Protests against Uber are heating up in Europe
online.wsj.com
Protests against Uber are heating up in Europe
1–10 of 59 posts
Re: Protests against Uber are heating up in Europe
#2Taxi drivers in Europe are paid a fraction of the profits they get from clients, most of it goes to taxes and the operators running the cab networks.
Uber's drivers are in a similar position.
So what do we have here? Another example of pitting poor against poor, for the interests of one group of rich against another, emerging, group of rich.
I almost admire the skillful orchestration at play here, although probably I shouldn't.
Re: Protests against Uber are heating up in Europe
#3Way to win me over to your side guys by inconveniencing your customer.
Re: Protests against Uber are heating up in Europe
#4I'd like to highlight this part of the article:
> In several of the protests, drivers aren't specifically targeting Uber and other service providers, but what they say is outmoded regulation that makes it hard for them to compete. Part of Uber's challenge in Europe is the variety of regulations governing the continent, even among the 28-member European Union, each of which has different unions and different rules.
It's easy to dismiss off the protestors as old hat for not reacting gracefully to a changing market, but the issue at least in London seems to largely be with the fact that their existing businesses are subject to more costs and regulations than the kinds that Uber and other services are facing.
So let's spare a thought for the taxi drivers who've spent years building up their skills and knowledge of the local area, especially in places like London [1], and hope that they can be given the opportunity to compete with Uber. After all, if it weren't for the existing Taxi industry it's possible companies like Uber wouldn't even exist.
There should be space in the market for both the traditional offering and the fancy new one, and I hope that they can learn from each other and improve as a result of the competition, rather than die out.
EDIT: To be clear, I'm not saying Uber should be forced to play by the rules. I'm saying that it might be time for the rules to be re-assessed based on developments in the industry.
[1]: In London, our famous black cabs are driven only by cabbies who've spent months learning London like the back of their hands in order to give their customers the fastest (and most interesting, in many cases) journey possible. See The Knowledge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom#...
Re: Protests against Uber are heating up in Europe
#5Is this the first EU-wide strike, or has there been any such things in the past?
Re: Protests against Uber are heating up in Europe
#6I just do not see why uber can be disruptive AND follow the rules. Here in Sweden they are lobbying to get exception from the rules, i.e. not having a meter and not having price comparisons on the cars.
It's not hard to be disruptive if you break the rules
Re: Protests against Uber are heating up in Europe
#7I'd like to highlight this part of the article: > In several of the protests, drivers aren't specifically targeting Uber and other service providers, but what they say is outmoded regulation that makes it hard for them to compete. Part of Uber's challenge in Europe is the variety of regulations governing the continent, even among the 28-member European Union, each of which has different unions and different rules. It…
>It's easy to dismiss off the protestors as old hat for not reacting gracefully to a changing market, but the issue at least in London seems to largely be with the fact that their existing businesses are subject to more costs and regulations than the kinds that Uber and other services are facing.
This is the fundamental issue: Uber's business advantage is to evade regulations that apply to its competitors; its business strategy is to try to drive them out of the market before regulation catches up with them.
Re: Protests against Uber are heating up in Europe
#8I just do not see why uber can be disruptive AND follow the rules. Here in Sweden they are lobbying to get exception from the rules, i.e. not having a meter and not having price comparisons on the cars. It's not hard to be disruptive if you break the rules
But why require every car to have this bulky fixed function meter device when a smartphone app can do the job just as well?
Sometimes the rules themselves need to be disrupted.
Re: Protests against Uber are heating up in Europe
#9I just do not see why uber can be disruptive AND follow the rules. Here in Sweden they are lobbying to get exception from the rules, i.e. not having a meter and not having price comparisons on the cars. It's not hard to be disruptive if you break the rules
Their beef with Sweden's regulation is odd, since Sweden has an extremely deregulated taxi market. Pricing is entirely set by the operator, subject to only two consumer-notification conditions that you note. You can charge whatever you want, but: 1) you must legibly advertise the price on the exterior of the car; and 2) you must have a meter which is inspected to ensure that you are actually charging the prices that are advertised. That's pretty similar to how, say, butchers are regulated: you can sell your meat for whatever you want, but must advertise the per-kilo price, and must use an official scale whose calibration has been validated. In the case of taxis, you must also have vehicle insurance that covers for-pay carriage of passengers, but that's just a basic road requirement (all drivers are required to have insurance that covers the kind of driving in which they're engaged).
Unlike NYC (for example), there isn't any kind of "medallion" system, government-regulated pricing, etc. And unlike London, there is no exam requiring drivers to have any particular knowledge. If anything the outcry from consumers is more often in the other direction, especially from tourists. Tourists who aren't aware that Sweden has completely deregulated taxi pricing are sometimes scammed into paying incredibly high fares, because there's nothing illegal about charging $500/km, as long as that's the stated price. (The fact that Sweden uses SEK instead of EUR helps this particular scam, since many tourists, especially those just arriving at airports, have no intuitive sense of what a SEK/km price means.)
Re: Protests against Uber are heating up in Europe
#10Taxi drivers should consider reducing their prices if they want their business to go up. Sorry but I don't think am the only one that thinks taxi drivers average salary is way higher than any software developers... Think their salary is un-taxed... most of it.