comment by spanishcow | Hacker News Reader

Uber is an unlawful business that tries to by-pass Labour law. If Uber model is imposed workers will be working for big companies without proper rights or protections. I want cheaper and better services but never at the cost of other people's rights.

With time driverless cars will be the norm. Until then I want that the people that drive me home have as many rights as them deserve.

(What will happen when machines are able to do all manual work is another more complex discussion)

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I have no sympathy for taxi drivers. They can scream about how cars are destroying their horse and buggy business but I don't care. They want to destroy competition not by lowering their own costs, but by artificially raising someone else's. Why not eliminate the taxi license fee? Why not protest that? Who gets that license fee and for what purpose? Make licenses free and thus eliminate that cost. If insurance is the problem, require it. With more people in the insurance pool, rates should go down. Mais no; it's better to flatten tires rather than speed up the horse.

Many taxi drivers also don't accept credit cards. Many also don't have GPS so I've wasted plenty of money while the driver wanders around looking for my address. Modernize or die. The taxi business is a business, not a social welfare agency.

Sure, blame the taxi drivers for the cost of medallions. Or the laws that require them to purchase insurance. It's their fault, right?

The taxi drivers WANT that as its a barrier to entry

The taxi drivers simply don't want to suddenly become 40% poorer. Selfish, right?

> I want cheaper and better services but never at the cost of other people's rights.

I hear that quite a bit.

The evidence seems to be the opposite though. So long as the deprivation of someone else's rights and conditions is external to your experience, hidden from view... then people tend to be very accepting of any compromise of another person so long as the price goes down (quality isn't even important if the price is low enough).

When people tend to try and argue this, I usually proffer Primark in the UK as an example. People have got to the point that they think a £4 T-shirt costly, without any regard as to how it came to be that a T-shirt is even valued at £4.

We only have some issue with taxis because we speak to the people involved. Even then we're hardly sympathetic.

You've very eloquently argued why voting with your wallet to provide a market-solution to stop abuse and exploitation of workers will never work and why we need government regulations if there is any hope to live in anything but a capitalist dystopia with a tiny sliver of ultra-wealthy owning class, and the rest de-facto slaves.

Don't forget that Uber are congesting the road, polluting, and going around without adequate insurance, all issues that affect even people who never use the service.

So are taxis. So is every other form of transport that uses a road. I never ride the bus but in Avignon, I get to wait behind long congested lines of buses clogging the ring road when I just want to get my daughter from her little school. I never ride those buses. Also your logical fallacy is a little silly: how does going around 'without insurance' harm people that don't use the service? That statement is just untrue. ALL drivers in France must have insurance.

How could it possibly be harmful to pedestrians or other drivers to have underinsured drivers on the road? Gee, I wonder.

Actually, the insurance problem is more complex: Normal drivers insurance does not pay if you were transporting a stranger for-profit. That’s why you need a special insurance for that, which most uber X drivers do not have

> congesting the road, polluting

all cars do that. In fact, Uber should do it less because they don't have to drive around looking for a fare.

> without adequate insurance

I don't know about other countries, but in the US they definitely require adequate insurance. All of your points are wrong.

All cars do that, but most cars are driven like 2 hours a day. The insurance coverage Uber has is rather skimpy despite Uber's success in changing regulations to get it to be considered adequate.

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