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> In addition to paying operating fees, Smith said the city wants the companies to provide multilingual customer service at all times, and to commit to addressi

> In addition to paying operating fees, Smith said the city wants the companies to provide multilingual customer service at all times, and to commit to addressing problems quickly. And like Ford GoBike — which currently has an exclusive contract with San Jose to operate a docked bike sharing program in the city — the city says scooter companies should be required to offer discounts to low-income residents and operate in what it calls “communities of concern.” What a world we live in, where a company cannot operate as it would like to. As long as no one is getting hurt, why can't a company choose its target demographic? Where does it end? Do all movie theaters have to show films in all languages? Are Whole Foods and starbucks required to open discount price stores for the same goods in "communities of concern"? I lived in San Jose for 5 years. I was flat broke, and living in a rundown 12-people-in-a-5-bedroom apartment, in the most violent and dangerous part of town. San Jose still has an immense amount of issues with drugs, violence, gangs, and a lack of pedestrian friendly streets. The city's priorities, much like San Francisco's, are laughably backwards.

closeparen 8y ago
This is what it means to oppose inequality. If we cannot all have something, no one can.
rayiner 8y ago
> And like Ford GoBike — which currently has an exclusive contract with San Jose to operate a docked bike sharing program in the city — the city says scooter companies should be required to offer discounts to low-income residents and operate in what it calls “communities of concern.” Ironically, this is exactly what caused the current de facto local monopolies for broadband. Until Congress made the practice illegal in 1992, cities would grant legal monopolies in exchange for funding various community access channels, serving all neighborhoods, and offering a basic tier of service at very low, regulated prices. The legal monopolies are gone, but the effects of that municial-government idiocy persist to this day. Cities love granting monopolies in exchange for various concessions, because it’s free money to them. The citizens are taxed indirectly through suppression of competition. It’s a practice that is well-intentioned but misguided. Cities do it because it hides the cost from residents. But it also hides the cost from the government—they have no idea how much extra their residents will pay to secure these social benefits.
- gruez 8y ago
  How else do you handle natural monopolies? Obviously the best solution would be if the city does it, the only thing that kills it is the political opposition (inefficiency, corruptions, "communism", budget, etc.). The other possibility is a free-for-all, in which companies overbuild (house is serviced by multiple cables from multiple companies) in the densest areas, and the sparse areas get no service at all. When you consider the other options, government granted monopolies is the least bad option. Of course, you need to keep the monopoly in check, eg. regulating the price and/or forcing unbundling.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    The fact that cities are doing the same thing with bike sharing belies the idea that they're thinking in economic terms (i.e. that they are actually designing and tailoring the policies based on the economics). In reality, they just want to get a bunch of concessions in a way where the cost residents are paying for those things is not readily apparent. > The other possibility is a free-for-all, in which companies overbuild (house is serviced by multiple cables from multiple companies) in the densest areas, and the sparse areas get no service at all. Which is fine. It takes very little competition to outperform a government built or regulated monopoly service in the U.S. Mobile devices are a dynamic market with really just two choices of operating systems, so is ride sharing, search engines, etc. If cities instead made it cheap and easy to hang wire on poles, most urban/suburban areas could probably have at least two choices. If building service to sparse areas is a concern, the government could step in to do it. What we do now is force providers to build in economically unviable areas in order to get the right to build in economically viable areas. That destroys competition in the economically viable areas by dramatically raising the cost of entering the market. It would be better to just let competition happen where it can, and let the government step in where it needs to.
    - mmt 8y ago
      > If building service to sparse areas is a concern, the government could step in to do it. This even happened in the past with wired phone service in some rural parts of Northern California. It worked just fine, with anecdotally better service and prices than the monopolies (AT&T or GTE).
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ggg9990 8y ago
Sorry, I’m reasonably libertarian but “operating in communities of concern” is fine by me for transit infrastructure providers. Taxis used to have laws that required them to go to any destination requested, and stop for any person hailing a ride. Now that Uber has largely replaced taxis, a vital piece of community infrastructure (point to point transportation) is only available to people with smartphones. I have no problem requiring that Uber take fares by phone, or that scooter companies service all areas, as transit infrastructure shifts from publicly owned to privately owned.
- chrischen 8y ago
  That problem was caused by taci regulation as well. Governments forbade ride hailing services to be hailed off the street.
- crazy1van 8y ago
  >Taxis used to have laws that required them to go to any destination requested, and stop for any person hailing a ride Laws that in my experience the taxi drivers completely ignored with no consequences. At least with Uber they pick you up before they find out the destination.
- briandear 8y ago
  Lol. I still remember when I drove a taxi back in the day a street in Houston called Coke Street. Nobody would pick up there. And me, being an idiot, picked up a trip there and was promptly robbed at gunpoint. I’m laying on the ground with a gun in the back of my head while thugs took everything from me. You can make laws, but self-preservation always trumps some misguided attempts by government to legislate “equal access.” When certain areas of town are higher risk than others, it’s immoral to require someone to service that area. I bet a member of city council never once visited that street at 3am, yet those same jackasses are those trying to require a private business owner/employee to put their life at risk in order to assuage their social justic guilt. The people that can afford private taxis and Uber generally would have a smartphone. The ultra poor aren’t riding in taxis, but taking the bus. We shouldn’t be designing society around the idea that every single person deserves every single product or service available to the general public. Some people won’t get to ride in taxis; that’s just life. Some people can’t eat in restaurants— that doesn’t mean restaurants ought to be required to have a “low income menu.” Access to a taxi or a scooter isn’t a human right, it’s a luxury.
wpietri 8y ago
> As long as no one is getting hurt, why can't a company choose its target demographic? They can, as long as they're not using public resources or imposing significant negative externalities. On the other hand, if you want to be part of the municipal transportation infrastructure, the stated goal of these scooter companies, cities may want a quid pro quo for that.
- rayiner 8y ago
  If that is the rationale (it isn’t), then the externalities should be priced in fairly for everyone, including those driving private cars. Otherwise you distort the market.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    I would encourage you to propose that you your rep, of course, as I'm all for better pricing of externalities. But there are a number of important differences between a person driving a private car for personal use and a company operating a business. An important one being that the business can possibly monetize the externalities, while individuals living their lives generally don't. As an example, when I park my bike at a municipal rack, I don't make any money directly from that. I at most use one space, and on average use zero. But if I can make a profit from putting a rental bike at a municipal rack, I have an incentive to consume as many spaces as are profitable. On average I might use hundreds.
    - mmt 8y ago
      You bring up an important distinction. I'd like to coin a term: externality arbitrage. Although an individual might be able to extract value, as you point out, the scale would be small. A business, especially a VC-funded one, is much more likely to be able to scale this on a massive level, across many markets.
almost_usual 8y ago
Sounds like moving was a good choice for you?
alaskamiller 8y ago
What a world we live in, where a company can operate however it would like. Using up public roads and sidewalks, relying on 911 when things go awry, and pushing all the responsibilities to the community. Things sure sound funny either way.
- wpietri 8y ago
  Absolutely. It's sort of like "Lemon Socialism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_socialism
  - wavefunction 8y ago
    Or exactly like modern capitalism!
- llukas 8y ago
  This is OK as long as they pay their fair share of taxes.
thereare5lights 8y ago
> As long as no one is getting hurt, You seem to have missed this line > San Jose resident Doug Smith said he fell and hurt his shoulder after being hit by a scooter speeding outside Martin Luther King Jr. Library in March.
- delinka 8y ago
  Wouldn't that be a bit like blaming Budget Rent a Car when one of their customers driving a rented car hits a pedestrian?
Frqy3 8y ago
Why? Because governments like to achieve social outcomes by mandating cross-subsidies from profitable customers to non-profitable customers instead of explicitly funding the outcomes themselves. However, like the proverbial hole in the bucket, this then requires additional pieces of legislation added over time to keep it working. In this case, to stop newer entrants from cherry picking the profitable customers. The biggest advantage of direct explicit funding (which can be provided through competitive tendering) is that it allows competition to work better. The other advantage is that the cost of achieving the desired social outcome is explicit as a budget line item, rather than hidden as indirect costs, allowing for a more informed debate about what social outcomes the community wants.
briandear 8y ago
Multilingual customer support is a problem? According to California law, English is the official language. It seems onerous to require companies to support multiple languages. If they choose to do it for a competitive advantage, that should be their choice. This isn’t a government agency that has a vested interest in serving all citizens, this is a private company. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=CONS&sectionNum=SEC.%206.&article=III&highlight=true&keyword=english https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

closeparen 8y ago

This is what it means to oppose inequality. If we cannot all have something, no one can.

rayiner 8y ago

> And like Ford GoBike — which currently has an exclusive contract with San Jose to operate a docked bike sharing program in the city — the city says scooter companies should be required to offer discounts to low-income residents and operate in what it calls “communities of concern.” Ironically, this is exactly what caused the current de facto local monopolies for broadband. Until Congress made the practice illegal in 1992, cities would grant legal monopolies in exchange for funding various community access channels, serving all neighborhoods, and offering a basic tier of service at very low, regulated prices. The legal monopolies are gone, but the effects of that municial-government idiocy persist to this day. Cities love granting monopolies in exchange for various concessions, because it’s free money to them. The citizens are taxed indirectly through suppression of competition. It’s a practice that is well-intentioned but misguided. Cities do it because it hides the cost from residents. But it also hides the cost from the government—they have no idea how much extra their residents will pay to secure these social benefits.

gruez 8y ago
How else do you handle natural monopolies? Obviously the best solution would be if the city does it, the only thing that kills it is the political opposition (inefficiency, corruptions, "communism", budget, etc.). The other possibility is a free-for-all, in which companies overbuild (house is serviced by multiple cables from multiple companies) in the densest areas, and the sparse areas get no service at all. When you consider the other options, government granted monopolies is the least bad option. Of course, you need to keep the monopoly in check, eg. regulating the price and/or forcing unbundling.
- rayiner 8y ago
  The fact that cities are doing the same thing with bike sharing belies the idea that they're thinking in economic terms (i.e. that they are actually designing and tailoring the policies based on the economics). In reality, they just want to get a bunch of concessions in a way where the cost residents are paying for those things is not readily apparent. > The other possibility is a free-for-all, in which companies overbuild (house is serviced by multiple cables from multiple companies) in the densest areas, and the sparse areas get no service at all. Which is fine. It takes very little competition to outperform a government built or regulated monopoly service in the U.S. Mobile devices are a dynamic market with really just two choices of operating systems, so is ride sharing, search engines, etc. If cities instead made it cheap and easy to hang wire on poles, most urban/suburban areas could probably have at least two choices. If building service to sparse areas is a concern, the government could step in to do it. What we do now is force providers to build in economically unviable areas in order to get the right to build in economically viable areas. That destroys competition in the economically viable areas by dramatically raising the cost of entering the market. It would be better to just let competition happen where it can, and let the government step in where it needs to.
  - mmt 8y ago
    > If building service to sparse areas is a concern, the government could step in to do it. This even happened in the past with wired phone service in some rural parts of Northern California. It worked just fine, with anecdotally better service and prices than the monopolies (AT&T or GTE).

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ggg9990 8y ago

Sorry, I’m reasonably libertarian but “operating in communities of concern” is fine by me for transit infrastructure providers. Taxis used to have laws that required them to go to any destination requested, and stop for any person hailing a ride. Now that Uber has largely replaced taxis, a vital piece of community infrastructure (point to point transportation) is only available to people with smartphones. I have no problem requiring that Uber take fares by phone, or that scooter companies service all areas, as transit infrastructure shifts from publicly owned to privately owned.

chrischen 8y ago
That problem was caused by taci regulation as well. Governments forbade ride hailing services to be hailed off the street.
crazy1van 8y ago
>Taxis used to have laws that required them to go to any destination requested, and stop for any person hailing a ride Laws that in my experience the taxi drivers completely ignored with no consequences. At least with Uber they pick you up before they find out the destination.
briandear 8y ago
Lol. I still remember when I drove a taxi back in the day a street in Houston called Coke Street. Nobody would pick up there. And me, being an idiot, picked up a trip there and was promptly robbed at gunpoint. I’m laying on the ground with a gun in the back of my head while thugs took everything from me. You can make laws, but self-preservation always trumps some misguided attempts by government to legislate “equal access.” When certain areas of town are higher risk than others, it’s immoral to require someone to service that area. I bet a member of city council never once visited that street at 3am, yet those same jackasses are those trying to require a private business owner/employee to put their life at risk in order to assuage their social justic guilt. The people that can afford private taxis and Uber generally would have a smartphone. The ultra poor aren’t riding in taxis, but taking the bus. We shouldn’t be designing society around the idea that every single person deserves every single product or service available to the general public. Some people won’t get to ride in taxis; that’s just life. Some people can’t eat in restaurants— that doesn’t mean restaurants ought to be required to have a “low income menu.” Access to a taxi or a scooter isn’t a human right, it’s a luxury.

wpietri 8y ago

> As long as no one is getting hurt, why can't a company choose its target demographic? They can, as long as they're not using public resources or imposing significant negative externalities. On the other hand, if you want to be part of the municipal transportation infrastructure, the stated goal of these scooter companies, cities may want a quid pro quo for that.

rayiner 8y ago
If that is the rationale (it isn’t), then the externalities should be priced in fairly for everyone, including those driving private cars. Otherwise you distort the market.
- wpietri 8y ago
  I would encourage you to propose that you your rep, of course, as I'm all for better pricing of externalities. But there are a number of important differences between a person driving a private car for personal use and a company operating a business. An important one being that the business can possibly monetize the externalities, while individuals living their lives generally don't. As an example, when I park my bike at a municipal rack, I don't make any money directly from that. I at most use one space, and on average use zero. But if I can make a profit from putting a rental bike at a municipal rack, I have an incentive to consume as many spaces as are profitable. On average I might use hundreds.
  - mmt 8y ago
    You bring up an important distinction. I'd like to coin a term: externality arbitrage. Although an individual might be able to extract value, as you point out, the scale would be small. A business, especially a VC-funded one, is much more likely to be able to scale this on a massive level, across many markets.

almost_usual 8y ago

Sounds like moving was a good choice for you?

alaskamiller 8y ago

What a world we live in, where a company can operate however it would like. Using up public roads and sidewalks, relying on 911 when things go awry, and pushing all the responsibilities to the community. Things sure sound funny either way.

wpietri 8y ago
Absolutely. It's sort of like "Lemon Socialism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_socialism
- wavefunction 8y ago
  Or exactly like modern capitalism!
llukas 8y ago
This is OK as long as they pay their fair share of taxes.

thereare5lights 8y ago

> As long as no one is getting hurt, You seem to have missed this line > San Jose resident Doug Smith said he fell and hurt his shoulder after being hit by a scooter speeding outside Martin Luther King Jr. Library in March.

delinka 8y ago
Wouldn't that be a bit like blaming Budget Rent a Car when one of their customers driving a rented car hits a pedestrian?

Frqy3 8y ago

Why? Because governments like to achieve social outcomes by mandating cross-subsidies from profitable customers to non-profitable customers instead of explicitly funding the outcomes themselves. However, like the proverbial hole in the bucket, this then requires additional pieces of legislation added over time to keep it working. In this case, to stop newer entrants from cherry picking the profitable customers. The biggest advantage of direct explicit funding (which can be provided through competitive tendering) is that it allows competition to work better. The other advantage is that the cost of achieving the desired social outcome is explicit as a budget line item, rather than hidden as indirect costs, allowing for a more informed debate about what social outcomes the community wants.

briandear 8y ago

Multilingual customer support is a problem? According to California law, English is the official language. It seems onerous to require companies to support multiple languages. If they choose to do it for a competitive advantage, that should be their choice. This isn’t a government agency that has a vested interest in serving all citizens, this is a private company. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=CONS&sectionNum=SEC.%206.&article=III&highlight=true&keyword=english https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...