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“Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

stallman.org

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Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#31

Post by jeremiep »

cjbprime wrote: post #3

> Uber plans to do away with human cab drivers. > It would be easy for a non-plutocratic government to prohibit this, and that's what every country ought to do, unless/until every person gets an adequate basic income so people don't need to be employed. Okay, so I am extremely liberal and everything, but "let's ban any new technologies that might make somebody lose their job to a robot" is seriously the most ridiculo…

> unless/until every person gets an adequate basic income so people don't need to be employed.

This. There's far more to his argument than merely "lets prevent people from losing jobs."

Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#32

Post by nemothekid »

lambda wrote: post #27
diminoten wrote: post #13

Modern taxis fail every one of these "tests", so the fact that RMS wouldn't use Uber but would continue to use taxis at all is merely RMS riding a hatred bandwagon in an effort to stay relevant. Fortunately for us, he hasn't said anything remotely new, so we can continue to think of him as the 20th century man he is.

Uh, no. You can hail a taxi by hand, and pay with cash, and no one will have your information in a database that can be used against you later. While I don't agree with all of his reasoning here, he is correct that taxis offer you substantially more privacy than Uber, and Uber has been known to abuse the data they collect on passengers in several instances, so it's far more than just a theoretical concern.

http://gawker.com/the-public-nyc-taxicab-database-that-accid...

Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#33

Post by packetized »

Interesting. Mr. Stallman should check with the local laws of any given municipality regarding taxis - in some, not only can you not hail a cab on the street, but you must also provide extensive contact information in order to summon one via phone.

To wit, Birmingham, AL has precisely these restrictions & regulations.

Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#34

Post by bkor »

birken wrote: post #14

Or... Why you shouldn't use any ride sharing company. Numbers 4-6 are even more broad, they basically apply to any situation where you are required to use a credit card to pay (which identifies you), which is basically every single app. I'm empathetic to the issue that there is no way to anonymously take an Uber (a real downgrade as compared to cabs), but for your average person where a massive upgrade in convenience…

Why compare this with ride sharing? That's not what Uber is. It doesn't matter that Uber calls itself a ride sharing company, it is not. This has been mentioned before: with Uber someone takes you from a place to somewhere you specify. They drive the way that you want because you requested it from them. Further, you pay their expenses and a bit more. Exactly like a taxi.

Ride sharing is where someone was already going somewhere and you share the costs.

IMO you could use a ride sharing company where you're more anonymous. E.g. public transport :-P (though not in my country :()

Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#35

Post by geofft »

cjbprime wrote: post #3

> Uber plans to do away with human cab drivers. > It would be easy for a non-plutocratic government to prohibit this, and that's what every country ought to do, unless/until every person gets an adequate basic income so people don't need to be employed. Okay, so I am extremely liberal and everything, but "let's ban any new technologies that might make somebody lose their job to a robot" is seriously the most ridiculo…

What happens if the digital meter/dispatch thing in the taxi runs non-free software, and there's no free replacement?

Wouldn't it be an ethical imperative for all taxi drivers to quit their jobs rather than use non-free software?

Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#36

Post by glesica »

agildehaus wrote: post #11
cjbprime wrote: post #3

> Uber plans to do away with human cab drivers. > It would be easy for a non-plutocratic government to prohibit this, and that's what every country ought to do, unless/until every person gets an adequate basic income so people don't need to be employed. Okay, so I am extremely liberal and everything, but "let's ban any new technologies that might make somebody lose their job to a robot" is seriously the most ridiculo…

It's nearly in the job description of every software engineer to create things that ease people's workloads or replace their jobs entirely. I bet Stallman's projects, and the free software movement itself, are responsible for the non-existence of numerous jobs. Also: basic income, or whatever it is that will make sense when there aren't enough jobs to go around, won't be preemptive.

> Also: basic income, or whatever it is that will make sense when there aren't enough jobs to go around, won't be preemptive.

Seems like this is really his point, if it isn't going to be preemptive, then (he feels) we should stop the jobs from going away.

Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#37

Post by johnloeber »

blhack wrote: post #29
taurath wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the value in his principles but I feel like it could use a more marketable steward.

"More marketable" is how you end up compromising on your ideals. Stallman is nuts, but he is an extremely important type of nuts. The world needs more people like him.

On that note, can you think of more people quite like RMS? In other fields, perhaps?

Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#38

Post by cjbprime »

rando3826 wrote: post #22
cjbprime wrote: post #3

> Uber plans to do away with human cab drivers. > It would be easy for a non-plutocratic government to prohibit this, and that's what every country ought to do, unless/until every person gets an adequate basic income so people don't need to be employed. Okay, so I am extremely liberal and everything, but "let's ban any new technologies that might make somebody lose their job to a robot" is seriously the most ridiculo…

First off, that's not what he said. Secondly, lots of smart people have been talking about the need for basic income when robots take over large portions of the labor force. I'm personally unconvinced that it will create mass unemployment, but I don't call it crazy.

> First off, that's not what he said.

Can you elaborate on the divide between his claim and my interpretation, operating under the extremely obvious assumption that the world is not switching to universal basic income tomorrow? I honestly don't see it.

For the record, I also advocate strongly for basic income. But I don't think that robots taking jobs leads to particularly poor outcomes. For example! Driving a car 17 hours a day (or at all!), as described in the Uber article, is a needlessly dangerous activity for a human to be performing.

Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#39

Post by pdpi »

agildehaus wrote: post #11
cjbprime wrote: post #3

> Uber plans to do away with human cab drivers. > It would be easy for a non-plutocratic government to prohibit this, and that's what every country ought to do, unless/until every person gets an adequate basic income so people don't need to be employed. Okay, so I am extremely liberal and everything, but "let's ban any new technologies that might make somebody lose their job to a robot" is seriously the most ridiculo…

It's nearly in the job description of every software engineer to create things that ease people's workloads or replace their jobs entirely. I bet Stallman's projects, and the free software movement itself, are responsible for the non-existence of numerous jobs. Also: basic income, or whatever it is that will make sense when there aren't enough jobs to go around, won't be preemptive.

"I bet Stallman's projects, and the free software movement itself, are responsible for the non-existence of numerous jobs."

Indirectly, perhaps. Application-level software projects do tend to have the "automate people's jobs away" effect, but AFAIK, Stallman has been mostly involved in infrastructure-ish "enable some people to work (on automating away other people's jobs)" projects.

Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#40

Post by enoch_r »

> It requires passengers to run a nonfree program (an app). As always, a nonfree program tramples its users' freedom.

> Uber plans to do away with human cab drivers.

> It would be easy for a non-plutocratic government to prohibit this, and that's what every country ought to do, unless/until every person gets an adequate basic income so people don't need to be employed.

Which is a bigger case of "trampling freedom": voluntarily using someone's closed-source program, or having the government tell me they'll put me in jail if I offer to sell someone a ride in my self-driving car?

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