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Uber London loses licence to operate

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#551

Post by henryaj »

foldr wrote: post #536
sol_remmy wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But here's an even better model: 1. Do a good job 2. Consumers use your service & rely on you 3. Wait for the government to try to shut you down 4. Consumers will back you 5. Government backs down & lets you do what you want

There's not going to be much public pressure on TfL to reverse this decision. Most Londoners don't use Uber, and there are plenty of alternatives.

391,499 Londoners (and counting) beg to differ: https://www.change.org/p/save-your-uber-in-london-saveyourub...

Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#552

Post by foldr »

henryaj wrote: post #551
foldr wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not going to be much public pressure on TfL to reverse this decision. Most Londoners don't use Uber, and there are plenty of alternatives.

391,499 Londoners (and counting) beg to differ: https://www.change.org/p/save-your-uber-in-london-saveyourub...

How do you know that everyone who's signed it is a Londoner?

Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#553

Post by glitcher »

zeveb wrote: post #490
vertex-four wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already had a warning shot four months ago, when their license renewal was denied in favour of a temporary renewal for four months. This one is the next step in the process. Uber isn't magic - if there's pent-up demand for a company that fills Uber's boots, one will pop up. The issues TfL have with Uber aren't to do with the service they provide, it's failing to comply with TfL's administrative requirements. You…

> Uber isn't magic - if there's pent-up demand for a company that fills Uber's boots, one will pop up. The thing is, until Uber popped up, that pent-up demand simply wasn't being satisfied. The taxi monopolies and regulators were quite happy with their rents (in the economic sense of rent-seeking), and consumers suffered from it (I suspect that Uber & Lyft have prevented thousands of drunken-driving deaths). A lot of…

> and save lives too

Is this purely anecdotal, or is there something more to this statement? Just curious because it doesn't seem to fit into this general discussion, and I would imagine almost any taxi company also has anecdotes of saving lives.

Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#554

Post by sctb »

cm2187 wrote: post #141
iamben wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time my (getting rather elderly) mother came to London I told her and her husband to get an Uber as it was easier than them standing in the rain trying to hail a cab. They flatly refused. They'd been told by a black cab driver the night before there was a 'strong possibility' they would get raped or robbed by 'foreign' drivers.

I'd rather be raped that do another ride in a black cab. These things have no suspension whatsoever, and are louder than a truck (which matters a lot if you are trying to sleep in a quiet street). Uber minicabs tend to drive a Toyota Prius which is way more comfortable and silent.

Unfortunately this doesn't meet the standards of civility for this site. Please make your point more thoughtfully.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#555

Post by vkou »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #515
vertex-four wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading Taxify's side of the story alone reveals significant bias, and even that seems to suggest that what happened is that Taxify bought an existing company for its minicab license - which is practically bound to be a problem. Why couldn't they find a customer to sell their product to without acquiring that customer? The problem wasn't the app - it was the company bypassing the licensing process. Interestingly, the…

Buying a company that owns an asset or holds a license is a reasonable way to obtain said asset or license. Nothing wrong with that.

Suppose that you are running a company that stores PII, in order to... Generate credit reports that banks and car loan places can use to evaluate your credit-worthiness.

Suppose (Shockingly!) that you operate in a country with strict regulation about how you can store sensitive PII. Suppose that in order to operate your business, you need to be in compliance.

Your business processes have to pass regulator audits - you need to limit access to your data, you need to keep it encrypted while at rest, you need to take steps to prevent exfiltration...

Suppose that you're in compliance, you are licensed to operate with PII and life's great.

Now, suppose that another company, called FaxEqui buys you. They come in, institute all their own business processes, open up all customer data to interns, change all passwords to admin/admin, unencrypt your database, and have a direct link between your PII, and the internet. None of this is in compliance with the regulatory environment.

The regulator takes one look at this, and pulls their license. They FaxEqui then proceeds to write to anyone who will listen, to complain about how unfair it is that 'their' license was revoked.

The point of this licensing process is to audit and control a company's internal processes. Buying a company that has such a license does not magically bring your own internal processes into compliance.

Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#556

Post by ghostwriter »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #525
ghostwriter wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the ethics of those who deny private companies the right to engage in volunteer transactions among people in the market? Secondly, consumerism is possible only in the presence of production, and it cannot exist unless there's a product to consume. Are you questioning the ethics of value-production?

> What is the ethics of those who deny private companies the right to engage in volunteer transactions among people in the market? You're breaking the law, laws with good reason. > Secondly, consumerism is possible only in the presence of production, and it cannot exist unless there's a product to consume. Are you questioning the ethics of value-production? Yes. Must I list human abuse that takes place because of "de…

> Yes. Must I list human abuse that takes place because of "demand" and "production"? Child labor? Child prostitution? Slavery? Unregulated economics is anarchy.

You are mixing together ethics of "producing a value as such" with immoral acts. One person's needs is not a claim on other people's life/time.

Slavery and child abuse is immoral based on exactly the same fundamental principle that makes regulations of volunteer trade in the market immoral - the principle that a human being belongs to oneself (which leads to the right to make decisions and to take choices based on their own reason and their capacity to think reasonably).

As for the child labour, it is not immoral as such - it's just a phenomenon of life that had better be absent in the contemporary society. Absence of it improves the quality of life, yet this quality is neither an inherent trait of life, nor something which is granted to a person upon his/her birth. It's quite the contrary - a human being must work in order to sustain their life and to prosper. It's a law of nature for all humans.

And an unregulated market multiplies opportunities for those who are willing to earn their own living by their work - by producing values and exchanging these values with other people, voluntarily, to a mutual benefit of each party. That's the essence of unregulated economy. And no government can either know beforehand or reasonably regulate or even be on the same page with all the possible volunteer transactions in the market that may benefit all parties. It's impossible because of a continuous technological advancement of humanity, of processes being improved and revisited for efficiency, and of many other aspects of human ingenuity. And that's why people might break laws - especially the laws imposed by government regulations, which are far from being reasonable most of the time.

Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#557

Post by bsder »

eric_the_read wrote: post #543
twic wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're talking about a license in the sense of a right, like a copyright or patent license, or a license to drill for oil somewhere, then yes. But this is a license in the sense of regulatory approval of a specific organisation, which is not something it's proper to buy and sell. You can't buy someone's driving license, gun license, medical license, license, etc.

It's common in many parts of the US to buy a liquor license from an existing establishment.

And generally there is a process that needs to be followed as well--public posting, public comment, etc. Any changes like operating hours, operating address, etc. means you have to go back to your council/commission.

Liquor licenses rarely just transfer unless you bought the whole business and didn't actually change a thing.

Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#558

Post by alexasmyths »

Nursie wrote: post #327
alexasmyths wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" they aren't jobs" Just 'let them eat cake' then? This is really quite insulting to the 20 000 - 40 000 people who are about to lose their source of income - most of them at the lower end of the economic scale - and the millions of users of Uber for whom Black cabs are just too expensive, because medallions or not - the system is de-facto a controlled economy. I highly doubt that a fairly operationally competent ent…

>> I highly doubt... Yet that's exactly what has happened in multiple markets now. Uber have a history of pulling this stuff. --edit-- and now I'm back at a real keyboard: >> This is really quite insulting to the 20 000 - 40 000 people who are about to lose their source of income So by that logic we should allow any company to continue to operate, regardless of how badly behaved? I don't think this argument has much…

Uber are not the best behaved lot - I understand.

But they are not stupid.

If they were given only a '4 month extension' in London - and told to 'comply' with certain things - this is a very direct 'shot across the bow'.

Uber creeped into markets 'under the radar' - but when the regulators are directly holding your business hostage - and are saying point-blank: 'do these things or no permit' - it's time to believe them.

Uber is not stupid. They know the difference between 'being under the radar' - and when things are 'for real'. They can ignore city councillors here and there, but this was not that.

Uber is, if anything operationally competent. They'd have had a legal team, strategy sessions etc. on this. It's London - maybe their #2 largest market globally (or at least top 5) - so they're not going to screw around on this.

If Uber was definitely continuing to cheat - and if they were definitely non-compliant, and there were in fact 'a lot of rapes' or whatever with Uber ... then I have no problem with them being banned.

But I believe this is a hugely political move - irrespective of what Uber was and was not.

European regulators from bottom-to-top have been attacking American companies with special regulations.

Apple had to pay a 'magical' $25B tax bill. EU regulators are now trying to create special 'google' and 'Facebook' taxes. They want Uber off their turf.

It's politics and geopolitics as much as anything. And there is a strong whiff of economic protectionism.

It's entirely possible that Uber was just breaking all the rules - but it would also be very naive to not see the geopolitical interplay here.

It's how 100% of international business works. There's no such thing as 'free trade' in reality.

Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#559

Post by florean »

glitcher wrote: post #553
zeveb wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uber isn't magic - if there's pent-up demand for a company that fills Uber's boots, one will pop up. The thing is, until Uber popped up, that pent-up demand simply wasn't being satisfied. The taxi monopolies and regulators were quite happy with their rents (in the economic sense of rent-seeking), and consumers suffered from it (I suspect that Uber & Lyft have prevented thousands of drunken-driving deaths). A lot of…

> and save lives too Is this purely anecdotal, or is there something more to this statement? Just curious because it doesn't seem to fit into this general discussion, and I would imagine almost any taxi company also has anecdotes of saving lives.

Uber supporters often seem to think that the only alternative to an easy to use ride hailing app is driving drunk and killing someone. It would take some careful research to correlate Uber rides to drunk driving deaths and I have yet to see someone attempt it.

Re: Uber London loses licence to operate

#560

Post by shkkmo »

ghostwriter wrote: post #556
toomuchtodo wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is the ethics of those who deny private companies the right to engage in volunteer transactions among people in the market? You're breaking the law, laws with good reason. > Secondly, consumerism is possible only in the presence of production, and it cannot exist unless there's a product to consume. Are you questioning the ethics of value-production? Yes. Must I list human abuse that takes place because of "de…

> Yes. Must I list human abuse that takes place because of "demand" and "production"? Child labor? Child prostitution? Slavery? Unregulated economics is anarchy. You are mixing together ethics of "producing a value as such" with immoral acts. One person's needs is not a claim on other people's life/time. Slavery and child abuse is immoral based on exactly the same fundamental principle that makes regulations of volun…

> And an unregulated market multiplies opportunities for those who are willing to earn their own living by their work

I don't think that's true. Unregulated markets can result in a number of situations that limit people's opportunities significantly. Monopolies are a clear example and various externalities can also have significant impacts on commerce. To maximize the opportunities we need carefully tuned regulation. The problem is that our political systems for creating and enforcing that regulation are, shall we say, "a little broken".

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