Company-owned marketplaces are wonderful for the 95% of people who never run into problems, and some people such as Blake Ross may wonder why we don’t just retire the publicly regulated markets. What he is missing is that there is no due process on company marketplaces. If you happen to have a streak of bad luck, or you are targeted or discriminated against and you get too many bad ratings, you are kicked off with no appeal process. Uber does not care whether the complaints are legitimate. Similar problems happen to a small fraction of users on Google Adwords, eBay, and other company-owned marketplaces who ultimately care about their own profit instead of justice. As public markets are replaced with private marketplaces, I think the loss of due process is not something that we should give up without some forethought.
Perfect is the enemy of good. What you're describing happens just as frequently in regulated markets (the police works fine for a certain sector of this country and not so great for another...), its just that regulated markets offer the false promise of perfection. At the end of the day there's no magic, its people at the end of all these services. So what's important, as Milton Friedman used to like to say, is not finding the right people, but getting the wrong people to do the right things.
The people that visit Las Vegas don't vote in Las Vegas, so what incentive is there AT ALL for the government to protect the customer? This is basically the worst edge case for a regulation: the regulators only receive votes from one side of the arrangement, so who do you think they'll bias? Unless taxi abuse got so bad that it actually affected tourism, then I assure you it will always slip between the cracks. On the other hand, a business that cares about solely this problem will actually figure out a way to solve it.
It also happens in highly regulated markets. For example, due primarily to my outward appearance (I'm not a member of the majority race), I'm often asked for 2x the normal fare in auto rickshaws. If my girlfriend (a different non-majority race than me) is with me, 3-4x [1].
I'm mostly denied access to banking (except for some legacy accounts) due explicitly to regulation.
This also happens in private markets without a company marketplace. For example:
You have obviously never spoken to a cab driver about the "due process" and fairness they are treated with by cab companies. There is a reason cab drivers are abandoning their corrupt, inefficient, and oppressive employers for Uber and Lyft.
The appeal process in a private market is called competition.
It doesn't always work, certainly. Then again, it would be foolish to say the State-owned alternatives always do. Or that "justice" is what motivates public administration. They're just people, no more or less self-interested than private actors.
The article has nothing to do with company-vs-regulated marketplace. It has to do with how horrible the government ideas were so far. If the city of Nevada wrote an iPhone app for rating cabs and the cabs had to display their stars, it would be better any of the other hilarious ideas they've come up with. Of course, the article implies they could have let Uber compete with the taxis like in so many other places, but the point is that 'due process' failed in this case, so even imperfect company would be better than that.
By similar token government-regulated marketplaces have a long-term problem with corruption.
We already observe the cases where teacher unions sponsor political candidates who will negotiate with teacher unions, police unions approving or disapproving of mayoral candidates who will sit on the opposite side of negotiating table when police contract is being discussed, insurance companies (ahem, industry) supporting (or not) state insurance commissioner candidates, or financial companies paying a bonus to a manager who departs for a government job.
How do you prevent corruption and align incentives properly in a government-run marketplace?
I just had my first Las Vegas cab experience, it was at 11:30pm. The taxi driver picked us up from the airport and took us to our hotel 30 minutes away. He was pretty helpful and seemed to know the area quite well. Then we got to our destination and he demanded that I pay cash, even though the taxi had a touchscreen terminal behind the front passenger seat for paying with card.
He said that he needed the $55 fare in cash because he needs to take some money home and it is midnight. I told him that I didn't feel comfortable, he was apologetic, explained he needed the money and so, to save trouble, I went into the hotel and got out the cash for him because I just got off a few hours plane ride, I didn't want to deal with this nonsense at this time of night.
I told the man behind the desk at the hotel and he explained that it happens all of the time. He said a lot of the drivers pocket the cash for themselves which is why they demand cash. He then advised us not to hire taxis and to use a hotel recommended private driver service that is the same cost (no doubt a nice referral fee for them). An ulterior motive there, but I don't doubt that this happens all of the time.
This experience, other experiences from colleagues and friends as well as online paints a picture of a pretty broken and corrupt taxi system in Los Angeles especially. While I am not a big fan of Uber (ethically) I do like the idea of ridesharing and the rating system. If Lyft, Uber and other companies were operating here, perhaps things would be different.
"He said a lot of the drivers pocket the cash for themselves which is why they demand cash."
Uh. No. Where else would the money go? Cabbies pay everything upfront. They keep all earnings.
The problem here is that both cabbies and customers are in a bad deal. The bulk of the profits go to taxi medallion holders which are typically investors.
They are the cheapest option (usually <$15 round-trip) to get from LAS to your hotel but, like any shared-ride setup, it's gonna be a wait for the bus to arrive and a longer wait while you drop others off. Las Vegas is a unique situation where people try to scramble as fast as they can from airplane seat to casino seat and they tend to miss this option and sprint straight for the cab line.
As long as the laws prohibit Uber from operating, why is it strange that the government would take steps to ensure that?
Perhaps the laws should change - certainly Uber wants them to. But flouting the law isn't often the best way to make that happen. They're not protesting injustice, they're jamming a foot in the door of a multi-billion dollar industry with technology that is still very new to regulators. The "we're just an app that connects people who want a ride with willing drivers" dodge is disingenuous, and the alternation between wounded and scoffing attitudes is grating. I don't like Uber as a company, and personally I hope it fails and the next guy picks up the torch and does these things with a bit of tact. Neither driver nor user will care.
I think even Uber's star system pales in comparison to a better solution: calculate fares in advance (maybe based purely on distance and average travel time).
We have GPS, we can estimate costs before the trip. If we do so, the only incentive for the cabbie is to get your service completed as efficiently as possible.
And it's weird that it's one of the only services where we can estimate the cost in advance fairly accurately in 99% of cases, but there's no price transparency. Cabs and medical services, maybe. There's no reason cab drivers should need a "billable hours" system of payment (at least not since gps mapping technology was invented).
I'd settle for that much. But my more controversial rider is that costs shouldn't vary by the time of the trip.
The risk of traffic flows should be borne by the party that will experience all the variations enough to be able to average it out. In consumer goods, if you buy a the one out of ten thousand products that are broken off the shelf, (or explodes in your hand), the merchants accept the loss, because they can even out this loss across all of their sales. In cabs, if there's suddenly an accident a mile ahead of you, and you're just stopped in a parking lot doubling your cost, that's your fault.
On an individual level, maybe just underpay if you've been jerked around. If the cabbie complains, tell them to bring the cops so you can both talk about the route and they can decide what's fair. If that behavior became widespread, taxis would lose the incentive to cheat in this way. (Though you'd probably get a few people shot in the street. I strongly prefer the "pre-calculated fares.")
I get your traffic jam problem, but in big cities its more complicated than that. There are supply demand imbalances and a traveling salesman type problem.
Technology could solve some of these issues but I don't see it happening in the near future.
It's amusing to point out the failures of government bureaucracy, and while it's admirable that they're trying, I think we can all agree that the people responsible for these measures aren't exactly blessed with an overabundance of competence.
> he was clearly falling short of Uber’s standard... I gave him five stars, of course.
Why? I wonder if the author would continually frequent a deli that regularly served him rotten meat out of some misplaced sense of guilt.
> He wouldn’t let us out of the cab until she promised to [give 5 stars]. Afterward, we agreed: That was a pretty annoying ride, but not so bad it was worth punishing someone financially over it.
Yeah, I always find it annoying when I get quasi-kidnapped too. But who's to blame the kidnappers? Petty corruption and extortion is a totally acceptable part of life in a civilized society! It's not as if there were some sort of completely anonymous, dead-simple mechanism to instantly eliminate this sort of behavior.
> Most regular Uber users have a story like this.
I don't, nor have I heard any such thing from anyone I know. Where's the data to back this statement?
> my sample wasn’t big enough to generate anything I’d call data
Ergo, you have no business writing authoritatively on this subject.
> Why would Uber invite riders to use a scale of one to five unless it wants them to make fine distinctions? But in practice, it means a rating intended by a user as a gesture of approval is in fact a vote to have a driver fired. That’s screwed up.
If it's so screwed up, then why would anyone drive for Uber? Surely, all of their drivers would be getting fired and no one would want to work for them if that were the case. The fact is, it's not, and the reason is clear if you have a basic understanding of statistics, particularly normal distributions.
> Uber likes this system because it enjoys being able to say all of its drivers have near-perfect ratings. But it’s a harsh one for drivers, and also for customers, who find themselves repeatedly forced to choose between guilt, spite and ignorance.
Again, if it's so harsh, why would either group voluntarily participate in the system? Nobody is forcing either side to participate, and yet they both do so in droves.
> Fundamentally, a five-star rating is far too simple.
And yet the article you cite advocates something radically simpler.
The author in the article you linked to is too far on the "Mercy" side of Mercy vs. Justice. Five stars is my default, but I don't have a problem giving out 2-stars. In a nearly endless labor pool, this is appropriate consumer behavior, and I see it as improving rides for other consumers.
Downvote me like the other commenter who expressed this, bitches!
//edit: At the time of writing this, sneak's comment was in the downvoted greyed-out font.
It seems to be working sufficiently for Uber and their happy customers. Uber is a premium service. Drivers should be fired if they don't know their way around, have a dirty or smelly car, or otherwise request things of me as a customer beyond my destination address. I routinely give out two and three star ratings, knowing it could well get people fired. 5 stars is for a perfect trip that could not be improved.
You know, I really wouldn't put it past Uber to game HackerNews. If they're willing to dig up dirt on journalists, can you imagine that they'd have a problem with 'employee advocacy' on HN?
It's funny, but people think there is something inherently inefficient about government, but inefficiency and unresponsiveness are usually more a function of incentives, as well as obvious stuff like organization size and structure.
Medicare is on average more efficient than private health care, for example. Health care might be a situation where profit incentives don't create the best outcome. In the case of the Nevada officials, there is no incentive whatsoever to actually fix the problem.
Something I recently learned in Vegas; if a taxi driver picks you up from a casino on the strip and offers to take you (or does it anyway) the "quicker way" to your destination [also on the strip] via taking some off-strip highway, reject him. A bit of traffic on the strip is nothing compared to how fast the meter flies upwards when a taxi is speeding along a highway via a long detour and it's going to result in you paying a lot more for the journey.
I hope I'm not getting Uber drivers in trouble by asking them to take longer routes (that are quicker because I know the traffic near my office better than the route planner does).
I'm surprised one of the smaller ride share companies hasn't pivoted into licensing/partnering with municipal governments. Share revenue and let them control the processes for accepting drivers and regulating them. Tada you're partnered with a entity that can legislate your competition out of business.
I'll naively give the government the benefit of the doubt and assume there are good arguments for being anti-Uber/Lyft. What are they? I'm curious to know if there are valid reasons besides dollars being shuffled into the right pockets. I'll assume preventing disruption is not a valid argument.
The best reason I can think of is labour protection for the drivers. Even though the US is pretty laissez faire when it comes to employee protections, Uber and similar completely strip all rights from drivers. The almighty Rating determines who gets fired, with zero transparency and zero second chances. Imagine working as a waiter, but if your tip percentage drops below a certain threshold, you're fired and banned from the restaurant business forever, even though you might just have gotten a bunch of asshole customers in a row.
Also, if the bar to entry into the profession is simply to have a car and a smartphone, it will quickly become a race to the bottom in terms of wages.
All of this is good for the consumers, they get a lot of power over the drivers, they can threaten to give them a bad rating and so on, but there should probably be a balance.
Then again, it's not like the existing taxi cab unions and medallion systems and regulations are a guarantee of a good environment.
And on the third side, this profession is going to be eradicated by self-driving cars within fifteen years, so who cares?
There are a couple of arguments to prevent discrimination against riders. The current regulation of Taxis and Public Transit are such that disabled persons and wheelchair-riders can get rides about as easily as able-bodied people. Uber and Lyft have no such provisions.
My own concerns about Uber/Lyft have to do with properly following regulation that are legitimately in the public interest. From what I understand, in additional to the 800 lb gorilla (medallion licensing), there are other areas where Uber and Lyft skirt regulation. For example, I have read Uber argue that they are insured, but is it to the same level that taxi company drivers are required to be? How about other licensing? If we believe that the taxi regulations are unnecessarily burdensome, then lets redraw the rules for all parties. We need a common set of rules that everybody follows. Only then can we have proper competition among Uber, Lyft, Yellow Cab, etc.
There's a false dichotomy in considering Uber/Lyft and Government as singular units.
One aspect of the government side is securing that drivers and cars are safe and properly insured and making sure that the handicapped and minorities aren't discriminated against. But it's also, in many cities, running a rigidly planned economy, ostensibly for the benefit of drivers, but in reality often more so for medallion holders and unions, and having allow those vested interests to capture the system - and surely against the benefit of consumers.
On the other hand, Uber clearly brings huge benefits to the consumer: better cars that actually show up, politer drivers, better price/choice, easy grievance process etc. But there's also ambiguity about how they threat their drivers, whether insurance is always completely correct (especially in UberPOP) etc. Then of course, there's some questionable ethical dealings.
I'm a big fan of Uber, so obviously biased, but the idea is that benefits and drawbacks exist on a spectrum, and there's no reason we couldn't get the best of both worlds: properly regulated and insured cars, without the planned economy of medallions, and decent labour-protection of drivers without completely screwing over consumers. In London, Ubers are fully regulated under the "Private Hire" scheme which is unlimited in the number of licenses provided, but require commercial insurance and a background check of drivers and I think this strikes the balance very well.
I would suspect that driving a taxi in most places reuqires some sort of driver exam. (Even if not everywhere is London with "the Knowledge") Anyone can start driving Uber/Lyft. Also, Uber is pushing subprime loans on its drivers and withholds their income against it essentially creating indentured servitude.
All in all, taxicabs suck but Uber should burn in hell.
Uber and friends need to pay a tax which pays back (at least in part) all those who've invested in the current infrastructure based on assurances from Government. I'm not saying they have to get paid back for anything they have done that is speculative, but they need to get paid back something. Is it really that huge a tax to pay? I'm sure they could pay it back over 20 years or something and the government can write bonds against it to pay back taxi drivers immediately.
> Flying to Vegas? Look to your left. Now look to your right. Statistically speaking, one of you is about to get ripped off by a cabbie. And it’ll probably be you, the imbecile who chose the middle seat and paid $15 for plane wifi.
Just a side-note: I wouldn't open an article with brazenly insulting the reader.
> The signs are done now, and I doubt they’ll ever need to be updated: Vegas is a sleepy town, and the dollar is a stable currency
This is a sarcastic remark, but: the US dollar is, in fact, a stable currency, and inflation is currently very low. Cab fares are regulated. If getting from point A to point B takes $20 in 2014, it will not be difficult to determine how much the fare should be in 2020, and to send some people around with new signs or price stickers.
I'm surprised at how many of these points seem to treat the low-tech methods used by the Nevada state government as patently absurd. I guess it comes from a mindset that technology is the obvious solution to society's problems, which is something I do not find to be obvious. It took me a while to catch on to the sarcasm as a result of that mismatch.
I can agree that the Gov's solutions are not absurd - at least not half as absurd as this post makes them out to be - but the overall point that the Uber rating system is superior to advisory signs stands strong.
I found the sarcastic writing style a pleasure; it was enjoyable humorous and obvious in intent to me.
I think the article is less poking fun at the non-technological nature of the government solutions, but at their ineffectiveness, when a proven solution with widely deployed infrastructure to support it already exists in the marketplace.
If Nevada could put a magic rock for $0.03/unit in cabs that made cabbies stop longhauling, with no extra technology in play, nobody would complain that it wasn't technological enough.
Up until the last few months when Uber came in and put the heat on the local Dallas (TX) taxi market, government was driving at the behest of the largest taxi company via local council and board members pushing ordinances[1] that squeezed smaller cab companies. What a shit show that's been...
Leaving aside the pro-Uber aspect of the piece, the criticism of the existing solutions was spot on.
If you add a huge amount of friction before you can offer feedback, the only people to do will either be normal people who had truly horrific experiences, or incredibly entitled and annoying assholes who complain about everything.
In practice, it's really difficult for the government to be as nimble as a private company, but even people who support strong government regulation (like me!) have absolutely no ground to stand on when defending that particular status quo.
I wonder if the next step in the evolution of public transport is something akin to Uber. It may be more entropic come the day self driving cars come along.
Given that each car heads to its destination without a transit route where passengers are buffered would be good.
Additionally, since the road is shared unlike the subway, it may be more efficient on resources.
Perhaps when the option becomes available, the government of some affording country may be able to pilot such a thing.
Lots of us fly there on business (usually conventions) and spend very little time in the casinos. But yeah, the restaurants can be a ripoff if you eat on-strip.
From my experience, long-hauling complaints are handled quite effectively. You just go here: http://taxi.nv.gov/Complaints/Complaints/ and spend ~5 minutes copying info that is present on your receipt.
Did this three years back. Within days, the offending cab company called me and issued me a complete refund.
I always wonder about micro-long-hauling anytime I go to new areas of Brooklyn or visit new cities. I pretty much know where I am, but if they went a little out of the way I would not notice.
If you drive a cab for 40 years, do 25 fares a day and "reroute" 4-8 extra blocks (~=$1.25) you'll see an extra ~$30/day or even if he/she does every other fair $15/day.
[+] [-] yonran|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tolmasky|11 years ago|reply
The people that visit Las Vegas don't vote in Las Vegas, so what incentive is there AT ALL for the government to protect the customer? This is basically the worst edge case for a regulation: the regulators only receive votes from one side of the arrangement, so who do you think they'll bias? Unless taxi abuse got so bad that it actually affected tourism, then I assure you it will always slip between the cracks. On the other hand, a business that cares about solely this problem will actually figure out a way to solve it.
[+] [-] yummyfajitas|11 years ago|reply
I'm mostly denied access to banking (except for some legacy accounts) due explicitly to regulation.
This also happens in private markets without a company marketplace. For example:
http://paxdickinson.wordpress.com/2014/10/22/moral-panics-an...
[1] She's normally asked for 2x if I'm not around. If I'm with a woman of the same race as me, the price goes back to 2x.
[+] [-] crystaln|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icebraining|11 years ago|reply
It doesn't always work, certainly. Then again, it would be foolish to say the State-owned alternatives always do. Or that "justice" is what motivates public administration. They're just people, no more or less self-interested than private actors.
[+] [-] Demiurge|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philwelch|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prostoalex|11 years ago|reply
We already observe the cases where teacher unions sponsor political candidates who will negotiate with teacher unions, police unions approving or disapproving of mayoral candidates who will sit on the opposite side of negotiating table when police contract is being discussed, insurance companies (ahem, industry) supporting (or not) state insurance commissioner candidates, or financial companies paying a bonus to a manager who departs for a government job.
How do you prevent corruption and align incentives properly in a government-run marketplace?
[+] [-] DigitalSea|11 years ago|reply
He said that he needed the $55 fare in cash because he needs to take some money home and it is midnight. I told him that I didn't feel comfortable, he was apologetic, explained he needed the money and so, to save trouble, I went into the hotel and got out the cash for him because I just got off a few hours plane ride, I didn't want to deal with this nonsense at this time of night.
I told the man behind the desk at the hotel and he explained that it happens all of the time. He said a lot of the drivers pocket the cash for themselves which is why they demand cash. He then advised us not to hire taxis and to use a hotel recommended private driver service that is the same cost (no doubt a nice referral fee for them). An ulterior motive there, but I don't doubt that this happens all of the time.
This experience, other experiences from colleagues and friends as well as online paints a picture of a pretty broken and corrupt taxi system in Los Angeles especially. While I am not a big fan of Uber (ethically) I do like the idea of ridesharing and the rating system. If Lyft, Uber and other companies were operating here, perhaps things would be different.
[+] [-] achille2|11 years ago|reply
Uh. No. Where else would the money go? Cabbies pay everything upfront. They keep all earnings.
The problem here is that both cabbies and customers are in a bad deal. The bulk of the profits go to taxi medallion holders which are typically investors.
[+] [-] joezydeco|11 years ago|reply
https://www.mccarran.com/Go/Shuttles.aspx
They are the cheapest option (usually <$15 round-trip) to get from LAS to your hotel but, like any shared-ride setup, it's gonna be a wait for the bus to arrive and a longer wait while you drop others off. Las Vegas is a unique situation where people try to scramble as fast as they can from airplane seat to casino seat and they tend to miss this option and sprint straight for the cab line.
[+] [-] artursapek|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devindotcom|11 years ago|reply
Perhaps the laws should change - certainly Uber wants them to. But flouting the law isn't often the best way to make that happen. They're not protesting injustice, they're jamming a foot in the door of a multi-billion dollar industry with technology that is still very new to regulators. The "we're just an app that connects people who want a ride with willing drivers" dodge is disingenuous, and the alternation between wounded and scoffing attitudes is grating. I don't like Uber as a company, and personally I hope it fails and the next guy picks up the torch and does these things with a bit of tact. Neither driver nor user will care.
[+] [-] brownbat|11 years ago|reply
We have GPS, we can estimate costs before the trip. If we do so, the only incentive for the cabbie is to get your service completed as efficiently as possible.
And it's weird that it's one of the only services where we can estimate the cost in advance fairly accurately in 99% of cases, but there's no price transparency. Cabs and medical services, maybe. There's no reason cab drivers should need a "billable hours" system of payment (at least not since gps mapping technology was invented).
I'd settle for that much. But my more controversial rider is that costs shouldn't vary by the time of the trip.
The risk of traffic flows should be borne by the party that will experience all the variations enough to be able to average it out. In consumer goods, if you buy a the one out of ten thousand products that are broken off the shelf, (or explodes in your hand), the merchants accept the loss, because they can even out this loss across all of their sales. In cabs, if there's suddenly an accident a mile ahead of you, and you're just stopped in a parking lot doubling your cost, that's your fault.
On an individual level, maybe just underpay if you've been jerked around. If the cabbie complains, tell them to bring the cops so you can both talk about the route and they can decide what's fair. If that behavior became widespread, taxis would lose the incentive to cheat in this way. (Though you'd probably get a few people shot in the street. I strongly prefer the "pre-calculated fares.")
[+] [-] mlrtime|11 years ago|reply
Technology could solve some of these issues but I don't see it happening in the near future.
[+] [-] dkbrk|11 years ago|reply
That said, this article completely ignored the very significant failures in Uber's rating system: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/08/14/what-ar...
Fundamentally, a five-star rating is far too simple. In my opinion, an example of this done well is Ebay's reputation system.
[+] [-] not_kurt_godel|11 years ago|reply
Wait, is this serious?
> he was clearly falling short of Uber’s standard... I gave him five stars, of course.
Why? I wonder if the author would continually frequent a deli that regularly served him rotten meat out of some misplaced sense of guilt.
> He wouldn’t let us out of the cab until she promised to [give 5 stars]. Afterward, we agreed: That was a pretty annoying ride, but not so bad it was worth punishing someone financially over it.
Yeah, I always find it annoying when I get quasi-kidnapped too. But who's to blame the kidnappers? Petty corruption and extortion is a totally acceptable part of life in a civilized society! It's not as if there were some sort of completely anonymous, dead-simple mechanism to instantly eliminate this sort of behavior.
> Most regular Uber users have a story like this.
I don't, nor have I heard any such thing from anyone I know. Where's the data to back this statement?
> my sample wasn’t big enough to generate anything I’d call data
Ergo, you have no business writing authoritatively on this subject.
> Why would Uber invite riders to use a scale of one to five unless it wants them to make fine distinctions? But in practice, it means a rating intended by a user as a gesture of approval is in fact a vote to have a driver fired. That’s screwed up.
If it's so screwed up, then why would anyone drive for Uber? Surely, all of their drivers would be getting fired and no one would want to work for them if that were the case. The fact is, it's not, and the reason is clear if you have a basic understanding of statistics, particularly normal distributions.
> Uber likes this system because it enjoys being able to say all of its drivers have near-perfect ratings. But it’s a harsh one for drivers, and also for customers, who find themselves repeatedly forced to choose between guilt, spite and ignorance.
Again, if it's so harsh, why would either group voluntarily participate in the system? Nobody is forcing either side to participate, and yet they both do so in droves.
> Fundamentally, a five-star rating is far too simple.
And yet the article you cite advocates something radically simpler.
[+] [-] civilian|11 years ago|reply
Downvote me like the other commenter who expressed this, bitches!
//edit: At the time of writing this, sneak's comment was in the downvoted greyed-out font.
[+] [-] sneak|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blazespin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmckib|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SwellJoe|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] whiddershins|11 years ago|reply
Medicare is on average more efficient than private health care, for example. Health care might be a situation where profit incentives don't create the best outcome. In the case of the Nevada officials, there is no incentive whatsoever to actually fix the problem.
[+] [-] butwhy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nursie|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbsmith|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KaoruAoiShiho|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qq66|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sah88|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eo3x0|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] henrikschroder|11 years ago|reply
Also, if the bar to entry into the profession is simply to have a car and a smartphone, it will quickly become a race to the bottom in terms of wages.
All of this is good for the consumers, they get a lot of power over the drivers, they can threaten to give them a bad rating and so on, but there should probably be a balance.
Then again, it's not like the existing taxi cab unions and medallion systems and regulations are a guarantee of a good environment.
And on the third side, this profession is going to be eradicated by self-driving cars within fifteen years, so who cares?
[+] [-] johnloeber|11 years ago|reply
On the flip-side, Uber seems to be reducing racial discrimination against potential riders, as per this piece: https://medium.com/matter/ubering-while-black-146db581b9db.
[+] [-] ryanhuff|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zhoujianfu|11 years ago|reply
But by that argument wikipedia should be the world's biggest encyclopedia of racist porn.
[+] [-] mseebach|11 years ago|reply
One aspect of the government side is securing that drivers and cars are safe and properly insured and making sure that the handicapped and minorities aren't discriminated against. But it's also, in many cities, running a rigidly planned economy, ostensibly for the benefit of drivers, but in reality often more so for medallion holders and unions, and having allow those vested interests to capture the system - and surely against the benefit of consumers.
On the other hand, Uber clearly brings huge benefits to the consumer: better cars that actually show up, politer drivers, better price/choice, easy grievance process etc. But there's also ambiguity about how they threat their drivers, whether insurance is always completely correct (especially in UberPOP) etc. Then of course, there's some questionable ethical dealings.
I'm a big fan of Uber, so obviously biased, but the idea is that benefits and drawbacks exist on a spectrum, and there's no reason we couldn't get the best of both worlds: properly regulated and insured cars, without the planned economy of medallions, and decent labour-protection of drivers without completely screwing over consumers. In London, Ubers are fully regulated under the "Private Hire" scheme which is unlimited in the number of licenses provided, but require commercial insurance and a background check of drivers and I think this strikes the balance very well.
[+] [-] chx|11 years ago|reply
All in all, taxicabs suck but Uber should burn in hell.
[+] [-] blazespin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] learc83|11 years ago|reply
What about the little guy who can't afford the fines he'll have to pay if he operates a cab without a license?
Sure a lot of the regulation is overburdensome, but the solution is to change the law, not encourage companies to break it.
[+] [-] d23|11 years ago|reply
Just a side-note: I wouldn't open an article with brazenly insulting the reader.
[+] [-] djur|11 years ago|reply
This is a sarcastic remark, but: the US dollar is, in fact, a stable currency, and inflation is currently very low. Cab fares are regulated. If getting from point A to point B takes $20 in 2014, it will not be difficult to determine how much the fare should be in 2020, and to send some people around with new signs or price stickers.
I'm surprised at how many of these points seem to treat the low-tech methods used by the Nevada state government as patently absurd. I guess it comes from a mindset that technology is the obvious solution to society's problems, which is something I do not find to be obvious. It took me a while to catch on to the sarcasm as a result of that mismatch.
[+] [-] TheDong|11 years ago|reply
I found the sarcastic writing style a pleasure; it was enjoyable humorous and obvious in intent to me.
[+] [-] cheald|11 years ago|reply
If Nevada could put a magic rock for $0.03/unit in cabs that made cabbies stop longhauling, with no extra technology in play, nobody would complain that it wasn't technological enough.
[+] [-] jbigelow76|11 years ago|reply
http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2014/04/judge-dfw-airport...
[+] [-] Fede_V|11 years ago|reply
If you add a huge amount of friction before you can offer feedback, the only people to do will either be normal people who had truly horrific experiences, or incredibly entitled and annoying assholes who complain about everything.
In practice, it's really difficult for the government to be as nimble as a private company, but even people who support strong government regulation (like me!) have absolutely no ground to stand on when defending that particular status quo.
[+] [-] Tarang|11 years ago|reply
Given that each car heads to its destination without a transit route where passengers are buffered would be good.
Additionally, since the road is shared unlike the subway, it may be more efficient on resources.
Perhaps when the option becomes available, the government of some affording country may be able to pilot such a thing.
[+] [-] lucianomt|11 years ago|reply
"Flying to Vegas? Look to your left. Now look to your right. Statistically speaking, everyone of you is about to get ripped off."
[+] [-] joezydeco|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usaar333|11 years ago|reply
Did this three years back. Within days, the offending cab company called me and issued me a complete refund.
[+] [-] BorisMelnik|11 years ago|reply
If you drive a cab for 40 years, do 25 fares a day and "reroute" 4-8 extra blocks (~=$1.25) you'll see an extra ~$30/day or even if he/she does every other fair $15/day.