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Car-sharing service HiGear shuts down due to theft of 4 cars worth $400,000

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Re: Car-sharing service HiGear shuts down due to theft of 4 cars worth $400,000

#141

Post by stanleydrew »

burgerbrain wrote: post #133
stanleydrew wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said anything about banning women from being objectified?

If we vilify those who do it, the effective message is a desired ban.

While that may be true (although it seems like a stretch to me) there is still a huge difference between advocating for a ban and calling out people for bad behavior.

To take this to an unrelated extreme, it seems like a rather common and valid position on abortion is to support the freedom of choice for a woman without making that choice for oneself and advising others not to as well.

Re: Car-sharing service HiGear shuts down due to theft of 4 cars worth $400,000

#142

Post by marquis »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #77
yanowitz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Three replies essentially all said the same thing. I'll respond to this one.) Enslavement should not be the standard by which we assess the effect of such actions. Under capitalism, we should expect to see people trading their labor (or image) for money. The more interesting questions include: why is this marketing pursued? How does it fit into a tapestry of cultural "norms" that objectify and demean women? What eff…

I agree entirely, but you know what. It's women who decide to pursue this route as opposed to another. Some women just like to be in front of the camera with as little cloth as possible, as well as men (EDIT: I think we forget guys do this too). If you live such lifestyle, you cannot complain later about how society views you.

I compel you to consider the life narrative of women and men who choose to be objectified sexually: I believe you will find that none of them thought when they were young, 'I want to grow up to be objectified for my body'.

It is not so much 'I can get paid for this' but more of 'In what other way can I get paid?'. There are exceptions of course as in all cases, some workers have a high degree of control and as long as they have great working conditions and a say in how they do their job I have no problem with the industry but again, my first sentence applies.

In the case of these Hi Gear girls, I cannot speak for them but likely they were simply hired by a modeling agency and have no particular commitment to the car company itself.

Re: Car-sharing service HiGear shuts down due to theft of 4 cars worth $400,000

#143

Post by rm445 »

bane wrote: post #26

A surprisingly fragile business model. I've wondered how Zipcar et al. haven't been killed by this? Or have they just done a better job at figuring theft into their model as a cost?

A surprisingly fragile company. There are plenty of thriving car hire companies (and yes, you can hire high-end vehicles).

Re: Car-sharing service HiGear shuts down due to theft of 4 cars worth $400,000

#144

Post by troll24601 »

bane wrote: post #26

A surprisingly fragile business model. I've wondered how Zipcar et al. haven't been killed by this? Or have they just done a better job at figuring theft into their model as a cost?

Because ZipCar owns the cars, they're able to take stronger precautions to track and to prevent theft. HiGear's model opened a wide range of attacks against the customer cars, some of them hard to tie to HiGear.

I wouldn't be surprised if the total theft from HiGear is more than 4 cars, but that some of the other thefts either haven't happened yet, or weren't easily tied to the HiGear service.

Re: Car-sharing service HiGear shuts down due to theft of 4 cars worth $400,000

#145

Post by protomyth »

zacharytamas wrote: post #46
protomyth wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Red vs Arri lawsuit story they ran felt that way. It looked like it was cribbed off the Reuters report. It struck me like the author didn't actually read the papers filed in the lawsuit. The biggest issue was the lack of reporting on the accusation that Arri sabotaged a Red One on the set of a movie. The original report was written before court papers were available (I think), but the TechCrunch story was posted…

I'm sure there's pressure to put out articles as fast as possible verses the old days of publishing where a journalist might have weeks to work on their piece. With publishing on the web so easy these days readers tend to expect higher publishing frequency, but I'm sure we can't be the only ones who would gladly trade quantity for quality.

I guess I would really like the writer of an article to actually read the only piece of source material. Yeah, I would love quality, but the current advertising metrics seem to work against quality in a big way.

Re: Car-sharing service HiGear shuts down due to theft of 4 cars worth $400,000

#146

Post by kd1220 »

sounds wrote: post #40
signa11 wrote: post #32

a silly question, but isn't there any insurance on the said cars ? if the cars are lost/stolen etc. and they do have insurance, let the insurance company deal with law-enforcement or other 'out-of-band' mechanisms (too many hollywood movies) to retrieve the stolen property...

The insurance premiums will go up. The problem is that the cars are owned not by HiGear but by wealthy clients who want to rent out their car (instead of having it sit in a garage). The cars have sentimental value. They may be customized and difficult/impossible to replace. I suppose there are already businesses that don't use a Peer-to-Peer model. If it's just a matter of arranging rentals in a more traditional mode…

It's been done before, but I think the result the same. I met with a guy who was a co-owner of a luxury car rental service in South Florida. He wanted help with implementing a tracking system, but I passed up the job. He started the company back in late 2008, and it had gone under some time early in 2011.

I saw him again recently and asked why the business went bust. To paraphrase him: "High overhead and picky customers." Turns out people who rent exotic cars want the newest and latest cars, not older models (unless it's vintage/classics they're looking for, but that's another beast). So you have to keep your stable fresh. Trying to offload exotics is a pain, because there's a specific type of person who will buy a used exotic: a nouveau rich man with more pride than financial management skills.

The kicker was when he told me that if he ever decides to launder money, he'll start another luxury rental place, because it would be perfect for that.

Re: Car-sharing service HiGear shuts down due to theft of 4 cars worth $400,000

#147

Post by joshu »

lionhearted wrote: post #84
jackowayed wrote: post #11

I felt worse for these guys until I read to the end of the letter and found out about the "HiGear girls". It's not quite as bad as I thought because they don't seem to "rent out" these models like they do cars; I guess it was just a publicity thing. But still, having revealing pictures and even stats (measurements) of the women is pretty much the definition of objectification. FOLLOWUP (responding to comments): I'm n…

Well, c'mon, can we be real here? If a guy is paying $600 to $900 to rent a car for a few hours, he's probably trying to get girls or close a business deal. People don't do that just to hang out with their buddy, unless they've got silly-money, in which case they just own their own cars. Also, some of the shots were rather tasteful (others, not so much, but this one for instance) - http://www.higear.com/images/our_co…

I rent higher end stuff than higear offered. Way cheaper than owning. I just drive them around.

Anyone that has financial sense and/or understands the hedonic treadmill will understand why.

Fwiw the place I use doesn't have pictures of women with cars anywhere....

Re: Car-sharing service HiGear shuts down due to theft of 4 cars worth $400,000

#148

Post by burgerbrain »

dennisgorelik wrote: post #137
burgerbrain wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why would remaining gang members care about former gang member who disappeared in unknown direction and does not cause any trouble?" Ignoring the obvious answers, try this one on for size: Who fucking cares? The fact is that they do care. You need not understand the problem for it to exist.

In order to solve the problem you typically need to understand it.

You are going to convince gangs to let their members leave?

Re: Car-sharing service HiGear shuts down due to theft of 4 cars worth $400,000

#149

Post by dennisgorelik »

burgerbrain wrote: post #148
dennisgorelik wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to solve the problem you typically need to understand it.

You are going to convince gangs to let their members leave?

Step 1. Understand problem.

Step 2. Find solution.

Step 3. Implement solution.

There is no point in planning step 3 when step 1 is not complete.

Re: Car-sharing service HiGear shuts down due to theft of 4 cars worth $400,000

#150

Post by rmc »

sliverstorm wrote: post #138
rmc wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the same as "all children are above average", since you're comparing a subjective evaluation (beauty) to an objective evaluation (e.g. reading skills). Neither am I saying that everyone is beautiful to everyone else, just that everyone is beautiful to someone. After all, there are some niche tastes. Just look at the gay community whose tastes can range from Bears (big chunky hairy guys) to twinks (young skin…

But how would you know beauty if you did not also know the lack of beauty? In the same way as, what is light without dark? You can't truly appreciate one without the other. You could be right about the "everyone is beautiful to someone". I agree, the fashion industry is not much better. If I was king, I'd have everyone aim for athletic/fit. I suppose that's just one person's preference though.

Yes everyone knows beauty and ugliness, but its not the same standard for everyone. Lots of people have their own idea of beauty and ugliness. What's ugly or meh to me, might be stunning to you. For example, some straight men like grantees/older women. They find these people attractive, and others find these people ugly. There is not one standard.
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