7 ms·

City of Portland sues Uber

63 points by kevingadd 12y ago

closetnerd 12y ago
What the hell is going on? This is nonsensical now.
- devindotcom 12y ago
  What's nonsensical about it? Uber is operating in Portland without meeting local regulations. The city is suing them to make them stop.
  - blisterpeanuts 12y ago
    The courts will have to decide whether they're violating local regulations. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion.
    - cardiffspaceman 12y ago
      In court, they won't be able to play their libertarian white night savior of the world cards, so foregone or not, reaching the conclusion through some sort of open process, would be welcome. I like the idea that Uber might just wait until they were clearly within the law before operating.
- lkbm 12y ago
  What do you mean? Uber is operating in the city in violation of various regulations (judging from the article: liability insurance requirements, background check requirements, access for disabled people requirements, and caps on fees) and they're being brought to court for it. What would you consider sensible? Here's Portland's official website on the issue: https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/article/511920 https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/article/511920 > The Limited Passenger Transportation and Taxi Driver Permit requirements ensure the public that drivers have passed annual City-required annual background checks. > “If Uber thinks there should be no maximum price on what they charge Portlanders, they should make their case to the Portland City Council,” Novick said. “If Uber thinks taxi companies shouldn’t have to serve people with disabilities, they should make their case. If Uber thinks taxis should not have to have proper insurance in case of a crash, they should tell us why we should allow that.”
  - blisterpeanuts 12y ago
    Is Uber a taxi service? If so, it might be violating some regs. But if it's a ride sharing broker, there probably aren't any specific regs to cover that. This is all about the money. Uber is suddenly rich, at least in terms of estimated valuation, and that makes it worth it to put lawyers to work trying to get a piece of that action. I'm cheering for Uber in this fight. The taxi industry has long been over regulated and much too buddy-buddy with city governments, to the detriment of both the drivers and their customers. When I lived in Asia, taxis were much less regulated, the drivers had a lot more autonomy, and you could go anywhere for a couple of dollars; it was a fantastic alternative to owning a car. We have regulated the taxi industry into an overpriced mess that poorly serves the cities, especially the lower income people who can't afford to buy and maintain a car, who would most benefit from a ride sharing service to get them where they're going quickly and cheaply. Just my opinion :)
- emergentcypher 12y ago
  What's going on is Uber decided that because it doesn't like laws regulating taxis, it should be allowed to just ignore them.
  - SilasX 12y ago
    In sharp contrast to normal cabbies, who pick up the very first person hailing them without any discrimination, never refuse a destination, always have credit card machines that work, who completely don't expect you to pay them a dime beyond the regulated rate, are perfectly diligent in working with the disabled, and report every last dime that passes through their hands -- or, whey they fail to do these things, are prosecuted by the city with the exact level of vigor used in the current case against Uber. /s Sometimes it sucks when people ignore the law. So does selective prosecution.
    - emergentcypher 12y ago
      I missed the part where any of this justifies Uber's behaviour. This is just a bunch of baseless conjecture about what you think "normal cabbies" do.
      - closetnerd 12y ago
        I think your problem is that you assume that because Uber might be, in some cases, be ignoring regulations that that means that Uber's behavior is wrong. The law usually not a guideline for ethical behavior. Specially in a country as bureaucratic as ours. The law quickly becomes something that protects incumbents and stifles innovation.
  - prawn 12y ago
    While the other companies followed those laws and helped refine them over time. Is there anything Uber have done in terms of improving user experience that they couldn't have done within the same framework offered to every other business? Maybe something to do with branding of cars? A legal taxi company could have created a great app, had some form of driver/user voting, presumably handled payment through apps?
- dogecoinbase 12y ago
  I agree. Willful, blatant, knowing violations of law on the part of corporations should not be met with injunctions or fines, but with revocation of the corporate charter, dissolution of the company, and criminal prosecution of the executives and of the board.
  - brandonmenc 12y ago
    Hyperbole. It depends on what law they're breaking. You're proposing the equivalent of life imprisonment for unpaid parking tickets.
    - dogecoinbase 12y ago
      If done with malice aforethought on the part of a corporation, particularly a corporation with massive funding, I absolutely am. Companies cut down protected forests after doing a calculus that the resulting improvement in their housing development's view will be worth the fines. The punishments for this type of antisocial behavior need to be large enough to actually change the balance of their risk assessments.
      - nmjohn 12y ago
        > done with malice aforethought > massive funding Who gets to make that judgement? In my mind you are asking for punishment based on subjective criteria, which would be ripe for abuse.
        dogecoinbase 12y ago
        Neither of those are in the least subjective, except in degree. I'm saying that permitting the wealthy to choose to violate laws by paying token fines is a fundamentally broken system.
        mikeash 12y ago
        Um, is not the answer to your question obviously "the judge and jury"? You do realize that criteria like these are already central to deciding crimes and punishments for all sorts of offenses? For example, premeditated murder is a different crime with a substantially more severe punishment than deliberate murder in the heat of the moment, which in turn is different from and more severe than accidentally causing someone's death.
DigitalSea 12y ago
Seems that $40 billion evaluation has provoked some cities into taking action against Uber. The recent valuation after a hefty raising amount proved that Uber was no longer this small San Francisco startup any more, they are bigger in many cities than some taxi companies and now cities want their cut. While I personally do not use Uber, we need services like Uber to be allowed to operate. My recent experience going from the airport to downtown Los Angeles was absolute hell, the taxi driver tried forcing me to pay cash even though the card terminal was working. He wanted to drive me to an ATM to get cash out. This is the kind of thing I am tired of. Don't get me started on the last weekend I was in Vegas, the taxi services are just as bad there (and unreliable). I don't get the whole safety argument either, I have always felt safe in an Uber and Lyft, I have felt unsafe too many times when I have taken a regular taxi, when they're not deliberately taking you a longer way to extort cash or trying to get you to pay cash when you only have a credit card. I know we need regulation and fair enough, Uber are violating some local laws here, but driving services like Uber out of the city won't make things better. Local councils should be working with services like Uber, so they can coexist and operate legally. Lets get some solid legislation and requirements for ridesharing services, otherwise, they will just continue to operate regardless (as they have shown). This feels like a cash grab from the city of Portland. No doubt other cities are going to follow suit as well. Let the people decide who they want to drive with. The better product will always win out and if that is Lyft, Uber or whomever, it really highlights the issues that plague the taxi industry.
- comrh 12y ago
  > Lets get some solid legislation and requirements for ridesharing services Sounds like what the city is trying to do. And I don't see the "cash grab" from the city when their criticisms are not about taxation but fair use for the public.
- tptacek 12y ago
  Uber can honor city rate caps, require the appropriate insurance for their drivers and take financial responsibility for drivers that fail to maintain that insurance. Uber can also comply with the same rules about coverage areas that cabs are required to comply with. They can do all these things but choose not to. What's to "work around"? One of the blinders people wear when talking about Uber is the "it's just Uber" blinders. No: if Uber's regulatory arbitrage strategy succeeds, they'll be followed by even less scrupulous companies looking to exploit the same loophole.
brandonmenc 12y ago
> "If Uber thinks there should be no maximum price on what they charge Portlanders, they should make their case to the Portland City Council,” City Commissioner Steve Novick says in a statement. If Uber were the only way to get around town in Portland, that might be a valid complaint. If you want Uber to go out of business - and it seems like supporters of this action are in that camp - you want them to charge more than people are willing to pay.
- tptacek 12y ago
  No, that's only true if there is exactly one price sensitivity for the whole city. But there are many. I'll take an Uber black car just because it's convenient and comfy. I'm not price sensitive. My neighbors might not be comfortable spending even the normal cab rate. If Uber gets to cream my business off the top of the market, it harms the cab companies, drives some of them out of business, and in doing so harms the consumers who depend on those cab companies and their rate structure. People forget that one of the reasons we have cab regulations is that taxicabs are, for major metro areas, a de facto component of the public transportation infrastructure.
  - deleted 12y ago
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  - Pyxl101 12y ago
    There is an assumption within your comment that these different market segments ought to be served by a single transportation company. If Uber wants to come along and take the "cream", let them. If that means traditional taxi companies go out of business, or have to change their business model and cater to a different segment, then so be it. That's competition, and competition is a good, healthy thing. It keeps us strong. A market that doesn't allow this is dysfunctional. If some of these segments are unprofitable and cannot be served by regular businesses, then that's good for us to realize! That encourages us to have the discussion we ought to be having, which is: should we provide these services in pursuit of a social goal? And what are the services worth? I would be much more in favor of cities contracting with private companies to provide a service than passing regulation to require it. Requiring a service by regulation hides the true cost of the service and causes it to be borne in random places and in random ways through price increases. It's like a hidden tax. There should be a clear dollar cost for these services in the budget, and voters should be able to inspect the costs and decide what's reasonable. Requiring private companies to provide the service through regulation does not promote a transparent democracy, since voters cannot easily determine the cost, and indeed the actual cost may be hard to determine. For example, if the city wishes there to be a certain number of vehicles available for the disabled, then a reasonable and fair approach is to ask private transportation companies to bid on a contract to provide that service. The city should be satisfied paying the lowest bid for that service. If the lowest price is viewed as too high, then this is a signal that either some political debate is needed regarding the budget for such things, or that the resources should be spent on another social goal which provides value more effectively. Far too many different issues are bundled together in the discussions of taxis. We ought to unbundle them. [Edit: Sorry for reposting my comment. There seems to be some kind of issue that's preventing me from editing my comments in minor ways like I usually can.]
tim333 12y ago
Perhaps Uber's 'most ethically challenged company in Silicon Valley' reputation, as Peter Thiel puts it, is starting to cause them problems.
jrockway 12y ago
I liked Uber back when (in NYC anyway) all the drivers were regular black car drivers, and they all had the appropriate city credentials. Uber was only "violating" the rule that black cars couldn't be reserved less than 45 minutes in advance, which didn't seem like an important rule in Brooklyn (since the yellow cabs never venture out here except under extreme duress). Uber provided an easy way to call a car and pay for it; which was more than enough to get me to use the service. But now it's different, and it's just random people with random cars and an app. I haven't had any problems, but I wonder if they're pushing things too far. Every time I take a ride, I feel bad for how little the driver's getting paid. (Now that we have the green cabs out here, I usually use those. You can get one from the Uber app, but have to pay the driver normally, which is confusing.)
- hyperbovine 12y ago
  > Every time I take a ride, I feel bad for how little the driver's getting paid. Presumably you still eat out, enjoy clean bathrooms, eat fruit, or live and work inside of a building? If American capitalism is a well-oiled machine, unsustainably cheap labor is its lubricant. This debate is well worth having, but in no way is it specific to Uber.
  - jrockway 12y ago
    I really don't want to digress into an amateur economics thread, but here goes. American capitalism has some problems. The cost of goods, while reflecting the value added, also has the cost of externalities extracted. The cost of the cab ride may include gas and equipment depreciation, but may not include the cost of the driver's family not having the opportunity to find a better lot in life. Maybe it all works out fine; I don't know. But I'm guessing people with minimum wage jobs are not setting their own price for their work, but rather society is conspiring against them to convince them to work for less than their actual cost. (Does the average child of a single mother who works at McDonalds go to college and become a lawyer? Why not? Shouldn't they have that chance, even if it means your cheeseburger costs a dollar more?) End digression.
- AndrewKemendo 12y ago
Pyxl101 12y ago
Does anyone know if other towncar services in Portland are required to follow the same regulations that Uber is being asked to follow? Services of the sort that show up under "Portland towncar" or "Portland limo". A quick search on the matter reveals that Portland seems to have imposed ridiculous requirements on them: - a requirement that forces customers to arrange a trip with an executive sedan or limousine at least 60 minutes prior to pick-up. For example, if you request a town car and it comes in 10 minutes, you must wait 50 minutes before you are legally allowed to enter the vehicle. - a requirement that forces executive sedans and limousines to charge a 35% fixed premium above current taxi rates established by the city. This seems like serious and absurd intervention in the market for transportation. It's difficult for me to believe that rules like this are fair and justified. An article [1] suggests that these rules were put in place to "differentiate towncar service from taxicabs". The implication is that without these arbitrary limitations, taxicabs could not compete with towncars effectively. In other words, in an effort to protect the taxicab monopolies, the city is impairing other business. It seems to me to be the behavior of people in power who believe they know best. Haven't we learned by now that central planning is usually not an efficient way of allocating resources? This kind of interference in the market sounds like authoritarianism of the sort that I'd prefer not to see in my country. Strive to minimize regulation: limit it to matters of health and safety. Requiring insurance and an appropriate driver license seems reasonable. It seems like Portland is imposing rule after arbitrary rule on the marketplace. If I lived in Portland I would be furious that the city is interfering in such a way with business, and my personal right to contract with others for transportation in the manner that I want to. I suspect the city could accomplish its goals (such as ensuring that a certain number of vehicles provide transportation for the disabled) in a more efficient and fair manner, such as establishing a subsidy for transportation vehicles meeting certain requirements. It seems unreasonable to me that the city requires taxis to provide that service, rather than providing a subsidy for vehicles to support the disabled, or providing its own transportation directly, or contracting with a privacy company to do so. The point is, those issues shouldn't be arbitrarily bundled together (the business facility that provides taxis and the business facility that provides transportation to the disabled). Allow them to be the same company or not as the market allows. It also seems absurd to regulate the price charged for a fare. I have never understood the objection to surge pricing. When crazy things are happening (like snowstorms), drivers will not be out on the road working unless they're compensated more than usual. The rougher the circumstances, or the busier things are, the more the price needs to rise in order to provide adequate supply. Anyone objecting to the concept of surge pricing clearly does not understand basic economics. (Objecting to the implementation is a different matter.) A city trying to regulate maximum price is taking a thoughtless approach, and cannot be understood to genuinely have consumer interest at heart, since consumers will typically prefer to have transportation available at a high price than not at all. [1] http://www.geekwire.com/2014/portland-ridesharing/ http://www.geekwire.com/2014/portland-ridesharing/

63 points by kevingadd 12y ago

closetnerd 12y ago

What the hell is going on? This is nonsensical now.

devindotcom 12y ago
What's nonsensical about it? Uber is operating in Portland without meeting local regulations. The city is suing them to make them stop.
- blisterpeanuts 12y ago
  The courts will have to decide whether they're violating local regulations. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion.
  - cardiffspaceman 12y ago
    In court, they won't be able to play their libertarian white night savior of the world cards, so foregone or not, reaching the conclusion through some sort of open process, would be welcome. I like the idea that Uber might just wait until they were clearly within the law before operating.
lkbm 12y ago
What do you mean? Uber is operating in the city in violation of various regulations (judging from the article: liability insurance requirements, background check requirements, access for disabled people requirements, and caps on fees) and they're being brought to court for it. What would you consider sensible? Here's Portland's official website on the issue: https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/article/511920 https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/article/511920 > The Limited Passenger Transportation and Taxi Driver Permit requirements ensure the public that drivers have passed annual City-required annual background checks. > “If Uber thinks there should be no maximum price on what they charge Portlanders, they should make their case to the Portland City Council,” Novick said. “If Uber thinks taxi companies shouldn’t have to serve people with disabilities, they should make their case. If Uber thinks taxis should not have to have proper insurance in case of a crash, they should tell us why we should allow that.”
- blisterpeanuts 12y ago
  Is Uber a taxi service? If so, it might be violating some regs. But if it's a ride sharing broker, there probably aren't any specific regs to cover that. This is all about the money. Uber is suddenly rich, at least in terms of estimated valuation, and that makes it worth it to put lawyers to work trying to get a piece of that action. I'm cheering for Uber in this fight. The taxi industry has long been over regulated and much too buddy-buddy with city governments, to the detriment of both the drivers and their customers. When I lived in Asia, taxis were much less regulated, the drivers had a lot more autonomy, and you could go anywhere for a couple of dollars; it was a fantastic alternative to owning a car. We have regulated the taxi industry into an overpriced mess that poorly serves the cities, especially the lower income people who can't afford to buy and maintain a car, who would most benefit from a ride sharing service to get them where they're going quickly and cheaply. Just my opinion :)
emergentcypher 12y ago
What's going on is Uber decided that because it doesn't like laws regulating taxis, it should be allowed to just ignore them.
- SilasX 12y ago
  In sharp contrast to normal cabbies, who pick up the very first person hailing them without any discrimination, never refuse a destination, always have credit card machines that work, who completely don't expect you to pay them a dime beyond the regulated rate, are perfectly diligent in working with the disabled, and report every last dime that passes through their hands -- or, whey they fail to do these things, are prosecuted by the city with the exact level of vigor used in the current case against Uber. /s Sometimes it sucks when people ignore the law. So does selective prosecution.
  - emergentcypher 12y ago
    I missed the part where any of this justifies Uber's behaviour. This is just a bunch of baseless conjecture about what you think "normal cabbies" do.
    - closetnerd 12y ago
      I think your problem is that you assume that because Uber might be, in some cases, be ignoring regulations that that means that Uber's behavior is wrong. The law usually not a guideline for ethical behavior. Specially in a country as bureaucratic as ours. The law quickly becomes something that protects incumbents and stifles innovation.
- prawn 12y ago
  While the other companies followed those laws and helped refine them over time. Is there anything Uber have done in terms of improving user experience that they couldn't have done within the same framework offered to every other business? Maybe something to do with branding of cars? A legal taxi company could have created a great app, had some form of driver/user voting, presumably handled payment through apps?
dogecoinbase 12y ago
I agree. Willful, blatant, knowing violations of law on the part of corporations should not be met with injunctions or fines, but with revocation of the corporate charter, dissolution of the company, and criminal prosecution of the executives and of the board.
- brandonmenc 12y ago
  Hyperbole. It depends on what law they're breaking. You're proposing the equivalent of life imprisonment for unpaid parking tickets.
  - dogecoinbase 12y ago
    If done with malice aforethought on the part of a corporation, particularly a corporation with massive funding, I absolutely am. Companies cut down protected forests after doing a calculus that the resulting improvement in their housing development's view will be worth the fines. The punishments for this type of antisocial behavior need to be large enough to actually change the balance of their risk assessments.
    - nmjohn 12y ago
      > done with malice aforethought > massive funding Who gets to make that judgement? In my mind you are asking for punishment based on subjective criteria, which would be ripe for abuse.
      - dogecoinbase 12y ago
        Neither of those are in the least subjective, except in degree. I'm saying that permitting the wealthy to choose to violate laws by paying token fines is a fundamentally broken system.
      - mikeash 12y ago
        Um, is not the answer to your question obviously "the judge and jury"? You do realize that criteria like these are already central to deciding crimes and punishments for all sorts of offenses? For example, premeditated murder is a different crime with a substantially more severe punishment than deliberate murder in the heat of the moment, which in turn is different from and more severe than accidentally causing someone's death.

DigitalSea 12y ago

Seems that $40 billion evaluation has provoked some cities into taking action against Uber. The recent valuation after a hefty raising amount proved that Uber was no longer this small San Francisco startup any more, they are bigger in many cities than some taxi companies and now cities want their cut. While I personally do not use Uber, we need services like Uber to be allowed to operate. My recent experience going from the airport to downtown Los Angeles was absolute hell, the taxi driver tried forcing me to pay cash even though the card terminal was working. He wanted to drive me to an ATM to get cash out. This is the kind of thing I am tired of. Don't get me started on the last weekend I was in Vegas, the taxi services are just as bad there (and unreliable). I don't get the whole safety argument either, I have always felt safe in an Uber and Lyft, I have felt unsafe too many times when I have taken a regular taxi, when they're not deliberately taking you a longer way to extort cash or trying to get you to pay cash when you only have a credit card. I know we need regulation and fair enough, Uber are violating some local laws here, but driving services like Uber out of the city won't make things better. Local councils should be working with services like Uber, so they can coexist and operate legally. Lets get some solid legislation and requirements for ridesharing services, otherwise, they will just continue to operate regardless (as they have shown). This feels like a cash grab from the city of Portland. No doubt other cities are going to follow suit as well. Let the people decide who they want to drive with. The better product will always win out and if that is Lyft, Uber or whomever, it really highlights the issues that plague the taxi industry.

comrh 12y ago
> Lets get some solid legislation and requirements for ridesharing services Sounds like what the city is trying to do. And I don't see the "cash grab" from the city when their criticisms are not about taxation but fair use for the public.
tptacek 12y ago
Uber can honor city rate caps, require the appropriate insurance for their drivers and take financial responsibility for drivers that fail to maintain that insurance. Uber can also comply with the same rules about coverage areas that cabs are required to comply with. They can do all these things but choose not to. What's to "work around"? One of the blinders people wear when talking about Uber is the "it's just Uber" blinders. No: if Uber's regulatory arbitrage strategy succeeds, they'll be followed by even less scrupulous companies looking to exploit the same loophole.

brandonmenc 12y ago

> "If Uber thinks there should be no maximum price on what they charge Portlanders, they should make their case to the Portland City Council,” City Commissioner Steve Novick says in a statement. If Uber were the only way to get around town in Portland, that might be a valid complaint. If you want Uber to go out of business - and it seems like supporters of this action are in that camp - you want them to charge more than people are willing to pay.

tptacek 12y ago
No, that's only true if there is exactly one price sensitivity for the whole city. But there are many. I'll take an Uber black car just because it's convenient and comfy. I'm not price sensitive. My neighbors might not be comfortable spending even the normal cab rate. If Uber gets to cream my business off the top of the market, it harms the cab companies, drives some of them out of business, and in doing so harms the consumers who depend on those cab companies and their rate structure. People forget that one of the reasons we have cab regulations is that taxicabs are, for major metro areas, a de facto component of the public transportation infrastructure.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Pyxl101 12y ago
  There is an assumption within your comment that these different market segments ought to be served by a single transportation company. If Uber wants to come along and take the "cream", let them. If that means traditional taxi companies go out of business, or have to change their business model and cater to a different segment, then so be it. That's competition, and competition is a good, healthy thing. It keeps us strong. A market that doesn't allow this is dysfunctional. If some of these segments are unprofitable and cannot be served by regular businesses, then that's good for us to realize! That encourages us to have the discussion we ought to be having, which is: should we provide these services in pursuit of a social goal? And what are the services worth? I would be much more in favor of cities contracting with private companies to provide a service than passing regulation to require it. Requiring a service by regulation hides the true cost of the service and causes it to be borne in random places and in random ways through price increases. It's like a hidden tax. There should be a clear dollar cost for these services in the budget, and voters should be able to inspect the costs and decide what's reasonable. Requiring private companies to provide the service through regulation does not promote a transparent democracy, since voters cannot easily determine the cost, and indeed the actual cost may be hard to determine. For example, if the city wishes there to be a certain number of vehicles available for the disabled, then a reasonable and fair approach is to ask private transportation companies to bid on a contract to provide that service. The city should be satisfied paying the lowest bid for that service. If the lowest price is viewed as too high, then this is a signal that either some political debate is needed regarding the budget for such things, or that the resources should be spent on another social goal which provides value more effectively. Far too many different issues are bundled together in the discussions of taxis. We ought to unbundle them. [Edit: Sorry for reposting my comment. There seems to be some kind of issue that's preventing me from editing my comments in minor ways like I usually can.]

tim333 12y ago

Perhaps Uber's 'most ethically challenged company in Silicon Valley' reputation, as Peter Thiel puts it, is starting to cause them problems.

jrockway 12y ago

I liked Uber back when (in NYC anyway) all the drivers were regular black car drivers, and they all had the appropriate city credentials. Uber was only "violating" the rule that black cars couldn't be reserved less than 45 minutes in advance, which didn't seem like an important rule in Brooklyn (since the yellow cabs never venture out here except under extreme duress). Uber provided an easy way to call a car and pay for it; which was more than enough to get me to use the service. But now it's different, and it's just random people with random cars and an app. I haven't had any problems, but I wonder if they're pushing things too far. Every time I take a ride, I feel bad for how little the driver's getting paid. (Now that we have the green cabs out here, I usually use those. You can get one from the Uber app, but have to pay the driver normally, which is confusing.)

hyperbovine 12y ago
> Every time I take a ride, I feel bad for how little the driver's getting paid. Presumably you still eat out, enjoy clean bathrooms, eat fruit, or live and work inside of a building? If American capitalism is a well-oiled machine, unsustainably cheap labor is its lubricant. This debate is well worth having, but in no way is it specific to Uber.
- jrockway 12y ago
  I really don't want to digress into an amateur economics thread, but here goes. American capitalism has some problems. The cost of goods, while reflecting the value added, also has the cost of externalities extracted. The cost of the cab ride may include gas and equipment depreciation, but may not include the cost of the driver's family not having the opportunity to find a better lot in life. Maybe it all works out fine; I don't know. But I'm guessing people with minimum wage jobs are not setting their own price for their work, but rather society is conspiring against them to convince them to work for less than their actual cost. (Does the average child of a single mother who works at McDonalds go to college and become a lawyer? Why not? Shouldn't they have that chance, even if it means your cheeseburger costs a dollar more?) End digression.
AndrewKemendo 12y ago

Pyxl101 12y ago

Does anyone know if other towncar services in Portland are required to follow the same regulations that Uber is being asked to follow? Services of the sort that show up under "Portland towncar" or "Portland limo". A quick search on the matter reveals that Portland seems to have imposed ridiculous requirements on them: - a requirement that forces customers to arrange a trip with an executive sedan or limousine at least 60 minutes prior to pick-up. For example, if you request a town car and it comes in 10 minutes, you must wait 50 minutes before you are legally allowed to enter the vehicle. - a requirement that forces executive sedans and limousines to charge a 35% fixed premium above current taxi rates established by the city. This seems like serious and absurd intervention in the market for transportation. It's difficult for me to believe that rules like this are fair and justified. An article [1] suggests that these rules were put in place to "differentiate towncar service from taxicabs". The implication is that without these arbitrary limitations, taxicabs could not compete with towncars effectively. In other words, in an effort to protect the taxicab monopolies, the city is impairing other business. It seems to me to be the behavior of people in power who believe they know best. Haven't we learned by now that central planning is usually not an efficient way of allocating resources? This kind of interference in the market sounds like authoritarianism of the sort that I'd prefer not to see in my country. Strive to minimize regulation: limit it to matters of health and safety. Requiring insurance and an appropriate driver license seems reasonable. It seems like Portland is imposing rule after arbitrary rule on the marketplace. If I lived in Portland I would be furious that the city is interfering in such a way with business, and my personal right to contract with others for transportation in the manner that I want to. I suspect the city could accomplish its goals (such as ensuring that a certain number of vehicles provide transportation for the disabled) in a more efficient and fair manner, such as establishing a subsidy for transportation vehicles meeting certain requirements. It seems unreasonable to me that the city requires taxis to provide that service, rather than providing a subsidy for vehicles to support the disabled, or providing its own transportation directly, or contracting with a privacy company to do so. The point is, those issues shouldn't be arbitrarily bundled together (the business facility that provides taxis and the business facility that provides transportation to the disabled). Allow them to be the same company or not as the market allows. It also seems absurd to regulate the price charged for a fare. I have never understood the objection to surge pricing. When crazy things are happening (like snowstorms), drivers will not be out on the road working unless they're compensated more than usual. The rougher the circumstances, or the busier things are, the more the price needs to rise in order to provide adequate supply. Anyone objecting to the concept of surge pricing clearly does not understand basic economics. (Objecting to the implementation is a different matter.) A city trying to regulate maximum price is taking a thoughtless approach, and cannot be understood to genuinely have consumer interest at heart, since consumers will typically prefer to have transportation available at a high price than not at all. [1] http://www.geekwire.com/2014/portland-ridesharing/ http://www.geekwire.com/2014/portland-ridesharing/