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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

#361

Post by oblio »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #319
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?

> 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".

> At which point we stop worrying about details like "money" and "scarcity".

And start worrying about Skynet and robots with lasers!

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

#362

Post by sokoloff »

dsacco wrote: post #179
hx87 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low socioeconomic mobility is a problem because the potential for any individual to contribute to the good of society is at best loosely correlated with their previous socioeconomic status. If people who could have been top-notch scientists, engineers, civil servants and entrepreneurs were prevented from doing so because they couldn't move up the ladder (and inversely, rich rent-seekers couldn't move down), society i…

Where did I conflate socioeconomic mobility and income equality? I didn't intend to do that. More to your point - I respond by asking whether or not the socioeconomic standing of a scientist matters for the societal impact of their work. I don't see an easy conclusion here. The scientists driving innovation in industry are generally paid very well (this is relative, but we can probably agree they are paid higher than…

How many people who could have become great scientists, engineers, or inventors instead have to grind out an existence planting and farming grain or bussing tables in a diner or some other job?

It's not so much an issue for those people who came from poorer backgrounds and became scientists (though there's still a question of whether they could have been better scientists with better early educational support), but it's a bigger issue for those who never got that chance by an accident of birth.

I don't support equality of outcome as a desirable goal, but I do support equality of opportunity.

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

#363

Post by zigzigzag »

angry-hacker wrote: post #347
zigzigzag wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Facebook and Twitter are in competition. And I think you underestimate the complexity of a project like Facebook. It started small, but back then people's expectations were much lower.

If Facebook started charging for its services or otherwise pissing off its users in big and obvious ways, I guarantee there'd be a serious competitor on the streets within months.

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

#364

Post by LogicX »

BurningFrog wrote: post #168
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…

> Taxis are a dying industry, but taxi drivers are not adapting. How do you know? My impression is that most taxi drivers are very busy adapting. But I don't know either. Let's be clear: The people hardest hit by Uber/Lyft is taxi company owners . > Clearly, asking them to adapt overnight would be too demanding Uber has been around for half a decade. How many decades does it take?

Since the bill goes to 2026, right now the answer appears to be approximately 1.5 decades by their judgement.

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

#365

Post by sokoloff »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #356
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…

>If overall quality of life increases, I am personally unconcerned with income inequality. Rising inequality generally hasn't improved quality-of-life for everyone.

Of course it harms the person at the very bottom of the stack.

But, would you rather live as a 10th percentile American today, a 50th percentile serf in feudal England, a 50th percentile American colonist, or even a 50th percentile American in the 1950s? It's only the very last that's even close, IMO.

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

#366

Post by mrerrormessage »

I haven't read all the comments in this thread, but I'm surprised at the outrage over a one-nickel tax. This seems like a fairly simple, straightforward rule. Is anyone going to decide not to Lyft/Uber over 5 cents? I don't think so.

Let's also not forget that these ride hailing services are MASSIVELY subsidizing the cost of rides in order to attract drivers/users. That hurts business for taxis. In my mind, this is a sort of protection that ensures taxis stay in business as another, publicly regulated option. What happens in other areas of Uber/Lyft kill all the taxis and then decide doing business isn't profitable and leave (or all their drivers leave I've subsidies end)? This might seem like a farfetched scenario, but remember that Uber is still sitting in a large cash reserves. What will change when they need to turn a profit every quarter? If they have established a monopoly (even locally), they can charge users as much as they want. If they've established a monopsony on drivers, they can lower wages. In my opinion, subsidizing a long-standing industry from a monopolistic competitor with gobs of money to throw at the market looks like a good move.

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

#367

Post by mirekrusin »

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…

By the time they are going to "improve their app" uber is going to be running self driving cars.

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

#368

Post by digi_owl »

cookiecaper wrote: post #121
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…

>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. Tuition rates didn't go through the roof until the government started guaranteeing/sponsor…

The sad part is that as with housing, the government is applying a demand side "solution" to a supply side problem.

Education is expensive, because there is a limited capacity (teachers, facilities, etc). But rather than put money into expanding the capacity, they start offering stipends and loans. But this just inflate the prices.

I wonder how much of the choice is because it is easier and quicker to show a results, thus it can be implemented within a single election term, and how much of it is straight graft.

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

#369

Post by sokoloff »

AndyNemmity wrote: post #70
Dylan16807 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wanting to show up when you search for taxi doesn't tell you if it's a taxi. Like a cable company showing up when you search DSL, it's not strange at all. UberTAXI gets you non-uber taxi cars, more or less. That's not their main service, and doesn't tell you whether their main service is a taxi service.

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

If I google "cambridge ma dsl", the 5th result is Comcast and the 6th is RCN cable.

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

#370

Post by new299 »

Trundle wrote: post #254
ucarion wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you know? My impression is that most taxi drivers are very busy adapting. But I don't know either. To be clear: I don't know either. I'm an outsider to this industry. I'm just offering arguments. > Let's be clear: The people hardest hit by Uber/Lyft is taxi company owners. I don't think this is true. They're losing the most money, but they have lots of money. Taxi drivers risk losing all their revenue, which…

Taxi drivers risk losing the difference between what they can earn working as a taxi driver and what they can earn on ride sharing apps. It's probably a fair drop but hardly all of their income.

Generally you pay for some kind of permit to be a taxi driver. A quick google suggests in excess of 150KUSD:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/08/05/what-about-taxi...

So they potentially have a lot to lose...

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