Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just leave their jurisdiction. Their "jurisdiction" is invalid, so why should we leave?
Your statement is false.
No it isn't.
How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
791–800 of 805 posts
Re: How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
#792Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's easy to imagine engineers working on small parts of the system, and never really connecting the dots that the whole point is to evade law enforcement. I would volunteer to work on that project because its whole point is to evade law enforcement. A lot of us (hackers/technologists) take a pretty dim view of arbitrary State regulations and "laws" and are quite happy to work to evade them. Most people who fit the t…
How far does your scofflaw streak go? Is this different from adding law enforcement blocking controls to any illegal tech product? Should everyone get to decide what laws to follow? I think you are describing anarcho-capitalism, not libertarianism.
I think you are describing anarcho-capitalism, not libertarianism
FWIW, I consider those terms, along with "voluntaryist" and/or "market anarchist" to be approximately synonymous for all practical purposes.
Re: How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
#793Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another good use for BIN information is justifying tax decisions. A little while back the VAT rules in the EU changed for online merchants. Before, you collected VAT based on your location. After, you collected VAT based on the buyer's location. Each country implemented a thing called VAT MOSS, and you can register with a country's tax authority to use their VAT MOSS system. You only have to do this in one country. O…
I wonder how this will work for the UK post-Brexit. Do you have any educated guesses?
These are my guesses. Not sure how educated they are.
I'd expect it to depend on the nature of the post-Brexit relationship between the UK and the EU. They will have some sort of treaty or agreement on trade, and that will probably include something about handling taxes.
In the best case they cooperate fully and keep the VAT MOSS system working like it does now. That will result in no change from a VAT reporting and collection point of view.
In the worst case they do not cooperate. The consequences of that depend on where the seller is located.
If the seller is not in the UK and not in the EU, then the result is to approximately double the quarterly paperwork. Instead of reporting to the VAT MOSS system of one country and having it distribute the tax to all the others, they will have to report to one EU country VAT MOSS to deal with all of the EU, and to the UK tax authorities to deal with VAT for UK customers. My guess is that those currently using UK VAT MOSS will most likely switch to Ireland VAT MOSS for their EU VAT, to stick with an English speaking country.
If the seller is in the UK, and not in the EU, then the "do not cooperate" case is not as big an impact. That's because the UK VAT MOSS system cannot be used by UK merchants to report UK VAT. They can only use it to report non-UK VAT. They have to file separate paperwork with the UK tax authorities for UK VAT. So worst case for these sellers is that UK VAT MOSS goes away and they have to register with some EU country's VAT MOSS to deal with EU VAT. After that, they are essentially in the same position they are now: they are still reporting to both the UK tax authority and to a VAT MOSS. All that changes is that they might have to use a different VAT MOSS.
Re: How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
#794Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine murder is illegal. But some guy thinks it isn't and does it anyway. He puts bodies in acid, hides them in concrete, and so on. Now this kind of behaviour is likely to mean the authorities will take a lot longer to find murderers. Murderers will get away with it from time to time. And a lot of resource needs to be spent just to find the criminals. We do tend to be more forgiving with crimes where the criminal…
Equating outdated city-level taxi regulations to universal law punishing murder is disingenuous, to say the least. FTC did a report [1] in 1984 about taxi regulations and pointed out why cities were not well-equipped nor incentivized to regulate for the purpose of market efficiency: > There are, in fact, reasons to doubt that existing regulations are efficient. One problem is that the analytical and informatiqnal pro…
It's totally irrelevant what the crime is, whether you like the rules or not, or whether the rules are economically efficient.
The point is you can't obstruct law enforcement from detecting that you've broken the rules.
Re: How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
#795Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how this will work for the UK post-Brexit. Do you have any educated guesses?
These are my guesses. Not sure how educated they are. I'd expect it to depend on the nature of the post-Brexit relationship between the UK and the EU. They will have some sort of treaty or agreement on trade, and that will probably include something about handling taxes. In the best case they cooperate fully and keep the VAT MOSS system working like it does now. That will result in no change from a VAT reporting and…
Thank you for the interesting reply.
One question:
> UK VAT MOSS system cannot be used by UK merchants to report UK VAT. They can only use it to report non-UK VAT
Why is that? Was it a deliberate choice by the UK tax authorities?
Re: How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
#796Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are arbitrarily assigning Uber's disruption a positive social outcome, which appears to be the lynchpin of your argument. Your argument could be applied to many outcomes that would appear on the surface to be negative. A few (admittedly exaggerated) examples: "ArmzDealR is providing a great service by eliminating government bureaucracy and providing access to arms that citizens should have. It's good that they he…
I'm simply pointing out that Temporal's argument that breaking the law is always wrong is simply incorrect. I'm not saying all laws should be broken. I'm saying one must decide whether or not the law is just, and support those who break unjust laws. I see no one even attempting to make the argument that taxi protectionism laws are just. Do you have an argument that they are?
I haven't researched the rationales behind taxi protectionism laws, so I can only offer conjecture. Two two reasons I can imagine we have such laws are traffic congestion control and accident liability.
On the surface congestion control seems far easier to implement (especially in a pre-mobile phone context) via restriction of medallions. I don't have arguments one way or the other as to the necessity of congestion control because I've only rarely experienced large cities (NYC, Chicago, London). I believe they are popular for various reasons, but I am not familiar with the arguments for or against.
Determination of liability seems like another obvious reason for a medallion monopoly. Presumably taxis are a higher risk pool for insurance claims, due to the presence of multiple parties. It's unclear to me where the liability falls if an Uber driver is in an accident that mortally wounds a passenger; will their standard insurance (that presumes a certain risk profile) cover the claim? I'm simply not familiar enough to definitely comment, unfortunately.
The latter argument holds more weight with me, but I'm sympathetic to arguments against it.
Re: How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
#797Earlier quoted context omitted.
You call it "rent seeking" but that's just not the case. Almost every law is founded in some sort of public interest. In 1937, NYC passed the Haas Act to clean up the taxi industry which had become so competitive that taxi drivers were not able to make ends meet (sound familiar?) and were turning to less than legal means to supplement their income. While that law is 80 years old, its original principle was to provide…
This is a common and bad form of argument: "there is at least one conceivable justification for this law, so it is not rent-seeking". But no one ever makes their primary public justification "we'd like to screw over the public and make more money". There is always something about some harm that the law will prevent. The question is whether the law is well targeted and proportionate. The restrictions on supply for tax…
its not a bad form of argument if its he truth. the world isn't black and white as much you might try and force to be.
I have taken a number of ubers that I wish had been regulated better: Both from safety and cleanliness.
Yes, the taxi medallion issue is wildly inappropriate at this point in time. But it obviously served a purpose.
Re: How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
#798Earlier quoted context omitted.
My time is worth something; standing on a corner at 3pm, checking the time, calling the main office - "oh yeah, he's five minutes away", 45 minutes still waiting, call again.. With Uber/Lyft, I can see when they'll arrive. I can plan to do something with that time if the wait is long enough. I can quickly redirect them to where I am if there's a misunderstanding. Yes, it's more efficient.
There are plenty taxi of companies worldwide that utilize mobile applications without also showing a disregard for law. The two things don't have to go together. From outside-US perspective, Uber is much less innovative than you'd think. They look simply like assholes with lot of VC money to burn on lawyers.
While you're congratulating the world, I'm in Lincoln, NE still waiting on a cab at 4pm.
I'm an adult; if I want to enter into an agreement to pay someone else to give me a ride and I'm not harming anyone else, then I will. Fuck their stupid arbitrary laws.
Re: How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
#799Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd rather go homeless than work on that.
Really?
Yeah... I guess I am too picky. My uncle was even better at engineering school than me and he also ended up as a derelict / janitor so maybe it is genetic. We both seem to be content with a rather low standard of living + powerful imaginations so that we can enjoy that almost as much as we would a much higher standard of living although we wouldn't really enjoy either all that much due to depression or whatever.
Re: How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
#800Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's about the defaults. I believe laws should be obeyed by default, and only opposed in special circumstances. The burden of proving that the circumstances warrant disobedience should be on the disobedient party. And most importantly, breaking the law should be expensive , so that it never becomes a viable business strategy. I'd even cut Uber some slack if they weren't so smug about what they're doing. This is just…
I think Uber has proven that their disobedience is beneficial. In the US and India they have made the transit sector vastly better than it was before. Even ignoring the benefits of the app over hailing a cab, the drastic reduction in racial discrimination is an amazing improvement. Note that India also had apps/SMS driven taxi hails - autowale.in started in Pune (my city). But Uber fixed transport and the political s…
The fix would have been to create better mass transit.