Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 539 posts

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

#511

Post by allendoerfer »

ambicapter wrote: post #489
allendoerfer wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not saying this specifically to your comment, but to the whole thread: Not all people can accomplish the same performance. Most HN users were just lucky. I am not sure where I would be today if I had not been born into a college educated family, had college educated friends and so on. Not all people have the same luck. Beyond that there are different levels of intelligence or just inability to concentrate etc. T…

> There are people on the job market who write and read on a level you had when you were 10 years old. 10 years old? Really? Do we expect those people to be useful? Why not just give them a basic income and take them out of the workforce?

I was not making suggestions on what exactly we should do about them. I am just saying that they exist and that HN should avoid sounding like a dick by stating that they should just suck it up.

To your questions: An easy example would be immigrants, who I imagine could definitely be useful for society and still be bad at writing a foreign language.

Besides, many of the most important jobs there are do not require physics degrees but emotional intelligence and kindness. Everything that has to do with caring for living creatures. Many professions will disappear, but I expect these to be one of the last.

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

#512

Post by seanp2k2 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #464
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…

"New York City cab medallions, which sold for as much as $1 million a year ago, now are priced at the $500K level, battered by competition from Uber, Lyft. Some Independent owners, having paid upwards of $1 million, are “under water” by hundreds of thousands of dollars on the mortgages they owe on the medallions." http://www.odwyerpr.com/story/public/6471/2016-03-08/uber-ly...

What was the point of the medallion system in the first place?

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

#513

Post by seanp2k2 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #464
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…

"New York City cab medallions, which sold for as much as $1 million a year ago, now are priced at the $500K level, battered by competition from Uber, Lyft. Some Independent owners, having paid upwards of $1 million, are “under water” by hundreds of thousands of dollars on the mortgages they owe on the medallions." http://www.odwyerpr.com/story/public/6471/2016-03-08/uber-ly...

What was the point of the medallion system in the first place?

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

#514

Post by astrostl »

Lots of jokes about horse-drawn carriages in here. Would note that, in order to legalize casinos in the STL area, they were required to give money to a dump of a horse track which would have otherwise sped (no pun intended) toward an even earlier grave.

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

#515

Post by manicdee »

IsaacL wrote: post #395
TeMPOraL wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

The taxi drivers in this story are not being "forced into jobs". They're forcing others (app developers) to give them money. Or they're forcing customers to use their services over someone else. Don't equivocate on the word "force". If you get the government to make people do things, that's force. If people aren't giving you money they are not "forcing" you to work for your money.

Is my landlord forcing me to work for money by threatening to evict me for not paying rent?

Is my grocer forcing me to work for money when they demand payment for the food I want to eat?

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

#516

Post by hx87 »

allendoerfer wrote: post #306
pjc50 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homeownership is capital accumulation. I'm not sure that a system where a large part of GDP is directed at stock purchase is sustainable; that's how private pensions are supposed to work but the system is creaking.

Additionally, home-ownership has the unique feature to be financed with money which would otherwise be a sunken cost. I like the idea of some kind of modern/virtual self-sustained living, where you own your house, produce your own energy and cover all costs by dividends from stocks of the same companies you buy products from.

A home is a massively illiquid and spectacularly undiversified asset, and the same benefits can be gained by, say, investing in a spread-out housing cooperative with a diverse set of owners.

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

#517

Post by wutbrodo »

akulbe wrote: post #497
wutbrodo wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our parents and grandparents would balk and roll in their graves at the thought of this idea that someone else should shoulder the burden of bailing you out. That's definitely not true. People have been kicking and screaming (and regulating) against being obsoleted by technology since literally the beginning of industrialization, and even earlier if you broaden that to "obsoleted by a change in market conditions".…

Industrialization didn't end up with a net loss of jobs. It ended up with a change and retooling of jobs. This hasn't changed with the advance of technology. We just have to figure out the how, and where, and what of this change. You know... be resilient, like we are as humanity. That's not to say it's going to be easy, and I'm not trying to over-simplify things. It will be HARD, but it is POSSIBLE. One of the things…

I don't disagree with anything you're saying, except for the claim that our parents' and grandparents' generation took the obsolescence of job categories with noble foresight. They were pretty much just as in love with bailouts and protectionism as we are (if not more).

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

#518

Post by drewgross »

manicdee wrote: post #515
IsaacL wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The taxi drivers in this story are not being "forced into jobs". They're forcing others (app developers) to give them money. Or they're forcing customers to use their services over someone else. Don't equivocate on the word "force". If you get the government to make people do things, that's force. If people aren't giving you money they are not "forcing" you to work for your money.

Is my landlord forcing me to work for money by threatening to evict me for not paying rent? Is my grocer forcing me to work for money when they demand payment for the food I want to eat?

No they are not. They are demanding money, but they don't care if you inherited it, worked for it, found it, etc.

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

#519

Post by toomuchtodo »

hx87 wrote: post #180
toomuchtodo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working class folks care more about their jobs than Uber's profits (rightfully so).

If their jobs exist only because of rent-seeking, they shouldn't in the first place.

How are tech jobs as a whole not rent seeking? Or is it different when it's not government-sanctioned?

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

#520

Post by chillacy »

AndyNemmity wrote: post #482
chillacy wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, unless they're paying the drivers. They're basically providing an interface to find taxis. Just like how Amazon can sell you a pack of Coke without being a food manufacturer. Or blogs can bring affiliate traffic to Amazon without being PCI compliant. Kayak and Hipmunk can get you a plane ticket without being an airline company. Etc.

They are paying the drivers, and they set the rates. I think them setting the rate of fares is a big indicator they are a taxi service. Amazon doesn't set the price of a pack of Coke, unless they are also distributing said coke through Amazon.

Am I misunderstanding what uberTAXI is? It seems like the taxi sets the rate and runs the meter, uber simply forwards them the payment: https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/3cl862/how_does_pa...

From what I've gathered, the old uberTaxi used to work differently, and that got banned in NYC, since the old version was using the phone as the meter.

Post reply on HN