Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by idiot900 » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 11:19 AM UTC

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...

Taxis in some places have awful service and blatantly ignore the law. Extrapolating from my experience, nearly every credit card reader in a taxi in Philadelphia is broken even though they must be working, and has been for years. As such I use Uber there 100% of the time, even when a taxi is available. By contrast, somehow, NYC cabs virtually always have working equipment - and there I use taxis for the majority of car trips.

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

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Post by douche » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 11:20 AM UTC

Taxachusetts strikes again. Rather than let a shitty industry that already enjoyed monopoly protections, fail and be replaced with something more efficient, let's prop them up with a misguided subsidy/tax scheme.

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

#343

Post by angry-hacker » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 11:20 AM UTC

fastball wrote: post #322

angry-hacker wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The app changes. That's what is so great about the fluidity of Uber, without medallions and regulation and such. If Uber starts to increase prices because they have a monopoly, a lone person can build an app that's cheaper.

In theory, yes, but you need to convince all the drivers and customers to install and use that app.

A lone person can create a new twitter and facebook too, it doesn't mean anyone is using it. I'm sure there are lone builders popping up every day. Is anyone using it, is there competition? - no.

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

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Post by deanCommie » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 11:20 AM UTC

cpkpad wrote: post #334

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.…

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 wor…

You're right except the whole "making more" part.

Once the market is saturated with Uber drivers like has happened in places like London, rates start to go down, and drivers make WAY less than than the used to. Simple supply and demand.

No defense of the medallion system. Maybe the government should "bail out" taxi medallion owners, and simply pay back these medallion costs so that taxi drivers are free to figure out the next step in their careers/lives without the indentured servitude of paying back the medallion loans hanging around their necks.

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

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Post by jwallaceparker » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 11:21 AM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #325

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…

Not sure it takes fewer drivers to satisfy the demands of customers. As Uber like apps make getting a ride cheaper and nicer the useage is presumably going up so there should be more drivers but making less per hour.

> Not sure it takes fewer drivers to satisfy the demands of customers.

I mean this in the sense that any one taxi driver can satisfy more customers with the use of a ride-hailing app than without.

You're right that ride-hailing apps have increased the demand for taxi rides.

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

#346

Post by sokoloff » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 11:22 AM UTC

fnj wrote: post #324

erklik wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some sort of basic income or a welfare scheme. As someone else mentioned, Australian's out of job get paid $300 or $400 depending on how many kids you have etc and how much savings. This allows the government to make sure that everyone out of a job doesn't go homeless but its not enough to be comfortable so people don't become dependent on it. ( Some people do become dependent on it, its not a 100% unfortunately )

Comfortable? Exactly how does $1200 per month come anywhere near paying housing, food, and clothing even for one single person?

It isn't meant to be "comfortable". That was clear I think from the parent comment. If you want to live long-term on the government money, it might be possible in a group living situation, with pooled resources. But it's meant to be a floor against abject poverty, not a recliner.

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

#347

Post by angry-hacker » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 11:22 AM UTC

zigzigzag wrote: post #335

angry-hacker wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And how those new apps get traction? They either need VC money or they die.

Facebook and Twitter are not Manhattan projects either, but there's no real competition.

Right now Uber is using the VC money to break or ignore laws and create itself a monopoly.

If we really wanted to disrupt the Taxi business, you need to destroy all the regulation for everyone.

Collecting tax pennies and giving them away does not help, of course.

It does not matter what the right answer is; the playground needs to be equal.

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

#348

Post by BigJono » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 11:24 AM UTC

fnj wrote: post #324

erklik wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some sort of basic income or a welfare scheme. As someone else mentioned, Australian's out of job get paid $300 or $400 depending on how many kids you have etc and how much savings. This allows the government to make sure that everyone out of a job doesn't go homeless but its not enough to be comfortable so people don't become dependent on it. ( Some people do become dependent on it, its not a 100% unfortunately )

Comfortable? Exactly how does $1200 per month come anywhere near paying housing, food, and clothing even for one single person?

It's not easy but it's not particularly difficult either. The only hard part is if you're living in a suburb that HN readers tend to live in, you'll have to move house and possibly get a housemate or two if you're single so you can cover the rent. But once you accept that, it's really just a matter of cooking your own meals and buying in bulk where possible.

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

#349

Post by finid » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 11:25 AM UTC

The state wants to play Robin Hood.

Hey! Why don't they give the money to me. I can use it.

Next they will want to take money from the likes of Facebook and give it to struggling newspapers.

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

#350

Post by deanCommie » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 11:26 AM UTC

kofejnik wrote: post #312

ucarion wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "s…

Look, I hate cabs too. I hate having to tell the driver where to drop me off because they never use GPS. I hate feeling like a lowlife for wanting to pay by credit card because I never have cash. And I hate how expensive cabs are.

But let's not forget that most taxi drivers are themselves far from well off. It is a working class gig, with a heavy representation from new immigrants. It's long hours, it's physically draining (software developers get to rebel against sitting in front of computers in favour of standing desks, yet what about drivers), and most people do NOT get rich doing it.

It's still an industry that's sick with corruption that has depended on anti-competitive practices and should be destroyed and rebuilt for the betterment of society. But most taxi DRIVERS have few if any options in the upcoming world.