18 ms·

This is a pretty surreal move: >The law says the money will help taxi businesses to adopt "new technologies and advanced service, safety and operational capabi

This is a pretty surreal move: >The law says the money will help taxi businesses to adopt "new technologies and advanced service, safety and operational capabilities" and to support workforce development... [Larry Meister, manager of the Boston area's Independent Taxi Operator's Association] said the money could go toward improving a smartphone app his association has started using, or to other big needs. I'm not an anti-regulation guy most of the time, but this doesn't even seem like regulation -- they're literally giving money to a fading industry because they are incapable of keeping up. I don't want to see cab drivers turn into homeless drifters, but this just seems wrong. Making a more efficient competitor pay to help taxi companies make their service better? The whole reason these companies exist is because taxi companies have been utter garbage for years and got the government to elbow out competitors. Am I missing something? Surely the burden for "do things better and buy nicer equipment" falls on the taxi companies, not the other organizations that are embarrassing them.

AndyNemmity 10y ago
Cab drivers don't become homeless drifters, they become your next lyft pick up. And the quality of service of Lyft and Uber have gone down the more and more cab drivers become drivers. It's starting to not feel like much of differentiation.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  > Cab drivers don't become homeless drifters, they become your next lyft pick up. Yeah, at significantly lower wages.
  - AndyNemmity 10y ago
    How much lower? Has anyone done an analysis of the difference in pay, given any requirements to pay the cab company, pay for a gold star, etc. Does a standard cabbie make significantly more than a standard lyft driver? Cabs are certainly far more rundown generally when I take them than lyft vehicles. People seem "better off" driving lyft, but it may not be their main source of employment. So it would be cool to see a real breakdown done.
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      Uber did an analysis that they claimed showed Uber pay was better, but they didn't take into account or share data about costs the driver is stuck with in Uber that they wouldn't be in a cab: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/22/uber-drivers-pay-study_n_6527470.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/22/uber-drivers-pay-st...
- RyJones 10y ago
  Yes. I got a nice lecture from a cab driver who was moonlighting driving Lyft about how I was destroying taxis using Lyft. Yes, I am, the faster the better. To hell with taxis.
- civilian 10y ago
  I don't think that's the case? My worst drivers are usually people who just don't have experience driving. They drive slow, they don't know the city, or they get confused other ways. Or they're just timid and don't know how to take a right on red. I'd much prefer a cabbie who's in an Uber. But I'm also someone who judiciously gives people lower stars. The rating system works for us! People just need to be willing to give 1-stars and file reports.
- tao_oat 10y ago
  They become your next lyft pick up (with drastically decreased wages).
taneq 10y ago
The right thing for the government to do would be to either deliver on their promise of an artificially scarce market (which they made when they instituted the taxi medallion system) by cracking down on unlicensed operators, or to buy the licenses back off the licensed taxis and then abolish the system and free up the market. What they're currently doing is like if a shopping mall charged resident shops a hefty fee, but allowed hawkers to set up next door for free, allowing them to sell the same goods for far less.
- adrianratnapala 10y ago
  Hmm: - an industry wants to operate as cartel, - but it can't police defectors charging market prices, - so it gets the government to enforce the cartel, - and calls this "regulation" even though it gouges, rather than protects the public. And somehow it is unfair if this gets undermined by events? To take your mall-and-hawkers example, what exactly is wrong with that situation? In practice it doesn't happen very often because no one is going to give the hawkers space for free. But if the mall rents were high because the builder bribed the council to keep competition far away, well that's their own fault.
  - rhino369 10y ago
    That's not how taxi medallions came into existence. Cities began to regulate taxis. They set prices, made safety regulations, made it so taxis couldn't refuse service. In exchange taxis were licensed to ensure the prices the city set supported a fleet of taxis. It's hilarious that Uber a billion dollar corporation portrays a bunch of Muslim or African immigrants as rich fat cats. Just lol
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      What can you say? They've got good PR folks and well-connected political hires.
      - rayiner 10y ago
        What's particularly fantastic is that they can maintain this PR shtick in the face of the fact that the thing that makes uber possible--surge pricing--is exactly the kind of "gouging" government-regulated rates we're designed to prevent. "Oh, it's raining? Well that's going to cost extra!"
acidburnNSA 10y ago
I mostly agree with you, and I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you 2 weeks ago, but I just read a book ("Listen, Liberal" by Thomas Frank) that makes some interesting points about how liberals have shifted from representing working people to representing professionals, and to worshiping innovation. While free trade and disruptive technology is good for the professional class, it inherently increases inequality. Frank argues that after the liberal shift, "everyone" now agrees to these pro-business, pro-Wall Street policies, but we don't have to allow rapid disruption freely. We could do what Massachusetts is doing. We could have tariffs and bring manufacturing back. Policy can prevent the inevitable. I learned about the book while vigorously researching Trump's rise to popularity during the primaries. I personally can't wait for self-driving cars, etc., but I think someone needs to be thinking of the swaths of working people who are afraid of losing their jobs. I know lots of working people. Many of them don't want to go back to school or get technical training. Many of them don't want to start the next big company. They just want to work their job and go hang out with their family. What do we tell the taxi and truck drivers when Uber shows up with self-drivers, etc.? I'm new to this line of thinking myself and I know there are lots of counterarguments. I just find it worth a ponder.
- AndyNemmity 10y ago
  Sounds like a pop style rewrite of what Noam Chomsky has been saying for eternity. Except less well cited, and accurate as Chomsky's work is. An excerpt if anyone is interested like I was, http://harpers.org/blog/2016/02/nor-a-lender-be/ http://harpers.org/blog/2016/02/nor-a-lender-be/
- maverick_iceman 10y ago
  Hmm, if liberals are so pro-business then why Bernie has so many fans?
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Because he's a democratic socialist? I love tech as much as the next person, but disrupting wide swaths of the country's working populace and drastically increasing income inequality and increasing unemployment in an unsustainable manner, due to the leverage tech provides, and we step in with laws to override the marketplace. A government exists for all its citizens, after all. No man is an island.
0xFFC 10y ago
> I don't want to see cab drivers turn into homeless drifters This is wrong. This is exactly how they want you to think. Cab drivers are not going to become homeless or jobless, they will work(drive) for a new companies(I agree if market is healthy enough, which is not).But they frame the issue kind of like "losing job" and "becoming homeless" just because they don't want to change. (I said cab drivers because it is what we talk. Other sectors are the same) P.S. when it comes to education and health and natural environment, I am 100% pro regulation and government interference(kind of like I am firm communist in those three categories). But other than those three I am 100% percent for free market, and I believe invisible hand will get the job done.
- dsacco 10y ago
  It doesn't make sense to say, "Except for [subset of policy a], I am 100% in favor of [policy a], but for [subset of policy a] I am 100% in favor of [policy b]." That's like saying, "Except for my student loans, I am 100% debt free." It muddles your point. Just a nit.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    It makes sense to me. Try something more like "I don't think people should get into debt, except for student loans". They support policy A for some markets, and policy B for other markets. That's not muddled.
    - dsacco 10y ago
      This is exactly my point. There is no reason to use an arbitrary percentage. More to the point, if you're "100% for something, except for [whatever]", you're simply not 100% for that thing. Why even use a percentage at that point, let alone 100%? It's just involving numbers with no purpose.
      - 10y ago
ben_jones 10y ago
The counter point I think is that if the persistence of a fading industry is in the public interest, then it is within the government's rights to give tax payer money to them. The only corollary I can immediately draw is the Detroit auto industry in 2008/2009 which was kept alive by bailouts despite the fact that it was not able to compete in the global market. I don't know if added competition by taxi companies is in the public interest, but it might be.
- tomp 10y ago
  It definitely is in public iterest. You can't haul Uber when your phone's dead or your bank won't give you a credit card.
dpeterson 10y ago
I know most people hate Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged here but that is literally what happened in the book. Roark Steel was made to give "green steel" to the unprofitable competitors to keep them in business.
- maverick_iceman 10y ago
  Ah, you're confusing Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Roark is an architect in Fountainhead. What you have in mind is Rearden Steel giving money to Associated Steel of Orren Boyle. But I agree, the current situation is eerily similar.
xg15 10y ago
I'd agree with you on any other case. But it seems to me a big part of Uber's "innovation" was circumventing the taxi regulations - which were protecting the taxi business, yes, but also giving protection to customers and individual drivers. With that I can kinda understand there is an interest to keep taxis alive.
emodendroket 10y ago
Uber and Lyft supported the bill because they got a bunch of other stuff they wanted; it seems weird to me that all the sudden I'm seeing a bunch of stories downplaying what seems to be a rather pertinent fact here.
mirekrusin 10y ago
By the time they are going to "improve their app" uber is going to be running self driving cars.
empath75 10y ago
This is one reason why we need basic income, to protect people who get 'innovated' out of work through no real fault of their own. So we don't have to subsidize failing businesses just to protect workers. This is not something that's just going to go away if we bury our heads in the sand.
empath75 10y ago
This is one reason why we need basic income, to protect people who get 'innovated' out of work through no real fault of their own. So we don't have to subsidize failing businesses just to protect workers. This is not something that's just going to go away if we bury our heads in the sand.
sebastianconcpt 10y ago
Totally agree. The only part I think you are missing is the part in which one stops being accepting on regulation because always ends in some form of distortion to what's best. Taxi drivers need to become one of the providers of these new services and things wil go well
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  There aren't enough of them. And regulation limits the number, solely so they can profit more. No way is the taxi industry going to 'go well' with a little more automation. Well, not for the public anyway.
  - sebastianconcpt 10y ago
    Reading your commend made me thing that state regulations is like parents not letting kids solve its own problems.
shiven 10y ago
It's the same darn argument as was used against the automobile when it started replacing horse drawn carriages (buggies) as the dominant mode of transport. "Oh, but think of the poor buggy horsewhip-makers! They will be deprived of their livelihood." Guess what? They adapted to the new reality and here we are, rehashing the age old argument for populist/crony politics. Change is always hard, sometimes unforgivingly so, but in the end, you adapt and survive or you perish (however that is defined). As a bleeding heart liberal humanist, I feel for the poor folks who will be put out of their current livelihood. But the societal answer to that cannot be the continuation of the status quo. If we, as a society, feel the need to help people in such situations, we need to find them alternatives that enable them to transition into the brave/merciless new world, rather than keep their current job on the socially funded ventilator, just because. Most importantly, I'd rather support the decentralization of taxi companies, i.e. turn them into car rental companies for free-agent drivers who then use them to pick up fares using uber/lyft/whatever. The taxi system is a bloody mess and some real competition will help clean out the systematic cruft that has accumulated over time. So yes, take money from uber/lyft, but NOT to support the rent-collecting taxi company owners. Better yet, use the money to give short-term loans to people who'd rather buy a car to drive as a ride-share cab.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Actually some of those buggy-whip makes just died of starvation. Folks used to fight hard against mechanization (the word Sabotage is said to originate when workers in Japan hurled their wooden shoes called 'Sabo' into the looms to break them) because their fate was starvation and death.
  - randallsquared 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabotage#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabotage#Etymology
    - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
      Thanks! The final definition in that article, "In Japanese, the verb saboru (サボる) means to skip school or loaf on the job." may be closer to the real origin.
fsloth 10y ago
While this does sound odd to say the least - the government regulates everything. I see no reason why they should not be able to regulate the speed of technical innovation. For instance, if government had regulated financial innovation more vigorously 2008 might have gone differently. What's sensible in the long term is a different thing of course. And, there is the strong history where regulations supports too much entrenched industries.
rayiner 10y ago
It's not so simple. Taxis were granted a monopoly in order to serve as an extension of cities' public transit. In return, they lost the autonomy of a normal business. They can't set their own rates. The government sets rates. They aren't allowed to use surge pricing to match supply and demand. Indeed, in many cases they're not allowed to use a GPS-based method to compute the fare, which increases the difficulty of implementing an app. This level of intrusion into a private sector business would be inconceivable today, post-Reagan. But taxi regulations were implemented at a time when this sort of thing was standard practice. So you've got all these people who invested into these businesses with these regulations on the explicit promise the government would protect them from competition. Taxis are upset about having to compete because the whole deal was they would not have to, in return for regulated rates. But heavy regulation destroyed any possibility of innovation in the taxi industry. So you have to let ride sharing operate to move forward. But what do you just reneg on the promise to taxis? I don't think taxing ride-sharing is an ideal solution. I'd prefer the state to just buy out the monopolies using general tax dollars. But it's not totally out on left field if you keep in mind the state isn't free to draw on a blank slate here.
- rev_bird 10y ago
  I wasn't expecting to start understanding the other side on this one, I have to admit. But this is a compelling argument -- that maintaining the taxi companies is like trying to maintain city buses, except companies built the infrastructure.
CyberDildonics 10y ago
> I don't want to see cab drivers turn into homeless drifters, but this just seems wrong. They could always drive for Uber

AndyNemmity 10y ago

Cab drivers don't become homeless drifters, they become your next lyft pick up. And the quality of service of Lyft and Uber have gone down the more and more cab drivers become drivers. It's starting to not feel like much of differentiation.

emodendroket 10y ago
> Cab drivers don't become homeless drifters, they become your next lyft pick up. Yeah, at significantly lower wages.
- AndyNemmity 10y ago
  How much lower? Has anyone done an analysis of the difference in pay, given any requirements to pay the cab company, pay for a gold star, etc. Does a standard cabbie make significantly more than a standard lyft driver? Cabs are certainly far more rundown generally when I take them than lyft vehicles. People seem "better off" driving lyft, but it may not be their main source of employment. So it would be cool to see a real breakdown done.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    Uber did an analysis that they claimed showed Uber pay was better, but they didn't take into account or share data about costs the driver is stuck with in Uber that they wouldn't be in a cab: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/22/uber-drivers-pay-study_n_6527470.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/22/uber-drivers-pay-st...
RyJones 10y ago
Yes. I got a nice lecture from a cab driver who was moonlighting driving Lyft about how I was destroying taxis using Lyft. Yes, I am, the faster the better. To hell with taxis.
civilian 10y ago
I don't think that's the case? My worst drivers are usually people who just don't have experience driving. They drive slow, they don't know the city, or they get confused other ways. Or they're just timid and don't know how to take a right on red. I'd much prefer a cabbie who's in an Uber. But I'm also someone who judiciously gives people lower stars. The rating system works for us! People just need to be willing to give 1-stars and file reports.
tao_oat 10y ago
They become your next lyft pick up (with drastically decreased wages).

taneq 10y ago

The right thing for the government to do would be to either deliver on their promise of an artificially scarce market (which they made when they instituted the taxi medallion system) by cracking down on unlicensed operators, or to buy the licenses back off the licensed taxis and then abolish the system and free up the market. What they're currently doing is like if a shopping mall charged resident shops a hefty fee, but allowed hawkers to set up next door for free, allowing them to sell the same goods for far less.

adrianratnapala 10y ago
Hmm: - an industry wants to operate as cartel, - but it can't police defectors charging market prices, - so it gets the government to enforce the cartel, - and calls this "regulation" even though it gouges, rather than protects the public. And somehow it is unfair if this gets undermined by events? To take your mall-and-hawkers example, what exactly is wrong with that situation? In practice it doesn't happen very often because no one is going to give the hawkers space for free. But if the mall rents were high because the builder bribed the council to keep competition far away, well that's their own fault.
- rhino369 10y ago
  That's not how taxi medallions came into existence. Cities began to regulate taxis. They set prices, made safety regulations, made it so taxis couldn't refuse service. In exchange taxis were licensed to ensure the prices the city set supported a fleet of taxis. It's hilarious that Uber a billion dollar corporation portrays a bunch of Muslim or African immigrants as rich fat cats. Just lol
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    What can you say? They've got good PR folks and well-connected political hires.
    - rayiner 10y ago
      What's particularly fantastic is that they can maintain this PR shtick in the face of the fact that the thing that makes uber possible--surge pricing--is exactly the kind of "gouging" government-regulated rates we're designed to prevent. "Oh, it's raining? Well that's going to cost extra!"

acidburnNSA 10y ago

I mostly agree with you, and I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you 2 weeks ago, but I just read a book ("Listen, Liberal" by Thomas Frank) that makes some interesting points about how liberals have shifted from representing working people to representing professionals, and to worshiping innovation. While free trade and disruptive technology is good for the professional class, it inherently increases inequality. Frank argues that after the liberal shift, "everyone" now agrees to these pro-business, pro-Wall Street policies, but we don't have to allow rapid disruption freely. We could do what Massachusetts is doing. We could have tariffs and bring manufacturing back. Policy can prevent the inevitable. I learned about the book while vigorously researching Trump's rise to popularity during the primaries. I personally can't wait for self-driving cars, etc., but I think someone needs to be thinking of the swaths of working people who are afraid of losing their jobs. I know lots of working people. Many of them don't want to go back to school or get technical training. Many of them don't want to start the next big company. They just want to work their job and go hang out with their family. What do we tell the taxi and truck drivers when Uber shows up with self-drivers, etc.? I'm new to this line of thinking myself and I know there are lots of counterarguments. I just find it worth a ponder.

AndyNemmity 10y ago
Sounds like a pop style rewrite of what Noam Chomsky has been saying for eternity. Except less well cited, and accurate as Chomsky's work is. An excerpt if anyone is interested like I was, http://harpers.org/blog/2016/02/nor-a-lender-be/ http://harpers.org/blog/2016/02/nor-a-lender-be/
maverick_iceman 10y ago
Hmm, if liberals are so pro-business then why Bernie has so many fans?
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Because he's a democratic socialist? I love tech as much as the next person, but disrupting wide swaths of the country's working populace and drastically increasing income inequality and increasing unemployment in an unsustainable manner, due to the leverage tech provides, and we step in with laws to override the marketplace. A government exists for all its citizens, after all. No man is an island.

0xFFC 10y ago

> I don't want to see cab drivers turn into homeless drifters This is wrong. This is exactly how they want you to think. Cab drivers are not going to become homeless or jobless, they will work(drive) for a new companies(I agree if market is healthy enough, which is not).But they frame the issue kind of like "losing job" and "becoming homeless" just because they don't want to change. (I said cab drivers because it is what we talk. Other sectors are the same) P.S. when it comes to education and health and natural environment, I am 100% pro regulation and government interference(kind of like I am firm communist in those three categories). But other than those three I am 100% percent for free market, and I believe invisible hand will get the job done.

dsacco 10y ago
It doesn't make sense to say, "Except for [subset of policy a], I am 100% in favor of [policy a], but for [subset of policy a] I am 100% in favor of [policy b]." That's like saying, "Except for my student loans, I am 100% debt free." It muddles your point. Just a nit.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  It makes sense to me. Try something more like "I don't think people should get into debt, except for student loans". They support policy A for some markets, and policy B for other markets. That's not muddled.
  - dsacco 10y ago
    This is exactly my point. There is no reason to use an arbitrary percentage. More to the point, if you're "100% for something, except for [whatever]", you're simply not 100% for that thing. Why even use a percentage at that point, let alone 100%? It's just involving numbers with no purpose.
    - 10y ago

ben_jones 10y ago

The counter point I think is that if the persistence of a fading industry is in the public interest, then it is within the government's rights to give tax payer money to them. The only corollary I can immediately draw is the Detroit auto industry in 2008/2009 which was kept alive by bailouts despite the fact that it was not able to compete in the global market. I don't know if added competition by taxi companies is in the public interest, but it might be.

tomp 10y ago
It definitely is in public iterest. You can't haul Uber when your phone's dead or your bank won't give you a credit card.

dpeterson 10y ago

I know most people hate Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged here but that is literally what happened in the book. Roark Steel was made to give "green steel" to the unprofitable competitors to keep them in business.

maverick_iceman 10y ago
Ah, you're confusing Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Roark is an architect in Fountainhead. What you have in mind is Rearden Steel giving money to Associated Steel of Orren Boyle. But I agree, the current situation is eerily similar.

xg15 10y ago

I'd agree with you on any other case. But it seems to me a big part of Uber's "innovation" was circumventing the taxi regulations - which were protecting the taxi business, yes, but also giving protection to customers and individual drivers. With that I can kinda understand there is an interest to keep taxis alive.

emodendroket 10y ago

Uber and Lyft supported the bill because they got a bunch of other stuff they wanted; it seems weird to me that all the sudden I'm seeing a bunch of stories downplaying what seems to be a rather pertinent fact here.

mirekrusin 10y ago

By the time they are going to "improve their app" uber is going to be running self driving cars.

empath75 10y ago

This is one reason why we need basic income, to protect people who get 'innovated' out of work through no real fault of their own. So we don't have to subsidize failing businesses just to protect workers. This is not something that's just going to go away if we bury our heads in the sand.

empath75 10y ago

sebastianconcpt 10y ago

Totally agree. The only part I think you are missing is the part in which one stops being accepting on regulation because always ends in some form of distortion to what's best. Taxi drivers need to become one of the providers of these new services and things wil go well

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
There aren't enough of them. And regulation limits the number, solely so they can profit more. No way is the taxi industry going to 'go well' with a little more automation. Well, not for the public anyway.
- sebastianconcpt 10y ago
  Reading your commend made me thing that state regulations is like parents not letting kids solve its own problems.

shiven 10y ago

It's the same darn argument as was used against the automobile when it started replacing horse drawn carriages (buggies) as the dominant mode of transport. "Oh, but think of the poor buggy horsewhip-makers! They will be deprived of their livelihood." Guess what? They adapted to the new reality and here we are, rehashing the age old argument for populist/crony politics. Change is always hard, sometimes unforgivingly so, but in the end, you adapt and survive or you perish (however that is defined). As a bleeding heart liberal humanist, I feel for the poor folks who will be put out of their current livelihood. But the societal answer to that cannot be the continuation of the status quo. If we, as a society, feel the need to help people in such situations, we need to find them alternatives that enable them to transition into the brave/merciless new world, rather than keep their current job on the socially funded ventilator, just because. Most importantly, I'd rather support the decentralization of taxi companies, i.e. turn them into car rental companies for free-agent drivers who then use them to pick up fares using uber/lyft/whatever. The taxi system is a bloody mess and some real competition will help clean out the systematic cruft that has accumulated over time. So yes, take money from uber/lyft, but NOT to support the rent-collecting taxi company owners. Better yet, use the money to give short-term loans to people who'd rather buy a car to drive as a ride-share cab.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Actually some of those buggy-whip makes just died of starvation. Folks used to fight hard against mechanization (the word Sabotage is said to originate when workers in Japan hurled their wooden shoes called 'Sabo' into the looms to break them) because their fate was starvation and death.
- randallsquared 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabotage#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabotage#Etymology
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    Thanks! The final definition in that article, "In Japanese, the verb saboru (サボる) means to skip school or loaf on the job." may be closer to the real origin.

fsloth 10y ago

While this does sound odd to say the least - the government regulates everything. I see no reason why they should not be able to regulate the speed of technical innovation. For instance, if government had regulated financial innovation more vigorously 2008 might have gone differently. What's sensible in the long term is a different thing of course. And, there is the strong history where regulations supports too much entrenched industries.

rayiner 10y ago

It's not so simple. Taxis were granted a monopoly in order to serve as an extension of cities' public transit. In return, they lost the autonomy of a normal business. They can't set their own rates. The government sets rates. They aren't allowed to use surge pricing to match supply and demand. Indeed, in many cases they're not allowed to use a GPS-based method to compute the fare, which increases the difficulty of implementing an app. This level of intrusion into a private sector business would be inconceivable today, post-Reagan. But taxi regulations were implemented at a time when this sort of thing was standard practice. So you've got all these people who invested into these businesses with these regulations on the explicit promise the government would protect them from competition. Taxis are upset about having to compete because the whole deal was they would not have to, in return for regulated rates. But heavy regulation destroyed any possibility of innovation in the taxi industry. So you have to let ride sharing operate to move forward. But what do you just reneg on the promise to taxis? I don't think taxing ride-sharing is an ideal solution. I'd prefer the state to just buy out the monopolies using general tax dollars. But it's not totally out on left field if you keep in mind the state isn't free to draw on a blank slate here.

rev_bird 10y ago
I wasn't expecting to start understanding the other side on this one, I have to admit. But this is a compelling argument -- that maintaining the taxi companies is like trying to maintain city buses, except companies built the infrastructure.

CyberDildonics 10y ago

> I don't want to see cab drivers turn into homeless drifters, but this just seems wrong. They could always drive for Uber