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From https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/nyregion/a-taxi-driver-took-his-own-life-his-family-blames-ubers-influence.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/nyreg

by pradn 8y ago

From https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/nyregion/a-taxi-driver-took-his-own-life-his-family-blames-ubers-influence.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/nyregion/a-taxi-driver-to...: Immigrants from Romania, the couple had bought their New York City taxi medallion nearly three decades ago. Lately, it had been difficult to find fares. Her husband worked 12-hour shifts, but brought home less money. He was worried about the plunging value of their once-lucrative medallion and frustrated about Uber’s takeover of the industry. On a cold day in March, Mr. Ochisor hanged himself in his garage in Queens. His family blames the growing hopelessness he felt over his fortunes as a taxi driver.

CamperBob2 8y ago
Yeah, a real tear-jerker. So, let's fix this. How do you propose to write a law that defines exactly when responsibility for suicide attaches? In this case, Mr. Ochisor's customers were so desperate for an alternative to his three-decade-old business that they turned to a startup company that works by (literally) dodging taxi regulators. Is that really Uber's fault? The regulators'? The customers? Just how far do we want to take this whole idea of being reponsible for our competitors' mental health, or that of our vendors?
- knuththetruth 8y ago
  I don’t know how far, but possibly beyond glib dismissals of people’s suicides as a “real tear-jerker.”
  - CamperBob2 8y ago
    (Shrug) It's an appropriate response, I think, to the use of peoples' suicides for purposes of overt emotional manipulation. Your beef is with the taxi cartels and their click-hungry sympathizers in the media, not with me. They started it.
    - knuththetruth 8y ago
      It speaks more to your disposition than anything else that being troubled by other’s suicides is “emotional manipulation.” And I don’t have “beefs” with fictional boogie man cooked up by Uber, however bought in you are to that narrative. I certainly don’t remember “taxi cartels” stealing and passing around the medical records of rape victims, but that was probably a conspiracy by their “click-hungry sympathizers in the media.”
      - CamperBob2 8y ago
        And here come the whataboutisms. You'll notice that in the post above, I explicitly called out Uber for actively circumventing the local taxi laws. I'm not apologizing for Uber, believe me, just pointing out that I'm not the one pulling the emotional-manipulation strings. The journalists (and the HN posters) who are citing someone's suicide to back up their position favoring one debatably-ethical actor over another are the ones who are doing that. Uber is not responsible for pushing people to suicide at the end of a 30-year taxi-driving career. If you disagree, I respectfully suggest there are other sites where such opinions are more in line with the underlying ethos.
- jstarfish 8y ago
  Immigrants have a hard enough time as it is getting access to this country. They can spend a decade or more going to the trouble of raising funds (not just burning free VC money), getting sponsorship/visas, emigrating, assimilating, and dropping serious capital to secure just an abstract right to operate a business, only to see their efforts trampled by a competitor that outscales and outperforms them by (your own admission!) cheating the same system. What recourse did he have? To this day government response to Uber's incursions has been mostly toothless. I'm no friend of the taxi lobby but the guy was just trying to do right by his family up until he killed himself. While I don't see how Uber could realistically be held responsible for this guy's suicide, their undercutting his business certainly contributed to it, and you're being needlessly callous.
admax88q 8y ago
The problem is not ride sharing, its the fact that being a taxi driver in NYC is viewed as an investment rather than a job. That you have to purchase a medallion for insane sums of usually borrowed money. It's a broken system. Could you imagine if you had to put up $1.3 million to be a factory worker? Money that you're still on the hook for if the factory ends up closing due to lack of demand? Charging people for the privilege of working, and somehow its Uber's fault for not protecting this corrupt and manipulative system.
- user5994461 8y ago
  If the medallion was bought 30 years ago as said, it was surely acquired for closer to $3 than to $1 million. He could sell it for a large profit, despite the downtrend in the recent years.
  - andrewprock 8y ago
    Thirty years ago they were about $250,000 in today's dollars. He would be lucky to recoup that in the current market.

by pradn 8y ago

CamperBob2 8y ago

Yeah, a real tear-jerker. So, let's fix this. How do you propose to write a law that defines exactly when responsibility for suicide attaches? In this case, Mr. Ochisor's customers were so desperate for an alternative to his three-decade-old business that they turned to a startup company that works by (literally) dodging taxi regulators. Is that really Uber's fault? The regulators'? The customers? Just how far do we want to take this whole idea of being reponsible for our competitors' mental health, or that of our vendors?

knuththetruth 8y ago
I don’t know how far, but possibly beyond glib dismissals of people’s suicides as a “real tear-jerker.”
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  (Shrug) It's an appropriate response, I think, to the use of peoples' suicides for purposes of overt emotional manipulation. Your beef is with the taxi cartels and their click-hungry sympathizers in the media, not with me. They started it.
  - knuththetruth 8y ago
    It speaks more to your disposition than anything else that being troubled by other’s suicides is “emotional manipulation.” And I don’t have “beefs” with fictional boogie man cooked up by Uber, however bought in you are to that narrative. I certainly don’t remember “taxi cartels” stealing and passing around the medical records of rape victims, but that was probably a conspiracy by their “click-hungry sympathizers in the media.”
    - CamperBob2 8y ago
      And here come the whataboutisms. You'll notice that in the post above, I explicitly called out Uber for actively circumventing the local taxi laws. I'm not apologizing for Uber, believe me, just pointing out that I'm not the one pulling the emotional-manipulation strings. The journalists (and the HN posters) who are citing someone's suicide to back up their position favoring one debatably-ethical actor over another are the ones who are doing that. Uber is not responsible for pushing people to suicide at the end of a 30-year taxi-driving career. If you disagree, I respectfully suggest there are other sites where such opinions are more in line with the underlying ethos.
jstarfish 8y ago
Immigrants have a hard enough time as it is getting access to this country. They can spend a decade or more going to the trouble of raising funds (not just burning free VC money), getting sponsorship/visas, emigrating, assimilating, and dropping serious capital to secure just an abstract right to operate a business, only to see their efforts trampled by a competitor that outscales and outperforms them by (your own admission!) cheating the same system. What recourse did he have? To this day government response to Uber's incursions has been mostly toothless. I'm no friend of the taxi lobby but the guy was just trying to do right by his family up until he killed himself. While I don't see how Uber could realistically be held responsible for this guy's suicide, their undercutting his business certainly contributed to it, and you're being needlessly callous.

admax88q 8y ago

The problem is not ride sharing, its the fact that being a taxi driver in NYC is viewed as an investment rather than a job. That you have to purchase a medallion for insane sums of usually borrowed money. It's a broken system. Could you imagine if you had to put up $1.3 million to be a factory worker? Money that you're still on the hook for if the factory ends up closing due to lack of demand? Charging people for the privilege of working, and somehow its Uber's fault for not protecting this corrupt and manipulative system.

user5994461 8y ago
If the medallion was bought 30 years ago as said, it was surely acquired for closer to $3 than to $1 million. He could sell it for a large profit, despite the downtrend in the recent years.
- andrewprock 8y ago
  Thirty years ago they were about $250,000 in today's dollars. He would be lucky to recoup that in the current market.