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I actually joined a political party in my country, because they had the intention of protecting Uber. Some people wonder, but why? Why protect such scummy comp

I actually joined a political party in my country, because they had the intention of protecting Uber. Some people wonder, but why? Why protect such scummy company? Well, it was literally to save lives, as much illegal Uber behaviour is, what they were trying to replace was worse, MUCH worse. Where I live "Taxi Mafia" was a thing, not just in the usual sense people imagine, like blocking competitors using regulations, but people were murdering others, there were beatings, assassinations, theft, high level government corruption, the Taxi Mafia was evil and destructive as any other "<drugs/guns/slavery> Mafia" you can imagine. A lot of people claim Uber is evil because they say their workers are contractors and not employees. Well, before Uber if you wanted to be a driver, you had to purchase your own car, open your own company, and then give 50k USD to the local mafia boss, and promise to join combat whenever called. Combat? Yes, combat, gathering up drivers to kill a competitor was a thing, one infamous case for example: out of town driver parked near airport to deliver someone, a client in a hurry got on his cab as the other client was leaving, the local mafia didn't like this happened, so they surrounded the car and invited the driver for a "walk", took him under a nearby bridge, and they all kicked him until he was a mangled mess, and then they kicked him some more to make sure he was dead.

foepys 4y ago
I don't understand why breaking up the mafia wasn't a more pressing issue? What makes Uber drivers different that they won't be dragged from their cars and kicked to death?
- SSLy 4y ago
  the politicians from the parent commenter's city/state aren't in uber's bed
  - hunterb123 4y ago
    They don't have to be? They would only need to intimidate/recruit the Uber drivers (which they did) and use their gov connections to cover up the crime. A local mafia problem is a local mafia problem, no matter the transportation system being hijacked. This whole thread kinda turned into Taxi whataboutism to deflect from Uber.
- soneca 4y ago
  They were definitely threatened and beat in Brazil several times at the beginning (I don’t recall anyone dying on the news, but I maybe it happened). The difference is that anyone could become a Uber driver, where not everyone could become a tax driver (due to governmental regulations and tight control by the mafia)
marcosdumay 4y ago
I'm wary of adding a me too comment, because we may be talking about the same mafia. But yes, it looks like most large cities in Brazil had an organized mafia that lived on extorting small amounts from the people unlucky enough to need a taxi ride. It helps that the government was the one organizing them, mandating meetings and price fixing, but the rampant extortion was not called for. And yes, there were about 3 years of very public beatings and assassinations from the taxi mafia on my city before they finally went bankrupt and disappeared. And now, suddenly the taxi service has a similar quality to Uber.
px43 4y ago
This is true in lots of cities in the US too. In Portland, our police were working with the taxi union, and kept creating phony Uber accounts, requesting rides, and then fining the drivers. Obviously those riders were getting horrendously negative reviews, so they got added to the "greyball" list where the phony users would log onto the app, and it would look like there were no cars available. They had the gall to complain that they were being targeted unfairly. https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/uber-portland-greyball-subpoena-investigation/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/uber-portland-greyba... Fuck the taxi unions and especially the PPB for so many reasons. In Las Vegas, where the corruption is much, much deeper, police, at behest of the taxi union, were just driving around and towing any car with an Uber or Lyft sticker. When the ride sharing companies finally broke through, they were still forced to only pick up at the farthest point in the parking lot of their airport, and at the back end of any casino, which could mean 10-15 minutes of walking in the 100F weather to get to the rideshare pickup spot. Vegas is the only place in the US where I'll still take a taxi, which I hate, but ride share there is so horrible that there isn't really much of an option. I also got robbed in various ways about 50% of the time when taking a taxi in Miami, with taxi drivers driving circles, or threatening to drive off with my luggage if I didn't leave a tip that was several times the actual fare of the ride, etc. People who complain about ride sharing companies are obviously people who have had the privilege of never needing to ride in a taxi. Maybe they're okay in some places, but they've been terrible pretty much everywhere I've been. The reciprocal rating systems that ride share apps use is a godsend.
- morelisp 4y ago
  > This is true in lots of cities in the US too. What speeder is describing is not even close to true in any US city.
  - px43 4y ago
    Maybe, but from stories I've heard from some locals, Vegas is pretty close. It's very much a mob run city, and I've heard stories (completely unsubstantiated) of assassinations related to taxi turf battles etc, and the tourism board directing police officers to not record any murders unless there were a lot of public witnesses so they can still be a top travel destination for tourists. These are like, ramblings from random drunk dude on the street kind of stories, so maybe it's all BS, but it sounds like there is a lot of violent crime happening there in collaboration with the local police.
morelisp 4y ago
Why do you think Uber would not have participated in the same corruption (or worse) once it was sufficiently entrenched? Remember, this is the company that in the US threatened journalists, and in India stole medical records of critics. It's not hard to believe they'd cross any line someone else was already crossing relative to local mores.
- squiffsquiff 4y ago
  Not poster you asked but: With Uber you don't pay the driver directly. The price is set by a third party and so is the recommended route. Tricky to swindle the rate, route or tips. In areas where drivers have to be licensed, that is enforced so passenger and driver identity has some verification
- speeder 4y ago
  What made Uber special was that it ignored medallion/license laws. Those were central to taxi mafia. For example in São Paulo there was a period of time where some 30.000 or so drivers had passed all requisites, paid all fees, but whenever they applied for a license the government would only say they needed to wait. But if you paid 100k USD to certain guys, they would drop a cab, license and everything you needed at an agreed drop point, without any of the exams, testing, courses, etc...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hourago 4y ago
> but people murdering others What is stopping them murdering Uber drivers? Your story seems a caricature and makes little sense. "Uber saved my country from assassins" Which country it was? Wich political party?
- soneca 4y ago
  Brazil (I am assuming). Here, mainstream media (use Google translate to read it): https://g1.globo.com/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2010/07/imagens-mostram-taxista-sendo-agredido-por-outros-cinco-no-galeao.html https://g1.globo.com/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2010/07/imagens-... The police officer quote mentions a series of similar attacks. There used to be a video of the act, but probably link rotted.
  - hourago 4y ago
    > While taxi drivers must pass through a battery of paperwork, courses, exams and fees to offer what is known as public individual transportation in Brazil, private individual transportation services don’t have specific regulations on the books. So, Uber steals the jobs of people that prepared to drive a taxi and paid their taxes. And Uber still says that taxis are evil like if Uber had not ignored rapes happening in their services around the world. Uber propaganda is to vilify taxi drivers at any cost, to make them look sub-human. Uber is pure evil.
    - bquest2 4y ago
      I'm enjoying how unhinged some of these comments are sounding. Should make for a good case study later on.
notyourwork 4y ago
Taxi bad. Uber not as bad. Uber is ok? I don't see the mental gymnastics to give one a pass because another is bad.
- novok 4y ago
  Do not let perfect be the enemy of good.
  - notyourwork 4y ago
    We don't let robbers go because there are murderers out on the streets.
    - skeaker 4y ago
      If letting the robbers go made the murderers vanish then we probably would, actually.
      - notyourwork 4y ago
        Ok I'll bite, where do we draw the line on acceptable crimes? What is the threshold for a crime we should punish versus not? Isn't that anti to the premise that we have varying degrees of punitive consequences for convicted crimes?
        novok 4y ago
        It happens today quite a lot actually. You only have so many police, courts, prisons and so on, so you have to focus your law enforcement resources on what matters more. If you dug into how the practice of policing actually works, especially in higher crime areas, you'd probably be fairly surprised. A lot of crimes do not have a consequence, because the police and prosecutors do triage. Same thing happens with medical triage and prioritization. The essential argument is: don't block a potential improvement because it doesn't perfectly fix the problem, and instead just stay in a worse situation. Because often, the practical reality is you only have imperfect solutions, and hypothetical perfect ones often do not happen. And you can still execute your perfect solution later after the imperfect one is complete.

foepys 4y ago

I don't understand why breaking up the mafia wasn't a more pressing issue? What makes Uber drivers different that they won't be dragged from their cars and kicked to death?

SSLy 4y ago
the politicians from the parent commenter's city/state aren't in uber's bed
- hunterb123 4y ago
  They don't have to be? They would only need to intimidate/recruit the Uber drivers (which they did) and use their gov connections to cover up the crime. A local mafia problem is a local mafia problem, no matter the transportation system being hijacked. This whole thread kinda turned into Taxi whataboutism to deflect from Uber.
soneca 4y ago
They were definitely threatened and beat in Brazil several times at the beginning (I don’t recall anyone dying on the news, but I maybe it happened). The difference is that anyone could become a Uber driver, where not everyone could become a tax driver (due to governmental regulations and tight control by the mafia)

marcosdumay 4y ago

I'm wary of adding a me too comment, because we may be talking about the same mafia. But yes, it looks like most large cities in Brazil had an organized mafia that lived on extorting small amounts from the people unlucky enough to need a taxi ride. It helps that the government was the one organizing them, mandating meetings and price fixing, but the rampant extortion was not called for. And yes, there were about 3 years of very public beatings and assassinations from the taxi mafia on my city before they finally went bankrupt and disappeared. And now, suddenly the taxi service has a similar quality to Uber.

px43 4y ago

This is true in lots of cities in the US too. In Portland, our police were working with the taxi union, and kept creating phony Uber accounts, requesting rides, and then fining the drivers. Obviously those riders were getting horrendously negative reviews, so they got added to the "greyball" list where the phony users would log onto the app, and it would look like there were no cars available. They had the gall to complain that they were being targeted unfairly. https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/uber-portland-greyball-subpoena-investigation/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/uber-portland-greyba... Fuck the taxi unions and especially the PPB for so many reasons. In Las Vegas, where the corruption is much, much deeper, police, at behest of the taxi union, were just driving around and towing any car with an Uber or Lyft sticker. When the ride sharing companies finally broke through, they were still forced to only pick up at the farthest point in the parking lot of their airport, and at the back end of any casino, which could mean 10-15 minutes of walking in the 100F weather to get to the rideshare pickup spot. Vegas is the only place in the US where I'll still take a taxi, which I hate, but ride share there is so horrible that there isn't really much of an option. I also got robbed in various ways about 50% of the time when taking a taxi in Miami, with taxi drivers driving circles, or threatening to drive off with my luggage if I didn't leave a tip that was several times the actual fare of the ride, etc. People who complain about ride sharing companies are obviously people who have had the privilege of never needing to ride in a taxi. Maybe they're okay in some places, but they've been terrible pretty much everywhere I've been. The reciprocal rating systems that ride share apps use is a godsend.

morelisp 4y ago
> This is true in lots of cities in the US too. What speeder is describing is not even close to true in any US city.
- px43 4y ago
  Maybe, but from stories I've heard from some locals, Vegas is pretty close. It's very much a mob run city, and I've heard stories (completely unsubstantiated) of assassinations related to taxi turf battles etc, and the tourism board directing police officers to not record any murders unless there were a lot of public witnesses so they can still be a top travel destination for tourists. These are like, ramblings from random drunk dude on the street kind of stories, so maybe it's all BS, but it sounds like there is a lot of violent crime happening there in collaboration with the local police.

morelisp 4y ago

Why do you think Uber would not have participated in the same corruption (or worse) once it was sufficiently entrenched? Remember, this is the company that in the US threatened journalists, and in India stole medical records of critics. It's not hard to believe they'd cross any line someone else was already crossing relative to local mores.

squiffsquiff 4y ago
Not poster you asked but: With Uber you don't pay the driver directly. The price is set by a third party and so is the recommended route. Tricky to swindle the rate, route or tips. In areas where drivers have to be licensed, that is enforced so passenger and driver identity has some verification
speeder 4y ago
What made Uber special was that it ignored medallion/license laws. Those were central to taxi mafia. For example in São Paulo there was a period of time where some 30.000 or so drivers had passed all requisites, paid all fees, but whenever they applied for a license the government would only say they needed to wait. But if you paid 100k USD to certain guys, they would drop a cab, license and everything you needed at an agreed drop point, without any of the exams, testing, courses, etc...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

hourago 4y ago

> but people murdering others What is stopping them murdering Uber drivers? Your story seems a caricature and makes little sense. "Uber saved my country from assassins" Which country it was? Wich political party?

soneca 4y ago
Brazil (I am assuming). Here, mainstream media (use Google translate to read it): https://g1.globo.com/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2010/07/imagens-mostram-taxista-sendo-agredido-por-outros-cinco-no-galeao.html https://g1.globo.com/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2010/07/imagens-... The police officer quote mentions a series of similar attacks. There used to be a video of the act, but probably link rotted.
- hourago 4y ago
  > While taxi drivers must pass through a battery of paperwork, courses, exams and fees to offer what is known as public individual transportation in Brazil, private individual transportation services don’t have specific regulations on the books. So, Uber steals the jobs of people that prepared to drive a taxi and paid their taxes. And Uber still says that taxis are evil like if Uber had not ignored rapes happening in their services around the world. Uber propaganda is to vilify taxi drivers at any cost, to make them look sub-human. Uber is pure evil.
  - bquest2 4y ago
    I'm enjoying how unhinged some of these comments are sounding. Should make for a good case study later on.

notyourwork 4y ago

Taxi bad. Uber not as bad. Uber is ok? I don't see the mental gymnastics to give one a pass because another is bad.

novok 4y ago
Do not let perfect be the enemy of good.
- notyourwork 4y ago
  We don't let robbers go because there are murderers out on the streets.
  - skeaker 4y ago
    If letting the robbers go made the murderers vanish then we probably would, actually.
    - notyourwork 4y ago
      Ok I'll bite, where do we draw the line on acceptable crimes? What is the threshold for a crime we should punish versus not? Isn't that anti to the premise that we have varying degrees of punitive consequences for convicted crimes?
      - novok 4y ago
        It happens today quite a lot actually. You only have so many police, courts, prisons and so on, so you have to focus your law enforcement resources on what matters more. If you dug into how the practice of policing actually works, especially in higher crime areas, you'd probably be fairly surprised. A lot of crimes do not have a consequence, because the police and prosecutors do triage. Same thing happens with medical triage and prioritization. The essential argument is: don't block a potential improvement because it doesn't perfectly fix the problem, and instead just stay in a worse situation. Because often, the practical reality is you only have imperfect solutions, and hypothetical perfect ones often do not happen. And you can still execute your perfect solution later after the imperfect one is complete.