[ahmeneeroe-v2]

No, I don't care about that at all. Why do you care?

Someone, generations ago, made a law saying people in your town could only solicit car rides if they paid a special tax, and now you're out here vigorously defending that dead model.

State-enforced monopolies are often legalized corruption. I care more about that than some corporation using their resources to break that corruption.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> Someone, generations ago, made a law saying people in your town could only solicit car rides if they paid a special tax, and now you're out here vigorously defending that dead model.

Congratulations on a text book case of Chesterton's Fence [0]. You've mischaracterized the purpose and nature of the law.

1. we have cars, we have people willing to drive them around to take people places

2. we want some regulation of this new business/service, to make things safer for the riders

3. we want some regulation of this new business/service because otherwise competition will force the price so low that nobody can make a living offering to do this (and we consider the service valuable).

So, we introduce a scheme which says you have pay for a license in order to provide this service. This creates driver identity and "responsibility" which we want for riders. We limit the number of licenses so that we do not have too many drivers chasing too few riders, and thus offering a more reliable income to the drivers, ensuring that the service remains available.

[ time passes ]

Uber introduces a scheme in which there is almost no floor to what drivers might be paid, but manages to tell a story that convinces enough people that they could make a living or at least a significant amount of extra cash by driving without the required license. Uber also assures riders that even though there is no official license, their technology can provide the driver identity/responsibility that it offered.

Result: better ride hailing for riders, money for Uber, and a steady, constant turnover of drivers "just giving it a try because I heard you can do really well ..."

As usual, a mixture of pros and cons, which vary depending on which perspective you are taking and your moral/political philosophy.

[ahmeneeroe-v2]

>Congratulations on a text book case of Chesterton's Fence [0]. You've mischaracterized the purpose and nature of the law.

You have created a convoluted ex post facto defense of taxi laws which sound plausible but are likely wrong.

"Chesterton's fence" doesn't say that "the most socially positive explanation is correct".

The simpler explanation is one of "concentrated benefits, diffused costs". A group of taxi owners helped implement a state-enforced monopoly at the expense of the rest of society. Technology enabled a new group (Uber) to concentrate benefits further at the expense of the relatively diffused monopoly-holders. Society benefited in some ways (easier rides) while likely bearing costs in other ways (drivers subsidizing Uber).

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> You have created a convoluted ex post facto defense

Why is it convoluted? Watch the process that has happened with every other technological development in the last (say) 40 years? How is what I've described any different?

> A group of taxi owners helped implement a state-enforced monopoly at the expense of the rest of society.

You assume that the downsides of the "monopoly" (I'll ignore the twisting of the conventional meaning of words there) are larger than the upsides, and yet you seem to similarly assume that the downsides of Uber are smaller than the upsides.

Society got a new line of work that made a reasonable living, control over the drivers in the interest of safety and accountability. Those are not exactly like the discovery of fire or the dawn of agriculture, but they are not of zero worth.

I also note how your description of "A group of taxi owners helped implement" has an implicit negative tone, something alone the lines of regulatory capture. Yet we regularly hear calls for regulations to be created with the participation of those affected by it, so that legislatures and civil servants don't make stupid mistakes/decisions.

Look, I'm not really interesting in defending the medallion systems. Taxi service in many places sucked under it and conditions for many drivers weren't exactly what society might have been aiming for.

But tearing it down in favor of another mixed bag of pros & cons needs to be done with a subtle weighing for the relative pros & cons, not the reckless and giddy greed of a company like Uber.

[dambi0]

Isn’t the entire point of Chesterton’s fence to consider things ex post facto? How would you explain places that have regulations for taxis but not artificial scarcity? I don’t think the collusion argument is simpler at all. That is not to say it doesn’t explain the situation in certain places of course.

[_bkyr]

Do you ever visit or live in a place with unofficial cabs preying on people at an airport? You're acting as if laws were only made by corruption and not because people were screwed over.

I think Uber is probably a net good thing but I also think Uber should be accountable for the laws they broke. Also, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb also did exactly what was expected and increased prices to a ridiculous degree once they became the default standard and went public.

[tetromino_]

I remember official cabs that were also predatory (especially to gullible tourists) and abusive (especially to minorities). Uber's star rating system is not great, but it's vastly better than the blatant customer-ripping-off assholism of the pre-Uber taxi era.

[TimTheTinker]

> Why do you care?

Not OP, but I believe in the rule of law, and in a republic governed by elected officials.

It's not OK for powerful actors, especially companies, billionaires, and government officials, to willingly and knowingly break the law.

[ahmeneeroe-v2]

Thank you. I do generally agree with you.

In this particular example with Uber, I see "powerful actors" many decades ago breaking our social contract by using the force of the government to implement a monopoly for their own profit and everyone else's expense. Legal, yes, in the strictest sense of the word, but certainly against what I value about my particular republic (USA).

So Uber here is more "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" than a company I actually admire.

[rstuart4133]

So clearly you aren't a fan of Gandhi. He also very deliberately broke the law. And not a fan of Nelson Mandela either I guess.

Not all laws are good. Using the taxi licencing system as a way of extracting tax income is one example of a "not good" law that somehow wormed it way into many societies.

It might never have changed unless an Uber had some along. The taxi licencing scheme has the unfortunate characteristics of being inefficient but not egregiously so, and had put golden handcuffs on a group of people making a valued contribution to society. Those handcuffs were the taxi licences, which became the taxi drivers retirement fund. The taxi drivers always fought any threat to the value of those licences long and hard. Those two characteristics ensured a politician would spend have to spend a immense amount political capital to fix something that had only a modest benefit. It looked like we were doomed to suffer from this tax parasite forever.

But then a seismic shift in technologies came along, and it was not so easy enforce the laws that protected the parasite. The way I remember it the taxi drivers screamed blue murder as their net worth went rapidly to 0, but the reaction from law enforcement was ... muted. I'm sure with a concerted effort the politicians could have made life so difficult for Uber the parasite could have survived. The taxi drivers certainly thought so. But it looked to me like my republics elected officials chose not to spend political capital on doing that. It was almost like they were glad to have an excuse to rid themselves of a parasite.

Now the carnage of the taxi drivers net worth going to zero is over. That aside, most things have got better. With the monopoly broken there are more taxi companies than there were before, taxi availability has become better since you don't need an expensive licence to put one on the road, and prices have dropped.

Sometimes the ends doesn't justify the means, sometimes it does. This looks like the latter to me.

[sgdfhijfgsdfgds]

> So clearly you aren't a fan of Gandhi. He also very deliberately broke the law.

I have to say this is one of the silliest takes I have ever seen on HN.

You only need to look at the way Gandhi broke the law, the methodology of his disobedience, to see that you cannot possibly make a comparison with Uber that shows them in a good light. It's absurd to draw this comparison.

[sgdfhijfgsdfgds]

> and now you're out here vigorously defending that dead model.

This is a bit of projection. But good for you, being open about your support for fraud :-)

[Citizen_Lame]

Taxis were fraud to begin with. Anything that can hurt them and make my life easier is a plus in my book.