81–90 of 120 posts
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Point is they are plentiful - I can hail a cab in minutes but if they become rare I could wait 30 minutes for the 'special' cab to show up.
If they become rare, wouldn't the market supply more cabs? I mean, how do you think food supply works?
I am not a fan of the medallion system, but Uber does seem to impact the businesses of traditional, local cab drivers while raking in profits on a global scale. It looks like a perfect middle-class job destroying operation that centralizes profits in one multinational company. As someone put it, those with the more powerful computers will win the economic spoils.
Are the taxi drivers allowed to use both Uber and the medallion system?
Of course regulation is needed. Insurance, car-standard, driver skill, all of that has to be known by the customer merely by the fact that you are stepping into a taxi. Can there be too much regulation, too archaic? Sure, but I can't see how that motivates sidestepping it entirely. In Stockholm, taxis (normal ones) are regulated in terms of insurance etc. but unlike most other cities, taxi prices are not regulated. T…
This raises the question, do you refuse to use any service that doesn't guarantee union wages? If so, picking up an econ textbook will pay for itself in no time.
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The problem with cabs is the information asymmetry. You dot know before you're getting in how good their knowledge is, this means that knowledgeable drivers can't charge more and you get a 'market of lemons'. This is a classic form of market failure, and is a strong case for regulation.
So any small business or startup without name recognition should be restricted from the marketplace by a higher authority until a government entity approves its service? Is that what you're saying? Wouldn't this basically kill Ycombinator?
>>Most notoriously, attaining “The Knowledge” required for a taxi license involves memorizing hundreds of routes, business locations, and places of interest throughout the city. Charming, but expensive — and quite unnecessary in the age of smartphones. Says a person who has never been to London and doesn't understand the enormous benefit of intimate knowledge of all the streets of London and how to navigate them quic…
>>Most notoriously, attaining “The Knowledge” required for a taxi license involves memorizing hundreds of routes, business locations, and places of interest throughout the city. Charming, but expensive — and quite unnecessary in the age of smartphones. Says a person who has never been to London and doesn't understand the enormous benefit of intimate knowledge of all the streets of London and how to navigate them quic…
Last time I was in London, I mentioned the name of a grotty backpackers hostel, not even remembering what road it was on, and the driver immediately started off towards it. Compare this to having to mess about on Google Maps for five minutes to figure out where we're going and potentially end up on the wrong side of the city anyway, which has happened to me in other cities. There's definitely something in having your…
I have no problem with regulation. I object to artificial limitation. If you want to set minimum standards for taxi drivers, to ensure the safety of drivers, I am absolutely fine with that. But anyone who wants to take the test should be able to, and there should be no artificial limit on the numbers.
One interesting aspect of limiting taxi numbers is that, as far as I understand the history, the first instance of doing so was imposed on taxi drivers by the public, rather than imposed by taxi drivers for guild-type reasons. London passed (one of?) the first taxi-regulation laws in the mid 17th century in response to popular outcry about the rapidly multiplying and unregulated hackney carriage operators; the law tr…
It has much less relevance for a purely call-and-wait service, which is why application to services like Uber is questionable.
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I'd rather pay cheaper fares, but thanks for deciding for me.
The problem with cabs is the information asymmetry. You dot know before you're getting in how good their knowledge is, this means that knowledgeable drivers can't charge more and you get a 'market of lemons'. This is a classic form of market failure, and is a strong case for regulation.
The main issue is getting a taxi in really small towns in the middle of nowhere, but it seems unlikely that Uber would have someone in these places, simply because there isn't really a demand.
I find it really hard to see Uber as anything but a taxi company that tries to underbid the competition by not following the same rules as everyone else.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Last time I was in London, I mentioned the name of a grotty backpackers hostel, not even remembering what road it was on, and the driver immediately started off towards it. Compare this to having to mess about on Google Maps for five minutes to figure out where we're going and potentially end up on the wrong side of the city anyway, which has happened to me in other cities. There's definitely something in having your…
I think the vast majority of people would rather look it up on Google Maps for five minutes and save $5.