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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

#61

Post by ghshephard »

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)?

That's precisely the tragedy of the commons - there is no "someone else" when it comes to things like water and air pollution, so without government regulation, there is no incentive to protect the commons, only use it in a manner to maximally improve one's own economic self interest, in a manner that harms all in an aggregate manner more than the community has been benefited.

It's a net-loss without some form of government regulation.

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

#62

Post by mikeash »

thisosound wrote: post #56
mikeash wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It certainly can be. Lots of laws are built to favor small groups who benefit less than the total cost imposed on the rest of the country.

My point is simply that regulation can be overall good and that you can't detect this by having them compete, because even good regulation can't compete.

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

#63

Post by jacalata »

spindritf wrote: post #37
onebaddude wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the taxi industry is "heavily regulated" for the benefit of the customer I get your point, but people decry the regulation that Uber is fighting against...until Uber implements free market "surge pricing". Then people are more than happy to leap back into the yellow cabs, which have their price regulated. Just read through some of the fallout. In other words, all the free market vs regulation talk is lip service. P…

until Uber implements free market "surge pricing". Then people are more than happy to leap back into the yellow cabs, which have their price regulated That is assuming they can find one. Surge pricing incentivizes drivers to actually show up and compensates them for tougher conditions and additional risk.

Do you have any numbers or stories showing that extra drivers begin working when surge pricing comes into effect at uber?

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

#64

Post by thisosound »

ghshephard wrote: post #61
thisosound wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)?

That's precisely the tragedy of the commons - there is no "someone else" when it comes to things like water and air pollution, so without government regulation, there is no incentive to protect the commons, only use it in a manner to maximally improve one's own economic self interest, in a manner that harms all in an aggregate manner more than the community has been benefited. It's a net-loss without some form of gov…

It's only a market failure, because it's publicly owned. Oceans and air is tricky, but rivers and lakes can certainly be privately owned.

But, regulation is also a public good and therefore also a market failure... so you end up with regulations that harm 99% of the people, like in the case of Uber in France.

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

#65

Post by shrikant »

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?

Literally 3 seconds on Google for "lead cost benefit analysis" yields this 1985 study by the EPA: http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/eerm.nsf/vwAN/EE-0034-1.pdf/$...

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

#66

Post by ak217 »

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.

Regulation must exist for valid reasons (clear evidence of environmental harm exists for lead emissions) and be applied equally. Neither of those is true here.

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

#69

Post by mikeash »

ak217 wrote: post #66
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.

Regulation must exist for valid reasons (clear evidence of environmental harm exists for lead emissions) and be applied equally. Neither of those is true here.

We aren't actually discussing taxi regulations in this subthread, just regulations in general, and why you can't judge their merit by letting them compete in a free market.

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

#70

Post by tzs »

shrikant wrote: post #65
thisosound wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Literally 3 seconds on Google for "lead cost benefit analysis" yields this 1985 study by the EPA: http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/eerm.nsf/vwAN/EE-0034-1.pdf/$...

It's even worse than that, I think. I may have missed it since I just skimmed that document, but I don't think it covered violent crime.

It has been shown rather conclusively that overexposure to lead in childhood leads to an increase in violent crime in adulthood. Banning leaded gasoline was the single most significant cause of the large decrease in violent crime in the US in the latter part of the 20th century. Here's one story on this [1]. Cites to peer reviewed journals are available from Wikipedia [2].

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/ban-on...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Toxicity

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