31–40 of 539 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
or better 3) uber is a taxi company and should follow the same laws and regulations as other taxi companies. Which would of course destroy uber's business model which is based on dodging the law, sorry, "disruption".
uber is not a taxi company
This is a pretty surreal move: >The law says the money will help taxi businesses to adopt "new technologies and advanced service, safety and operational capabilities" and to support workforce development... [Larry Meister, manager of the Boston area's Independent Taxi Operator's Association] said the money could go toward improving a smartphone app his association has started using, or to other big needs. I'm not an…
I mostly agree with you, and I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you 2 weeks ago, but I just read a book ("Listen, Liberal" by Thomas Frank) that makes some interesting points about how liberals have shifted from representing working people to representing professionals, and to worshiping innovation. While free trade and disruptive technology is good for the professional class, it inherently increases inequality.…
The weird thing is they don't even have a solid plan for what to do with the money. Or a plan at all, it seems. The least they could do is create some kind of MassTrans App that shows a user options for navigating the state (uber/lyft/cabs/transit/greyhound etc). Otherwise it seems like collection for the sake of it.
I've never seen a successful government app, certainly there must be one. Does anyone know of a reasonably useful government app? It's hard enough for normal tech to create useful apps, let alone the over expensive bogged down government.
This is a pretty surreal move: >The law says the money will help taxi businesses to adopt "new technologies and advanced service, safety and operational capabilities" and to support workforce development... [Larry Meister, manager of the Boston area's Independent Taxi Operator's Association] said the money could go toward improving a smartphone app his association has started using, or to other big needs. I'm not an…
The right thing for the government to do would be to either deliver on their promise of an artificially scarce market (which they made when they instituted the taxi medallion system) by cracking down on unlicensed operators, or to buy the licenses back off the licensed taxis and then abolish the system and free up the market. What they're currently doing is like if a shopping mall charged resident shops a hefty fee,…
- an industry wants to operate as cartel,
- but it can't police defectors charging market prices,
- so it gets the government to enforce the cartel,
- and calls this "regulation" even though it gouges, rather than protects the public.
And somehow it is unfair if this gets undermined by events?
To take your mall-and-hawkers example, what exactly is wrong with that situation? In practice it doesn't happen very often because no one is going to give the hawkers space for free.
But if the mall rents were high because the builder bribed the council to keep competition far away, well that's their own fault.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
or better 3) uber is a taxi company and should follow the same laws and regulations as other taxi companies. Which would of course destroy uber's business model which is based on dodging the law, sorry, "disruption".
uber is not a taxi company
Looking at Uber's SEO, they have a lot of listings like "Request taxi cabs from your phone with uberTAXI" on their home page in the source. 52 entries.
Strange for a company that isn't a taxi company to advertise their taxis.
This is a pretty surreal move: >The law says the money will help taxi businesses to adopt "new technologies and advanced service, safety and operational capabilities" and to support workforce development... [Larry Meister, manager of the Boston area's Independent Taxi Operator's Association] said the money could go toward improving a smartphone app his association has started using, or to other big needs. I'm not an…
I mostly agree with you, and I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you 2 weeks ago, but I just read a book ("Listen, Liberal" by Thomas Frank) that makes some interesting points about how liberals have shifted from representing working people to representing professionals, and to worshiping innovation. While free trade and disruptive technology is good for the professional class, it inherently increases inequality.…
Uhhh, how about "suck it up and do it anyway"? I know plenty of people on hn are all about the "making the world a better place" shtick and would work anyway/for the sake of it but for the vast majority of people work straight up means doing things you otherwise wouldn't want to do in exchange for income. It's sort of the whole point of offering compensation. Earning money is the carrot on the stick that lures most of us through education and then in to careers. Why taxi drivers should get to be a special exception I would have no idea. Why not people that want to play with cats all day? Or people that want to get paid to move rocks from one pile in their yard to another every day?
Sure there's the question of people not being able to be productive in a work force with a higher skill floor and I'm all for a basic income, but "what if they don't want to" in regard to people working? Crazy.
I think that this makes sense in concept if not in implementation. Taxi medallions were sold and traded under a certain set of laws which defined their value. The government decided to change those laws, so "buying out" the medallions at some fair price, paid for by the beneficiaries of the change in law, makes sense.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mostly agree with you, and I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you 2 weeks ago, but I just read a book ("Listen, Liberal" by Thomas Frank) that makes some interesting points about how liberals have shifted from representing working people to representing professionals, and to worshiping innovation. While free trade and disruptive technology is good for the professional class, it inherently increases inequality.…
Hmm, if liberals are so pro-business then why Bernie has so many fans?
I love tech as much as the next person, but disrupting wide swaths of the country's working populace and drastically increasing income inequality and increasing unemployment in an unsustainable manner, due to the leverage tech provides, and we step in with laws to override the marketplace.
A government exists for all its citizens, after all. No man is an island.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mostly agree with you, and I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you 2 weeks ago, but I just read a book ("Listen, Liberal" by Thomas Frank) that makes some interesting points about how liberals have shifted from representing working people to representing professionals, and to worshiping innovation. While free trade and disruptive technology is good for the professional class, it inherently increases inequality.…
Hmm, if liberals are so pro-business then why Bernie has so many fans?