Taxi deregulation coming to Finland • Hacker News Board

Re: Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

#51

Post by alkonaut » Thu, Feb 01, 2018, 4:57 PM UTC

joncrane wrote: post #48

I wonder where Finland draws the line between "taxi" and "ride sharing" (stuff like the Waze commute thing).

If they deregulate it’s not unthinkable that they are looking across the water to Sweden. In Sweden there is no difference between different operators, Uber is a Taxi company. You can’t drive anyone for money without being a taxi company.

Actual ride sharing where no one makes money is obviously not taxi. What Waze commute will count as I suspect is still up in the air so long as neither of the people in the car makes any money.

Re: Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

#52

Post by pluma » Thu, Feb 01, 2018, 5:06 PM UTC

orangehour wrote: post #37

pluma wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for Finland but to me Uber seems similar to Facebook in many ways (though it currently doesn't seem like Uber is as successful internationally): Taxi apps started out in 2007/2008 according to Wikipedia, most apps I'm personally aware of (in Western Europe) seem to have popped up at some point in 2010, roughly the same time as Uber launched in the US. I remember using a taxi app in 2011 but the signup w…

It doesn't help that StudiVZ is based off of Facebook, so it's not really revolutionary either.

I pointed that out (Facebook even took them to court later on). But I remember running into at least two German equivalents that couldn't be based more on Facebook than merely fitting the description of "MySpace but for coeds".

The point is that Facebook wasn't revolutionary. It just seems so in hindsight because of its success and how much it overshadows everything else.

Everything stands on the shoulders of giants. Sometimes some of the giants get squashed. Sometimes some fall off the other giants. But in the end it's just a massive pyramid of giants standing on each other's shoulders.

Facebook, MySpace, LiveJournal, GeoCities. There was plenty of cross-pollination and incremental changes. Revolutions? Not so much.

Re: Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

#53

Post by TomMarius » Thu, Feb 01, 2018, 5:17 PM UTC

InitialLastName wrote: post #46

TomMarius wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no need for the initiative to be for profit. People are perfectly capable of getting together and doing stuff - in much bigger scale than a metro.

Yes, and when they do, we sometimes call it "government".

Nope. No one is allowed to opt out and people are forced to pay even though they don't want to or straight up can't use it and/or don't agree with it.

Re: Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

#54

Post by goty2 » Thu, Feb 01, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #50

goty2 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no mystery why taxis are expensive in Sweden. Deregulation legalizes price gouging, meaning few people will ride independent taxis or look a new companies. That doesn't just limit competition, but also puts more taxis on the road in relation to riders. Meaning higher costs.

> more taxis on the road in relation to riders. Meaning higher costs. I didn’t understand this bit

In a regulated market you just, in theory, take the closest taxi because you have no choice. But if there are five companies covering the same area, each company is going to have less coverage or need more cars. Each company is going to have to drive longer to pick up passengers. One company might have no cars available and passengers waiting, while another company has empty cars doing nothing. All in all there is less utilization of cars. I am not sure how big the effect would be though.

Re: Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

#55

Post by azemetre » Thu, Feb 01, 2018, 5:40 PM UTC

TomMarius wrote: post #53

InitialLastName wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and when they do, we sometimes call it "government".

Nope. No one is allowed to opt out and people are forced to pay even though they don't want to or straight up can't use it and/or don't agree with it.

No one is stopping you from renouncing your citizenship and leaving the country.

The problem with your argument is you seem to want all the benefits for yourself with zero drawbacks. Society doesn't work like this and successful societies will never work like this.

Re: Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

#56

Post by indubitable » Thu, Feb 01, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

davnn wrote: post #12

I thought Finland was one of the few places where taxi prices were high enough that taxi drivers could make a fair living off it. Those days are probably gone.. I don't see the great innovations that ride hailing services bring to the table at this point. Having another person drive you around should expensive in my opinion.

You have to keep in mind that prices are, generally, not magical. The price is a balance between what people are willing to sell something for and what people are willing to buy it for. Of course that's elementary, but thinking about this will explain why drivers, in general, will not be well paid.

Driving is a low value skill that the vast majority of people have, and if they don't have - they can learn it rapidly. Let's imagine now being a driver was lucrative. Well you'd have a ton of people racing to become drivers, no pun intended. But with so many people willing to drive people around, it'd mean a shortage of work for all the drivers. And so somebody would offer to drive people for a little bit less. And that'd repeat on downward until we reached the equilibrium point at which not enough drivers were willing to go below.

There are some exceptions like truck driving where people spend hours and hours on the road driving vehicles that do require some degree of skill to manage. And so the wages there are still pretty decent. It's not just driving per se, but unpleasant work that requires some degree of skill.

Ride sharing apps bring market efficiency. If you're willing to drive for $x and people are willing to pay $x, well - why shouldn't you be able to? They're still centralized of course, but I think it takes us one step closer to decentralizing the entire industry which would be amazing, as it entirely removes the middle man and let's people simply directly offer and purchase each others' labor. Of course this ideal is pointless in this particular case as automation is imminent and will super-centralize the industry. Although there prices will likely be lower than even a decentralized market could offer.

Re: Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

#57

Post by kisstheblade » Thu, Feb 01, 2018, 6:04 PM UTC

Taxi service has been great in finland. Competent drivers (they know their way around the city) and clean cars. Pretty good availability, except for the one hour when the bars close when you have to fight for your life at the taxi stop :)

And you could actually make a decent living driving cabs.

This will probably change and the foreigners who now deliver our food (Foodora et.al.) will start driving taxis.

So drivers getting lost and crashing in the winter months because of lacking skills in snow driving. And of course not speaking finnish so handling the eldery and school transports which are a big service taxis provide here might get more difficult. We'll see... But in my opinnion it is not possible to operate taxis much more cheaply (and with the same quality) as we have now.

Re: Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

#58

Post by geezerjay » Thu, Feb 01, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #30

mattmanser wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, from experience. I live in an urban environment in the UK with extensive public transport and haven't had a car for the last 5 years. I have friends and family who live in the 'burbs. There are plenty of times I take a taxi over public transport, including: 1. I'm in a rush 2. I need to transport something not small 3. I'm feeling lazy Note, that all public transport suffers from some fundamental problems…

So while I like and appreciate our public transport, it can be a huge timesink and when you don't want to pay the "time tax" of public transport, taxis fill the role. Last time I was in London for work I naively hopped in a Taxi at Paddington Station because I was late for a meeting and the tube would take 30 minutes. The taxi took 35 minutes and cost an order of magnitude more.

> The taxi took 35 minutes and cost an order of magnitude more.

It seems that the moral of that story is that people should avoid travelling by car in places where roadways are congestioned.

Re: Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

#59

Post by jimmywanger » Thu, Feb 01, 2018, 6:39 PM UTC

goty2 wrote: post #54

alkonaut wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more taxis on the road in relation to riders. Meaning higher costs. I didn’t understand this bit

In a regulated market you just, in theory, take the closest taxi because you have no choice. But if there are five companies covering the same area, each company is going to have less coverage or need more cars. Each company is going to have to drive longer to pick up passengers. One company might have no cars available and passengers waiting, while another company has empty cars doing nothing. All in all there is le…

That is ridiculous. That's like saying that the food market is more expensive because you can have multiple vendors of food in one area, so it somehow promotes price gouging. I personally like having differentiated choices of food rather than going to the state sanctioned store close to your house because they all have the same things anyways.

> All in all there is less utilization of cars.

Sure. Because there is competition for supermarkets, more food gets wasted. You did not respond in defense of your other point that somehow this would magically raise prices because ???

Re: Taxi deregulation coming to Finland

#60

Post by geezerjay » Thu, Feb 01, 2018, 6:46 PM UTC

Reason077 wrote: post #17

TomMarius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market would build railroads and metros given the chance.

Building a metro requires enormous investment, with a huge but very long-term payback. Most of that return is not direct in the form of ticket revenues, but externalised in the form of economic growth along the metro routes, as well as environmental and social benefits. Even where you have private companies building and operating metros, it's usually with the direction and financial support (such as land grants and l…

> Building a metro requires enormous investment, with a huge but very long-term payback

Actually that's far from the truth. Any form of railway transport, with some notable exceptions like some french TGV lines, are absurd money sinks. The value of railway services in particular but public transportation systems in genetal manifest themselves mainly as externalities.