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Uber now has to wait 15 minutes before picking you up in France

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Re: Uber now has to wait 15 minutes before picking you up in France

#51

Post by mikeash »

cecilpl wrote: post #50
yankoff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a regulated industry cannot compete with an unregulated one, but people are still better off with the regulated one. Can you please give one example?

Leaded gasoline. Using it allows you to increase the compression of your engine, which improves fuel economy. The total cost of lead in the environment by far outweighs the economic benefits, which is why it's banned, yet for each individual person it makes economic sense to use leaded gasoline if you can.

Nice one! This is a much better example than my more generalized one of car emissions in general.

Re: Uber now has to wait 15 minutes before picking you up in France

#52

Post by DanBC »

mikeash wrote: post #48
yankoff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a regulated industry cannot compete with an unregulated one, but people are still better off with the regulated one. Can you please give one example?

Pollution regulations are an obvious example. Car emission regulations seem to be a pretty good thing, what with the distinct lack of smog in major US cities these days. Yet, if given the choice to opt in or opt out of the regulations, people would generally opt out, as it's cheaper for them personally. The result would be the return of car-related smog.

Car regulations are a great thing, and pollution levels have decreased a lot, even in LA.

Pollution is still a significant problem in LA.

> “Ozone and particle pollution contribute to thousands of hospitalizations, emergency room visits, and deaths every year,” Dr. Kari Nadeau, a Stanford Medical School professor and American Lung Association researcher, said when the State of the Air report was released. “Air pollution can stunt the lung development of children, and cause health emergencies, especially for people suffering from chronic lung disease, including asthma, chronic bronchitis, and emphysema. Both long-term and short-term exposures can result in serious health impacts.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/eco-nomics/2012/08/23/los-angele...

The numbers of people dying from car pollution is weirdly high, considering we don't hear much about it.

Re: Uber now has to wait 15 minutes before picking you up in France

#53

Post by thisosound »

cecilpl wrote: post #50
yankoff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a regulated industry cannot compete with an unregulated one, but people are still better off with the regulated one. Can you please give one example?

Leaded gasoline. Using it allows you to increase the compression of your engine, which improves fuel economy. The total cost of lead in the environment by far outweighs the economic benefits, which is why it's banned, yet for each individual person it makes economic sense to use leaded gasoline if you can.

> The total cost of lead in the environment by far outweighs the economic benefits

Evidence?

Re: Uber now has to wait 15 minutes before picking you up in France

#54

Post by thisosound »

chc wrote: post #47
yankoff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a regulated industry cannot compete with an unregulated one, but people are still better off with the regulated one. Can you please give one example?

Probably the clearest example: If one company is required to clean up its waste responsibly and the other one is allowed to do whatever it wants with its waste, the unregulated company will destroy the other one (perhaps literally by burying it under a mountain of waste).

> to clean up its waste responsibly

Why won't the unregulated company get sued if they dump their waste onto someone else's property (in/directly)?

Re: Uber now has to wait 15 minutes before picking you up in France

#56

Post by thisosound »

mikeash wrote: post #41
spindritf wrote: post #3

Presumably, the taxi industry is "heavily regulated" for the benefit of the customer, then shouldn't customers flock to this excellent, regulated service on their own? Why are those artificial and arbitrary limits necessary?

The entire point of rational regulation (not to be confused with insane regulation, which is sadly common) is to avoid market failures such as the tragedy of the commons. By their very nature, those market failures mean that a regulated industry cannot compete with an unregulated one, but people are still better off with the regulated one. That's not to say that these regulations are beneficial or that regulations ar…

Regulation is a public good, therefore it is itself a market failure. Voters don't do hours of research to determine what constitutes rational regulation.

So, if there's a new law that will cost 990 people $1 each and the other 10 people gain 99 each... it will pass, because for 99% of the people it's not even worth an hour of their time to rally against it. However, the 1% that benefit from it can afford to organize entire campaigns to convince the 99% that this new law is for their own good.

Re: Uber now has to wait 15 minutes before picking you up in France

#58

Post by oakwhiz »

thisosound wrote: post #53
cecilpl wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaded gasoline. Using it allows you to increase the compression of your engine, which improves fuel economy. The total cost of lead in the environment by far outweighs the economic benefits, which is why it's banned, yet for each individual person it makes economic sense to use leaded gasoline if you can.

> The total cost of lead in the environment by far outweighs the economic benefits Evidence?

Putting extra lead in the environment increases the risk of people coming into contact with larger amounts of lead. Lead has been shown to cause health problems and birth defects.

Re: Uber now has to wait 15 minutes before picking you up in France

#59

Post by officemonkey »

gioele wrote: post #36
southpawgirl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some Italian cities the situation is no different: taxi licenses are issued only on a fixed, limited number and are sometimes inherited from father to child, often sold for mind-boggling amounts (comparable to the price of a house). The service as a result is quite crap: long waits, high prices per km and all the most contrived surcharges you can think of (5 additional Euros for the airport and some tourist destin…

> high prices per km In Italy, and in other European countries, the taxi prices are set by the city councils, not the taxi drivers.

And those councils are aggressively lobbied (and possibly bribed) by those taxi drivers.

The most depressing thing about public corruption is how cheap it is.

Re: Uber now has to wait 15 minutes before picking you up in France

#60

Post by mikeash »

thisosound wrote: post #54
chc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the clearest example: If one company is required to clean up its waste responsibly and the other one is allowed to do whatever it wants with its waste, the unregulated company will destroy the other one (perhaps literally by burying it under a mountain of waste).

> to clean up its waste responsibly Why won't the unregulated company get sued if they dump their waste onto someone else's property (in/directly)?

Because that "someone else's property" is often shared water/air resources, and when you cause $30 million in damages by causing 10 cents in damage each to 300 million people, there's no way to turn that into a lawsuit, even when tons of other people are doing the same thing and adding up to thousands of dollars of damage per person.
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