101–110 of 321 posts
Then they allowed these two companies to return. [1]
1. https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2018/08/28/dockless-elec...
I generally away from regulation, but let me articulate the pro-regulation argument. Markets that are important (like transportation) and have network effects need to be regulated. A monopoly with Uber and/or Lyft dominating local transportation is not good for consumers or cities in the long-term. Cities should take control of their transportation and ensure competition by managing allocation of capacity. I think th…
If you consider the short term rental of inexpensive scooters an important market needing laws to regulate their capacity (..by the wise and benevolent leaders of this sparkling city..), it's hard to imagine any market that would fall short of your importance threshold. The notion that the only way to ensure competition is to forbid it is convoluted.
Even if many of these scooters are improperly parked, the parking was done by the users and not the companies themselves, so holding the companies solely responsible for that dose not appear fair.
I generally away from regulation, but let me articulate the pro-regulation argument. Markets that are important (like transportation) and have network effects need to be regulated. A monopoly with Uber and/or Lyft dominating local transportation is not good for consumers or cities in the long-term. Cities should take control of their transportation and ensure competition by managing allocation of capacity. I think th…
San Francisco just granted two companies a monopoly when previously there were multiple companies fighting for the same business. That’s the exact opposite of what you’re advocating.
In addition, there's no network effect with scooters. Car sharing has the chicken-and-egg problem where you need enough drivers to meet demand, and you need enough passengers to give drivers a reason to drive for you. But scooters are cheap and easy to dump a whole bunch on a city, so there's no reason why a new company can't move in on an existing scooter market. For the most part the only important pieces are the brand recognition of the company and how easy their app is to use. If Uber is serious about scooters, I fully expect them to just move back in when the pilot program is over and immediately pick up a sizeable chunk of the market.
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Why shouldn't land owners be able to build whatever they want on their own property? It's not your backyard, it's your neighbors property
Imagine you owned a home and somebody wanted to put a nightclub on one side of you and an abattoir on the other. Do you think that might affect your quality of life at all? I mean hey, it's their property!
Chances are that a 50 story building isn't going next to a single family home without serious changes to the entire block. More likely, people want to build multi-families which are not going to ruin your sunlight. Additionally, changing all of this takes a lot of time, just because zoning may be relaxed doesn't mean overnight its going to turn in to Manhattan or Hong Kong as opposed to Paris which largely is ~6 stories and not particularly known for being a hellhole.
It is immoral to always in favor of the people lucky enough to have bought at the right time. Surely it is a difficult balance, but chances are your home has appreciated enough to give you a lot of options too.
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When corporate entities happily take money in exchange for their clients littering the streets with eyesores, it is a rather important problem. Boston hasn't been overrun yet, and I am hopeful that we stay that way.
Have you tried one? They’re actually quite handy.
Why pay $1 for something that should cost $0.05, and would be difficult to integrate into my life? If I wanted to ride a bicycle, I'd spend the equivalent of 150 Lime rides at Target or Wally World and own my own bicycle. Why rent what you can own?
Interviewed with Scoot last month on Howard St. The entire experience felt like a Monty Python interview- engineers driven on a death march to get their stuff done and interview an endless stream of qualified candidates, all the while management isn't ready to hire, but still bringing on a torrent of candidates. The interviewing process was one of the most disorganized and chaotic I've ever gone through. Pair program…
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If I'd started a scooter company before scooter companies were a thing, went to any city and asked for permission, they would have said "wtf? no." (assuming they answered my petition at all) and that would have been the end of it. The only reason we're here arguing about this is companies like Bird chose to ask for forgiveness rather than permission in the past.
Completely untrue. Before the scooters littered the city, the companies talked to SFMTA, and SFMTA said they were drafting up regulations to govern the scooters prior to giving permission. The companies went ahead and littered the city with them anyway, without permission. Claiming that breaking the rules is what led to the SFMTA coming up with regulations to allow scooters is just plain wrong. They were working on t…
If they'd asked for permission before anyone had heard of the idea of a scooter company, SFMTA would have ignored the request.
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No, government services are worse. I can opt out of Comcast.
Sure if you want DSL. Choices in my market are: dialup, dsl, and Comcast.
So they want only x number of scooters in the streets. Fine, but the bureaucrats are picking winners, when they should let the consumers choose.
And how do you propose they do that?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why shouldn't land owners be able to build whatever they want on their own property? It's not your backyard, it's your neighbors property
Imagine you owned a home and somebody wanted to put a nightclub on one side of you and an abattoir on the other. Do you think that might affect your quality of life at all? I mean hey, it's their property!
And let’s not be flippant. Nobody wants the ability to build anything anywhere, but it’s eaually absurd to not build much of anything at all. You can have density and affordable housing and a good quality of life; lots of cities do it already!