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Transportation inefficiency isn't a market failure-- cab supply is deliberately limited by most cities, and the price a cab can charge is fixed by the city as w

Transportation inefficiency isn't a market failure-- cab supply is deliberately limited by most cities, and the price a cab can charge is fixed by the city as well. Similarly, jitney buses or other forms of efficient private mass transport are completely outlawed. The government doesn't want private bus routes competing with its clunky, unionized services. The empty seat problem in private cars is more of an issue with personal safety and the broad increase in crime over the past fifty years. Technology should help here, but the reason low-tech hitchhiking has all but disappeared is that it is not safe for the rider or the driver. This didn't used to be the case-- the boomer generation hitchhiked across the country to college, for example.

kragen 16y ago
Fixed cab fares are a response to passengers' effective inability to negotiate cab fares. In general, while transport regulations benefit the incumbents to some degree by raising the barrier to entry (rather shockingly in the case of NYC taxi medallions), they are generally supported by the public for reasons of safety. There hasn't actually been a "broad increase in crime over the past fifty years" in the US; consider http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nccrimn.htm http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nccrimn.htm which shows that, in North Carolina, violent crime in general has nearly doubled over that time, and robbery has increased by a factor of six, but murder rates have halved. A similar trend is seen in San Diego http://www.sandiego.gov/police/stats/ http://www.sandiego.gov/police/stats/ — violent crime has quadrupled, robbery has barely doubled, and murder has halved. Furthermore, these overall trends have been far from monotonic; the crime peak in 1990–1992 is far worse than anything we've seen over the last 20 years. And there are lots of countries where low-tech hitchhiking is very much alive, and crime is much higher in most of them than in the US. I think the real reason for the change is economic: as people in the US got much richer, they preferred the safety of private cars, airplanes, and other public transport, to the cost savings of hitchhiking. Regardless, that's a problem of information. You want to know if the person you're riding with has a record of trying to rob or rape previous drivers or passengers, or even leering at their tits.
sedachv 16y ago
"The empty seat problem in private cars is more of an issue with personal safety and the broad increase in crime over the past fifty years." It's more of an issue of the American perception of danger, and the anti-hitchhiking laws passed as a result. Lots of people still hitchhike all across the US.
- hugh3 16y ago
  I'd say that the danger in picking up a random stranger as a passenger isn't really about the danger that they're going to try to kill you. There's any number of other ways it can go wrong. They can smell bad. They can talk loudly or offensively. They can start going off with their theory about how the Jews run the country through the freemasons. They can be drunk and throw up. They can wind down the window and scream obscenities at nearby women. They can... well, ask any taxi driver for stories about what the worst things random strangers can do to your car. If I were going to pick up random strangers to disrupt my otherwise-peaceful me-time alone in my car, it'd have to have a big incentive, and being able to split the money I pay for gas just ain't it. Being a taxi driver is a sucky job, and I don't wanna do it in my spare time for cents per mile.
  - kragen 16y ago
    Hmm, you have a good point — aside from people in the US being paranoid about crime, they're also unbelievably intolerant, to the point that they're not comfortable around teenagers talking loudly, drunk people, or people with different political views.
    - hugh3 16y ago
      I'm not sure you're in a position to be lecturing others about tolerance after a comment like that. "Tolerance" is a noble concept in some sense. It means I respect the right of others to be stupid and annoying in the abstract, not necessarily in my passenger seat.
      - kragen 16y ago

kragen 16y ago

Fixed cab fares are a response to passengers' effective inability to negotiate cab fares. In general, while transport regulations benefit the incumbents to some degree by raising the barrier to entry (rather shockingly in the case of NYC taxi medallions), they are generally supported by the public for reasons of safety. There hasn't actually been a "broad increase in crime over the past fifty years" in the US; consider http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nccrimn.htm http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nccrimn.htm which shows that, in North Carolina, violent crime in general has nearly doubled over that time, and robbery has increased by a factor of six, but murder rates have halved. A similar trend is seen in San Diego http://www.sandiego.gov/police/stats/ http://www.sandiego.gov/police/stats/ — violent crime has quadrupled, robbery has barely doubled, and murder has halved. Furthermore, these overall trends have been far from monotonic; the crime peak in 1990–1992 is far worse than anything we've seen over the last 20 years. And there are lots of countries where low-tech hitchhiking is very much alive, and crime is much higher in most of them than in the US. I think the real reason for the change is economic: as people in the US got much richer, they preferred the safety of private cars, airplanes, and other public transport, to the cost savings of hitchhiking. Regardless, that's a problem of information. You want to know if the person you're riding with has a record of trying to rob or rape previous drivers or passengers, or even leering at their tits.

sedachv 16y ago

"The empty seat problem in private cars is more of an issue with personal safety and the broad increase in crime over the past fifty years." It's more of an issue of the American perception of danger, and the anti-hitchhiking laws passed as a result. Lots of people still hitchhike all across the US.

hugh3 16y ago
I'd say that the danger in picking up a random stranger as a passenger isn't really about the danger that they're going to try to kill you. There's any number of other ways it can go wrong. They can smell bad. They can talk loudly or offensively. They can start going off with their theory about how the Jews run the country through the freemasons. They can be drunk and throw up. They can wind down the window and scream obscenities at nearby women. They can... well, ask any taxi driver for stories about what the worst things random strangers can do to your car. If I were going to pick up random strangers to disrupt my otherwise-peaceful me-time alone in my car, it'd have to have a big incentive, and being able to split the money I pay for gas just ain't it. Being a taxi driver is a sucky job, and I don't wanna do it in my spare time for cents per mile.
- kragen 16y ago
  Hmm, you have a good point — aside from people in the US being paranoid about crime, they're also unbelievably intolerant, to the point that they're not comfortable around teenagers talking loudly, drunk people, or people with different political views.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    I'm not sure you're in a position to be lecturing others about tolerance after a comment like that. "Tolerance" is a noble concept in some sense. It means I respect the right of others to be stupid and annoying in the abstract, not necessarily in my passenger seat.
    - kragen 16y ago