[fnimick]

And enough usage in the general public to have "politician X will ban uber" be a negative campaign position.

Same reason AirBnB works despite many laws to the contrary. If you get popular enough that the public will vote against people who threaten to enforce the law, out of a desire to keep using the product, you win. It's a race to get too big to be shut down.

[bobthepanda]

AirBnB's major achilles heel is that it actually isn't popular.

It is popular with tourists, who don't vote in the jurisdictions they visit, and it is popular with some landlords, who are a small minority that generally the renting public have at best indifference and often hatred for. It is very unpopular among renters who now see supply taken off long-term rental market; and it is very unpopular among other homeowners who do not want to live next to hotels.

It is not really a surprise that major tourist destinations are now slapping AirBnB with all kinds of restrictions.

[fcsp]

Oh yeah, enough usage, which is another thing to throw capital at beyond lawyers and lobbyists. Tough to not get cynical sometimes.

[throwaway237289]

There's something hilarious about your framing of "get too big to be shut down".

You actually said "if you get popular enough that the public will vote against people who threaten to enforce the law".

So someone builds a product that the public likes, something they demand that politicians allow, and somehow this is "too big to be shut down". Do you forget that modern democracies pretend that their authority derives from the will of the people?

The law is not sacred. Get off your high horse.

[manquer]

Modern ( and ancient) democracies are not direct democracies.

There are many reasons why popularity alone of the voting public does not translate into policy. The dangers of tyranny of the majority is well known, will of the people is a necessary but not sufficient reason.

There are also some pre-requisites for a functioning democracy like a well-informed electorate which is questionable today at best.

[SllX]

You are correct, but so is the parent (although I wouldn’t have put it quite like that).

Laws are there to serve society. Some of the ways it serves society is when it restrains society, but people are not stupid and understand when they’re being unreasonably restrained. Unreasonably being the key word, as I’d like to think we’re all generally anti-murder around here, even if we can argue to death about things like AirBnB.

Let me put it like this: the laws of San Francisco (and other cities) protected Taxi drivers from competition, and by the late aughts the local taxi services here were godawful magnets for complaints every weekend that the relevant regulatory authority (the SFMTA) didn’t do a goddamned thing about. If you wanted to go out and enjoy a nice weekend night, the responsible thing was not to drive. But good luck getting home, and if you could get a cab, it would be filthy and the driver would unlawfully insist his card reader was broken (it wasn’t, and it never was, the card reader was probably the most reliable thing in that car given how little wear and tear it would have seen in life).

Uber didn’t walk into a well regulated transportation marketplace. They and Lyft drove headfirst into a marketplace where the existing laws and regulations were suppressing supply and killing the market, and not in service of the passengers (i.e. the voters). They won the battles that mattered which were the political battle by upending a status quo that had favored this shitty little taxi medallion system and the market battle by just being better at a price people were willing to pay than their competition.

Popularity doesn’t always translate to policy in a democracy, but it often does.

[fnimick]

While I agree taxi regulation was done badly, effectively removing all regulation I don't think is the answer. There are huge negative externalities to people who are neither drivers nor riders that should be protected by the law as much as the 'customers' wishes are. (just like the airbnb example, imagine someone cycling in a busy commercial area dodging uber drop-offs throwing open doors, double parking, etc)

[SllX]

The environmental hazards to cyclists are far beyond any extra danger Uber and Lyft provide and they lose to more popular constituencies regularly because most people in America even in the cities are not cyclists and often resent cyclists.

We prioritized cars a long time ago, and we’re still paying for it. I’m not happy about that fact either. You can absolutely argue that cyclists are victims to a tyranny by majority much as I can argue that that the presence of Uber and Lyft is a net benefit versus the status quo that existed prior to their coming onto the scene, and I’ll just say both things can be true. People also lose in democracies.

[B1FF_PSUVM]

> The law is not sacred. Get off your high horse.

OK, let's take a vote to take your stuff and share it around.