[gharbad]

By "skirting around" do you mean "blatantly flouting"? Because that's the truth of it..

Uber, Lyft, et al are just central dispatch for gypsy cabs. I don't see any reason they shouldn't get massive fines or seized vehicles in all locales they operate.

[fennecfoxen]

> Uber, Lyft, et al are just central dispatch for gypsy cabs.

True fact: Every single Uber and Lyft vehicle which I've ridden in, in New York City, has a Taxi and Limo Commission plate on it in the T123456C format. The so-called "gypsy cab"+ market consists of the vehicles without those plates.

(+complete with casual old-fashioned ethnic slur)

[PhantomGremlin]

casual old-fashioned ethnic slur

It's not a slur. Why does everything need to be so PC these days? The term may have originated in NYC, home of much colorful language.

Here's a Village Voice article that provides a lot of background and that quotes illegal cab drivers referring to themselves that way:

   once a gypsy, always a gypsy

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/how-some-illegal-taxi-drive...

[morganvachon]

Based on your racist and derogatory statements, I have to wonder if you're involved in the taxi industry.

The fact is, taxi lobbies are just protection rackets. I don't like Uber at all due to the way they treat their customers and drivers, but ridesharing is the future and the taxi mob is desperate to stop them from growing. If that means paying off the local law enforcement and city officials to illegally and unconstitutionally seize law abiding citizens' vehicles (including regular folks dropping off or picking up family and friends, which boggles the mind), they will do it.

[fennecfoxen]

The problem is that even if you can't own a person wholesale anymore in this country, you can own the right to be the sole provider of one type of service to that person, and charge them exorbitant rates. To the taxi lobby, the citizens of New York are not free men, but their property as customers. Uber and the like are therefore dirty thieves, abolitionist usurpers.

The taxi lobby will also say that it's all for your own safety, even as unlicensed taxi drivers in licensed cabs proliferate. (fun story: I've had colleagues whose luggage was held hostage while driven to an ATM because the driver didn't want card payment because he wasn't driving the cab legally. good luck pursuing recourse for that.)

[talmand]

Wait, I don't understand. Because this person used a term that you describe as a racist and derogatory term, you are claiming the entire taxi industry is racist? As I asked elsewhere, how is this term racist and derogatory?

[goldenkey]

Central dispatch for gypsy cabs?

Are you trying to make a cogent argument? because all I see is a nasty insult.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

[amalcon]

"Gypsy cab" is a slang term for an unlicensed taxi, and no longer has anything to do with the Romani people. It's not a term I personally use (outside a descriptive context like this), but it doesn't seem intended as an insult.

[PhantomGremlin]

Uber, Lyft, et al are just central dispatch for gypsy cabs.

Ignore any flak you get about this. It is the best one-sentence description I've ever read about Uber.

[TheCoelacanth]

Uber and Lyft are licensed livery cabs in NYC. Livery cabs are not allowed to accept street hails, but are allowed to be ordered for pick up in other ways (such as through a phone call). The only way that they would be illegal is if you believe that ordering through a phone app is more similar to street hailing than it is to ordering through a phone call, but I think that is a huge stretch.