4 ms·

> All this to avoid the pretend horror of taxis. Taxis consistently fail to show up in a reasonable amount of time (or at all). They have a solid track record

by natrius 10y ago

> All this to avoid the pretend horror of taxis. Taxis consistently fail to show up in a reasonable amount of time (or at all). They have a solid track record of preferring riders who aren't large black men, like I am. I am a happy Arcade City rider. I avoid the actual horror of taxis.

kuschku 10y ago
Or you fix your taxis, like most of the rest of the world has. I can use taxi.eu to order a taxi in minutes, it will be clean, it will be there quickly, it will be cheap, and anyone can easily start their own taxi company if they have a commercial drivers license and commercial car insurance. That’d liberalize the market. Uber gaining a monopoly is not a free market. Hell, the whole fucking Unicorn thing, no, the whole fucking startup thing is about monopolies, breaking Antitrust laws, and it’s all intentional. The whole point of startups like Google, Facebook, Uber, etc was to outcompete competitors by doing predatory pricing thanks to VC funding (for example, Uber pays drivers in several countries more than the ride brought them in profit), then getting a monopoly (for example, Facebook paying people’s data costs if they’d spend more than X time on FB, and automatically inviting friends in the early years in Europe), increasing the costs for competitors to enter the market (For example, Facebook’s Internet.org campaign trying to ensure competitors would have a huge disadvantage without lots of funding). If you want to get the best result for you as customer, you have to basically ban any VC-funded fast-growth focused startups from the market you are in, and then try to reduce remaining regulation as necessary. These startups are not there to improve the service for you.
- natrius 10y ago
  Taxis are bad because it's profitable for taxi companies and politicians for them to be bad. "Just fix your taxis" is a pretty ridiculous suggestion in the face of regulatory capture. I have no desire for an Uber monopoly. I desire decentralized marketplaces that are controlled by their users. Adding regulations won't help to get those.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    Well, the city is a democracy, right? The state is the same? You can just get elected, and solve it that way. Regulation is also only useful for things you actually want regulated, and you should directly write down what it’s meant for. Regulate uninsured drivers, regulate drivers without license, prevent companies from controlling > 50% of the taxi market. But neither banning all competition, nor just allowing uber will work. Uber is just as bad as the existing monopoly.
  - philovivero 10y ago
    I'm with Natrius here. The existence and use of Uber/Lyft is exactly what "fixing taxis" looks like in the USA.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      But that’s not "fixing taxis". That’s just creating a new monopoly, and 10 years down the road the taxi situation in the US will look just like the ISP situation looks like now, with Uber and Lyft holding control over 90% of the market, and people will be like "deregulation made it even worse", or people will complain why no one competes with them.
      - jalami 10y ago
        Regulation is a big reason the ISP situation is the way that it is. You can't just up and build an ISP in most neighborhoods. Simply controlling a large percentage of the market is not the same as a monopoly; That word gets used far too often. We'd be in a better place if most the regulatory hurdles impeding new ISP's from entering the market were done away with. I think your asking for Uber and Lyft to be more regulated would do more to cement their place as a monopoly than any call for taxi deregulation would. Cities doing the regulation often want one company to deal with as opposed to seven so it's a mutually beneficial to impede competition in the area.
        kuschku 10y ago
        Even with zero regulation the ISP market is hard to enter, building all the cabling is a major investment. And try competing with uber with no regulation: uber will just reduce costs of their service (as they are doing now) and fund it with their existing money, while you have to run a profit and will be more expensive. Regulation can help against that.

by natrius 10y ago

kuschku 10y ago

Or you fix your taxis, like most of the rest of the world has. I can use taxi.eu to order a taxi in minutes, it will be clean, it will be there quickly, it will be cheap, and anyone can easily start their own taxi company if they have a commercial drivers license and commercial car insurance. That’d liberalize the market. Uber gaining a monopoly is not a free market. Hell, the whole fucking Unicorn thing, no, the whole fucking startup thing is about monopolies, breaking Antitrust laws, and it’s all intentional. The whole point of startups like Google, Facebook, Uber, etc was to outcompete competitors by doing predatory pricing thanks to VC funding (for example, Uber pays drivers in several countries more than the ride brought them in profit), then getting a monopoly (for example, Facebook paying people’s data costs if they’d spend more than X time on FB, and automatically inviting friends in the early years in Europe), increasing the costs for competitors to enter the market (For example, Facebook’s Internet.org campaign trying to ensure competitors would have a huge disadvantage without lots of funding). If you want to get the best result for you as customer, you have to basically ban any VC-funded fast-growth focused startups from the market you are in, and then try to reduce remaining regulation as necessary. These startups are not there to improve the service for you.

natrius 10y ago
Taxis are bad because it's profitable for taxi companies and politicians for them to be bad. "Just fix your taxis" is a pretty ridiculous suggestion in the face of regulatory capture. I have no desire for an Uber monopoly. I desire decentralized marketplaces that are controlled by their users. Adding regulations won't help to get those.
- kuschku 10y ago
  Well, the city is a democracy, right? The state is the same? You can just get elected, and solve it that way. Regulation is also only useful for things you actually want regulated, and you should directly write down what it’s meant for. Regulate uninsured drivers, regulate drivers without license, prevent companies from controlling > 50% of the taxi market. But neither banning all competition, nor just allowing uber will work. Uber is just as bad as the existing monopoly.
- philovivero 10y ago
  I'm with Natrius here. The existence and use of Uber/Lyft is exactly what "fixing taxis" looks like in the USA.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    But that’s not "fixing taxis". That’s just creating a new monopoly, and 10 years down the road the taxi situation in the US will look just like the ISP situation looks like now, with Uber and Lyft holding control over 90% of the market, and people will be like "deregulation made it even worse", or people will complain why no one competes with them.
    - jalami 10y ago
      Regulation is a big reason the ISP situation is the way that it is. You can't just up and build an ISP in most neighborhoods. Simply controlling a large percentage of the market is not the same as a monopoly; That word gets used far too often. We'd be in a better place if most the regulatory hurdles impeding new ISP's from entering the market were done away with. I think your asking for Uber and Lyft to be more regulated would do more to cement their place as a monopoly than any call for taxi deregulation would. Cities doing the regulation often want one company to deal with as opposed to seven so it's a mutually beneficial to impede competition in the area.
      - kuschku 10y ago
        Even with zero regulation the ISP market is hard to enter, building all the cabling is a major investment. And try competing with uber with no regulation: uber will just reduce costs of their service (as they are doing now) and fund it with their existing money, while you have to run a profit and will be more expensive. Regulation can help against that.