3 ms·

Stop being so rational. Please instead appeal to my existentialism of a professional in a young, pubescent nation rising in the world, carried safely around by

by aje403 9y ago

Stop being so rational. Please instead appeal to my existentialism of a professional in a young, pubescent nation rising in the world, carried safely around by a uncongenial immigrant who, demeanor notwithstanding, bestows me with a nostalgic feeling of brotherhood in a baleful urban jungle. Now, it's all fading away. We're ruining these people's lives in the same way that we ruined the lives of those who were talented at manually separating cotton. In a way, I feel bad for these people, in the same way anybody who has to re-evaluate their identify and path in life and develop a new skillset or profession. And frankly, most of the people on this site have a stable career path, savings, and little threat to their immediate survival (at the very least), so we probably can't really even empathize, but still - that's the entire point of survival - adaptation to meet the needs of a changing world.

pgrote 9y ago
> adaptation to meet the needs of a changing world. Trying to flesh this out. In the case of taxi drivers that need to adapt shouldn't they have the benefits of the same environment? Ride sharing services are unencumbered by the regulations/laws facing taxi drivers. The taxi drivers "environment" doesn't allow the adaptation. Had Uber needed to follow the regulations/laws in place for taxis in a city like New York would they have succeeded?
- nerfhammer 9y ago
  uber does follow the law in NYC. You need a taxi/limousine license and plates to drive for uber there. There are several classes of taxi/limousine in NYC regulations and the medallion'ed yellow cabs are only one of them, ubers just count as a different kind. I think as a livery cab ("black car") where the number of them was never fixed like the medallions were. Distinction is you're only allowed to hail yellow (and green) cabs on the street. Black cars have to scheduled and or sent from a dispatch, which uber counts as. BTW, the black cars pre-uber were notorious for brazenly ignoring the hailing law, they would show up where the yellow cabs didn't and you could still "hail" them and you would have to play hardball negotiation on the price like you were in a third world country or else they would try to demand an abusive price.. Much more clearly illegally competing with the yellow cabs but not centralized into a single corporate villain and therefore more difficult to feel outraged towards.
- aje403 9y ago
  I've lived here for ~4 years, which is not a long time, but anecdotally, every other taxi or uber driver has given me an earful of their opinion on regulation (or lack of). If I were a taxi driver 5 years ago, I would have began driving for Uber and potentially looking for other career paths and finding opportunities to invest. I think there are a lot of people who come over with families and poor language skills and taxi driver is the obvious job. I really would not want to be a person in that position. Yes, I absolutely think that whether or not it was Travis Kalanick or any other tech entrepreneur rolling the initial die, but that it's inevitable that in 10 years we're going to press a button on our phone and a self-driving car will pick us up with less people owning vehicles. It was a great idea that was going to succeed unless it was deliberately quashed. The concept of a taxi driver will be memory in 20 years from now.

by aje403 9y ago

pgrote 9y ago

> adaptation to meet the needs of a changing world. Trying to flesh this out. In the case of taxi drivers that need to adapt shouldn't they have the benefits of the same environment? Ride sharing services are unencumbered by the regulations/laws facing taxi drivers. The taxi drivers "environment" doesn't allow the adaptation. Had Uber needed to follow the regulations/laws in place for taxis in a city like New York would they have succeeded?

nerfhammer 9y ago
uber does follow the law in NYC. You need a taxi/limousine license and plates to drive for uber there. There are several classes of taxi/limousine in NYC regulations and the medallion'ed yellow cabs are only one of them, ubers just count as a different kind. I think as a livery cab ("black car") where the number of them was never fixed like the medallions were. Distinction is you're only allowed to hail yellow (and green) cabs on the street. Black cars have to scheduled and or sent from a dispatch, which uber counts as. BTW, the black cars pre-uber were notorious for brazenly ignoring the hailing law, they would show up where the yellow cabs didn't and you could still "hail" them and you would have to play hardball negotiation on the price like you were in a third world country or else they would try to demand an abusive price.. Much more clearly illegally competing with the yellow cabs but not centralized into a single corporate villain and therefore more difficult to feel outraged towards.
aje403 9y ago
I've lived here for ~4 years, which is not a long time, but anecdotally, every other taxi or uber driver has given me an earful of their opinion on regulation (or lack of). If I were a taxi driver 5 years ago, I would have began driving for Uber and potentially looking for other career paths and finding opportunities to invest. I think there are a lot of people who come over with families and poor language skills and taxi driver is the obvious job. I really would not want to be a person in that position. Yes, I absolutely think that whether or not it was Travis Kalanick or any other tech entrepreneur rolling the initial die, but that it's inevitable that in 10 years we're going to press a button on our phone and a self-driving car will pick us up with less people owning vehicles. It was a great idea that was going to succeed unless it was deliberately quashed. The concept of a taxi driver will be memory in 20 years from now.