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>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 ridd

by 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.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Regulations aren't mathematical proofs. Laws not working somewhere doesn't justify tearing them down everywhere. You don't see people arguing "Hey, seen that robbery on the news? Those regulations obviously don't work; fuck it, let's make theft legal." To reiterate coldpie's point, "regulations don't come about because some lawmakers got bored, they come about in answer to a problem". Before going full anti-regulatory based on personal experience, one would be good to consider the relative impact on all places.
    - Arizhel 10y ago
      I never said they should be torn down or that they can never work. I merely have the position that regulation is not the panacea that the pro-regulation people seem to think it is. If it works, great. If it doesn't work, then instead of harassing the people who work around broken regulations which just support rent-seeking by cronies, maybe we should look at fixing the political system and eliminating the corruption and bad regulation and bad regulators instead. But that's never proposed as a solution, probably because 1) it's too hard, and 2) the pro-regulation people don't like to admit to the existence of corruption.
    - mindcrime 10y ago
      "regulations don't come about because some lawmakers got bored, they come about in answer to a problem" Sure, if you consider the desire of incumbent businesses to lock out competition and artificially inflate their profits to be a "problem".

by Arizhel 10y ago

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.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Regulations aren't mathematical proofs. Laws not working somewhere doesn't justify tearing them down everywhere. You don't see people arguing "Hey, seen that robbery on the news? Those regulations obviously don't work; fuck it, let's make theft legal." To reiterate coldpie's point, "regulations don't come about because some lawmakers got bored, they come about in answer to a problem". Before going full anti-regulatory based on personal experience, one would be good to consider the relative impact on all places.
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    I never said they should be torn down or that they can never work. I merely have the position that regulation is not the panacea that the pro-regulation people seem to think it is. If it works, great. If it doesn't work, then instead of harassing the people who work around broken regulations which just support rent-seeking by cronies, maybe we should look at fixing the political system and eliminating the corruption and bad regulation and bad regulators instead. But that's never proposed as a solution, probably because 1) it's too hard, and 2) the pro-regulation people don't like to admit to the existence of corruption.
  - mindcrime 10y ago
    "regulations don't come about because some lawmakers got bored, they come about in answer to a problem" Sure, if you consider the desire of incumbent businesses to lock out competition and artificially inflate their profits to be a "problem".