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> Are you going to check with what association your taxi driver is registered and have you done the necessary research upfront to judge the credentials of the a

> Are you going to check with what association your taxi driver is registered and have you done the necessary research upfront to judge the credentials of the association? This is a valid point, because people don't always have the time to do detailed research when they make buying decisions. However, with the internet, and with (soon) most people carrying smartphones, this may change. One could easily imagine a registration including a computer-readable logo, that when one points one's phone at it, produces reviews of whether that registration is good or bad. > The businessman will tell everyone that the taxis in StateCapital suck, but a few months later, when he's there again for a one-off trip, he will have forgotten the name of the taxi service that rendered him such a bad service last time. However, commerce in StateCapital is harmed by all the gossipy remarks concerning one of their taxi services (which are remembered as concerning all taxi services in the city). Then why not have the city government issue a voluntary registration? Then, if people value it and feel it provides real benefits against being ripped off, they will value that registration. But compulsory government licenses are if anything more likely to lead to customers being ripped off than protecting those costomers. Consider New York, where a taxi medallion costs $600,000 (source: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN3040666220070530 http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN3040666220070530 ). Who pays the $600k? Eventually the customers do. So compulsory government licensing is more likely to lead to me being ripped off than no licensing.

Sukotto 16y ago
One could easily imagine a registration including a computer-readable logo, that when one points one's phone at it, produces reviews of whether that registration is good or bad. Which just opens the door to abuse from anyone with an incentive to game the system. This is a complex problem (in the sense of Menken's rule) and probably a fabulous business opportunity if you can find a good way to solve it. You might have better luck than me. Every month or so I try to solve it and so far each solution runs into one or more of: privacy, chicken-or-egg, incentives-to-use, internet-dickwad, or some kind of abuse from the various players.
- cabalamat 16y ago
  > Which just opens the door to abuse from anyone with an incentive to game the system. Pretending you've got a registration when you haven't is equally possible whether the registration is compulsory or not, so making registrations optional would not cause that problem. Gaming the system by trying to get people to believe your product/service/company is better than it actually is, is as old as commerce, and societies have developed ways of coping with this which while not perfect, do work well enough that the vast majority of economic actors see it as not in their interest to rip people off. You'll never get a perfect solution, but what is achievable is one that works reasonably well.
  - JadeNB 16y ago
    > Gaming the system by trying to get people to believe your product/service/company is better than it actually is, is as old as commerce, and societies have developed ways of coping with this which while not perfect, do work well enough that the vast majority of economic actors see it as not in their interest to rip people off. I'm not sure that this is true any more. I remember that it used to be possible to find bad—or even just informative—reviews of products; but now it seems to me that there's a ‘conspiracy’ (in an informal sense, not an actual plotting-together sense) between • providers who have no scruples about packing reviews with spurious praise, and • review-collectors who are either •• less powerful than the providers (in which case they will winnow the reviews to just the good ones to curry favour) or •• more powerful than the providers (in which case, because power corrupts, they will informally censor reviews for the providers who provide them bribes). (Trying to find reviews of apartments, as I was doing recently, really drives this point home. Almost no-one reviews his or her apartment unless he or she is really unhappy, and, since it's so easy to do and there's effectively no penalty for it, it's more or less a given that the top reviews for each complex will be posted by staff of that complex.)

Sukotto 16y ago

One could easily imagine a registration including a computer-readable logo, that when one points one's phone at it, produces reviews of whether that registration is good or bad. Which just opens the door to abuse from anyone with an incentive to game the system. This is a complex problem (in the sense of Menken's rule) and probably a fabulous business opportunity if you can find a good way to solve it. You might have better luck than me. Every month or so I try to solve it and so far each solution runs into one or more of: privacy, chicken-or-egg, incentives-to-use, internet-dickwad, or some kind of abuse from the various players.

cabalamat 16y ago
> Which just opens the door to abuse from anyone with an incentive to game the system. Pretending you've got a registration when you haven't is equally possible whether the registration is compulsory or not, so making registrations optional would not cause that problem. Gaming the system by trying to get people to believe your product/service/company is better than it actually is, is as old as commerce, and societies have developed ways of coping with this which while not perfect, do work well enough that the vast majority of economic actors see it as not in their interest to rip people off. You'll never get a perfect solution, but what is achievable is one that works reasonably well.
- JadeNB 16y ago
  > Gaming the system by trying to get people to believe your product/service/company is better than it actually is, is as old as commerce, and societies have developed ways of coping with this which while not perfect, do work well enough that the vast majority of economic actors see it as not in their interest to rip people off. I'm not sure that this is true any more. I remember that it used to be possible to find bad—or even just informative—reviews of products; but now it seems to me that there's a ‘conspiracy’ (in an informal sense, not an actual plotting-together sense) between • providers who have no scruples about packing reviews with spurious praise, and • review-collectors who are either •• less powerful than the providers (in which case they will winnow the reviews to just the good ones to curry favour) or •• more powerful than the providers (in which case, because power corrupts, they will informally censor reviews for the providers who provide them bribes). (Trying to find reviews of apartments, as I was doing recently, really drives this point home. Almost no-one reviews his or her apartment unless he or she is really unhappy, and, since it's so easy to do and there's effectively no penalty for it, it's more or less a given that the top reviews for each complex will be posted by staff of that complex.)