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Well, I'm glad I could help you vent some righteous indignation by holding me responsible for an interpretation of a statement that I explicitly explained wasn'
by mseebach 12y ago
Well, I'm glad I could help you vent some righteous indignation by holding me responsible for an interpretation of a statement that I explicitly explained wasn't what I was trying to say.
You don't get to decide who are activists based on whether you agree with them. Activism literally just means "doing something". And the drivers and passengers that use Uber/want to use Uber are very much citizens trying to get a fair shake. The people of Germany will be the one deciding, but - and here comes the actual point: such decisions are never made in a vacuum. Rules and regulations are made in response to circumstances in the real world changing, not the other way around. The emergence of Uber (and Lyft and plenty more) is the real world changing.
- pgeorgi 12y agoSo they're activists. For what cause? Simple: for maximizing their own profit. They have no interest in making it easy for Lyft (as they have repeatedly shown), or for licensed taxi drivers that are required by their license to cover the whole county, or for the people living in somewhat remote (but affordable) areas that won't benefit because no Uber driver wants to drive there without a surging incentive. As soon as they can, they'll use their war chest to lobby harder than German taxi companies could ever do. And they won't do it for the general public's benefit and they won't do it "for the taxi drivers". Lobbying is not a déformation professionnelle of taxi company bosses, but of people with money. In this case this means: Uber, not the taxis. We don't need to import every flawed idea from overseas, and establishing a new monopoly where there's now a certain amount of (regulated) competition certainly belongs in that category.