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Here is the thing with "sharing" economy - the moment money exchange hands, this is no longer sharing but commercial activity. So you must abide to the regulati

Here is the thing with "sharing" economy - the moment money exchange hands, this is no longer sharing but commercial activity. So you must abide to the regulations. You cannot cherry pick only the rules that suit you.

JonFish85 11y ago
They've been able to do it to the tune of a tens of billions of dollars valuation. So has Airbnb. Why change now? They'll get their IPO before anyone has to answer for anything, so investors & founders will be happy. Keep running the marketing machine with the "sharing" moniker right until the check clears, and after that, it's the shareholders' problem.
- Frondo 11y ago
  "Why change now?" Because what they're doing is wrong, and doing something wrong because you can get a lot of money for it is pretty awful.
  - Drakim 11y ago
    That is how business and capitalism works. Being immoral can hurt your profits, because customers might be repulsed and boycott you. Breaking the law can hurt your profits, because the government might take action against your business. Those are the sole reasons why you would avoid doing immoral and illegal things. If the benefit outweighs the negatives, then businesses will do those things. If they don't do it, they will lose against other businesses that are willing to do it. Fortunately, the downsides can be quite big, which means that most of the time businesses will "stay in line". A huge boycott from the people or hard damaging actions from the government really hurts profits, so it's very rarely a profitable thing to be immoral and break the law.
    - Frondo 11y ago
      Of course people can be moral actors in the business world. "Because you might get caught" is by no means the only reason to do the right thing, even if it means leaving money on the table. What you're describing is a sociopathic greed.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
JohnTHaller 11y ago
It's not "sharing". It was never "sharing". It's sharecropping.
- mason240 11y ago
  You might have a case for calling it "sharecropping" if Uber owned the cars and the drivers were paying Uber for the privilege of using them. They are not though, so it's a gross misapplication of the term.
  - JohnTHaller 11y ago
    Drivers pay for the vehicle as well as all maintenance and operational costs. They also pay for insurance. They aren't covered by workers compensation if injured while on the job. Oh, and Uber even "helps" you get a car and they get a cut of the purchase and financing: https://get.uber.com/cl/financing/ https://get.uber.com/cl/financing/
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    Drivers pay for the customers they get. The analogy thus fits.
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      ...no, I don't think that really fits. Besides, it wasn't the sharecropping itself that was a problem, it was the abusive lending.
murbard2 11y ago
One man's modus ponens is another's modus tollens... The way I see it is that there is no such thing as "commercial activity". There is voluntary activity of all sorts, and all kind of transactions happen, whether it be through payments, barter or goodwill. If I'm exempt from the ADA when inviting friends over, so should you be when you rent your room on AirBnB, and so should the motel across the street. All exist on a continuum, and the "sharing economy" is now making that continuum more explicit than ever before. Decreeting that some activity is commercial and subjecting it to government rules merely because it involves money is arbitrary and unfair. Laissez faire, laissez passer.
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  How can there be no such attribute if there is a continuum of that attribute? Picking thresholds is not unfair. It's the fundamental way that life interacts with the world around it. You physically cannot examine everything that could affect you with infinite precision. The job of regulation is not to pick a mythical "perfect" result for every possible case, it's to force a good guideline into place. This is partially arbitrary, and that is okay. It doesn't matter if that fine is $200 or $220, the regulation just needs to work.
  - murbard2 11y ago
    What I mean to say is that the attribute isn't categorical, even though it is treated as such in the discussion. I'm also not saying the regulation cannot "work" by picking a threshold, I am appealing to our moral intuition that regulating private behavior is wrong to explain why regulating "commercial" behavior is also wrong.
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      But how does it explain that? The situations are clearly very different on either end of the spectrum, so you can't directly use the intuition from one end on the other. The only thing you've really shown is that the categorization will be mildly imperfect.
true_religion 11y ago
I agree. Their statement is that they are a black car service, not a taxi service. Personally I think having a meter in the car makes them a taxi, and I'm glad to see the UK government agrees. However, if they simply take out their meter they are a black car service and only have to comply with the rules set about for those. Just being a better private car service, doesn't make them illegal by default.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  No, but it means they must comply with relevant regulation - like accommodating disabled people.
  - true_religion 11y ago
    Do private cars have to accommodate disabled people?

JonFish85 11y ago

They've been able to do it to the tune of a tens of billions of dollars valuation. So has Airbnb. Why change now? They'll get their IPO before anyone has to answer for anything, so investors & founders will be happy. Keep running the marketing machine with the "sharing" moniker right until the check clears, and after that, it's the shareholders' problem.

Frondo 11y ago
"Why change now?" Because what they're doing is wrong, and doing something wrong because you can get a lot of money for it is pretty awful.
- Drakim 11y ago
  That is how business and capitalism works. Being immoral can hurt your profits, because customers might be repulsed and boycott you. Breaking the law can hurt your profits, because the government might take action against your business. Those are the sole reasons why you would avoid doing immoral and illegal things. If the benefit outweighs the negatives, then businesses will do those things. If they don't do it, they will lose against other businesses that are willing to do it. Fortunately, the downsides can be quite big, which means that most of the time businesses will "stay in line". A huge boycott from the people or hard damaging actions from the government really hurts profits, so it's very rarely a profitable thing to be immoral and break the law.
  - Frondo 11y ago
    Of course people can be moral actors in the business world. "Because you might get caught" is by no means the only reason to do the right thing, even if it means leaving money on the table. What you're describing is a sociopathic greed.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

JohnTHaller 11y ago

It's not "sharing". It was never "sharing". It's sharecropping.

mason240 11y ago
You might have a case for calling it "sharecropping" if Uber owned the cars and the drivers were paying Uber for the privilege of using them. They are not though, so it's a gross misapplication of the term.
- JohnTHaller 11y ago
  Drivers pay for the vehicle as well as all maintenance and operational costs. They also pay for insurance. They aren't covered by workers compensation if injured while on the job. Oh, and Uber even "helps" you get a car and they get a cut of the purchase and financing: https://get.uber.com/cl/financing/ https://get.uber.com/cl/financing/
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  Drivers pay for the customers they get. The analogy thus fits.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    ...no, I don't think that really fits. Besides, it wasn't the sharecropping itself that was a problem, it was the abusive lending.

murbard2 11y ago

One man's modus ponens is another's modus tollens... The way I see it is that there is no such thing as "commercial activity". There is voluntary activity of all sorts, and all kind of transactions happen, whether it be through payments, barter or goodwill. If I'm exempt from the ADA when inviting friends over, so should you be when you rent your room on AirBnB, and so should the motel across the street. All exist on a continuum, and the "sharing economy" is now making that continuum more explicit than ever before. Decreeting that some activity is commercial and subjecting it to government rules merely because it involves money is arbitrary and unfair. Laissez faire, laissez passer.

Dylan16807 11y ago
How can there be no such attribute if there is a continuum of that attribute? Picking thresholds is not unfair. It's the fundamental way that life interacts with the world around it. You physically cannot examine everything that could affect you with infinite precision. The job of regulation is not to pick a mythical "perfect" result for every possible case, it's to force a good guideline into place. This is partially arbitrary, and that is okay. It doesn't matter if that fine is $200 or $220, the regulation just needs to work.
- murbard2 11y ago
  What I mean to say is that the attribute isn't categorical, even though it is treated as such in the discussion. I'm also not saying the regulation cannot "work" by picking a threshold, I am appealing to our moral intuition that regulating private behavior is wrong to explain why regulating "commercial" behavior is also wrong.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    But how does it explain that? The situations are clearly very different on either end of the spectrum, so you can't directly use the intuition from one end on the other. The only thing you've really shown is that the categorization will be mildly imperfect.

true_religion 11y ago

I agree. Their statement is that they are a black car service, not a taxi service. Personally I think having a meter in the car makes them a taxi, and I'm glad to see the UK government agrees. However, if they simply take out their meter they are a black car service and only have to comply with the rules set about for those. Just being a better private car service, doesn't make them illegal by default.

venomsnake 11y ago
No, but it means they must comply with relevant regulation - like accommodating disabled people.
- true_religion 11y ago
  Do private cars have to accommodate disabled people?