I'll naively give the government the benefit of the doubt and assume there are good arguments for being anti-Uber/Lyft. What are they? I'm curious to know if there are valid reasons besides dollars being shuffled into the right pockets. I'll assume preventing disruption is not a valid argument.
The best reason I can think of is labour protection for the drivers. Even though the US is pretty laissez faire when it comes to employee protections, Uber and similar completely strip all rights from drivers. The almighty Rating determines who gets fired, with zero transparency and zero second chances. Imagine working as a waiter, but if your tip percentage drops below a certain threshold, you're fired and banned from the restaurant business forever, even though you might just have gotten a bunch of asshole customers in a row.
Also, if the bar to entry into the profession is simply to have a car and a smartphone, it will quickly become a race to the bottom in terms of wages.
All of this is good for the consumers, they get a lot of power over the drivers, they can threaten to give them a bad rating and so on, but there should probably be a balance.
Then again, it's not like the existing taxi cab unions and medallion systems and regulations are a guarantee of a good environment.
And on the third side, this profession is going to be eradicated by self-driving cars within fifteen years, so who cares?
>Also, if the bar to entry into the profession is simply to have a car and a smartphone, it will quickly become a race to the bottom in terms of wages.
If that's all that is required to be an effective driver, why should cab drivers be overpaid?
As a software engineer working in California, I (and many others here) enjoy the labour protection of non-competes being unenforceable here. That drives up the cost of hiring software engineers, i.e. we are being overpaid.
This is why we have labour laws, to shift the balance, to make work suck a little bit less for everyone.
(In principle. In practice in the taxi-cab case, I can't say that the various regulations and systems improve things for anyone, it's mostly captured by the rent-seekers anyway, so everyone gets screwed)
Yes, in Liberty Utopia, where bad companies are swiftly punished for not treating their employees fairly.
Meanwhile, in the real world, people take jobs for all sorts of reasons, and often do not have the luxury of choosing freely. The whole reason we have labour laws in the first place is because the free market has shown, again and again and again, to be completely inept at guaranteeing fair tratment of workers.
I know that with a purely US perspective it's hard to see the benefits of labour protections, since here jobs are either unionized into stupidity, or completely at-will. There's no middle ground, and then it's fair to come to the conclusion that it's all crap. However, there are plenty of countries outside the US where job markets have a healthier balance between protections for workers and company interests.
There are a couple of arguments to prevent discrimination against riders. The current regulation of Taxis and Public Transit are such that disabled persons and wheelchair-riders can get rides about as easily as able-bodied people. Uber and Lyft have no such provisions.
My own concerns about Uber/Lyft have to do with properly following regulation that are legitimately in the public interest. From what I understand, in additional to the 800 lb gorilla (medallion licensing), there are other areas where Uber and Lyft skirt regulation. For example, I have read Uber argue that they are insured, but is it to the same level that taxi company drivers are required to be? How about other licensing? If we believe that the taxi regulations are unnecessarily burdensome, then lets redraw the rules for all parties. We need a common set of rules that everybody follows. Only then can we have proper competition among Uber, Lyft, Yellow Cab, etc.
Here's an outlandish idea: let people choose whether to take rides from insured drivers or not. Hell, why not let drivers openly advertise their insurance levels to attract customers! Letting people choose their risk level for themselves - it's so crazy it might just work.
We know that people are hopeless at assessing risk. And an un-insured driver and their passenger are not taking risks for only themselves -- other people using the roads need coverage. If you cause an accident their insurance company will come after you. A seemingly minor injury - sprained wrist with bruised fingers - becomes overwhelmingly expensive if it's an eye-surgeon who is injured and who is suing for loss of earnings for two weeks. Why should that person lose money because you chose to go uninsured?
1) As a customer, I don't care at all what insurance my driver has to protect him or herself in the event they cause an accident. Should I?
2) The requirement that road users have insurance is in my opinion completely separate to what those road-users do with their vehicles. Shouldn't it be?
3) People are not "hopeless at assessing risk." That's a ludicrous assertion. Everytime anybody buys anything, goes anywhere, or does anything, they are assessing risk. Buying goods off Ebay = assessing risks. Eating at a restaurant = assessing risks. Walking down the street = assessing risks.
3) People are not "hopeless at assessing risk." That's a ludicrous assertion.
No, you are wrong. People over-estimate the probability of rare events and under estimate the probability of common events. There are a bunch of biases that make people really bad at assessing risk.
The examples you give - all of them needed extensive modification to help people assess the risk or to protect people from the risk. (Ebay introduced reputation systems and gives stern advice about not paying for goods with Western Union cash transfer; retaurants have to comply with hygiene laws backed up by inspection - how many people bother to ask to see the kitchen or the staff loos before eating somewhere?)
Licensing can also be used to ensure competence and familiarity with safety regulations (there's a reason why we require people to be licensed to operate a vehicle in general and a reason why even in the age of GPS, London cabbies are required to pass a test of their knowledge of the city's streets.)
There's a false dichotomy in considering Uber/Lyft and Government as singular units.
One aspect of the government side is securing that drivers and cars are safe and properly insured and making sure that the handicapped and minorities aren't discriminated against. But it's also, in many cities, running a rigidly planned economy, ostensibly for the benefit of drivers, but in reality often more so for medallion holders and unions, and having allow those vested interests to capture the system - and surely against the benefit of consumers.
On the other hand, Uber clearly brings huge benefits to the consumer: better cars that actually show up, politer drivers, better price/choice, easy grievance process etc. But there's also ambiguity about how they threat their drivers, whether insurance is always completely correct (especially in UberPOP) etc. Then of course, there's some questionable ethical dealings.
I'm a big fan of Uber, so obviously biased, but the idea is that benefits and drawbacks exist on a spectrum, and there's no reason we couldn't get the best of both worlds: properly regulated and insured cars, without the planned economy of medallions, and decent labour-protection of drivers without completely screwing over consumers. In London, Ubers are fully regulated under the "Private Hire" scheme which is unlimited in the number of licenses provided, but require commercial insurance and a background check of drivers and I think this strikes the balance very well.
I would suspect that driving a taxi in most places reuqires some sort of driver exam. (Even if not everywhere is London with "the Knowledge") Anyone can start driving Uber/Lyft. Also, Uber is pushing subprime loans on its drivers and withholds their income against it essentially creating indentured servitude.
All in all, taxicabs suck but Uber should burn in hell.
Uber allows people with poor credit scores to purchase a vehicle so they can make a living? That seems fundamentally different than the "subprime crisis" involving mortgages.
Are you alleging that all lending to people with poor credit scores is wrong, even in the cases where doing so might be the only way to give that person a job and help them improve their life?
The point about indentured servitude seems like hyperbole. Certainly the drivers can decide to just stop driving for Uber (they can't withhold income that doesn't ever come through) and/or allow the car to be repossessed if they really can't afford it. It also looks like Uber is helping buyers get manufacturer discounts (http://uberwest.weebly.com/la-vehicle-financing.html). Maybe I'm missing something here, but it looks like a good program for a number of people who can't afford to buy a car but want to become a driver.
I don't think the parent said it was creating a "subprime crisis". I believe his point was that people with poor credit are buying a vehicle under "sub-prime" terms, meaning high interest rates and other onerous terms, that somehow binds the driver to Uber. That's a pretty shady tactic if true. Can somebody validate this claim?
Uber and friends need to pay a tax which pays back (at least in part) all those who've invested in the current infrastructure based on assurances from Government. I'm not saying they have to get paid back for anything they have done that is speculative, but they need to get paid back something. Is it really that huge a tax to pay? I'm sure they could pay it back over 20 years or something and the government can write bonds against it to pay back taxi drivers immediately.
Just so we're clear, you're saying that a monopoly should be granted tax revenues to cover the loss of revenue incurred by a viable competitor emerging in the market, because they didn't anticipate that competitor emerging?
I think the OP is saying that they need to be paid back because they made a purchase based on the government's promise to enforce a monopoly.
If I paid a million bucks for a taxi medallion, and then 6 months later medallions aren't necessary--either because the government changes the law or because the government fails to enforce the law--I'm going to want a refund.
If I make any business decision that turns out poorly for me, I'm going to want a refund. It doesn't mean I should be entitled to one.
This is, ostensibly, what contracts should cover. The medallion issuer should be subject to a series of conditions under which the medallion purchaser is entitled to some sort of recompense if the issuer breaches those conditions. Entering into a purchase contract for an item that is literally the life and death of your career, agreeing to terms in which the other party basically says "trust us, we'll do what we promise so you aren't completely ruined" is a terrible way to do business.
