5 ms·

Well, a taxi license in Spain costs as much as a good new house. Maybe even two houses depending on the area. Historically, people needed to take big credits

• samuel 12y ago
  Also, licenses had their own bubble. Probably their value has decreased about a 50% since the peak.
  • vimes656 12y ago
    Exactly, the price for a driver spot is driven by demand, it's not expensive just by law. Traditionally, getting a driver license in Spain has always been like signing for a relatively well paid and secure job for life. And moreover, there is no need for any investment learning any particularly difficult skill. This is all supported by ridiculously high fares backed by regulations. This is not to put the blame on taxi drivers, I truly believe they are choosing a honest option to make a living. But considering that an important factor, if not the most important, for the Spanish economical crisis is the inability to adapt to a global economy, with this kind of actions, the message the government is sending is: "don't invest your time learning to code, or getting engineering degrees because we are still trying everything in our hand to keep traditional professions secure and well paid, not like those new risky technological jobs". The average Spanish programmer is in a more precarious situation than anyone with a highly regulated unskilled profession. Here in Spain, I'm constantly seeing measures to try to maintain the old ways of living at any cost with total disregard about how the rest of the world is evolving. I'm not claiming globalization is good or bad but it's happening, and if the Spanish government keeps trying to hide it from its population with more debt, in the long term, it only means less economical competitiveness for the country and slimmer chances to catch up with the rest of the world in the future. Defending these minority groups only means more poverty overall for everyone in Spain.
• pron 12y ago
  > Also I've empathy for those who want to make use of Uber services. It's not easy to make justice to all of them at the same time. Well, it depends on your culture and perspective, of course. To me, the answer is almost always clear and obvious: when there's a conflict between the worker's happiness and the consumer's happiness, the worker comes first. Society's role is to ensure its members can make a respectable livelihood -- not to solve every minor inconvenience for those whose comfortable survival is already guaranteed, or to make their life more "efficient". Of course, if the rich want to run their lives like well-oiled machines, it's their prerogative, as long as they don't interfere with society's more important goals.
  • samuel 12y ago
    The thing is that they aren't workers. It would be a much easier problem to solve if they were. They are freelancers with unlimited liability.
  • _yosefk 12y ago
    You mean typewriter manufacturers should have been kept afloat forever using taxpayers' funds so as to not fire workers? (That's what "the worker comes first" despite the consumer not wanting the product would mean, I think. If not, then the question is where you draw the line and how you measure the harm done to the average worker when he is forced to support other workers who are unproductive compared to available alternatives. For instance, rich people have private cars and sometimes private drivers and don't need taxis that much. Who needs a taxi? Someone without a car who needs to quickly get from A to B. Could be a rather poor chap. Of course, taxis, that regulated brand of public transportation, are hardly affordable on a regular basis to "poor" people. Whether this helps or hurts "workers" is not obvious to me. All of which is not to say that I'm "on Uber's side" or some such, I'm too uninformed to take a side on this one. Just wondering about your "pro-worker" statement.)
    • pron 12y ago
      Common sense and politics[1] usually provide the answer. I'm not talking about keeping dead industries afloat, but protecting certain necessary ventures through regulation, to ensure that the workers get compensated fairly for their required service. It is better to have customers wait another 3 minutes for a taxi, than taxi drivers not being able to make ends meet. The important thing to remember is that we aren't supposed to work for the sake of the economy; the economy is meant to work for us. What that means in practice, is left for each country, with its own culture and customs, to decide. [1]: Although I mean politics in its very common denotation (i.e. the work of politicians, and not "politics of oppression"), it does provide a very good mechanism for groups to bargain over interests. It doesn't always come up with the same answer your common sense would give you, but it's sometimes better (though more annoying): it allows groups to consider various proposals as a package, rather than fight it out over each one in isolation (e.g. we won't oppose increase in gas tax if you don't allow unregulated taxi services).
• Kurtz79 12y ago
  I think that it´s an easy position to take. If the government sides with Uber it loses the money he get from the (outrageously expensive, like you said) licenses, and has a lot of unhappy voters (taxi drivers). What would it gain ? Better service ? Lower prices, more fares ? Happier citizen ? That is really all to be demonstrated. It´s a very rational decision in my opinion, on part of the government, although I might not agree with it. On the human side, I agree that taxi drivers deserve sympathy, but no more than other owners of traditional businesses that are made obsolete by progress (small CD shop owners, bookstores, photo development shops)...
  • samuel 12y ago
    The councils(not the goverment) sell/auctions a tiny fraction of licenses. There's a secondary market where license owners sell them, usually when they retire.