4 ms·

> Austin's goal in the law was to put controls and regulation on this industry. I'm pretty sure Austin's goal was to protect the taxi magnates by putting their

by wtbob 10y ago

> Austin's goal in the law was to put controls and regulation on this industry. I'm pretty sure Austin's goal was to protect the taxi magnates by putting their competition out of business. > However, it seems that what has actually been created due to the city's creating a void in needed services is a totally underground black market system with no accountability whatsoever. That's not actually bad when one considers the real purpose of the law: the taxi magnates get to keep their price floor, and they get to watch the police power of the State exercised against their underground competitors.

mc32 10y ago
It's easy to comply with the requirement, so I don't see how this requirement was meant to protect the incumbent taxi services. In other words, it's not that much of a burden. They could comply and they could continue to decimate the incumbents --but the new services, the taxi platform services see this as a stand they must take to control costs (and don't want other jurisdictions getting the same ideas) I believe that is all it is.
enraged_camel 10y ago
>>I'm pretty sure Austin's goal was to protect the taxi magnates by putting their competition out of business. This is pure nonsense. The fingerprint requirements are nothing new. Taxi companies have been following them for years. Uber and Lyft simply did not think they should be treated as taxi services, and threw a hissy fit when the City of Austin decided otherwise. Furthermore, Uber and Lyft were not "put out of business." In fact, they continued to operate in Austin for two years after the law was passed. They left only when they failed to repeal the law. Also keep in mind they spent over $8 million on the public relations and lobbying campaign to get the law repealed. So yeah, make no mistake: they have plenty of money, and the only reason they left was as a way of saying "fuck you" to Austin.
SwellJoe 10y ago
That doesn't really make sense, and is an inaccurate representation of what happened and why. I wasn't in Austin while this was going down, but I know a lot of folks involved in city government (and I have more harsh words to say about the city's government than most people in many areas). Uber/Lyft is who wanted special treatment; not the other way around. Every company/individual that sells rides in Austin follows roughly the same rules (with some tweaks to suit the mode of transit): cabs, electric cabs, pedicabs, etc. They all do the same background check and fingerprinting process. Uber/Lyft wanted to do their own thing. The city said, no, you're going to have to do it the same way all of your competitors do it. Uber/Lyft spent nearly $10 million dollars (enough to pay for hundreds of thousands of fingerprint background checks, probably a decade worth of drivers) to do an end run around city council with a ballot proposition to not be subject to the same rules as their competitors. That proposition failed; badly. Uber/Lyft left in a huff because they would not receive special treatment. It is a remarkable act of rewriting history to claim that Uber/Lyft are being stifled by cab companies when they're only being asked to do what even the bicycle pedicab drivers do. If they wanted a level playing field without those requirements (i.e. cabs, e-cabs, and pedicabs, would have also been exempt from that process and instead could use a private background check instead of the city process), I might have been on their side...and, so would the pedicabbers, e-cabbers, and probably the rest of Austin. What I saw was some spoiled brats at the helm of billion dollar valuation companies trying to get special treatment and throwing a tantrum when they didn't get it. Also: The background check that Uber/Lyft claims prevents them from being able to operate at all in Austin costs about $40. And, both companies operate in other places that require similar processes (and every other company that provides rides in Austin does the same). They're acting like entitled spoiled brats.
- chillacy 10y ago
  Uber/Lyft's central idea is that a marketplace system with per-driver reviews delivers a better experience than the traditional government licensing model, in factors like price, safety, and user experience. Their whole business model relies on minimum government regulation, so fingerprinting to them is the first steps towards the end of their business model. It's an existential threat to them, I don't blame them for trying to nip this at the bud.
  - SwellJoe 10y ago
    That's a slippery slope argument, which is generally considered a fallacy.
    - chillacy 10y ago
      Uhh... yes, it's a fallacy to claim that just because A necessarily precedes B, realizing A will lead to B. But if A usually precedes B, not realizing A may prevent B. This isn't new either. A month ago HN was generally supporting Apple's fight against the FBI. Apple recently spent a bunch of money fighting a seemingly uninteresting case of an old iOS version belonging to a known mass murderer: to prevent the "slippery slope" of the FBI using this tactic in more places. It wasn't certain that the FBI would do this, but there was plenty of evidence that the FBI would have liked to, given the opportunity.
      - SwellJoe 10y ago
        Pretty sure there's a fallacy about making analogies to things that are not analogous. The city of Austin is not the FBI. The voters of Austin made this decision; first through their elected representatives, and then through a ballot measure. There is nothing comparable about the FBI vs. privacy/encryption and the situation we are discussing. No secretive agencies or courts were involved. It is not a constitutional matter, at all. And, if we really were calling slippery slope a valid argument, rather than the fallacy that it so often is: Austin's legal requirements for providing rides have been decreasing over the past decade, both in complexity and in cost of compliance. It's just not very slopey or slippery, as it has been trending in the opposite direction of what your slippery slope argument suggests would happen. I'm sure there's still room for improvement and simplification, but if the stoners I know who pedicab can figure it out, I'm confident the bright young lads who run Uber and Lyft can, too.

by wtbob 10y ago

mc32 10y ago

It's easy to comply with the requirement, so I don't see how this requirement was meant to protect the incumbent taxi services. In other words, it's not that much of a burden. They could comply and they could continue to decimate the incumbents --but the new services, the taxi platform services see this as a stand they must take to control costs (and don't want other jurisdictions getting the same ideas) I believe that is all it is.

enraged_camel 10y ago

>>I'm pretty sure Austin's goal was to protect the taxi magnates by putting their competition out of business. This is pure nonsense. The fingerprint requirements are nothing new. Taxi companies have been following them for years. Uber and Lyft simply did not think they should be treated as taxi services, and threw a hissy fit when the City of Austin decided otherwise. Furthermore, Uber and Lyft were not "put out of business." In fact, they continued to operate in Austin for two years after the law was passed. They left only when they failed to repeal the law. Also keep in mind they spent over $8 million on the public relations and lobbying campaign to get the law repealed. So yeah, make no mistake: they have plenty of money, and the only reason they left was as a way of saying "fuck you" to Austin.

SwellJoe 10y ago

That doesn't really make sense, and is an inaccurate representation of what happened and why. I wasn't in Austin while this was going down, but I know a lot of folks involved in city government (and I have more harsh words to say about the city's government than most people in many areas). Uber/Lyft is who wanted special treatment; not the other way around. Every company/individual that sells rides in Austin follows roughly the same rules (with some tweaks to suit the mode of transit): cabs, electric cabs, pedicabs, etc. They all do the same background check and fingerprinting process. Uber/Lyft wanted to do their own thing. The city said, no, you're going to have to do it the same way all of your competitors do it. Uber/Lyft spent nearly $10 million dollars (enough to pay for hundreds of thousands of fingerprint background checks, probably a decade worth of drivers) to do an end run around city council with a ballot proposition to not be subject to the same rules as their competitors. That proposition failed; badly. Uber/Lyft left in a huff because they would not receive special treatment. It is a remarkable act of rewriting history to claim that Uber/Lyft are being stifled by cab companies when they're only being asked to do what even the bicycle pedicab drivers do. If they wanted a level playing field without those requirements (i.e. cabs, e-cabs, and pedicabs, would have also been exempt from that process and instead could use a private background check instead of the city process), I might have been on their side...and, so would the pedicabbers, e-cabbers, and probably the rest of Austin. What I saw was some spoiled brats at the helm of billion dollar valuation companies trying to get special treatment and throwing a tantrum when they didn't get it. Also: The background check that Uber/Lyft claims prevents them from being able to operate at all in Austin costs about $40. And, both companies operate in other places that require similar processes (and every other company that provides rides in Austin does the same). They're acting like entitled spoiled brats.

chillacy 10y ago
Uber/Lyft's central idea is that a marketplace system with per-driver reviews delivers a better experience than the traditional government licensing model, in factors like price, safety, and user experience. Their whole business model relies on minimum government regulation, so fingerprinting to them is the first steps towards the end of their business model. It's an existential threat to them, I don't blame them for trying to nip this at the bud.
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  That's a slippery slope argument, which is generally considered a fallacy.
  - chillacy 10y ago
    Uhh... yes, it's a fallacy to claim that just because A necessarily precedes B, realizing A will lead to B. But if A usually precedes B, not realizing A may prevent B. This isn't new either. A month ago HN was generally supporting Apple's fight against the FBI. Apple recently spent a bunch of money fighting a seemingly uninteresting case of an old iOS version belonging to a known mass murderer: to prevent the "slippery slope" of the FBI using this tactic in more places. It wasn't certain that the FBI would do this, but there was plenty of evidence that the FBI would have liked to, given the opportunity.
    - SwellJoe 10y ago
      Pretty sure there's a fallacy about making analogies to things that are not analogous. The city of Austin is not the FBI. The voters of Austin made this decision; first through their elected representatives, and then through a ballot measure. There is nothing comparable about the FBI vs. privacy/encryption and the situation we are discussing. No secretive agencies or courts were involved. It is not a constitutional matter, at all. And, if we really were calling slippery slope a valid argument, rather than the fallacy that it so often is: Austin's legal requirements for providing rides have been decreasing over the past decade, both in complexity and in cost of compliance. It's just not very slopey or slippery, as it has been trending in the opposite direction of what your slippery slope argument suggests would happen. I'm sure there's still room for improvement and simplification, but if the stoners I know who pedicab can figure it out, I'm confident the bright young lads who run Uber and Lyft can, too.