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One of my close friends killed himself. I don't wish suicide on anyone. I'm sure Doug Schifter's fallacies are obvious to us. He was committing the CBT cogniti

One of my close friends killed himself. I don't wish suicide on anyone. I'm sure Doug Schifter's fallacies are obvious to us. He was committing the CBT cognitive distortions of "Personalization" and "magnification". He failed to recognize that his taxi job was an ill-gotten gain, gotten through lobbying, government control, and harming consumers. Our species is built around the principle of adaptation. When the world changes, you must change with it. Or you die.

alphonsegaston 9y ago
That you've so internalized this oppressive ideology as natural or just is why I imagine people like Schifter feel so hopeless in the face of their circumstances. Perhaps think on this before dismissing another's life so glibly.
- civilian 9y ago
  No, I've just done a lot of CBT. Killing yourself for a chance at a NYT article is flawed thinking, plain and simple. I graduated at 2009, after the recession, with a degree that wasn't particularly useful. I was unemployed for a long time, but I figured out how to lower my standards, get something to survive on, and then use that foundation as an opportunity to retrain myself. It's hard, but it's not impossible, and millions of people take new jobs that are in different fields.
  - 6d6b73 9y ago
    But you're not 60, right?
ohyes 9y ago
Eh, Uber is driving taxi companies out of business with billions of dollars in VC money. Offering a dramatic discount in a unsustainable way to ruin your competition is anti-competitive and pretty unethical. In NYC 88,000 is a livable wage. NYC metro is a very expensive place to live. Calling a livable wage for a weeks work “ill gotten gains” is a bit far fetched. Unions and state controlled monopolies exist for a reason, not the least of which is protecting the broader workforce who don’t have leverage against their wealthy employers otherwise.
- dcow 9y ago
  I find it hard to blame Uber for doing something that companies have done for hundreds of years in the US. So what if it's 2018 and a venture capital backed tech company is at the center of it this time? Unions don't prevent new competition, otherwise they'd be rather unethical themselves..one (with a capitalist mindset) might argue. This is capitalism and if it's too emotionally painful to watch disruption unfold then as a society we need to find a different mode of operation. Why get distracted by the players when the game is the problem? I've been largely okay with capitalism I guess because I've benefitted from it. But human lives have decreased in value. In a society where making $500, literally, is more valuable than a human life, we'll choose the money every time. That's the game. Of course I have no idea what to do, in the face of this almost existential crisis, but getting mad a Uber for disrupting an industry is wasted effort.
dang 9y ago
This somehow crosses into personal attack, which is not ok in HN comments. The man who killed himself may not be here to read it, but the reason we have this rule is because of community effects.
hmschreck 9y ago
A little more in depth, the article specifically mentions the depreciation of taxi medallions. "Medallions, which grant the right to operate a taxi in New York City, were now depreciating assets and drivers who had borrowed money to pay for them, once a sound investment strategy, were deeply in debt." Just like any investment, you are not guaranteed a right to a return, or even to keep the money you put into an investment, and there is no reason why taxi medallions should be any different. The only reason these medallions were so valuable and such a "sound investment" for so long is because of government-induced artificial scarcity. There are good arguments behind that model, but if you depend on a model like that, eventually, you will have problems. "He was now sometimes forced to work more than 100 hours a week to survive he said; when he had started out in the 1980s a 40-hour week was fairly typical." In 5+ years, he never had the opportunity to change careers or do something about his situation? I know it's not easy, especially as you get older, but it's a lot easier than leaving your family behind. I apologize if I sound harsh, but he had years to come to terms with the changes in his profession and adapt, and he chose not to. "For taxi drivers staring down an even bleaker future of driverless cars" - in other words, the changes brought about by Uber and Lyft and every other service of that sort is inevitable anyway. What do these drivers think will happen the moment they can reasonably be replaced by the very cars they drive? A lot of this feels like the death throes of an industry that had its time and served its purpose, but an arguably better alternative came along, and the industry now feels as though it is owed something by virtue of existing, rather than by virtue of providing something of value. Pardon me, my buggy whip was left in the beginning of last century.

alphonsegaston 9y ago

That you've so internalized this oppressive ideology as natural or just is why I imagine people like Schifter feel so hopeless in the face of their circumstances. Perhaps think on this before dismissing another's life so glibly.

civilian 9y ago
No, I've just done a lot of CBT. Killing yourself for a chance at a NYT article is flawed thinking, plain and simple. I graduated at 2009, after the recession, with a degree that wasn't particularly useful. I was unemployed for a long time, but I figured out how to lower my standards, get something to survive on, and then use that foundation as an opportunity to retrain myself. It's hard, but it's not impossible, and millions of people take new jobs that are in different fields.
- 6d6b73 9y ago
  But you're not 60, right?

ohyes 9y ago

Eh, Uber is driving taxi companies out of business with billions of dollars in VC money. Offering a dramatic discount in a unsustainable way to ruin your competition is anti-competitive and pretty unethical. In NYC 88,000 is a livable wage. NYC metro is a very expensive place to live. Calling a livable wage for a weeks work “ill gotten gains” is a bit far fetched. Unions and state controlled monopolies exist for a reason, not the least of which is protecting the broader workforce who don’t have leverage against their wealthy employers otherwise.

dcow 9y ago
I find it hard to blame Uber for doing something that companies have done for hundreds of years in the US. So what if it's 2018 and a venture capital backed tech company is at the center of it this time? Unions don't prevent new competition, otherwise they'd be rather unethical themselves..one (with a capitalist mindset) might argue. This is capitalism and if it's too emotionally painful to watch disruption unfold then as a society we need to find a different mode of operation. Why get distracted by the players when the game is the problem? I've been largely okay with capitalism I guess because I've benefitted from it. But human lives have decreased in value. In a society where making $500, literally, is more valuable than a human life, we'll choose the money every time. That's the game. Of course I have no idea what to do, in the face of this almost existential crisis, but getting mad a Uber for disrupting an industry is wasted effort.

dang 9y ago

This somehow crosses into personal attack, which is not ok in HN comments. The man who killed himself may not be here to read it, but the reason we have this rule is because of community effects.

hmschreck 9y ago

A little more in depth, the article specifically mentions the depreciation of taxi medallions. "Medallions, which grant the right to operate a taxi in New York City, were now depreciating assets and drivers who had borrowed money to pay for them, once a sound investment strategy, were deeply in debt." Just like any investment, you are not guaranteed a right to a return, or even to keep the money you put into an investment, and there is no reason why taxi medallions should be any different. The only reason these medallions were so valuable and such a "sound investment" for so long is because of government-induced artificial scarcity. There are good arguments behind that model, but if you depend on a model like that, eventually, you will have problems. "He was now sometimes forced to work more than 100 hours a week to survive he said; when he had started out in the 1980s a 40-hour week was fairly typical." In 5+ years, he never had the opportunity to change careers or do something about his situation? I know it's not easy, especially as you get older, but it's a lot easier than leaving your family behind. I apologize if I sound harsh, but he had years to come to terms with the changes in his profession and adapt, and he chose not to. "For taxi drivers staring down an even bleaker future of driverless cars" - in other words, the changes brought about by Uber and Lyft and every other service of that sort is inevitable anyway. What do these drivers think will happen the moment they can reasonably be replaced by the very cars they drive? A lot of this feels like the death throes of an industry that had its time and served its purpose, but an arguably better alternative came along, and the industry now feels as though it is owed something by virtue of existing, rather than by virtue of providing something of value. Pardon me, my buggy whip was left in the beginning of last century.