[studentrob]

> I'm not complaining, I think it's exactly what the city deserves for duplicitousness

So you don't think Fasten or other competitors will be able to fill the gap? I'll be interested to follow developments.

> Sometimes walking away from crazy people is all you can do.

That's fine that you feel this way. I'd argue it hasn't been the path forward for businesses or governments when working with each other. U/L has a lot of business elsewhere so the decision to leave may not hurt them in the short term.

I understand better now how strongly you feel the city government is lying. I'm still not convinced that leaving Austin is the right way for U/L to get what they want.

Arguing that private background checks are just as effective as government fingerprint checks is a nuanced point of view. The public may have a hard time swallowing this one. Through their vote, they expressed more trust in the government's claim that fingerprint checks are more secure than private checks. Generally, people trust government security over private security. Apple staked a good part of its reputation challenging one part of this belief. They seem to have won, for now. U/L could also something extreme along those lines, walk away as you say, or try negotiating. They have several options

[EdHominem]

> Arguing that private background checks are just as effective as government fingerprint checks is a nuanced point of view.

No, it's not. In this case there's no risk (see the majority of areas where taxi drivers are not fingerprinted and the lack of rape epidemics) so there's no benefit to any mitigation strategy.

You'd receive just as much value from an anti-rape charm bracelet.

If there was a real problem you could actually analyze it, knowing what we know of rapists, and see how much of a barrier each type of countermeasure would provide. Not "nuanced" but fact-based.

> Through their vote, they expressed more trust in the government's claim that fingerprint checks are more secure than private checks.

The same government that paid to build fear over a non-existent rape epidemic paid to tell them that their solution was better.

If I hire an expert and that expert lies to me, yes I'd probably be fooled. But having fooled me doesn't somehow vindicate the expert. Even if Uber was banned by an actual popular vote it would be meaningless at this point.

[studentrob]

Are you in a debate club or something? I'm surprised this discussion has continued so long. This is one of the longer discussions I've ever had online. I'm impressed. If you're not already into debating, I'd recommend checking it out, you'd be great!

> But having fooled me doesn't somehow vindicate the expert

I never said it would vindicate anyone. I just said people make decisions based on their interpretation of facts, or their perception of reality. Since reality is always perceived through some lens, there is no objective reality. You are, of course, free to disagree.

The fact that interpretation and context impact our perception of facts is not a bad thing or a good thing. It's just a thing. When you're 7, and your parents tell you that skateboards are dangerous, you'll probably believe that for awhile. At age 10, you might see a friend riding a board while wearing pads. You might think that's pretty reasonable and change your mind. For those 3 years between 7-10, you stayed away because your parents kept telling you it's too dangerous. Adults aren't so different from kids. We don't have time for all these detailed messages from companies and politicians. Each news headline gets about 5 seconds of people's attention. People don't have time to read an article about every topic.