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

Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 221 posts

Re: Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

#201

Post by jackmaney »

zzzzzzzzzman wrote: post #145
jackmaney wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be fortunate not to have any preexisting conditions or to not need any medical procedures that, without insurance, can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars.

I appreciate your response :) The real question is why are medical procedures so artificially expensive. The only thing I would really need medical insurance for is a rare emergency procedure like an appendectomy. Information online says an appendectomy can cost anywhere from $1,500 to $150,000. Why is there such a deviation? This is how insurance companies make their money. When we consider that medical insurance in…

Oh, and another thing:

> The only thing I would really need medical insurance for is a rare emergency procedure like an appendectomy.

If you need an appendectomy, then you do not have time to fiddle around and comparison shop for medical insurance. If an appendix needs to come out, then it needs to come out ASAP (otherwise, the appendix could burst, causing sepsis). And there's no insurance provider on the planet that will take on a new customer and cover a procedure done before the customer's policy goes into effect.

Let me guess: you also think car insurance is a sham, and that you shouldn't be required to have it. And if, heaven forfend, you get into a car accident, you can just call up State Farm (or whoever) and get them to retroactively approve a claim for the accident. Am I right?

Sorry, my eyes can only roll so much...

Re: Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

#202

Post by miguelrochefort »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #197
miguelrochefort wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're trying to prevent people from earning money in exchange for a service. Let's say I have a garden, and grew a bunch of tomatoes. Should I be allowed to sell them for money, or should I only be allowed to trade them for other tomatoes?

There are lots of services out there in the universe that I am not allowed to exchange money for.

It shouldn't be.

Re: Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

#203

Post by wang_li »

imafish wrote: post #122
mr_blobs wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reality is more like: 2 out of 10 monkeys spend all their waking hours sacrificing and working so their children can have more than 1 banana and then give 15 out of the 20 bananas they earn to the group. The majority of monkeys in the group gives 0 bananas, but continue to say that the ones that do give the most aren't paying their fair share (and need to give even more). They then have many discussions on how they c…

Despite the exaggeration (2 out 10), this is actually an issue in the Nordic countries, so I do not understand the downvote.

2 out of 10 is really close in the US.

Re: Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

#205

Post by type0 »

_0w8t wrote: post #106
edblarney wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So, they want to encourage ride-sharing in the original meaning - carpooling. Not the "taxi company in disguise" meaning. Sounds fair enough to me." I'm not necessarily a fan of Uber, but this is ridiculous. If 'taxis' are legal in Sweden then there's no reason Uber should not be able to operate so long as they are obeying the laws . Ostensibly, this is about a specific issue - distance travelled and the lack of abi…

In Norway there is definitely no hostility in any form towards entrepreneurship. In fact it is safer to start a private company here as after closing down the business one still can apply to some social support from the state. Also there are lot of various free courses about how to do reporting and accounting for new businesses. And one can do the accounting oneself in a spreadsheet and/or free web sites when the bus…

I heard that Norway is great for new businesses. Like if you are located outside the city you can pay lower taxes, that's not the case in Sweden. Also the culture seems a bit different when it comes to startups. A friend of mine said that it's easier to attract investors in Norway although the country is smaller, I don't know how deep those differences go but norwegians are probably more open to new companies.

Re: Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

#206

Post by type0 »

edblarney wrote: post #66
Tangokat wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind providing a source for 2)? In my experience you couldn't be more wrong.

Talk to an older Swede. If you're young, and talk mostly to young Swedes, it's a different story. Actually, one of the reasons that this may be 'contentious' is because of 'startup culture'. When I say 'business' - you might be thinking 'startup'. Surely - it's 'cool' among young people to be at a startup, doing some cool thing like 'games' or 'music'. But the attitude towards most business, by that I mean what is re…

The guy who wrote "the girl with dragon tattoo" was a leftwing journalist. There is no cultural epitaph of pervasive leftist majority anymore in the Nordic countries. If anything there are much more nationalist conservative right-wing views among the common population because of the recent waves of ME immigrants. The media by an large is still left.

It's true that many west european countries had very strong socialist movements for decades (not as much now though), but there isn't even possible to make such statements that it's somehow became engraved in the culture. Look at the former East Block countries, there it might be true, but then the mistrust of the public to businesses is because of the corruption. Sweden also has a fair bit of corruption, but the authorities together with lobbying organizations and media spread enough propaganda that the country is somehow the least corrupt in the World.

Re: Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

#208

Post by kalleboo »

toss1941 wrote: post #60
justinhj wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at many factors Sweden is way more livable than the USA. Perhaps that explains why culturally they don't mind paying higher taxes. I've worked in the US and Canada. I pay more taxes in Canada but the social services and health care are much better here and I can go to great public facilities like gyms and pools that I had to pay for privately in NY

Fully public facilities like gyms and pools are just one brand of soda, as it were. Some people don't like Pepsi, they'd rather drink Coca Cola, or put more plainly at least go to gyms and pools where the people have an appreciation of the cost of good things. There is the central difference between the American way of doing things, people have more freedom to choose what they spend their money on. If you are subsidi…

And that is how you end up with a country full of poor obese people, who drive up healthcare costs for everyone.

The American Way: Cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Re: Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

#209

Post by ptaipale »

robert_foss wrote: post #171
mafribe wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't have 0% corporate tax and free healthcare and education. Sure you can. You tax more elsewhere, e.g. higher VAT, higher income tax, higher captial gains, higher giraffe tax ... The possibilities are infinite. Taxation is ultimately a social tool to organise how people work as a group/nation, who does what etc. I think Estonia has or had 0% corporate tax.

Right, just to clarify. You can have 0% corporate tax rate, you just have to recoup those taxes elsewhere. And as corporations are benefiting from free education and healthcare they clearly should pay into that system too.

I think you should study the field of tax incidence a bit.

Corporate tax actually falls on shareholders and workers. It sounds nice: tax those faceless corporations and not us nice citizens. But the actual end result is not necessarily what one may think.

You will of course find lots of material claiming this and that about corporation tax, because people are passionate about it, but for some balance, this is a summary I picked at random:

https://hbr.org/2014/08/who-pays-corporate-taxes-possibly-yo...

(And in case of Sweden, consider that it is a particularly open economy.)

Re: Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

#210

Post by pyrale »

jazzyk wrote: post #157
pyrale wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is the central difference between the American way of doing things, people have more freedom to choose what they spend their money on. And people which don't have money have less freedom and no choice about it. Maybe the problem is that you decided that freedom is dead presidents printed using green ink.

>And people which don't have money have less freedom and no choice about it So, what are you proposing? That everything is funded from taxes, so that people who make less money could enjoy the same things as people who make a lot? This is called communism, and has failed miserably (see Venezuela, Cuba, etc). There is an acceptable level of sharing (healthcare, defense, police), but swimming pools? What about spas? Eq…

Public swimming pools can also be found in most european countries, and western europe is not exactly a collection of failed communist states.

There is a nice ring to the ideology of freedom, but practicality beats purity, and when it comes to the social cost vs reward of public institutions, the cursor in the US is way off.

If swimming pools are out of the question for you, free education and health care are an easier starting point.

Post reply on HN