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German court issues nationwide ban on Uber driving services
- 1971genocide 12y agoStuff like this is going to be more and more common as govt doesn't want 25+ % of their population to be unemployed due to nerds churning out code.
- andrewpi 12y agoAny evidence that Uber leads to more unemployment rather than less unemployment?
- michaelbuckbee 12y agoUber have stated that they are developing self driving cars http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/03/technology/innovationnation/uber-self-driving-cars/ http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/03/technology/innovationnation/...
- ptaipale 12y agoWouldn't it then be more sensible to ban Google from doing business? If it is bad to develop new technology that utilizes resources (people, material, energy) more efficiently.
- pluma 12y agoCalling Uber drivers "employed" is no different from calling temp agency workers "employed". It's not a solution to unemployment, it's an exploitation of people unable to find a job in societies where not having a job means living in poverty. They're not entrepreneurs either. They're workers who have the liberty of employees with the legal requirements of entrepreneurs. It's the worst of both worlds.
- andrewpi 12y agoTemp agency workers are generally considered employed. Government statistics include temp workers as well.
- pluma 12y agoSure, except (at least in Germany) they get the short end of the stick. They generally have to enter into non-competes, prohibiting them from working for other agencies or companies. They are only paid when the temp agency actually has work for them. They generally get zero benefits compared to regular employees. They also tend to be paid pennies and don't benefit from labour agreements (because unlike their regular employee co-workers they're not allowed to unionize). Basically, they're like independent contractors, except they're not independent. Temp agencies in this form weren't even legal in Germany until a few years ago (well, about a decade now).
- ptaipale 12y agoThis sounds a bit of a Luddite approach to me. Yeah, all those spinning Jennies make weavers unemployed.
- jjoonathan 12y agoRight, but if you blame the proximal cause of unemployment then you don't have to address the underlying social issues or ask hard questions about the legitimacy of a system that snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.
- ptaipale 12y agoGood point. Spinning Jennies and Uber taxis work as scapegoats; often the mental change is the hardest.
- sfk 12y agoWhat mental change? To accept boring non-innovations as something fundamental?
- jjoonathan 12y agoNo, to accept the possibility that we will need to institute economic policy that decreases the supply of unskilled labor without punishing the unskilled laborers for working below capacity. We've done it before and we'll do it again, but in a society that (correctly) sees hard work as a personal virtue and is controlled by people with a vested interest in conflating the personal virtue with the societal virtue of promoting hard work, there's a fight every time the policies need tweaking.
- onion2k 12y agoIf that's the analogy you're going to use, it's probably worth remembering that the new jobs mechanisation created in the industrial revolution were in horrible conditions where the people using the new technologies died young after being worked to death putting in long hours for minimal wages.
- jonathanza 12y agoI live in a country with 25% unemployment, South Africa. I've used Uber a few times in the last week or so and my drivers have been: - A high-school dropout studying towards his Matric and wanting to go into engineering. - An owner of a backpacker lodge looking to do something during the day when his business isn't busy. - A retired person looking to earn some extra income. - A full time Uber driver who was a long-haul truck driver. IMHO, my country needs more nerds churning out code which will cut through the bureaucracy our government has put in place and create opportunities for our unemployed. With regards to self-driving cars, that would be awesome. I just don't see that it's something that would be affordable in a developing country in the next few years.
- tobltobs 12y agoIt is more that govt doesn't like if companies try to avoid social insurances for their workers.
- chappi42 12y agoMore like germany doesn't want drivers without proper papers and sloppy serviced cars. Taxis work quite well here with reasonable fares. No need for uber which exploits their employees... well they are not employees but exploitable individuals with very little power. It's good that the government cares for a certain standard. Of course there are regions where this degenerated i to bad burocratie
- ShellfishMeme 12y agoReasonable? For the price it costs to get from Berlin's city center to the airport, you could easily drive your own car to Hamburg - and probably back. I really don't understand why it has to be so expensive. For inner city trips the gas costs are a negligible part of the total price, and most drivers are being paid minimum wage. (I've actually heard quite a few taxi drivers complain about minimum wage being introduced because their employers claim that it's too expensive for them and they need to cut costs.) Either there are too many taxis out there so they need higher prices to be able to pay for the time where they just stand around waiting for customers, or somebody is getting rich.
- ptaipale 12y agoIn my experience the taxis in Berlin are not that expensive. 15 euros from Tegel to Schöneberg. That doesn't really get you enough gas to get to Hamburg, let alone compensate any other cost of vehicle. Now, just don't get me started about the prices of regulated taxes in Helsinki, or the largely unregulated taxis in Stockholm, where you really have to be careful.
- purringmeow 12y agoHow does Uber exploit its employees? Nobody is making drivers sign-up for Uber. Nobody is keeping them signed-up by force. The whole problem with Uber can be solved if governments deregulate the taxi industry. I absolutely agree that you need an insurance that covers the passengers, but what else except more frequent technical checks? Taxi licenses are an artificial way to control the supply, so I am adamantly against them.
- reasonish 12y agoDon't be ridiculous. Uber isn't cheaper because of code. It's cheaper because they ignore the laws and regulations. Just like airBnB. Code has absolutely nothing to do with it.
- Usu 12y agoI'm wondering whether the ban also applies to uber taxi, they had a big marketing campaign just last week in Berlin where you were able to take a ride for free for a couple of days [1] [1] http://blog.uber.com/freeubertaxi_berlin_en http://blog.uber.com/freeubertaxi_berlin_en
- bradleyjg 12y agoJust uberpop it looks like. More details in this article: http://www.ft.com/intl/fastft/293403/uber-ride-sharing-banned-again-germany http://www.ft.com/intl/fastft/293403/uber-ride-sharing-banne...
- thesimon 12y agoGerman article http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/wirtschaftspolitik/umstrittener-fahrdienst-gericht-verbietet-uber-in-ganz-deutschland-13491025.html http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/wirtschaftspolitik/ums... (use Google Translate if needed) says the services for professional drivers are not affected (eg. Uber Black, probably Uber Taxi too)
- detaro 12y agoSince these seem to be licensed taxis, they should be fine.
- andrewmutz 12y agoMore detail here: http://fortune.com/2015/03/18/german-court-ban-uber/ http://fortune.com/2015/03/18/german-court-ban-uber/
- struppi 12y agoThe main reason (IIUC) for the verdict was (a little bit simplified): Most of the drivers for uberPOP break german laws because they have no proper license and insurance to be commercial drivers. The question was if Uber breaks the law ("Personenbeförderungsgesetz") by simply acting as a broker for those drivers - And the judge said yes, they do.
- pluma 12y agoThe thing isn't just that Uber may break the law, but that it encourages others to break the law. Call it anti-libertarian, but in Germany a company shares responsibility for the behaviour it is creating. They would have to put controls in place (within reason) to ensure that Uber drivers don't break the law -- but of course they don't because they're well-aware that that would reduce the number of drivers and drive up costs and prices. Basically, Uber is breaking the law when it comes to passenger transportation the same way Mega was breaking the law when it came to file sharing. It created an environment that promoted illegal activities.
- spdustin 12y agoNo oversight. No privacy. No standards. Can't say I blame them.
- Karunamon 12y agoBecause the oversight, privacy, and standards are working ever so well.. [1] http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/taxi-driver-20-years-raping-passenger-article-1.1789225 http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/taxi-driver-20... [2] http://coconutgrovegrapevine.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-county-taxi-cabs-are-unsafe-and.html http://coconutgrovegrapevine.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-county... and so on.. Call me when your "overseen, private, and up to standards" taxi has an immediate rating system that will cause the driver to effectively lose their job if they continue to provide crappy drives. I do blame them. Bureaucracy sucks, and I can see why people would want to subvert it. Government's just mad they're not getting their vig. That's all this boils down to. (Fixed link 1)
- fijal 12y agowe're talking about germany here (where oversight and standards are generally running high), not NYC
- Karunamon 12y agoWhat could be better oversight than the people actually riding in the cabs rating the quality of the service provided? Serious question. That's a level of feedback that simply can't be provided by a government agency.
- fijal 12y agoBecause stuff like technical checks and insurance can't be postponed until the accidents happen, generally speaking. In the EU (at least all countries I know) third party car insurance is generally mandatory and it's details depend on how you use the car, be it commercial or private. You can of course always claim that it's a subject to "market forces" and people might opt out from insurance, but this is really not how we roll in Europe.
- MAGZine 12y agoI think that Uber has done tremendous amounts to modernizing the taxi industry, and maybe even for breaking down some taxi monopolies. These are both good things. I can't comment on UberX, but regular Uber should absolutely be subject to regular taxi/safety/liability clauses. Which isn't to say that those clauses couldn't be modernized, but IS to say that it should also not be a surprise when a company gets a nationwide ban for violating them. Regular Uber is exactly a taxi system, with a state-of-the-art automated dispatch and billing system.
- DasIch 12y agoI don't see how it has done so at all, at least in Germany. Precisely because the industry is so highly regulated I don't see how Uber offers anything that I don't get with a regular taxi.
- anon1385 12y agoYou get the thrill of drivers who are uninsured and poorly paid (once you factor in the capital costs of the vehicle and the cost of vehicle maintenance). Welcome to the libertarian paradise.
- ma2rten 12y agoI think they are actually pretty well paid, even factoring those things in. Do you have a source?
- felixgallo 12y agohttp://www.buzzfeed.com/johanabhuiyan/what-uber-drivers-really-make-according-to-their-pay-stubs http://www.buzzfeed.com/johanabhuiyan/what-uber-drivers-real...
- reasonish 12y agoNot to mention the danger of them possibly being sex offenders, rapists, murderers. Who knows!
- fotcorn 12y agoThe permit to commercially transport people costs 421 Euro: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fde.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FF%25C3%25BChrerschein_zur_Fahrgastbef%25C3%25B6rderung&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev... Far too much for some casual Uber drivers.
- struppi 12y agoAFAIK you also need special insurance and shorter maintenance intervals for your car, so the total cost is probably higher - And recurring!
- thesimon 12y agoIt also requires extensive knowledge of the city (know all streets), which is way too much for a casual driver who will simply use a gps. To commercially transport people you also need a special insurance and need your car checked more frequently. So it should't be surprising that UberPOP was forbidden.
- detaro 12y agoThat is necessary, but not enough. To operate a taxi you also need a taxi license (which sometimes just is a 50 € fee, sometimes has to be taken over from an existing taxi company, all depends on the city) + of course insurance etc. You can use it to operate a "rental car with driver", like UberBlack does, but that has other limitations to be not too taxi-like (most notably you can't take new passengers or their orders while on the road, you have to return to your home location after every trip)
- pluma 12y ago"Funkmietwagen" (rental cars with a driver you that picks you up and drops you off and can be hired instantly by phone) are actually very common in most parts of Germany I've been to. Many businesses offer you to call one instead if you ask them to call you a taxi (though I think they have to explicitly tell you it's a Funkmietwagen rather than a taxi). That said, Uber isn't really solving a problem here. There are already call-a-taxi apps (though they don't seem to have been very successful) and the only value add Uber provides is that it encourages an entirely illegal business model (i.e. transporting persons without the required qualifications, no insurance coverage, no guarantees and no reliable pricing). Sure, UberBlack may be a nice idea if an ordinary taxi is beneath you or socially inappropriate, but other than that Uber simply doesn't offer anything new. Note that Germany and the EU in general have very strong customer protection laws. The health, safety and protection of the passenger is an actual concern in the local market. Uber (and similar "disruptive" services) gain most of their appeal from entirely disregarding that. It doesn't matter how appealing your business idea is if it doesn't work within the restrictions of consumer protection.
- serve_yay 12y agoJust Uber specifically? So you can just download a different app and order rides again? Why?
- fredoliveira 12y agoOther, competing services to uber, aren't functioning (or at least not as pervasively) in germany.
- teekert 12y agoHere in the Netherlands Uber drivers are being driven off the road, threatened and they have their cars marked (http://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/1038/Rotterdam/article/detail/3911575/2015/03/17/Weer-Rotterdamse-Uber-snorder-klemgereden-en-bestickerd.dhtml http://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/1038/Rotterdam/article/detail/3911575...) Its crazy. I for one can't wait until the taxi mob is competed off the market. Taxi drivers here are more often than not complete a-holes that try to scam you every chance they get. I for one welcome uber with open arms. I'm sorry for the nice taxi drivers but your business is deeply ill.
- danieldk 12y agoThe problem here is unfair competition: in The Netherlands taxis are bound by the 'Wet Personenvervoer' (Law persons transport). Uber can encourage drivers to ignore the law, because it has deep pockets to cover for legal costs of drivers. I agree that the taxi market is ripe for disruption, but this is only fair if other taxis are not bound by that law as well. Another question is if we want complete deregulation. E.g. I would personally want to be sure that the driver has proper insurance, etc.
- ptaipale 12y agoEvery car should have a proper insurance, right? At least here it's the law.
- dagw 12y agoEvery car has to have third party insurance. Basically covering any damage you do to someone not in your car. Insurance covering damages to passengers in your car is a different insurance, and insurance covering passengers in your car because they are paying you to drive then somewhere is different a insurance again.
- ptaipale 12y agoOver here (Finland), the mandatory insurance covers passengers (and driver) also in your car, not just third parties. Different countries obviously have different practices. I can see that this is a problem in countries where the vehicle's insurance does not cover its own passengers. (In fact, the mandatory car insurance here even covers personal damages of third parties at fault if they are pedestrians or are riding a bicycle; i.e. if a bicyclist runs a red light and collides with a car and hurts himself, the care cost is carried by the car's insurance. If the bicyclist hits a tree, the tree has no insurance... this applies to personal injuries only, not the broken bike. Any damage to the car is covered by the bicyclist's insurance if any.)
- lleims 12y agoI don't understand why Uber (not UberPOP, which in theory operates with licensed drivers) has been also banned. Can anyone explain why?
- random3 12y agoDisclaimer: I'm an uber Uber user. It seem that the German government ensures that everyone gets the same version of the laws. I don't see how that's wrong. There are generally regulations (and not a few) wrt taxi. Drivers need to pass an exam, get licenses, pay a lot on various taxes, insurance, etc. Most of all, however, there's a limited number of taxi medallions. Perhaps not all these do make sense, but that's not an excuse not to obey them. So perhaps a government authority that ensures that it's own policies are respected is not unexpected. So yes, Uber contributes a lot to the quality of the transportation. That's why I'm using it. But I don't see how that has anything to do with the fact that it's one the verge of the law (good or bad) or even against the law in some cases - which is what the German authorities decided. I don't think this has anything to do with their self-driving cars or the German government taking care of the unemployment problem. In fact, it's probably helping employment. Now how did this play out in the US?
- minthd 12y agoHow is it(removing uber services) helping employment,given we know that uber increases demand for taxi services ?
- CaptainZapp 12y agogiven we know that uber increases demand for taxi services ? Do you have a reliable source for this assertion?
- buro9 12y agoHow does it increase demand for taxi services? If your answer is by making it dramatically cheaper by externalising the costs of running a sustainable taxi business... then how does having a greater number of people employed on wages that they cannot afford to live on benefit anyone?
- ptaipale 12y agoIt makes it easier to order a taxi. For instance in the case of Germany, I've sometimes walked a distance simply because I'm not sure if my German is good enough to handle the phone call to the taxi dispatcher, or just because I don't know the number of the taxi company/dispatcher/order central. With an app, I know how to use it.
- tessierashpool 12y agoThe caveat with disruption: Sometimes an industry which is very tightly regulated, or which has a lot of middlemen, has these obstructions for a reason. A taxi service holds enormous opportunities for kidnappers or rapists. I'm a man, which basically disappears the rape risk, but there are many Central and South American countries where getting in a taxi could be quite risky for me, and could involve me disappearing. even some parts of Mexico. Recent related stories make Uber look really bad: http://boingboing.net/2014/11/19/uber-can-track-your-one-night.html http://boingboing.net/2014/11/19/uber-can-track-your-one-nig... http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/uber-executive-suggests-digging-up-dirt-on-journalists http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/uber-executive-suggests-dig... http://www.buzzfeed.com/anitabadejo/uber-but-for-real-estate-disputes#.yiVDk2w15 http://www.buzzfeed.com/anitabadejo/uber-but-for-real-estate... Also, just to state the obvious, both Uber drivers and regular taxi drivers have logical incentives for driving unsafely. In this context, I have no problem with governments wanting to regulate Uber literally to death, at least outside of California. I understand cabs are completely unacceptable garbage in California, and the HN audience definitely skews Californian, but cabs are gold in Chicago, London, and New York, and probably quite a few other places too. Maybe Germany is one of those places. Also, although I'm sympathetic to libertarians, disruption doesn't always fix things. The Internet crippled the music industry, but introduced stacks of new middlemen in the process. Ask Zoe Keating how that "democratization" turned out. http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/108898194009/what-should-i-do-about-youtube http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/108898194009/what-should-i... In music, the corporate middlemen are this pernicious infestation, which just reappears after you thought you'd wiped it out. Artists have to sacrifice a lot to develop their art to a serious level, and a lot of music performance takes place in situations where people are celebrating (i.e., drunk or high, late at night). So somebody has to provide security, as well as business sense. There's a lot of opportunities for middlemen to get their middle on, and disrupting a market, under those conditions, just means shuffling in a new deck of middlemen. It doesn't change the game. In the same way, my guess is that disrupting a market which is inherently full of criminality risks - incentives to drive unsafely, opportunities for kidnapping and rape - means you just shuffle the deck of regulations. Yet another criminality risk: taxi services of any kind, whether Uber or not, hold terrific opportunities for armed robbery. In some cities, being a cab driver is very dangerous, for this reason. So, if Uber kills the entire taxi industry, then governments will have to scrap their taxi regulations and re-build a similarly gigantic regulatory infrastructure around Uber instead. I think Uber is a really good lesson for entrepreneurs in how a market can look awesome but actually suck.
- snitko 12y agoMy, god people. The number of those supporting the useless regulation is so great it astounds me. If you want to regulate something as simple as driving people around, claiming drivers need licences, permissions and passing some sort of exams certifying they are indeed capable of driving cars with passengers, why don't we regulate something much more critical, like software development? Software runs the world these days, you can't just let people with no licences write shitty code. Politicians and bureaucrats should join their forces and decide whether each individual programmer is of a certain level. If not, he is banned from writing code and should be fined or imprisoned if he ever tries to do that. Or let's regulate musicians. You know, it would do good. I'm so tired of all these useless crappy bands that write all the same music, thinking they are different. Even though I don't listen to them I also think others shouldn't be listening to them too, as this influences people's tastes in a direction I cannot approve of. So yes, licences for musicians!
- anon1385 12y agoSo you think people should be able to drive around on the roads without valid insurance?
- snitko 12y agoYes, I think people should have a choice. If the market wants insured taxis only, you will see that people only use those taxi-services that prove they have it. If not, then some will be using uninsured services at their own risk. No one has the right to tell me what choice am I supposed to make with my own money.
- jokoon 12y agoI just wanted to see if I could search for someone to drive me to some specific grocery store for a specific day, to see how much that would cost me if I would plan in advance. It's a 15min ride, and the bus service is poor for that particular route. I need to carry a lot of food, and on welfare aldi is a must for me, so I would gladly pay for gas money plus some more instead of taking the bus, especially since I carry frozen food. I started entering my info. Closed it immediately when it asked for my credit card before I could search for anything. I'm sorry, but if uber is getting money from rides, I really think it should at least play nice with governments and laws, especially when it has so much value on the stock market. It's a matter of respect, being disruptive doesn't excuse everything. Building and regulating civilization has a cost, if you want to improve people's lives, don't be so greedy about it. It doesn't require so much money to help people find each other for car rides. I totally understand that cab licenses are against the libertarian's dream, but when I sense unjustified money behind it, it sets me off immediately. The internet doesn't feel very free, it's just another new land for money makers, and I'm often okay with it, but here, I'm not.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago> Building and regulating civilization has a cost, if you want to improve people's lives, don't be so greedy about it. This. I wish many a company took it to heart. But then again, a lot of companies (and startups) don't care about improving people's lives; some unfortunately use the talk about "improving lives" as a marketing angle. As for Uber, it's pretty clear now that they don't care about improving anything else than the contents of their wallets - I'm surprised that no one banned them yet for literally being assholes.
- jokoon 12y agoI'm sure they are being pissed on by governments because they're a net loss to society. People just like to use shiny smartphone to order a taxi. I hate that new libertarian trend of pretending to solve a socio economical problem, while it requires a smartphone and a fast dataplan. The army developped those techs and now it's being used for profits and profits. Oddly there is so little money involved in techs like bittorrent or openstreetmap, etc. Investors should really think about having a legitimate improvement for society. I mean if I was an investor, I would be so much proud of creating free services. That's the only way honest improvements has ever worked, when it was not so much profit driven.
- Tomte 12y agoInteresting point: Uber is (rightfully) continuing their service, because the ban only goes into effect when the plaintiff pledges a security, to compensate Uber's loss, in case this ban is reversed. I have no idea if the plaintiff wants to take that risk.
- Chichikov 12y agoI haven't bothered to look at Russians' responses to Uber, but the whole idea must seem strange to any Russian. It has been normal in Russia since the fifties to flag down cars (i.e. everyday, private traffic) on the street and pay a driver for a lift. Usually the fare is cheaper than a taxi (I don't remember ever calling a taxi in Russia). The drawback is that not all drivers are headed in your direction, but then again, it's only a matter of time till someone who is comes along (this problem is further ameliorated by drivers who moonlight as gypsy cabs and will take you wherever for the right price). My point is that the service that Uber provides is viable primarily due to largely baseless social conventions (i.e. middle-class paranoia). If the fare is all that matters to a given consumer, then any car/driver will do. If security matters more than fare, then taxis will do. Uber is operating in a gray area between these extremes and as soon as A) we cease fearing our neighbors (I believe that the decline of suburbia and renewed urbanization will eventually take us there) and B) taxi services will begin offering better technical solutions, Uber's service will become largely obsolete.