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Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

reuters.com

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Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#101

Post by rhizome »

mikerichards wrote: post #76
0xFFC wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want to see cab drivers turn into homeless drifters This is wrong. This is exactly how they want you to think. Cab drivers are not going to become homeless or jobless, they will work(drive) for a new companies(I agree if market is healthy enough, which is not).But they frame the issue kind of like "losing job" and "becoming homeless" just because they don't want to change. (I said cab drivers because it is…

You people always have to preface with "...I'm always for regulation and government interference...but".

"Everybody's got a big 'but'." --Pee Wee Herman

Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#102

Post by dpeterson »

rev_bird wrote: post #2

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 know most people hate Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged here but that is literally what happened in the book. Roark Steel was made to give "green steel" to the unprofitable competitors to keep them in business.

Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#103

Post by rspeer »

brightball wrote: post #5
quickben wrote: post #3

Well, things should be equal. Why should a taxi service have to perform a regular vehicle inspection and a an uber driver be exempt from it? Either make the Uber driver go through regular inspections or cancel the regulation for the cabbies.

Making Uber drivers abide by the same standards would make sense. This is using government authority to take money from one business and give it to another.

I think this legislation is a tacit admission that those standards don't make sense.

If the taxi regulations had any benefit, then there would be something better about taking a taxi than taking an Uber. But in the real world (especially in Massachusetts) taxis completely suck. From the user experience point of view, Uber has done a great job of regulating itself.

So the government has decided not to make things worse by putting the regulations on Uber. The taxi owners complain that this is unfair. The government says "you're right, have some money."

Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#104

Post by AndyNemmity »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #78
AndyNemmity wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get any cable companies that show up when I search DSL.

Okay? It's just an example of a product with a close substitute product. I'm having trouble prodding google into showing many ads, but personally when I search for dsl service I see an ad for home 4G internet.

I don't get ads, I have them all blocked in a hosts file.

Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#105

Post by pcl »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #14
rev_bird wrote: post #2

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.…

For the foreseeable future, a driver will be an important component of any ride-hailing solution, whether it's a taxi, a black car, or something more informal, and whether the dispatcher is an algorithm or a company's employee.

This is really about the taxi companies and the dispatchers, not the drivers.

Of course, driverless cars are likely to someday displace the drivers. But the taxi companies would be thrilled to be in charge of fleets of driverless cars, I'm sure. And that's a long way off. As has been said innumerable times here on HN, short-run city driving is likely to be among the last places to get swept up by driverless technologies.

Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#106

Post by AndyNemmity »

hueving wrote: post #100
AndyNemmity wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just googled Taxi Service. Uber is the third listing under Yellow Cab, and Discount Cab. 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.

Methinks you don't know what uberTAXI is.

I didn't, never used it. So it's an app that hails you a taxi.

Does that make Uber a taxi service?

Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#107

Post by AnthonyMouse »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #14
rev_bird wrote: post #2

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.…

> While free trade and disruptive technology is good for the professional class, it inherently increases inequality.

You seem to be asserting this without any explanation, but it's pretty clearly wrong.

Do the math. Cab driver making $30K is displaced and has to take a different job making $25K, with the result that $30K of value is captured by cab riders via lower fares while the former cab driver suffers $-5K. But cab riders are just regular people. Between the riders and the drivers we're net +$25,000 to regular people. That's a pretty sizable decrease in wealth inequality.

And that's assuming the former cab driver can only find work that pays less than driving a cab did. He could train to become a plumber or carpenter and end up making significantly more money.

Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#108

Post by RyJones »

AndyNemmity wrote: post #6
rev_bird wrote: post #2

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…

Cab drivers don't become homeless drifters, they become your next lyft pick up. And the quality of service of Lyft and Uber have gone down the more and more cab drivers become drivers. It's starting to not feel like much of differentiation.

Yes. I got a nice lecture from a cab driver who was moonlighting driving Lyft about how I was destroying taxis using Lyft.

Yes, I am, the faster the better. To hell with taxis.

Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#109

Post by tro2102 »

Trundle wrote: post #36
acidburnNSA wrote: post #14

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.…

Many of them don't want to go back to school or get technical training... What do we tell the taxi and truck drivers when Uber shows up with self-drivers, etc.? 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 otherw…

how about "suck it up and do it anyway"?

I don't necessarily disagree with this sentiment, but this doesn't really address the question, which is about what happens to an industry when it's made redundant by technology. Cab drivers competing with self-driving cars can't "suck it up".

"what if they don't want to" in regard to people working?

Again, I feel you haven't read the spirit of this comment accurately. What happens to an entire class of working people (truck drivers, for instance), when their trade is replaced by tech which is 1/10 (conservatively) the cost to produce? I too want to say innovation is worth it, but it's definitely worth the thought cycles to consider what happens when we make an entire workforce obsolete.

Re: Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

#110

Post by ars »

quickben wrote: post #3

Well, things should be equal. Why should a taxi service have to perform a regular vehicle inspection and a an uber driver be exempt from it? Either make the Uber driver go through regular inspections or cancel the regulation for the cabbies.

> Why should a taxi service have to perform a regular vehicle inspection and a an uber driver be exempt from it?

All cars in MA have yearly inspections.

Any extra inspection for taxi is total nonsense, probably invented by the taxi companies themself as a barrier to entry by others.

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