4 ms·

like Airbnb getting sued in New York? or Uber/Lyft/etc having to go through extortionary-like procedures in California? ...

• mbreese 13y ago
  Some regulation can be good. Airbnb, Lyft and to a lesser degree Uber (definitely UberX) are all competing with established industries that are heavily regulated for a reason. Hotels and taxis are regulated to protect consumers (think safety). Requiring car manufacturers to sell via franchised dealers protects franchised dealers. That's a big difference.
  • hearty778 13y ago
    Has there been a wave of consumer harm caused by Uber? What makes taxis safer than Uber?
    • mbreese 13y ago
      Not that I know of. Uber, I think, has done a good job of running a good, self-regulated, business in leu of government regulation. I'm less worried about Uber specifically than the non-medallion transportation sector in general. Taxis are regulated because you could have issues when someone gets into a random person's car. You can imagine how that would be dangerous for consumers (both physically and financially). I personally like Uber a lot and had a good experience when I was able to use them. But, you could see how a lesser competitor could cut corners in background checking their drivers. I'd rather have somethings explicitly regulated than trust that all companies are interested in spending money on things like background checks. AirBnB has the same flaws, but even more pronounced.
• unknownian 13y ago
  >or Uber/Lyft/etc having to go through extortionary-like procedures in California? Forgive me for not knowing all the details, but what is the extortion in the fact that Taxi co's have to pay fees that Uber and Lyft don't? I'm guessing there is more to this than I know.
  • 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
    Some people have a hard time grasping the idea that you can be against unnecessary, foolish laws without being for companies that flout them.
  • jarrett 13y ago
    Extortion is perhaps not the most accurate word, going strictly by its definition. Anyway, the objection isn't to taxation of taxis, but rather to outright excluding new entrants to the taxi market. Which many cities do, via the medallion system.
    • dmayle 13y ago
      I must admit, I don't see how it's extortion. It's capitalism at it's finest (by forcing the consideration of externalities as a free-market commodity). Since space in the streets is a fixed size-resource, supply and demand work to price medallions accordingly. If anything, the city sells medallions (referring to NYC) at a rate much lower than their actual value on the free market.
      • jtoeman 13y ago
        by definition, the city selling a fixed quantity of medallions is NOT capitalism at its finest. enabling an infinite number of providers to charge any price for any service they want, then letting those with the best offering win, is capitalism at its finest. the moment the government gets involved in limiting distribution you veer away from open markets/capitalism. not that i'm a huge fan of unfettered capitalism, but just clarifying...
      • jarrett 13y ago
        Putting an absolute cap on supply, which is what medallion programs do, is not a free market solution. If you feel that use of the streets is not being rationed efficiently, or that heavy users of the streets are not paying enough relative to light users, then you can impose some kind of sliding scale or conditional tax on street use. This is not at all the same as an absolute cap on supply.
• throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
  I'm not arguing that US is universally free-market today, rather that it was less free-market 50 years ago.
  • jtoeman 13y ago
    i don't really agree. other than some deregulation (power, cable, etc), for the most part i'd say the government today is more intertwined with lobbyists/big corporations' interests at heart than they used to be...
    • hearty778 13y ago
      Car franchise laws and taxi medallions didn't exist in the 70s?
  • rtpg 13y ago
    I'm really tired of people trying to set an equivalence between free markets and lack of regulation. I don't know if that's exactly what you're trying to do but: A free market is a very specific definition, there are things like atomicity of actors and whatnot. Loads of regulations can help meet that, for example: -Governments handing out tax credits to new companies helps free markets -Governments setting in anti-trust laws helps free markets -Governments setting disclosure regulations helps free markets Some regulations harm free markets (namely things like entry controls), but others protect it. We need to learn to make the distinction