dventimi

At this point I have no idea who's who in this thread anymore. Sorry.

If you're sending it to do errands, you might consider also sending it out to take riders, as a side hustle. Do that, and you're now a taxicab service.

Point being, I suspect many people don't want to own any vehicle, whatever level of automation it has (which could be none). The reason we do is that taking taxis everywhere is too expensive. If that cost can be brought down, however it's done (computer brain, cab driver, capuchin monkey, whatever), many people will be happy to forgo owning a vehicle.

If gig work is such a good job perhaps you should consider doing it.

How many cars does each person monitor?

How many someones are there per active vehicle?

Why would that be any different from Uber? Doesn't Uber also want to cut costs?

I've taken 38 Waymo rides so far. Every one of them has been very clean, cleaner than the average Uber ride.

Whether or not there's an etiquette for HN, there's definitely guidelines for HN which among other things encourage commenters not to accuse each other of not reading the articles, and to give each other the benefit of the doubt.

As it happens, I did read the article before writing my first comment. That would be the article which uses the word "secret" in its title but neither "secret" nor "secrecy" anywhere else in the body. Put another way, having actually read the article, among the many interesting things it says, one thing I know it doesn't say is exactly what it means by its title

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm not saying there's anything necessarily sinister or surprising about its police department. I'm just trying to be more complete. If we say the City just collects bins and runs one school, well that's not really giving the full picture, now is it?

Beyond that, consider this:

-The City has one of highest concentrations of global finance power in the world, if not the highest.

-That global finance power--global banking and commerce--has been accused of illicit activity, largely money laundering.

-If they do engage in that illicit activity, they probably collude with whatever governments they need to to advance their interests. It only makes sense.

-And, they probably would cloak these activities under a veil of secrecy. That also only makes sense.

Little if any of this is in dispute. What seems to be in dispute is the answer to these related questions:

Money laundering can happen anywhere, in Canary Wharf, in the Channel Islands, hell in New York and Delaware. But, is there something unique about the square mile? If so, what is it? Whatever conditions create a money laundering opportunity, are those conditions enhanced by what's unique about the City? And if it's not the Corporation, then what is it? If there's a high degree of money laundering there to go along with its high concentration of global finance power, then why is that? Because there hasn't been equivalent such accusations against New York and Delaware. The square mile has been called out as playing an outsized role in corruption. If that's true--supposing for the sake of argument it is--if that's true, then why? Is it just coincidence? Global finance and the vices it's indulged in had to land somewhere, and the City was as good a place as any?

That's one way to put it. Another way to put it is "most". The City has the largest number of financial firms, the largest share of office space, and the largest share of trading volume and assets under management. It's home to the Bank of England and the London Stock Exchange, and will be home to HSBC when it finishes its move there from Canary Wharf.

Those firms have been accused--indirectly--of money laundering. If they're engaged in that vice, it's plausible to me they would add the additional vice of protecting it from scrutiny. I.e. engaging in "secrecy." It need not collude with the government to do so, but if it did it would hardly be the first time business and government colluded under a veil of secrecy.

As for what the actual City of London Corporation runs, since you didn't answer the question, I'll answer it for you. In addition to collecting bins and operating one school, it also runs a police department.

> The Corporation is a local council, it collects the bins and operates one primary school.

Is that all it runs?

> There's always this misconception that it's some sort of lawless wild west.

I don't view it that way.

> I assure you every company in the world would be based there!

How many financial companies in the world are based there?

Where is the UK financial services sector concentrated?

That's defensible.

The article title includes "the secret City of London." Without clarification, it's left to readers to decide what that means. It could mean its government actively maintains a cloak of secrecy, it could just mean that it's not well known, say, to Americans, or it could mean something in between. The latter pole--that it's not well known, say, to Americans--has been established in this thread. What I'm trying to do is offer evidence to support the former pole. If there's corruption within the City of London, that supplies a motive for its financial institutions or its government (as if there's a difference) to shield the activities that occur there from scrutiny.

Relevance? I haven't said whether I'm talking about the City of London's government or its financial institutions (as if there's a difference). None of which has to do with "secrecy" which is arguably the relevant topic. On that subject, whether it's the government or the financial institutions or both, if they're engaged in money laundering, which is more likely: They keep those matters secret, or they don't keep those matters secret?

Hard disagree. A car that has been around for three years is not old.

> It's irritating to be accused of not engaging

I can see how that might be irritating. Good thing I haven't done that.

> you've twice ignored my main point that expectation of tips lowers the posted price and makes life harder for all of the drivers/servers

That's not a point. That's a claim, which you have not persuaded me to accept.

> I tried to probe for what is not coming through to you this third time, with another case where the legibility of a cost is shifted to no benefit.

If only you had been clear that that's what you were doing, I would've told you that what's not coming through is the casual relation between tips and wages. You seem to believe tips necessarily suppress wages. I see no particular reason to believe that's true.

> Not going to continue here.

Suit yourself.

Did you? You asked a question about Social Security policy, in a thread that's arguably about individual tipping practices. Perhaps you regard the former as an illustrative thought experiment which helps reason about the latter via shared principles, but it's a shame you didn't elaborate on it because as it stands, I regard it as a non sequitur.

Non sequitur

Well, from my first comment I have been speaking on micro terms, since I've been speaking for myself, an individual. I'm not speaking on the macro level because as an individual I have little power to make restaurants, say, pay higher wages, or Uber pay higher rates, or lower wages or lower rates. As an individual, whether or not I tip isn't going to change that one iota.

Now, if you want to talk about organizing collectively beyond the individual level, to use political and market power to make structural changes that raise wages but curb tipping, well that's a different topic that's worth discussing. But, absent that, I'm going to keep tipping.

Well. I don't want to speak for other people. If I were an Uber driver I personally would like to make more money rather than less, and if that happened with tips I wouldn't grumble too much about it. Maybe that's just me.

> I know this feels right, but introducing tip culture into a market currently free of it is bad

I couldn't possibly agree with this less. My view is that "it depends." Level salaries in San Francisco and I'll consider not tipping. Until then, I'm comfortable with my choices.

I feel that. With about that same frequency, I encounter a vehicle or a driver or driving that's just dreadful. But, I don't report it or even ding the driver because I feel like that's a hard job that I don't wanna do, and I feel bad. I dunno, maybe I should.

Well, you can now, and I do. It's hard enough living in California and especially San Francisco, and I believe being in the service industry here is no picnic. Tipping is the least I can do.

If they expand their supply, I would expect that to lower prices, not raise them.

Also, perhaps it's a consequence of limited supply. If the SF fleet is still just 250 cars that seems quite small to me for a city with a lot of demand for ride services.

> A few years down the line the cars will be old

Maybe. Then again, maybe not.

That might be a long wait. There's no particular reason a monopoly need appear in this market. If it does, that will be a matter of public policy at it always is. That would be unfortunate, as it always is, but it would also be larger and different problem that goes well beyond this particular market.

Yes because a $3 ride on a public bus is exactly like a $23 ride in a Waymo car.

> you won't have a choice

I will have a choice. I will choose one of the competitors.

> Same thing that happened when Lyft and Uber when they ran the taxi industry out of business

There's still a taxicab industry in San Francisco. It became better after competing with Lyft and Uber.