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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

#311

Post by jwallaceparker »

You and a friend are stranded on an island. You both spend all your working hours catching fish by hand in order to eat.

You use some leisure time to build a fishing rod, which enables just one of you to catch enough fish to feed you both.

It would be foolish to destroy the fishing rod to preserve both your jobs as fishermen. One of you would fish and the other would do something else, like build shelter and cut firewood.

It's just the two of you, so you don't literally exchange in barter, but an implicit exchange takes place when you share the fish, shelter and firewood.

You both enjoy a better standard of living thanks to the productivity increase created by the fishing rod.

A modern economy is much more complex but the same fundamental principle applies.

The ride-hailing apps make taxi drivers more productive by helping them connect with customers faster.

Now it takes fewer taxi drivers to satisfy the demands of customers. This frees up the labor time of the remaining taxi drivers to produce additional goods or services.

There is certainly temporary pain endured by workers who are displaced by the innovation. But it is folly to subsidize work that is no longer in demand.

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

#312

Post by kofejnik »

ucarion wrote: post #147
Trundle wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You identify most of the difficulty of this scenario: 1. Taxis are a dying industry, but taxi drivers are not adapting. 2. As a result, taxi drivers are suffering. Their livelihoods, which have brought food to their families' tables for decades, are being taken from them by forces they could not anticipate or control. Of course, 3. We care about these taxi drivers. Suffering is bad no matter what industry you work in…

Under the old model, taxi riders were/are suffering, and taxi drivers want to keep getting their monopoly rent.

"Taxi drivers are suffering" actually means "they cannot fleece their customers like they used to". This is a zero sum game - taxi drivers take money from taxi riders, so any change will be met with opposition. The difference is, taxi drivers are better organized and have PR people to tell us about their "suffering", while millions of taxi riders quietly enjoy better service and reasonable prices.

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

#313

Post by lparry »

xorcist wrote: post #285
dzhiurgis wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Works globally, processes payments, eliminates bad drivers.

The last bit is problematic, as one of the criticisms against them is that they don't eliminate the bad drivers. People drive with all sorts of criminal records which they tried to spin as something positive.

If that driver with a criminal record keeps their rating high enough to keep driving, what's the problem? A reformed criminal who drives safely and is pleasant to their passengers would be better than half the taxi drivers I've ever had the displeasure of dealing with

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

#314

Post by nxtrafalgar »

morgante wrote: post #117
HillRat wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd like to see a dialectic about why income inequality increasing is bad, in of itself. One main issue is that income inequality decreases socioeconomic mobility by inflating the cost of scarce goods that improve earnings capabilities. So 4K TVs are cheaper but college tuition becomes unaffordable, because good universities and grad programs are valuable, scarce goods that the wealthy can outbid everyone else on. P…

> So 4K TVs are cheaper but college tuition becomes unaffordable, because good universities and grad programs are valuable, scarce goods that the wealthy can outbid everyone else on. Except that such goods are increasingly not priced via the market. If you're smart enough to get into an elite university, you don't have to worry about the cost. Full stop. That being said, I do think we have a societal responsibility t…

> If Warren Buffet had his wealth spread amongst millions of families, would each one be willing to give up 90% of that wealth?

This question doesn't make a lot of sense. Of course they wouldn't be, because any middle- or working-class family can actually conceivably spend 90% of their wealth.

Instead of allowing Warren Buffett to accumulate such a large quantity of wealth and relying on his whim to donate that wealth to good causes -- something which most billionaires don't do -- shouldn't we have redistributive mechanisms in place to ensure this money goes to people who can actually use it?

> 2. The winnowing of the middle makes redistribution more palatable.

More palatable? If we accept that the rich are likely to attempt to hold onto their wealth, then why would they not spend much of their significant resources establishing and entrenching policy that does not affect redistribution?

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

#315

Post by TeMPOraL »

onion2k wrote: post #197
BurningFrog wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what happens to an industry when it's made redundant by technology We have over 200 years experience of countless industries being made redundant by technology. It's not a new scary thing that has never happened before.

We also have 200 years of people in the redundant industries complaining about it, and 200 years of government regulating to make the transition less painful. Why should we stop that with taxis?

And it bears reminding that some of this 200 years of history was pretty bloody precisely because people were fed up of being told to "suck it up" and do what the entrepreneurs say them to to survive. The mostly sane working conditions we enjoy today - like somewhat reasonable working hours, like leaves and insurances - things a lot of people in my generation work to destory, for some reason -- all those things were paid for in blood by our great-grandfathers.

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

#317

Post by JoshTriplett »

visarga wrote: post #250
ptaipale wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good to care about taxi drivers, but not because they are taxi drivers. Go back >200 years. In England, Spinning Jennies replaced weavers, and there were luddites who tried to resist, but the solution was not to start subsidizing weavers; and not even a specific tax to weaving machines to provide for the weavers specifically; the solution was to slowly build a social security system, and not just for master weav…

> putting a burden on something productive just because it is better What aspect of Uber is better than a regular taxi? I can hail taxis from my phone just as well. They take me to the destination. I think Uber found a way to subsidize their fleet with drivers own cars and not pay some taxes to the state which the regular taxi drivers have to pay. Maybe I am missing something...

(Note: most of the below applies to Lyft as well.)

> What aspect of Uber is better than a regular taxi?

Higher-quality, rated drivers. Single app that works consistently everywhere. Better reporting mechanism for problems, that also works consistently everywhere. Live mapping of the vehicle picking you up. Payment handled automatically and consistently everywhere. No payment step inside the vehicle.

> I can hail taxis from my phone just as well.

Using one app per city (if the city even has one), or a phone number (vastly worse, and you need to look it up), with the experience varying vastly in different locations. Uber and Lyft work identically everywhere.

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

#318

Post by cooper12 »

jwallaceparker wrote: post #311

You and a friend are stranded on an island. You both spend all your working hours catching fish by hand in order to eat. You use some leisure time to build a fishing rod, which enables just one of you to catch enough fish to feed you both. It would be foolish to destroy the fishing rod to preserve both your jobs as fishermen. One of you would fish and the other would do something else, like build shelter and cut fire…

I'm not saying that the taxi drivers are right, but your example ignores the education and certification that modern professions require. These days most professions require degrees. Taxi drivers need to be certified and that requires memorizing tons of routes. Taxi drivers are exactly the crowd that doesn't have a college education, severely hampering their mobility to other professions except ones which are worse.

Anyway, just another example of how the analogies the hacker crowd loves so much always fail at closer inspection.

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

#319

Post by JoshTriplett »

chrisbennet wrote: post #264
pfisch wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure the answer is to retrain and/or go into a different profession.

As a thought exercise, what will/would software developers do once 90% are made redundant by A.I. or something? Maybe "suck it up" and go back to school to become nurses?

> As a thought exercise, what will/would software developers do once 90% are made redundant by A.I. or something?

An AI capable of doing 90% of the job of a software developer would likely be an AGI, and thus capable of doing 100% of the job of every human far better than the human can. At which point we stop worrying about details like "money" and "scarcity".

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