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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

#331

Post by TeMPOraL »

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…

> Uhhh, how about "suck it up and do it anyway"?

You have it backwards.

Humans have always had to suck it up because this is the default, natural state. But one would think in XXI century we could do better. That we can show some civilization, some compassion, instead of telling the unfortunate among us that they should suck it up. They're not our slaves to be forced into productive jobs, or resources to be used up and discarded. They're human beings - with dreams, fears and hopes. The deserve some help, or at least, some consideration.

(Not to mention, the next day it may be us who will need the same.)

EDIT: changed to sound less personal - it wasn't my intention for it to sound like it was aimed at the OP.

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

#332

Post by chrisbennet »

pfisch wrote: post #295
chrisbennet wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well, if software developers are made redundant by AI then we have already transitioned to a new type of economy because virtually every other job has been replaced except service industry. If we are in some impossible world where that isn't true then I would say they should maybe go into medicine, engineering or law I guess. Your question is too open ended to answer really. I have like 10 follow up questions to unde…

The question was meant as a thought exercise aimed at my fellow developers. I was hoping they would ask themselves, "What will I do once my field is disrupted?" I was hoping that they could feel a little empathy for others whose livelihood has been turned upside down.

(I'm not directly responding to you, just your points which are typical responses.)

The general response when faced with uncomfortable questions is to avoid facing it - a "it would never happen to me" sort of rationalization. Or it would be an "impossible world" where my field would be illuminated.

Take "go into law" for example: I think the recent unemployment rate for new law graduates is something like 25%. Medicine is another field ripe for disruption (except nursing maybe).

"Just get another job" is another popular "let's not really think about the unthinkable" response.

It seems like many "answers" to the disruption problem boils down to "let them eat cake" and I was hoping to break through that.

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

#333

Post by tim333 »

maverick_iceman wrote: post #151
hueving wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, yes. They were using that to fund expansion into China/India.

Uber is, I don't know about Lyft. Does anyone here knows about Lyft's profitability?

Lyft is losing a fortune.

>According to Bloomberg, the ridesharing startup took a net loss of $127 million in the first half of [2015], off less than $47 million in revenue.

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

#334

Post by cpkpad »

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.…

I live in Boston. Taxi drivers are jumping to Uber and Lyft wholesale. They make more, and perhaps more importantly, the income is steady. With the taxi system, medallions cost about $600,000 to buy, and were owned by rich investors.

Cab drivers rent those medallions for around $200 per day, and after paying off the investor, kept any profit on top of that. On a bad day, they'd lose money. On a decent day, they'd work a 16 hour shift and make minimum wage. On a great day, they'd make a few hundred bucks.

In Massachusetts, the law is designed to protect those investors (who lobbied for it) -- not cab drivers. There is nothing in the law which is not corrupt.

Self-driving cars will cost jobs. This just costs the very rich their investments in medallions, which prior to Uber were a full-proof investment.

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

#335

Post by zigzigzag »

angry-hacker wrote: post #286
bmon wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that cab companies aren't ripping you off already? In my area, you pay over twice the amount for a cab compared to uber.

And what do you think happens when they have the monopoly and/or VC's start wanting their money back?

Er, either prices float to their natural level and there's no problem (i.e. Uber's profits are reasonable), or a competitor comes along.

Come on, keep some perspective. Uber is a taxi app. We're not talking about a Manhatten Project of software here. Duplicating the Uber experience is easy. 99% of the effort they're putting in there is the fights with all the governments, regulators, taxi unions etc.

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

#336

Post by jwallaceparker »

cooper12 wrote: post #318
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.…

The analogy most certainly does not fail at closer inspection.

Do you disavow all innovation? Does innovation render people who don't have degrees useless?

Certainly not.

Quite the contrary, innovation makes them more productive and increases their wage earning ability.

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

#337

Post by sokoloff »

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...

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

It's wildly cheaper (1/4-1/2 the price, depending on UberPool vs UberX), the app is more convenient (faster/easier to activate for a ride, better feedback while waiting), and if there's a problem with the ride of some sort, I'd rather deal with Uber than some random city's department of livery licensing. Not driving in a clapped-out Crown Vic with loose wheel bearings and 3-5 warning lights on the dash is a bonus.

For most people, more convenient and absurdly cheaper is enough to answer your question.

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

#338

Post by eggy »

tro2102 wrote: post #109
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…

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 ha…

That is like saying take back the washing machine, since it took away washer women jobs, of which my Irish grandma was when she emigrated. Change, flow, adapt, is life.

And work is not something you do because you just get compensated for it. Some one pays you what they think a task is worth, and you take up that task, because you are not able or not wanting to move up or horizontally to another job.

It takes energy at the most primal level to accomplish work. The problem with politics is that people then think energy can be printed and everyone can be made happy with an endless supply of happy. We try our best to be compassionate, and hope for everyone's well being, but in the end, work needs to be done to gain something.

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

#339

Post by TeMPOraL »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #290
dsacco wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your comment as a contribution to discussion, but I'd like to see a dialectic about why income inequality increasing is bad, in of itself. I see this implied quite a bit on Hacker News. Usually something along the lines of, "But doing this will increase income inequality" stated as a counterpoint. If overall quality of life increases, I am personally unconcerned with income inequality. I haven't seen definitiv…

Income inequality in itself isn't bad. I can argue that a certain amount of it is desirable even. The problem is more the difference in quality of life and opportunity. This is a problem even if the base quality of life is generally improving. If the folks at the bottom are continually stressed about money, if they have shelter, food, power, etc, it is bad. If the folks at the bottom cannot get access to the things t…

> If the folks at the bottom are continually stressed about money

I'd say this is the key. It doesn't matter whether your bare-minimum cheapest apartment is an old wooden shed or a pretty newly constructed flat with heated floors, two bedrooms and a lifetime free subscription of Netflix. It doesn't change a damn thing if you're two paychecks from getting evicted and going hungry, raising your children on the streets.

More and more jobs are turning transient, transitional, on-demand. This may be more efficient, but this hit the poorer hard, because there is no way in hell you can do any financial planning for yourself if you don't know when and how much money you bring home, or if you'll have any job at all next week. This is one of the bigger things that keeps poor in poverty.

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

#340

Post by mbreedlove »

trengrj wrote: post #252

I'm in Sydney Australia and we have a one dollar fee for each Uber to bribe off taxi medallion owners. It feels completely wrong and Uber makes the fee separate on your card I think in protest.

I hope they label the charge "Taxi Bribe".
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