
Rideshare website ruled illegal - nickb
http://www.thestar.com/business/article/535185
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elai
Whenever I think of taxi medallions and taxi licensing, I think of a corrupt
protectionist cash raking scheme that make taxis way overpriced.

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callmeed
I wouldn't be surprised if sites like airbedandbreakfast.com get targeted as
well.

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vaksel
probably one murder away from being shut down

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jrockway
The solution is to move this website somewhere else. Last time I checked,
Sealand didn't have car-sharing regulations.

Anyway, if people want to do something, you can't stop them from wanting to do
it by adding a disclaimer to a website. Sorry, that's not how the world works
anymore.

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tptacek
This kind of makes sense: if _ever_ there was an industry that needed
regulation, it's taxi/car service. PickupPal is basically the Napster of taxi
dispatchers. I'm not saying I think it should be outlawed; I'm just saying,
it's not crazy that others do think that.

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mseebach
Really? Why? What makes driving a stranger around in your car so much more
dangerous than driving your wife and kids around?

It's absolutely crazy. The bus company asking the government to protect it
from delivering the service that their customers want and need.

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tptacek
Hmmm. Start here: the "threat" is that people will set up businesses offering
rides to people full-time. Those people are, in fact, nothing less than
unlicensed cab companies. Now, let's go with:

* There's an official definition for what a "fare" is, and cab drivers can't change it in the middle of a trip.

* Cab drivers lose their medallions if they drive people around in circles to rack up fares.

* Cab drivers lose their medallions if they randomly drop people off halfway to their destination.

* The insurance requirements for cab drivers are much more strict than for noncommercial drivers.

* Cab drivers are more stringently licensed than normal drivers; in fact, with "P2P car service", there's no incentive to be licensed at all. Reckless driving is a huge problem with urban cab drivers.

* Taxis themselves are inspected for safety, and cab companies risk their licensing by fielding cabs with bald tires and fucked up brakes.

There are two obvious reasons why you'd want to be careful about using the
Internet to route around taxi regulation:

* There is no incentive whatsoever for "P2P car services" to follow safety, insurance, and fair business practice rules, because a bad actor can simply re-register their car with a new account.

* The P2P system cannibalizes the regulated taxi system, which offer far more consumer protections.

That's a start. I don't think it's crazy at all --- though again, I'm not
arguing that this Internet service should be outlawed.

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Prrometheus
The most important aspect of the regulated taxi market to the status quo is
that all the fares are set the same, preventing competition on price/quality.
Also, medallions are rationed, ensuring that the supply of cabs is always
heavily utilized. The demand always outstrips supply on weekend nights and
rainy days, but the market cannot adjust to meet it.

You could make an argument for the licensing of any profession. In practice,
most markets get by with some basic safety regulations and reputation
incentives. The licensing only serves to stifle competition and innovation.

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tptacek
Most rational people probably agree that the medallion caps should be lifted;
they were a deliberate attempt to stifle competition during the Depression.
So, fix that problem. It's not a strong argument for deregulating taxi
service. The regulated taxi service has huge problems as-is without making
rules impossible to enforce:

* Taxi drivers tend to be unsafe drivers

* Taxi drivers tend to rip off their customers

* Taxi drivers tend to drive unsafe vehicles

There are so many cabs on the road, it's infeasible to address this problem
car by car. One thing the medallion system does is to try to inject some
accountability into the market, so that there's more to lose for being a
scofflaw than just one car.

Note also that there's apparently a trend towards leasing medallions on a per-
shift basis instead of in long-term leases, and that trend --- which is a step
towards deregulation --- correlates with a decline of compliance and and
increase in service complaints.

Whether or not I believe we should outlaw shadow cab dispatcher services, I
think it's easy to make the argument that there's a real risk that they will
hurt cab service for most people in the long run. But I mean, as long as they
keep them out of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, I don't really care.

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mseebach
> * Taxi drivers tend to be unsafe drivers

> * Taxi drivers tend to drive unsafe vehicles

That's for the insurance companies to settle. It's easy to imagine that
"regular" liability insurance policies will prohibit commercial transportation
of humans in the vehicle.

> * Taxi drivers tend to rip off their customers

Your "P2P Car Service" rating will plummet if you rip off your customers. By
the same measure, eBay and Craigslist should be blatant failures.

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tptacek
That's obviously true, but I think you might be missing my points. Right now,
they are:

(1) If you lose your million dollar medallion, you are out a million dollars
(and likely the ability to ever get a medallion again). If you lose your P2P
car service rating, you do what every scammer on every online market has done
since 1995: you fake up a new one and game it with BS reviews.

(2) Many of the most severe costs of running a bad car service are
externalities. I haven't had a valid drivers license in (checking...) THREE
YEARS, and I drive every single day. I drive in a car with invalid plates. I
get pulled over (checking...) NEVER. Take me, but make me a foreigner with no
knowledge of the rules of the road, no knowledge of the city I drive in, and a
record of hit and run accidents. _I would do just fine in a P2P cab market_.

Any system that would have me as a cab driver is one we should be skeptical
of.

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mseebach
But these are all issues that a well-established P2P Car Service could handle.
Require drivers to submit a current copy of their license, insurance claim
history and registration for the car in question every 3-6 months. Make this
information available on the website (except driver's lastname and address or
whatever for privacy). Put a GPS logger in each car (if it's not on, you don't
get paid). Charge exclusively on a point-to-point basis (e.g. let the driver
carry the risk of going in circles).

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tptacek
Fine, but these are all issues that _this_ P2P car service _doesn't_ handle.
You basically just designed a new privatized medallion system. Plenty of car
services do exactly this; it seems like you just want them to have a REST web
API, so someone can build the Kayak of private car service dispatchers.

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mseebach
Well yeah. That would be cool.

Anyway, in a point that relates to the OP, it would be that I hope lawmakers
will see this as a cue to reform and privatise taxi-regulation.

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gills
Nothing to see here, just a complaint from a bus charter company trying to
protect their turf. It's obviously not fair for us peons to vanpool in private
vehicles because some looter isn't getting his cut.

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pageman
time to put the site as a "hidden service"
<http://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-hidden-service.html.en>

