6 ms·

Neelie Kroes responds to taxi protests in Europe

67 points by Eduard 12y ago

norswap 12y ago
It's nuanced, not peddling to any one camp and shows deep understanding of the issues at hand. I wish more politicians were like Neelie Kroes.
- tormeh 12y ago
  She's my favorite politician.
fidotron 12y ago
This is really quite a remarkable response, and in my view entirely correct. "More generally, the job of the law is not to lie to you and tell you that everything will always be comfortable or that tomorrow will be the same as today." That's possibly the single biggest unstated divide in modern western society, where a significant proportion of the population do think they can legislate complete stability for themselves into existence, and that's one of the first times I've ever seen it so bluntly shot down. A lot of people just want the quiet easy life, and get ferociously angry when they perceive someone else as rocking their boat.
- antihero 12y ago
  But then, contrast this with the Uber CEO's trying to get rich by essentially destroying the livelihoods of a huge amount of people. Ethics does play a part in this, and obviously what he says is true, but it's only true because there are so many greedy people out there that put their own desires over others' needs. Disrupting markets may be sexy, but you always have to think of the consequences. I was discussing the idea with a friend about buying a company in order to grab their customer base, which he thought was a fantastic idea until I pointed out that it utterly fucks over the employees of that company. Sure, if his company was good enough, he'd win eventually, but you can coexist and do things in a way that aren't utterly vicious and unethical. There's a middle way, which is allowing evolution but in an ethical, considerate manner.
  - fidotron 12y ago
    But as she mentions, just wait for driverless cars. Or should they be pre-emptively banned as they'll destroy the livelihoods of millions? This isn't Uber's CEO being evil, it's simply that they found new efficiencies to squeeze out enabled with newer technology.
    - antihero 12y ago
      I'm not advocating banning them, please read what I'm actually saying. I'm saying that utterly free markets mean that many people are left behind and suffer, because it takes time to adapt and re-train (and often people are too old to do this). So, we should facilitate evolution in such a way that accommodates human beings. Perhaps if we replaced the cars with driverless people and the farmers with automated farms, these people should not have to work, because the work is done for them? Except in this world, even if every part of our lives was automated, we'd still have to work for pittance (or even compete with the machines), because the machines would be owned by private entities. This is the nature of exploitation - a job is seen as a gift, and the more we automate, the less jobs there are to do, and it becomes a race to the bottom. When things get automated, we don't allow the people who previously did those jobs rest, because everything has to be "earned". Whilst technology is amazing and has led to unparalleled productivity and efficiency, the owners are the ones who have benefited massively disproportionately to humanity as a whole - any positives to everyone else are just a side-effect.
      - fidotron 12y ago
        Free markets are the only way to avoid catastrophic booms and busts. Protectionism leads to giant bubbles which fail all at once, as opposed to more manageable gradual change. Farms are significantly automated, compared to a hundred years ago. And farmers continue to attempt to improve their own efficiency. Cabs are in a sense automated, it's just that the last big group made unemployed by a technological revolution at that point were horses. They just stopped moving forward after that. Nothing prevented the cab drivers coming up with something like Uber themselves. If you prefer existing taxis to Uber then you're currently free to make that choice with your wallet - but that choice is exactly what protectionists want to take away from people. Ultimately protectionism becomes a giant hidden tax in society, and competing societies with less of it in the long term win.
- OneOneOneOne 12y ago
  I think most respondents are missing your point. At heart this is not about Uber or disrupting technologies.
ddalex 12y ago
I think it is missing the point - the protests are not against digital innovation, as much as Uber would like to point so. There are countless taxi applications out there that will allow you to get a taxi at the press of a button - nobody is having a beef with that. Uber and the other apps provide the same service - you get a car to transport you from A to B and you pay for the service proportional with the distance and time you sit in that car. The essential difference between Uber and the other apps is that Uber uses unlicensed drivers, while the other apps use licensed drivers. This creates a big handicap for the regulated taxis. Uber skirts around the law to avoid regulation, and the difference in cost of operation enables them to "win". The playing field is simply not fair and not equal to all players. Either we start regulating Uber drivers as equal to other taxi service providers, requiring expensive licences, or we eliminate regulation for all drivers. Let's not make a technological poster child out of Uber's skirting of laws.
- splintercell 12y ago
  > Either we start regulating Uber drivers as equal to other taxi service providers, requiring expensive licences, or we eliminate regulation for all drivers. So why aren't the Tax drivers protesting against the regulation? Their decision to protest tells you where they see more benefit. You may keep on saying that this is not about their stance against digital innovation, but the fact is that its all about economics. Taxi cabs in most major cities run on a Medallion system, its an artificial limit on the number of cabs that can exist in the city(sometimes done because of lobbying by the existing cab owners, sometimes to reduce the number of cabs in the city). This restriction causes the price of Medallion to be artificially higher than it should be. For instance in NYC, Medallions are now sold for upto $1 million. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/nyregion/1-million-medallions-stifling-the-dreams-of-cabdrivers.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/nyregion/1-million-medalli... Why do people pay $1 million to own a cab? Because this is the aggregated value they estimate to be, based on the number of years they will operate the cab for(and the profit they will make from it). This is precisely why most cab owners in the NYC are immigrants who can barely speak English, because only they have the savings to own and operate a cab. Imagine you having spent $1 million to acquire a cab medallion, would you support any measure to increase the number of cabs in the city? Nope! That's precisely why all measures against increasing this number is heavily resisted by the cab owners. The value of their capital asset goes down if the number of cabs goes up in the city. You'd think that they would be ok with bringing Uber under the same medallion system but that position would be completely contradictory to their economic interest. They have, in past resisted increase in number of medallions, so that makes no sense for them to even remotely support bringing Uber under the same licensing system. This is also the reason why the slave owners of the south resisted abolition of slavery. A slave stops being a 'labor' input in your profit and loss calculation, and becomes a capital asset. Its value is derived from the total earnings anticipated to be made in the lifetime of the slave. Consider it like this, if you are a programmer who can make $100K a year, and has a working life of 20 years, then a slave owner would be willing to pay you upto $100K*20 = $20M to posses you, of course he wouldn't wanna pay $20M, because then he would make no profit, plus there is a risk potential involved, running away or death, so like $10M. Now if a slave owner pays $10M to acquire you then there is no way he would wanna set you free until he at least recuperates that cost.

67 points by Eduard 12y ago

It's nuanced, not peddling to any one camp and shows deep understanding of the issues at hand. I wish more politicians were like Neelie Kroes.

tormeh 12y ago
She's my favorite politician.

fidotron 12y ago

This is really quite a remarkable response, and in my view entirely correct. "More generally, the job of the law is not to lie to you and tell you that everything will always be comfortable or that tomorrow will be the same as today." That's possibly the single biggest unstated divide in modern western society, where a significant proportion of the population do think they can legislate complete stability for themselves into existence, and that's one of the first times I've ever seen it so bluntly shot down. A lot of people just want the quiet easy life, and get ferociously angry when they perceive someone else as rocking their boat.

antihero 12y ago
But then, contrast this with the Uber CEO's trying to get rich by essentially destroying the livelihoods of a huge amount of people. Ethics does play a part in this, and obviously what he says is true, but it's only true because there are so many greedy people out there that put their own desires over others' needs. Disrupting markets may be sexy, but you always have to think of the consequences. I was discussing the idea with a friend about buying a company in order to grab their customer base, which he thought was a fantastic idea until I pointed out that it utterly fucks over the employees of that company. Sure, if his company was good enough, he'd win eventually, but you can coexist and do things in a way that aren't utterly vicious and unethical. There's a middle way, which is allowing evolution but in an ethical, considerate manner.
- fidotron 12y ago
  But as she mentions, just wait for driverless cars. Or should they be pre-emptively banned as they'll destroy the livelihoods of millions? This isn't Uber's CEO being evil, it's simply that they found new efficiencies to squeeze out enabled with newer technology.
  - antihero 12y ago
    I'm not advocating banning them, please read what I'm actually saying. I'm saying that utterly free markets mean that many people are left behind and suffer, because it takes time to adapt and re-train (and often people are too old to do this). So, we should facilitate evolution in such a way that accommodates human beings. Perhaps if we replaced the cars with driverless people and the farmers with automated farms, these people should not have to work, because the work is done for them? Except in this world, even if every part of our lives was automated, we'd still have to work for pittance (or even compete with the machines), because the machines would be owned by private entities. This is the nature of exploitation - a job is seen as a gift, and the more we automate, the less jobs there are to do, and it becomes a race to the bottom. When things get automated, we don't allow the people who previously did those jobs rest, because everything has to be "earned". Whilst technology is amazing and has led to unparalleled productivity and efficiency, the owners are the ones who have benefited massively disproportionately to humanity as a whole - any positives to everyone else are just a side-effect.
    - fidotron 12y ago
      Free markets are the only way to avoid catastrophic booms and busts. Protectionism leads to giant bubbles which fail all at once, as opposed to more manageable gradual change. Farms are significantly automated, compared to a hundred years ago. And farmers continue to attempt to improve their own efficiency. Cabs are in a sense automated, it's just that the last big group made unemployed by a technological revolution at that point were horses. They just stopped moving forward after that. Nothing prevented the cab drivers coming up with something like Uber themselves. If you prefer existing taxis to Uber then you're currently free to make that choice with your wallet - but that choice is exactly what protectionists want to take away from people. Ultimately protectionism becomes a giant hidden tax in society, and competing societies with less of it in the long term win.
OneOneOneOne 12y ago
I think most respondents are missing your point. At heart this is not about Uber or disrupting technologies.

ddalex 12y ago

I think it is missing the point - the protests are not against digital innovation, as much as Uber would like to point so. There are countless taxi applications out there that will allow you to get a taxi at the press of a button - nobody is having a beef with that. Uber and the other apps provide the same service - you get a car to transport you from A to B and you pay for the service proportional with the distance and time you sit in that car. The essential difference between Uber and the other apps is that Uber uses unlicensed drivers, while the other apps use licensed drivers. This creates a big handicap for the regulated taxis. Uber skirts around the law to avoid regulation, and the difference in cost of operation enables them to "win". The playing field is simply not fair and not equal to all players. Either we start regulating Uber drivers as equal to other taxi service providers, requiring expensive licences, or we eliminate regulation for all drivers. Let's not make a technological poster child out of Uber's skirting of laws.

splintercell 12y ago
> Either we start regulating Uber drivers as equal to other taxi service providers, requiring expensive licences, or we eliminate regulation for all drivers. So why aren't the Tax drivers protesting against the regulation? Their decision to protest tells you where they see more benefit. You may keep on saying that this is not about their stance against digital innovation, but the fact is that its all about economics. Taxi cabs in most major cities run on a Medallion system, its an artificial limit on the number of cabs that can exist in the city(sometimes done because of lobbying by the existing cab owners, sometimes to reduce the number of cabs in the city). This restriction causes the price of Medallion to be artificially higher than it should be. For instance in NYC, Medallions are now sold for upto $1 million. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/nyregion/1-million-medallions-stifling-the-dreams-of-cabdrivers.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/nyregion/1-million-medalli... Why do people pay $1 million to own a cab? Because this is the aggregated value they estimate to be, based on the number of years they will operate the cab for(and the profit they will make from it). This is precisely why most cab owners in the NYC are immigrants who can barely speak English, because only they have the savings to own and operate a cab. Imagine you having spent $1 million to acquire a cab medallion, would you support any measure to increase the number of cabs in the city? Nope! That's precisely why all measures against increasing this number is heavily resisted by the cab owners. The value of their capital asset goes down if the number of cabs goes up in the city. You'd think that they would be ok with bringing Uber under the same medallion system but that position would be completely contradictory to their economic interest. They have, in past resisted increase in number of medallions, so that makes no sense for them to even remotely support bringing Uber under the same licensing system. This is also the reason why the slave owners of the south resisted abolition of slavery. A slave stops being a 'labor' input in your profit and loss calculation, and becomes a capital asset. Its value is derived from the total earnings anticipated to be made in the lifetime of the slave. Consider it like this, if you are a programmer who can make $100K a year, and has a working life of 20 years, then a slave owner would be willing to pay you upto $100K*20 = $20M to posses you, of course he wouldn't wanna pay $20M, because then he would make no profit, plus there is a risk potential involved, running away or death, so like $10M. Now if a slave owner pays $10M to acquire you then there is no way he would wanna set you free until he at least recuperates that cost.