I love libertarian logic sometimes. Taxi regulation must have come about because mustache-twirling government goons said "This taxi thing is working too well; let's ruin it with some regulation!"
Government is just an abstraction. There were early taxi companies that lobbied for a monopoly for themselves. They asked for laws to establish a hard limit on number of licenses available. Then, they cashed out nicely because supply of taxis was limited with police force, but demand was growing. Later taxi drivers just had to buy the permit and now they are also interested in keeping the existing laws (or they lose a lot of money). There is no magic at all, pure economics + violent intervention via police.
Except none of this is true in this case - Sweden. The only regulation in place is consumer protection (driver's licenses, reputable businesses, regulated taximeter, comparison prices posted on the cars). There's nothing protecting driver's interests.
Uber could use this standard exclusion: "Tariffs by written agreement exclusively for a particular customer or passenger category do not have to be reported in the price data."
edit2: I'm reading the law now. There are massive loopholes all over this thing. Uber could easily implement their standard business model within this framework if they'd just comply with a few things http://www.transportstyrelsen.se/Global/Regler/TSFS_svenska/...
So if government was really concerned with its citizens well-being, maybe they should have simply launched a campaign informing people that it might be dangerous to take private cabs. Then private cabs industry would respond by introducing new business practices that would ensure more safety. Your reply suggests that young women have no brains of their own and should rely on government patronage solely to avoid potentially dangerous situations.
2. Regulation was also brought into place that made it illegal for private cab drivers to hang around touting for business, they must be called up and dispatched to you. This way you get a cab from a registered business, not some shady guy hanging around saying "I take you home seven pounds".
3. We consider it, in communist europe, part of the government's duty to protect its citizens and to enable them to live lives free of constant worry about assault, rape, robbery etc etc. I know you brave libertarians consider us childlike for not constantly considering personal defence, but it makes life a heck of a lot more pleasant.
4. The libertarian model disgusts me. If you get food poisoning you won't eat there again? If you get sexually assaulted or the car falls apart then by gum, you just won't use that firm again and you'll give them a jolly poor review! The rest of us like safety standards and rules to prevent these situations in the first place.
Do you agree that people have different standards of what is good and what is not? If you don't like something and I'm forcing you to swallow it, you won't feel any good (even if it's good for someone else).
Now, one way to resolve it is to come up with some boundaries that we cannot cross (e.g. "do not kill") and then everyone does what they please.
Another way is to say "stronger/bigger majority can press others to comply with what those in majority feel is good".
Do you realise that any law is a threat of murder? Even if it does not say so. If I make some customers happy, but you get jealous and angry and use a law against me to make pay a fine or shut down business, you are basically threatening me with a violent police force. If I don't comply, police will take me. If I try to protect myself, they may kill me.
What's my argument for you: if you want some protection, go make it, no problem. I'm not the one who will threaten you with violence. If you find a great business model to offer protection, monitoring, insurance etc. and my company goes out of business, well, that was my risk and my opportunity. And if you go out of business, it's the same: no one gets threatened, robbed or killed. We both just try to solve the problem in a peaceful manner. But when you start talking about regulation, then it is real threat of violence, guns, prisons, rape and confiscation.
Oh there's nothing in the world like libertarian absolutism is there? Everything can be reduced to 'violence', therefore everything you disagree with is demonstrably, objectively wrong.
Here's one major flaw in your thinking "We both just try to solve the problem in a peaceful manner."
You ascribe honourable motives and noble behaviours to all actors. You are demonstrably wrong where human behaviour is concerned.
Anyway, we're no longer talking about taxis at this point, and I'm not up for a full discussion on the libertarian model. Needless to say, we don't all see the world in as black and white a way as you.
You ascribe honourable motives and noble behaviours to all actors. You are demonstrably wrong where human behaviour is concerned.
Then by this definition, you should be more concerned with giving the power to a monopoly which is a state. People would surely be very likely to abuse this kind of power. When you a have a private company, it goes out of business the moment its customers stop paying money. Government doesn't have to worry about that happening, because it can force you to pay. And you can only vote once in a number of years.
History shows us that merchants and service providers are constantly, constantly out to deceive and screw us. It's just a fact and it's why we have so many consumer protections.
The government is also not to be trusted, it's true, but at least we can vote them out.
Once in n years. And you don't really vote them out. You get the same parties and interests screwing you all over again.
You just don't see consumer protection as a service while it is - and it's monopolized by the government. If you had private consumer protection agencies financed directly, then the moment this agency starts screwing its customers, it's out of business, because people stop paying. Compare this to consumer protection via a government: you can't simply stop paying, you can't effectively influence how an agency works and you don't have a choice between various protection agencies that best suit your interests as a consumer.
Now tell me why should I ever choose government over a private market given this situation? In other words, can you convince me (and not force me to comply) that a government can protect my interests better?
What power does a private agency have? None. That's why you choose a government agency, so that when someone starts selling cheap crap to kids that's covered in toxic paint, it can be shut down.
> Do you realise that any law is a threat of murder? Even if it does not say so. If I make some customers happy, but you get jealous and angry and use a law against me to make pay a fine or shut down business, you are basically threatening me with a violent police force. If I don't comply, police will take me. If I try to protect myself, they may kill me.
Extra reply to "libertarian model disgusts me": you probably live 95% of your life in total peaceful anarchy. All your personal relationships are voluntary. You don't threaten your friends with moral obligations when you plan to go to a pub. You just negotiate. You try to be nice and keep others happy. And everyone in your circle values that because if you break the trust, people will stop talking to you and your life will be less happy. And you use simple tools like doors, locks, privacy, avoiding bad districts to protect yourself against random assaults. You try to prevent problems and voluntarily establish good relationships, you are not going to a church or a court any time something does not satisfy you.
It's just remaining 5% of our lives are affected by some forces that we don't understand and/or don't really like.
So I don't believe that "libertarian model" disgusts you really. You just confuse lack of imposed regulations with a lack of security. Look around you: how much security is nicely and cheaply provided for you by the fellow citizens without laws, courts and guns.
No, the libertarian model, of allowing anything and working by reputation, disgusts me.
It results in (for instance) a world where idiots drive unsafe cars with impunity. Where private drivers rape young women (somehow the market is supposed to solve this? It demonstrably did not), and a million and one other things that we, as a society, have decided constitute an unacceptable risk to the rest of us.
The problem is not that I can't form good relationships, the problem is that assholes exist, and always will. The rest of us came up with government and rules to protect ourselves from them.
Well, food poisoning happens all the time in the regulated market. People get assaulted all the time by government employees on duty.
The libertarian way, however, is not that there should be no regulations. The idea is to 1) make regulations voluntary 2) not give the right to regulate to a monopoly with the exclusive power to use force.
You see, if there is a demand for certain things on the market - like safety, for example - market finds a way to provide those things. You don't need a government to protect you, it's an illusion and the longer you believe in it, the harder it is for you to see an alternative.
Except it doesn't. The market finds a way to screw the consumer, it has been like that since the dawn of recorded history ("Caveat Emptor!") and we no longer stand for it, sorry.
I'm not trying to say that all government and all regulation is necessarily good either. Over-regulation is a problem in a lot of places and there absolutely should be debate on what rules are sensible, which rules are unjust and intolerable, or make life worse.
I just don't accept that government, laws, taxes etc as morally wrong from the outset, or that it doesn't matter what the outcome would be without them because OMG violence!
You not accepting it doesn't mean it's not true. When you say "we should regulate taxi industry because we want higher standards of safety" you have to remember that those standards are by no means universal. Every person has his own set of standards. If 60% of people accept your standards and 40% do not, that means that those 40% would be forced to follow them. If they don't - meaning if they decide to start a business that doesn't comply with those standards to serve customers who don't agree with these same standards - they will pay fines or go to jail. It's a fact, not a perspective.
Thus you saying you don't accept that government and taxes are immoral is actually the same as saying you don't accept to call it theft and force when governments do something to the rest of the people who disagree with you.
You believe in violence and force just as much as anyone else, becauser you believe in property rights and the use of force to protect them.
If 40% of people don't accept your interpretation of land ownership rights then you would have no problem forcing them to follow your interprewtation of those, so stop getting all high and mighty as if you have an unassailably correct and violence free philosphy. You don't.
The "free market" doesn't work in the idealized way you think it does, and does not react in a way that solves such problems. The Scandinavian social-democratic model, by contrast, does work. Very few Scandinavians want to trade it in for the US model, and certainly not some kind of Tea-Party-sounding paranoia about Big Government like this press release oozes.
People always say the chant "free market doesn't work" without giving any explanation or examples. Moreover, any example should be carefully dissected and analyzed, which rarely happens. Even if people come up with examples, it's usually followed by "and this is why free market doesn't work".
The free market did not solve the problem of rapes, robberies and assaults in London's unregulated private late-night taxi business.
No, it didn't.
Now, you can argue that the people getting into those cabs should have known better, and that morally you ought to have the right to run one of these services. Law is the rest of us telling you where you can stick your absolutist morality while we find a nice balance that allows people to live the best they can with minimal restrictions.
Actually, they are. But, more importantly, you are trying to decide for other people what's good for them. Some people might prefer a less safe ride with a less professional driver for less money. Now, I don't see anything wrong with informing people that private cabs might not be as safe, however the decision to use one should lie with the customer, not with the government.
How does an average person knows which restaurant to go, which shoes to buy, which ISP to connect to internet through, which car to buy, which computer to use and which city to live in?
Well, here in the UK, if they want to know about food safety then the star rating from the government mandated hygiene check is posted on the door to the premises, letting the consumer know the cleanliness of the kitchen and the safety of food preparation practices.
This, like car safety ratings, is something rather hard to judge by a cursory look around the place. We also consider these two things important enough for regulation as they can result in illness, injury or death.
Shoes, well, if your shoes fall apart very quickly then you have a statutory right to a refund, rather than a libertarian 'right' to bitch about it and hope to damage the business. Other things are regulated similarly.
It's not a question of someone choosing for you, it's a question of society coming up with standards and regulations to take the danger of unscrupulous or negligent merchants out of the picture.
