6 ms·

I kinda like hotel and taxi regulations. I feel they keep things safe, clean and above-board. Despite what Republicans would have you believe, regulations don't

by coldpie 10y ago

I kinda like hotel and taxi regulations. I feel they keep things safe, clean and above-board. Despite what Republicans would have you believe, regulations don't come about because some lawmakers got bored, they come about in answer to a problem. Don't tear down that fence before you understand why it was constructed...

jstanley 10y ago
You're welcome to use hotels and taxis that you like. The issue is with stopping other people from using hotels and taxis that you don't like.
- falcolas 10y ago
  It's not a matter of "like", regulated industries are a matter of "safe" and "consistent".
- coldpie 10y ago
  I disagree. I think safety and ethics standards are important and I don't think it's reasonable to expect every citizen to be able to completely evaluate every single product or service they consume.
  - randomdata 10y ago
    I think that is what the parent was suggesting. Those who want the government's evaluation can utilize the services offered by licensed providers, and those who want to do the evaluation themselves can choose whoever they want.
    - mistermann 10y ago
      Except why do those licensed providers have to adhere to those laws, maybe they don't want to also? As well, maybe it takes a while before the true societal risks are understood, AitBNB regulations may be too weak for some reason, but until we discover that, perhaps we've "unfairly" put some marginal hotels out of business that would have survived under the impending new legislation. (Hope that makes sense?)
      - randomdata 10y ago
        They adhere to the laws to maintain their licensing to attract the consumers that demand that. As with now, customers pay a premium to have a certain standard certified for them, which benefits the service provider through higher incomes. As I touched on a above, the thing about restricted markets is that price is able to rise artificially due to the unnaturally constrained supply. This ends up being a government subsidy; one that is disproportionally paid for by the poorest people. If you are already comfortable with subsidizing licensed businesses, why not continue to subsidize the marginal ones? Perhaps even in a way that is less impactful to the poorest people?
  - aorloff 10y ago
    What people are discovering is that tech + crowdsourced feedback loop is better than gov regulation. Feedback loop is faster, more thorough, and more reliable.
    - cwilkes 10y ago
      What's the feedback loop for someone that lives next to a place being rented out on AirBnB?
      - orasis 10y ago
        If there is a loud party, call the cops.
        bsder 10y ago
        And when the cops are getting called every week what happens? Congratulations. You just invented "zoning laws".
      - jhall1468 10y ago
        Nothing, as long as the participants aren't violating the law. Much in the same way that you don't get any input on how long my grass is, unless it happens to be a fire hazard.
        blackbagboys 10y ago
        Actually, to the contrary, through things like town ordinances and homeowner's associations it is very likely that you do get to have input on how long your neighbor's grass is
        c22 10y ago
        I got fined by the city once for "harboring rodents" because my neighbor felt my grass was too long (and was also a dick).
        10y ago
- koolba 10y ago
  > You're welcome to use hotels and taxis that you like. The issue is with stopping other people from using hotels and taxis that you don't like. My issue would be buying a house or condo with the neighbors across the hall or across the street changing daily. It's not an issue of the quality of the hotel. It's an issue of respecting zoning laws.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  But the reason we don't like them is that they choose to skirt the law.
saiya-jin 10y ago
you want to be in highly regulated environment, and pay according price for it? great, you have hotels, hostels and so on. somebody would like to spend less, be in more welcoming/cozy/more spacious environment, have a kitchen at hand and so on? well there is now an option for those too. I don't see where the problem lies. just don't take perks from the other 'side' as granted.
- coldpie 10y ago
  Sure, but then we have streets filled with taxis, out-of-towners renting space in areas not built to accommodate them, an increase in sickness due to poor sanitation, people getting scammed or worse by shady drivers or landlords, and so on. These things affect me, too, even if I'm not participating in the service.
  - matz1 10y ago
    This is expected, no law is perfect for everyone. Less regulation has it problem but also has it benefit.
    - evgen 10y ago
      And collectively we get to decide the ratio of problem to benefit we will tolerate. We call those decisions laws...
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    >people getting scammed or worse by shady drivers or landlords People get scammed by shady taxi drivers and landlords all the time. Regulations don't work. Haven't you heard about all the taxi drivers who don't take credit cards because "the card reader is broken"? I've had this happen many times, and I don't even use taxis very much.
hx87 10y ago
I'm okay with hotel and taxi regulations...as long as they deal strictly with quality and not quantity. Unfortunately, in too many locations there is a hard cap on the number of taxis, which leads to rent-seeking, low quality of service, and high prices.
Arizhel 10y ago
>I kinda like hotel and taxi regulations. I feel they keep things safe, clean and above-board. Your feelings don't match reality. The licensed taxis I've ridden in were nasty, far worse than the unlicensed Uber cars I've ridden in. Taxi: 20-year-old P-O-S Crown Victoria. Uber: 2-year-old Mercedes There's also plenty of rat-trap motels out there that are properly licensed. I live a couple of miles from one; people have even put videos on YouTube about how awful it is there. There's plenty of really nice hotels too, but that's because people are willing to pay double the price of the rat-trap, and those hotel chains are nation-wide and want to maintain their reputations, not because of any regulations. The only thing regulations are good for is making sure places don't burn down. And even that's iffy; generally places just burn down anyway and then someone gets punished afterwards.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  Your argument is anecdotal and based on empirical and not scientific data. I've ridden in many fine taxis. It depends on the city, cultures, cab companies, regulations and a host of other factors. There are terrible motels and good motels; same with hostels. I've stayed in many hostels that were far Superior and better value than hotels. I've been in some that had mold infestations everywhere. Regulations play a part, and the are an important part of equality. Do people game the system, bend the rules and lobby to pass their own laws that benefit them over the customers and employees. Of course. But it's all a very complicated system. You need to do a lot of surveys, research and have a good set of controls to say "regulations might correlate with x, y and z," and you'd need people to replicate your work before you can even start addressing causality.
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    No, you don't need to do any of that stuff to disprove an invalid claim. A claim was made that "I feel that regulation makes things clean and safe". I pointed out that that claim is utterly false using actual examples. I don't have to prove that regulation doesn't work anywhere, I only have to prove that it doesn't work somewhere. And in the places I've used taxis (NJ, AZ), they're awful. I have used them in NYC too, and those are OK (though to be fair, I'm not black, which I've read is a big problem there). You're right: it depends on the city, etc. Regulations and regulators are different in different places. But to make the broad claim that "regulation is wonderful!!" is blatantly false, and easily disproven by showing only one example of a place where it doesn't work right. Now, if you want to make the claim that "regulation works really well in location X", that's a defensible claim, and only disproven by showing that things are actually bad in location X (and not other locations). This seems to be the problem with this whole regulation vs. anti-regulation argument WRT taxis and hotels: the pro-regulation people cherry-pick a few places where things seem to be OK. The anti-regulation point out that their experiences in other places are entirely different. The pro-regulation people them stick their fingers in their ears and refuse to believe that there's places where regulations don't work well. Maybe regulation really does work well in those cherry-picked places, but that doesn't help the places where the regulation is bad and the regulators are corrupt.
orasis 10y ago
They come in answer to a percieved problem. Lots of people like to make noise about "that one bad thing they heard happened that one time"

by coldpie 10y ago

jstanley 10y ago

You're welcome to use hotels and taxis that you like. The issue is with stopping other people from using hotels and taxis that you don't like.

falcolas 10y ago
It's not a matter of "like", regulated industries are a matter of "safe" and "consistent".
coldpie 10y ago
I disagree. I think safety and ethics standards are important and I don't think it's reasonable to expect every citizen to be able to completely evaluate every single product or service they consume.
- randomdata 10y ago
  I think that is what the parent was suggesting. Those who want the government's evaluation can utilize the services offered by licensed providers, and those who want to do the evaluation themselves can choose whoever they want.
  - mistermann 10y ago
    Except why do those licensed providers have to adhere to those laws, maybe they don't want to also? As well, maybe it takes a while before the true societal risks are understood, AitBNB regulations may be too weak for some reason, but until we discover that, perhaps we've "unfairly" put some marginal hotels out of business that would have survived under the impending new legislation. (Hope that makes sense?)
    - randomdata 10y ago
      They adhere to the laws to maintain their licensing to attract the consumers that demand that. As with now, customers pay a premium to have a certain standard certified for them, which benefits the service provider through higher incomes. As I touched on a above, the thing about restricted markets is that price is able to rise artificially due to the unnaturally constrained supply. This ends up being a government subsidy; one that is disproportionally paid for by the poorest people. If you are already comfortable with subsidizing licensed businesses, why not continue to subsidize the marginal ones? Perhaps even in a way that is less impactful to the poorest people?
- aorloff 10y ago
  What people are discovering is that tech + crowdsourced feedback loop is better than gov regulation. Feedback loop is faster, more thorough, and more reliable.
  - cwilkes 10y ago
    What's the feedback loop for someone that lives next to a place being rented out on AirBnB?
    - orasis 10y ago
      If there is a loud party, call the cops.
      - bsder 10y ago
        And when the cops are getting called every week what happens? Congratulations. You just invented "zoning laws".
    - jhall1468 10y ago
      Nothing, as long as the participants aren't violating the law. Much in the same way that you don't get any input on how long my grass is, unless it happens to be a fire hazard.
      - blackbagboys 10y ago
        Actually, to the contrary, through things like town ordinances and homeowner's associations it is very likely that you do get to have input on how long your neighbor's grass is
        c22 10y ago
        I got fined by the city once for "harboring rodents" because my neighbor felt my grass was too long (and was also a dick).
        10y ago
koolba 10y ago
> You're welcome to use hotels and taxis that you like. The issue is with stopping other people from using hotels and taxis that you don't like. My issue would be buying a house or condo with the neighbors across the hall or across the street changing daily. It's not an issue of the quality of the hotel. It's an issue of respecting zoning laws.
st3v3r 10y ago
But the reason we don't like them is that they choose to skirt the law.

saiya-jin 10y ago

you want to be in highly regulated environment, and pay according price for it? great, you have hotels, hostels and so on. somebody would like to spend less, be in more welcoming/cozy/more spacious environment, have a kitchen at hand and so on? well there is now an option for those too. I don't see where the problem lies. just don't take perks from the other 'side' as granted.

coldpie 10y ago
Sure, but then we have streets filled with taxis, out-of-towners renting space in areas not built to accommodate them, an increase in sickness due to poor sanitation, people getting scammed or worse by shady drivers or landlords, and so on. These things affect me, too, even if I'm not participating in the service.
- matz1 10y ago
  This is expected, no law is perfect for everyone. Less regulation has it problem but also has it benefit.
  - evgen 10y ago
    And collectively we get to decide the ratio of problem to benefit we will tolerate. We call those decisions laws...
- Arizhel 10y ago
  >people getting scammed or worse by shady drivers or landlords People get scammed by shady taxi drivers and landlords all the time. Regulations don't work. Haven't you heard about all the taxi drivers who don't take credit cards because "the card reader is broken"? I've had this happen many times, and I don't even use taxis very much.

hx87 10y ago

I'm okay with hotel and taxi regulations...as long as they deal strictly with quality and not quantity. Unfortunately, in too many locations there is a hard cap on the number of taxis, which leads to rent-seeking, low quality of service, and high prices.

Arizhel 10y ago

>I kinda like hotel and taxi regulations. I feel they keep things safe, clean and above-board. Your feelings don't match reality. The licensed taxis I've ridden in were nasty, far worse than the unlicensed Uber cars I've ridden in. Taxi: 20-year-old P-O-S Crown Victoria. Uber: 2-year-old Mercedes There's also plenty of rat-trap motels out there that are properly licensed. I live a couple of miles from one; people have even put videos on YouTube about how awful it is there. There's plenty of really nice hotels too, but that's because people are willing to pay double the price of the rat-trap, and those hotel chains are nation-wide and want to maintain their reputations, not because of any regulations. The only thing regulations are good for is making sure places don't burn down. And even that's iffy; generally places just burn down anyway and then someone gets punished afterwards.

djsumdog 10y ago
Your argument is anecdotal and based on empirical and not scientific data. I've ridden in many fine taxis. It depends on the city, cultures, cab companies, regulations and a host of other factors. There are terrible motels and good motels; same with hostels. I've stayed in many hostels that were far Superior and better value than hotels. I've been in some that had mold infestations everywhere. Regulations play a part, and the are an important part of equality. Do people game the system, bend the rules and lobby to pass their own laws that benefit them over the customers and employees. Of course. But it's all a very complicated system. You need to do a lot of surveys, research and have a good set of controls to say "regulations might correlate with x, y and z," and you'd need people to replicate your work before you can even start addressing causality.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  No, you don't need to do any of that stuff to disprove an invalid claim. A claim was made that "I feel that regulation makes things clean and safe". I pointed out that that claim is utterly false using actual examples. I don't have to prove that regulation doesn't work anywhere, I only have to prove that it doesn't work somewhere. And in the places I've used taxis (NJ, AZ), they're awful. I have used them in NYC too, and those are OK (though to be fair, I'm not black, which I've read is a big problem there). You're right: it depends on the city, etc. Regulations and regulators are different in different places. But to make the broad claim that "regulation is wonderful!!" is blatantly false, and easily disproven by showing only one example of a place where it doesn't work right. Now, if you want to make the claim that "regulation works really well in location X", that's a defensible claim, and only disproven by showing that things are actually bad in location X (and not other locations). This seems to be the problem with this whole regulation vs. anti-regulation argument WRT taxis and hotels: the pro-regulation people cherry-pick a few places where things seem to be OK. The anti-regulation point out that their experiences in other places are entirely different. The pro-regulation people them stick their fingers in their ears and refuse to believe that there's places where regulations don't work well. Maybe regulation really does work well in those cherry-picked places, but that doesn't help the places where the regulation is bad and the regulators are corrupt.

orasis 10y ago

They come in answer to a percieved problem. Lots of people like to make noise about "that one bad thing they heard happened that one time"