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Chicago taxi industry sliding towards collapse

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Re: Chicago taxi industry sliding towards collapse

#241

Post by optimusclimb »

valuearb wrote: post #219
tstactplsignore wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Whether it's for the better or worse simply doesn't matter Yikes- I have only a little sympathy for the taxi industry, but it is very scary that you do not believe we should be concerned with whether market forces improve society or not. I think it is extremely important to the vast majority of people that any enormous change in transportation occurs for the benefit of society - the ideology that capitalism is an en…

The market, i.e. customers, are saying they prefer Lyft and Uber to monopoly taxis. Market forces are naturally driven by customer demand and the realities of supply costs. Government intervention/subsidies is the only thing that interferes with that process, and almost always that intervention is being driven by self interested actors looking to reap above market profits. You may not like what customers want, but th…

I don't prefer Lyft or Uber to monopoly taxis, I prefer to axe the monopoly part, which seems to have led to terrible taxi service in many places.

I don't want - Drivers that drive like maniacs. Drivers that spend the entire ride on a phone call to god knows where. Drivers who lie to me and tell me they can't accept my credit card.

However, it seems to be conflated that the alternative to that can only be people using their private cars that don't necessarily know the area they're driving in and are by no means professional drivers working in an ill-defined "non-employee"/Employer relationship with Uber.

Re: Chicago taxi industry sliding towards collapse

#242

Post by valuearb »

DashRattlesnake wrote: post #234
valuearb wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phoebus couldn't last, no free market cartel can. Bell System ended up being heavily regulated, and it's service was second to none. It was nearly a natural monopoly because of the cost of running phone lines. If Uber ever became that, we could resolve any problems with regulation. But in reality Uber can never become a natural monopoly, entry into their market is too easy and just gets easier over time as costs decl…

> Bell System ended up being heavily regulated, and it's service was second to none. It was nearly a natural monopoly because of the cost of running phone lines. If Uber ever became that, we could resolve any problems with regulation. I think it's unlikely that the current political climate will allow such problems to be solved with regulation.

At this exact moment? No. But if Uber was really gouging people Trump would be one of the first to try to make political capital from regulating them.

Politics is politics. I was just re-listening to Dan Carlin's podcast series on the fall of Rome. He starts with the Graccus brothers, who were populists. Rome had an elitist power structure, basically the founding families controlled the senate, with the Equestrians and Plebes below them (and slaves below that).

The Graccus brothers got themselves elected Tribunes, which were roles intended to check the power of the senate, and took those roles to push forward land and other reforms to check the power of the senate and give things to the middle class and poor (some would say to buy the mob).

To stop this, the Senate at one point recruited their own Tribune candidate, and he didn't promise to rollback the Graccus reforms, in fact he did the opposite. Instead of giving away land for cheap prices to the Plebes, he offered them free land. He offered even more bread subsidies, and instead of the state paying for a foreign colony for the plebes, he offered to pay for 12 of them. And he got elected to replace Gaius Gracchus.

All politicians are sensitive to where the wind is blowing and most try to take advantage from it.

Re: Chicago taxi industry sliding towards collapse

#243

Post by pavel_lishin »

optimusclimb wrote: post #241
valuearb wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market, i.e. customers, are saying they prefer Lyft and Uber to monopoly taxis. Market forces are naturally driven by customer demand and the realities of supply costs. Government intervention/subsidies is the only thing that interferes with that process, and almost always that intervention is being driven by self interested actors looking to reap above market profits. You may not like what customers want, but th…

I don't prefer Lyft or Uber to monopoly taxis, I prefer to axe the monopoly part, which seems to have led to terrible taxi service in many places. I don't want - Drivers that drive like maniacs. Drivers that spend the entire ride on a phone call to god knows where. Drivers who lie to me and tell me they can't accept my credit card. However, it seems to be conflated that the alternative to that can only be people usin…

> Drivers who lie to me and tell me they can't accept my credit card.

For what it's worth, in New York, that's not your problem if they tell you at the end of the ride. By law, if a card reader is broken, they must inform you of this at the beginning. None of this "ok, I take you to ATM" business that tacks on a few more bucks onto the meter.

Re: Chicago taxi industry sliding towards collapse

#244

Post by pavel_lishin »

spydum wrote: post #153
agotterer wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its hard to even consider taking a taxi at this point. I was in Chicago last weekend and considered taking a taxi from the airport into the city. Taxi wanted ~$60 and Uber wanted ~$25. The same thing happened in SF a few months back. The driver wanted $90 to goto Palo Alto and I took an Uber pool for $23. Granted I don't believe for a second that's the actual rate and I'm confident the driver was trying to take advan…

It's worse than just pricing.. I've had several taxis "pretend" their meter stopped working, to try to scam a cash ride.

Is that a problem for you, assuming that the price of the ride didn't change? I don't particularly want to enable crime, but if a driver wants to rip off the owner of the medallion bolted to the car he's driving, that's not particularly my problem, any more so than the Taco Bell employee slipping my cash into his pocket instead of the till.

Re: Chicago taxi industry sliding towards collapse

#245

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

valuearb wrote: post #223
FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm left wondering... so what? Well, ~10,000 people, mostly male, are going to be left not only unemployed, but heavily indebted. That combination cannot be good for social stability. If you are a resident of Chicago, you should care. This problem won't go quietly into the night. > The government in no way insured that medallions would be a winning business investment. People who recently took out loans to purchase…

This is bs. Entrepreneurs go bankrupt all the time, it's the "creative destruction" part of capitalism, risk and reward. And 10,000 people in the chicago would be a drop in the bucket. But it's not 10,000 people. Lots of those medallions are owned by businesses, and they leased the medallions to drivers. Most drivers can switch to Uber/Lyft if they have or want to buy their own cars, or get other jobs. Driving a cab…

Your bias is causing you to come to some faulty conclusions. I did not quote the number of medallions given out by the city (which by the way is around 7000 [0]). I specifically stated the number of people employed as taxi drivers, which as of Dec 2016, is 9500. [1]

> Most drivers can switch to Uber/Lyft if they have or want to buy their own cars, or get other jobs.

Although some of them can probably use their primary car for Uber/Lyft, many of them will have to take out a loan/increase their debt to get a car they can use for ride-hailing. Perhaps you aren't aware, but losses in sub-prime auto loans have reached their highest levels since the 2008 financial crisis. Given that taxi drivers make on avg about $35,000, it's safe to assume that many only qualify for subprime and will add to this problem. And this is happening all across the country.

To your other point, get another job: Doubtlessly some people will be able to retrain. Just as surely, a number of people will not be able to adapt. Being a driver is about as low skilled as labor gets, so there are hardly any where their previous experience can transfer. So what jobs? Retail

> Driving a cab wasn't lucrative, the owners of the medallions were the ones reaping the monopoly profits. The best part of the shattering of these monopolies was the lesson it gives others investing in government shielded businesses.

I don't really care about the superiority of dynamic startups vs government shielded monopolies and honestly I think the financialization/commodification of parts of the economy such that people make bets on things instead of contributing productive value is not a good thing. But I digress, I'm more concerned with the shattered pieces left over in the creative destruction. 9500 formerly employed people with little future job prospects. That is .2% of working adults. It's not a huge amount, but it's not a drop in the bucket, especiallly when the city is again raising taxes and these individuals are going to need government assistance.

As us in the tech industry innovate and move forward, we aren't following the patterns of the past. When software eats industries, it destroys jobs a magnitude more than it creates. Let's be clear, coal isn't coming back and neither is manufacturing (BTW, the US is still the world's 2nd largest manufacturer and the leading advanced manufacturer, a fact that goes unnoticed) I personally don't find meaning or validation in life by having a job, but many do and UBI is a stopgap at best, but we really don't have any other solution at this point. That's what scares me....and people making rhetorical, ideological rants with no regards for facts.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_States#...

[1] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-chicago-taxi-driver-de...

Re: Chicago taxi industry sliding towards collapse

#246

Post by heisenbit »

SilasX wrote: post #104
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on the law. "You need to pay $300k for the right to get paid to drive people from point A to B" is a really terrible law.

The law was more like, "You must have a medallion to operate a cab. We only issued 10k medallions (or whatever). The medallions are transferable. We're not issuing new ones." Combined with the supply of cab labor, that had the effect of, "if you want to operate a cab, you need to buy one from an owner at the current absurd market price".

Which worked as long as the prices were going up.

Isn't it ironic that taxi drivers having gone in debt to buy a medallion are now financially destroyed by a company spending more than it takes in? Medallion asset bubble destroyed by Uber valuation bubble.

Re: Chicago taxi industry sliding towards collapse

#249

Post by valuearb »

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #245
valuearb wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is bs. Entrepreneurs go bankrupt all the time, it's the "creative destruction" part of capitalism, risk and reward. And 10,000 people in the chicago would be a drop in the bucket. But it's not 10,000 people. Lots of those medallions are owned by businesses, and they leased the medallions to drivers. Most drivers can switch to Uber/Lyft if they have or want to buy their own cars, or get other jobs. Driving a cab…

Your bias is causing you to come to some faulty conclusions. I did not quote the number of medallions given out by the city (which by the way is around 7000 [0]). I specifically stated the number of people employed as taxi drivers, which as of Dec 2016, is 9500. [1] > Most drivers can switch to Uber/Lyft if they have or want to buy their own cars, or get other jobs. Although some of them can probably use their primar…

No jobs have been destroyed. Chicago needs roughly the same number of drivers, just more are going to be driving Lyft or Uber in the future than Taxis. Taxi drivers might even do better with Lyft and Uber given they weren't getting any of the monopoly profits for driving.

Subprime is less than 20% of car loans, because it's easy to get a car loan if you have good (decent, not great) credit. Car loans are relatively safe because they are collateralized. This is why my bank is offering new and used car loans at 1.99%, and manufacturers/dealers can offer even lower rates. Even with poor credit you can get loans for less than 10%, which is fantastic by historical standards.

Even for the drivers who have terrible credit they can get still get a subprime loan and keep driving. Even at absolute worst case 20%, that's $6,000 a year, about $3/hour for a $30k car being used full time for Lift/Uber. Leasing a cab from a medallion holder for one shift a day probably cost close to $10,000 a year. In the case of the sub-prime loan you can refinance when your credit improves or pay it off over time. The Medallion lease costs were forever. And the driver likely can get higher utilization with Uber and Lyft than they ever got with their cabs, so they should be able to make more money.

Re: Chicago taxi industry sliding towards collapse

#250

Post by omegaham »

gehwartzen wrote: post #196
PacketPaul wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you buy land where the only access is through another person's private property, that is your own fault. The purchaser has a responsibility to do their own due diligence.

I was thinking more the opposite; You could already own the land and then someone else buys up everything surrounding it.

Obviously, we're leaving LibertarianLand for a moment, but the law generally makes it impossible to split up a parcel of land in such a way that one of the lots will be landlocked. If that lot is going to be landlocked, they must create an easement allowing travel across the property that does have access to the road.

Similarly, easements don't go away when they change buyers. For example, if you own a landlocked property, and you have an easement with your neighbor that allows you to drive across his property on his private road to reach yours, and then the neighbor sells his property, you can still use that road - the new owner cannot say "tough luck."

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