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SF wants startups to behave, so why did it reject the ‘nice guy’ of e-scooters?

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Re: SF wants startups to behave, so why did it reject the ‘nice guy’ of e-scooters?

#71

Post by crankylinuxuser »

yebyen wrote: post #40
reaperducer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my experience with pretty much any bureaucracy, regardless of locale. It doesn't have to be this way. I incorporated my first company in Chicago, and was stunned with how helpful the bureaucrats were. Yes, it was a little complex, especially in the years before "startups" were a thing, and you could do stuff online. But each department I had to work with had people who would sit me down at their desk an…

Echo this sentiment from another Midwesterner, ex-pat former New York State resident. I moved to Indiana and have not had the experience of incorporating a business entity, but the experience I had at the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles has been one to make me question whether bureaucracies are really necessarily horrible all of the time. Starting with the experience of moving to the state, to contrast (Upstate) Wes…

I live in Indiana, and incorporated about 3 weeks ago. Took me about 20 minutes, and I've never done it before. I had to use a unique company name, and that check could only be done in the Indiana Secretary General's office. 3 days later, I receive an email of congratulations. The next day, I get my physical paperwork.

I was making a LLC, so it was pretty straightforward and no surprises.

Once the SecGen approved it, getting IRS numbers was a whole 5 minutes. I also wish to sell things on Kickstarter/Indiegogo, so I applied for indiana tax numbers as well. $20 for 2 years.

Re: SF wants startups to behave, so why did it reject the ‘nice guy’ of e-scooters?

#72

Post by mikojan »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #58
mikojan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is down voting this? It is correct. Uber is contributing to traffic jams, environmental catastrophe and the continued deterioration of public transport. Airbnb is contributing to a housing crisis in many major cities. Of course,the public sector created a lot of the problems Uber alleviates on an individual basis but that doesn't change the fact that is a really bad solution.

>Uber is contributing to traffic jams Who are you trying to alleviate traffic jams for? Which group of people do you think has a greater right to traffic free car travel?

Traffic jams are bad for the environment because in general acceleration is more costly than constant speed. This is about every bodies right to clean air and a world permitting organized human life.

Re: SF wants startups to behave, so why did it reject the ‘nice guy’ of e-scooters?

#73

Post by edouard-harris »

kd5bjo wrote: post #8

The application form requires a paragraph labeled A3, and their application had the required information but didn’t label it as A3. That’s the sort of mistake that can land you in bureaucratic purgatory anywhere in the world, which is exactly what happened, and there’s an ongoing appeal right now. The founder’s take-away from this should have been “double-check the details, especially when dealing with a bureaucracy”…

The reason "optimize for the short term" is one of the takeaways here isn't that Skip filled out their application wrong. It's that the operators who did this (such as Lime, Bird, and Spin) weren't punished by the City for it.

Re: SF wants startups to behave, so why did it reject the ‘nice guy’ of e-scooters?

#74

Post by r00fus »

argonaut wrote: post #15

Yes, this is just standard bureaucracy and it's Skip's fault, as people are saying. But the bigger point is that the SF government apparently places more weight on minor application mistakes than actual, historical "bad" behavior. That's why this is so comical. It only feeds fuel to the truth that rules should be bent and there really is no point in "moving slow" for startups. You won't be rewarded for it. Most tech…

Doesn’t seem “comical” to me, it smells like corruption.

Re: SF wants startups to behave, so why did it reject the ‘nice guy’ of e-scooters?

#75

Post by acd »

Seems like these scooters ended up else where to cities which were not clever enough to say no. Sweden got Bird scooters the city could have said no to buy and throw scooter companies. Scooters litter the streets which makes it hard for people with vision disabilities. Scooters tend to ride to fast for other pedestrians safety etc.

Frankly I do not like these scooters. We have bicycles made from iron and aluminium they are fully recyclable vs this electronic plastic e-waste ie scooters.

Re: SF wants startups to behave, so why did it reject the ‘nice guy’ of e-scooters?

#76

Post by randomsearch »

kd5bjo wrote: post #39
mikojan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is down voting this? It is correct. Uber is contributing to traffic jams, environmental catastrophe and the continued deterioration of public transport. Airbnb is contributing to a housing crisis in many major cities. Of course,the public sector created a lot of the problems Uber alleviates on an individual basis but that doesn't change the fact that is a really bad solution.

>Who is down voting this? It is correct. Simply being correct is not the only criterion for a comment being a positive contribution to the conversation. The comment also needs to relate its new information to the topic at hand. At a guess¹, the unsupported assertion that AirBnB and Uber have been disasters is the major problem with the comment, in addition to the fact that they are not the primary subject of the conv…

> the unsupported assertion that AirBnB and Uber have been disasters

...quick examples, just grabbed these articles but they're representative of the problems Airbnb has caused people and cities I have first-hand experience of:

> Uber has been stripped of its London licence after authorities found that more than 14,000 trips were taken with drivers who had faked their identity on the firm’s app.

> TfL said on Monday it had identified a “pattern of failures” by Uber, including several breaches that placed passengers and their safety at risk.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/25/uber-lose...

> Uber and Lyft increase pollution and undermine public transport, study shows

https://www.transportenvironment.org/news/uber-and-lyft-incr...

> Airbnb rentals in London block sparks call for action

https://www.ft.com/content/3aa0bd72-fa01-11e8-af46-2022a0b02...

> Airbnb time limits 'ineffective in London' councils say

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-38924720

> "Short term lets are having a terrible impact. They are hollowing out communities, both in the city centre and increasingly across Edinburgh. Residents are putting up with high levels of anti-social behaviour and, very worryingly for us, we believe there is a huge impact on housing supply," said Councillor Kate Campbell (SNP), housing convenor at City of Edinburgh Council.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47910700

etc. etc.

Re: SF wants startups to behave, so why did it reject the ‘nice guy’ of e-scooters?

#77

Post by xvector »

souterrain wrote: post #69

Forget for a moment that a bureaucracy is involved. If your company was bidding on a request for proposal (RFP) for a potential client, wouldn't you want to follow the customer's requirements? Often RFP teams use failure to follow directions or specifics in a proposal submission as an informal measure of the likelihood the respondent will fail to deliver on other requirements. I have worked for a company where I had…

I think this is ridiculous. Formality to the absurdist extreme. Any mildly competent human being would overlook the letters “A3” not being above a certain safety paragraph.

If a robot were processing these applications then the error might be forgivable. But if you’re a human on the job, society expects you to use the reasoning skills of a human.

I think the sort of person that would reject Skip’s application is someone that society would be better off without them in their current position. Hopefully one day they realize how their incompetence is hurting both people and progress, and either work towards using those reasoning skills or find a position better suited towards them.

Re: SF wants startups to behave, so why did it reject the ‘nice guy’ of e-scooters?

#78

Post by dsfyu404ed »

yebyen wrote: post #40
reaperducer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my experience with pretty much any bureaucracy, regardless of locale. It doesn't have to be this way. I incorporated my first company in Chicago, and was stunned with how helpful the bureaucrats were. Yes, it was a little complex, especially in the years before "startups" were a thing, and you could do stuff online. But each department I had to work with had people who would sit me down at their desk an…

Echo this sentiment from another Midwesterner, ex-pat former New York State resident. I moved to Indiana and have not had the experience of incorporating a business entity, but the experience I had at the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles has been one to make me question whether bureaucracies are really necessarily horrible all of the time. Starting with the experience of moving to the state, to contrast (Upstate) Wes…

I've had the same experience you've had but with different states than you. IMO it all comes down to a difference in attitude of the people of the state. In some states people generally expect the government to serve the people and of course the pool of people from which the government is staffed is drawn from the state so the government reflects these values. In some states the government is expected to serve its own interested and when you staff a government with people with those expectations that's exactly what you get. If you just throw up your hands at bad government like it's something unchanging to be taken for granted then that's exactly what you'll get.

Re: SF wants startups to behave, so why did it reject the ‘nice guy’ of e-scooters?

#79

Post by rolltiide »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #64
rolltiide wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People that defer too much respect to the state are at a disadvantage. What I mean by that is that some people will conclude "well that's the law! so don't break it" as opposed to looking at the consequences or seeing the relativity of the law, or the influence you can have on the law. Many laws don't have a consequence. Many laws were written by your rival. Many laws have consequences that have nothing to do with cl…

And it's important to remember that the state doesn't see the law this way. I guarantee that whoever wrote the application forms didn't think they were passing a law about filling in section A3; they just wanted information about safety, and the style guide for writing forms says they get that information by putting a lettered and numbered section.

> And it's important to remember that the state doesn't see the law this way.

Yes, it is important to remember that the state is imbued with power, and also in many areas they have discretion, so if you want something discretionary from the state you need to maintain a relationship with them or leverage.

But the term you need to remember is "toothless", there are some toothless laws, and some toothless enforcement agencies

When the consequences are negligible you can consider acting accordingly

Re: SF wants startups to behave, so why did it reject the ‘nice guy’ of e-scooters?

#80

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

mikojan wrote: post #30
reaperducer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my experience with pretty much any bureaucracy, regardless of locale. It doesn't have to be this way. I incorporated my first company in Chicago, and was stunned with how helpful the bureaucrats were. Yes, it was a little complex, especially in the years before "startups" were a thing, and you could do stuff online. But each department I had to work with had people who would sit me down at their desk an…

This has been my experience in dealing with the German collection office even though all had already been moved to web and I never once met a real person. They would always send me nice letters explaining what exactly was wrong. Even did this in cases in which they themselves corrected the error on my behave. On the other hand, dealing with private bureaucracies such as internet providers has always been a major pain…

This. If all the ISP's died near me, I probably wouldn't shed a tear.
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