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>> One of the things I like about the sharing economy (Uber, Airbnb, etc) is that we're slowly being reminded that it's okay to trust our neighbors > Except it

>> One of the things I like about the sharing economy (Uber, Airbnb, etc) is that we're slowly being reminded that it's okay to trust our neighbors > Except it's not neighbors but complete strangers you're asked to trust, and that trust is sometime misplaced. I'm guessing you've never lived in a place where the common means of transportation is to just stand by the street, look for the next car coming by with empty seats, and signal/ask how much it is to your destination?

mc32 9y ago
So I guess when people complain about being assaulted by poor vetting by Uber, that's just noise and the uproar is overblown and we should accept assault by taxi drivers as the price of living in society.
- throwaway613834 9y ago
  > So I guess when people complain about being assaulted by poor vetting by Uber, that's just noise and the uproar is overblown and we should accept assault by taxi drivers as the price of living in society. What kind of a strawman is that? Where did I ever suggest you should just "accept assault by taxi drivers"? Go report them so that we can weed them out. Nobody suggested we do nothing.
  - mc32 9y ago
    My implication is there is a balance between doing nothing and acceptance and doing reasonable due diligence to combat social issues.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Since zero crime is an impossible goal, the discussion is ultimately a question of how much assault by taxi drivers we should accept.
  - hexane360 9y ago
    And we also have to consider how much we as a society lose by not having a taxi system with x amount of danger. 1000 people gaining a little bit quickly outweighs 1 person losing a lot (at least from a purely utilitarian perspective)
    - harry8 9y ago
      A lot of times when this is brought up it isn't mentioned there is an assumption here. That we are already at the efficient frontier and any move is necessarily a trade off. In my experience that assumption is usually false. There are usually ways where you can actually reduce the amount of danger and the number of people exposed to it and increase the number of people getting a more efficient service at the same time. Look for these outward movements of the efficient frontier. The opportunity is almost always there. When we're really at the efficient frontier of what is possible and have no choice but to make tradeoffs let's say so loudly because something has gone very, very right to get to that point.
      - mc32 9y ago
        Agreed. Like Vision Zero[1] which some municipalities have instituted as initiatives to reduce the number of traffic fatalities in their jurisdictions through a variety of measures with the obvious goal of reducing such to the absolute minimum. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero
        slavik81 9y ago
        Vision Zero is a project that's unable to come to terms with its own beliefs. Their stated goal is zero traffic fatalities no matter the economic cost, and yet they don't actually embrace policies that would reduce fatalities to zero. Their policies seem to merely be the same old stuff you'd see out of traditional planning, but with a little higher cost assigned to injuries and fatalities. That's good, and it plays nicely to your point that the status quo isn't always at the right balance point, but the hypocrisy is off-putting.

mc32 9y ago

So I guess when people complain about being assaulted by poor vetting by Uber, that's just noise and the uproar is overblown and we should accept assault by taxi drivers as the price of living in society.

throwaway613834 9y ago
> So I guess when people complain about being assaulted by poor vetting by Uber, that's just noise and the uproar is overblown and we should accept assault by taxi drivers as the price of living in society. What kind of a strawman is that? Where did I ever suggest you should just "accept assault by taxi drivers"? Go report them so that we can weed them out. Nobody suggested we do nothing.
- mc32 9y ago
  My implication is there is a balance between doing nothing and acceptance and doing reasonable due diligence to combat social issues.
mikeash 9y ago
Since zero crime is an impossible goal, the discussion is ultimately a question of how much assault by taxi drivers we should accept.
- hexane360 9y ago
  And we also have to consider how much we as a society lose by not having a taxi system with x amount of danger. 1000 people gaining a little bit quickly outweighs 1 person losing a lot (at least from a purely utilitarian perspective)
  - harry8 9y ago
    A lot of times when this is brought up it isn't mentioned there is an assumption here. That we are already at the efficient frontier and any move is necessarily a trade off. In my experience that assumption is usually false. There are usually ways where you can actually reduce the amount of danger and the number of people exposed to it and increase the number of people getting a more efficient service at the same time. Look for these outward movements of the efficient frontier. The opportunity is almost always there. When we're really at the efficient frontier of what is possible and have no choice but to make tradeoffs let's say so loudly because something has gone very, very right to get to that point.
    - mc32 9y ago
      Agreed. Like Vision Zero[1] which some municipalities have instituted as initiatives to reduce the number of traffic fatalities in their jurisdictions through a variety of measures with the obvious goal of reducing such to the absolute minimum. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero
      - slavik81 9y ago
        Vision Zero is a project that's unable to come to terms with its own beliefs. Their stated goal is zero traffic fatalities no matter the economic cost, and yet they don't actually embrace policies that would reduce fatalities to zero. Their policies seem to merely be the same old stuff you'd see out of traditional planning, but with a little higher cost assigned to injuries and fatalities. That's good, and it plays nicely to your point that the status quo isn't always at the right balance point, but the hypocrisy is off-putting.