[anjel]

In England, ca. 1500s common law established the legal precedent that if your cattle broke loose of its pen, wandered into your neighbor's field and trampled their garden, you were liable for the damage your cattle caused.

Meanwhile, 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's problem.

Now AI (set loose in the wild at the AI industry's strategic choice so as to be irreversible) seems poised to disrupt and render a very significant part of the labor force disrupted on an unprecedented societal scale and it appears to be a foregone conclusion that collateral damages won't be the causal industry's expense. Nevermind that its also poised to easily afford those social costs, and don't even consider that maybe society should be considering this obvious cause and effect. For me at least the feudal suppression of this otherwise obvious and necessary discussion is perhaps more spectacular than the causal technological breakthrough itself.

Now *that's* control.

[pibaker]

> In England, ca. 1500s common law established the legal precedent that if your cattle broke loose of its pen, wandered into your neighbor's field and trampled their garden, you were liable for the damage your cattle caused.

Ok.

> Meanwhile, 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's problem.

And how does this paragraph connect to the previous one? The streets of New York isn't taxi drivers' private property. No one trampled their garden any more than me opening a coffee shop tramples the garden of the Starbucks down the street. Should we forbid any new entry into a market just because it upsets the incumbents who invested big money into their business?

[psalaun]

I'm not from the US, but if the NYC taxi system works like french one, entry on the market required buying an existing licence from a retiring driver for the price of a flat. Government should have forbidden Uber from operating in this market without any cost of entry (the cost could've been to end the regulation and pool money to compensate actors that were playing by the rules)

[NitpickLawyer]

I struggle to see how the 3 examples go together. Your exposition implies a connection, but I struggle to see one. The best I could do is that it has to do with rights and responsibilities?

The first example is clear. And it has pretty much carried on, as the "right to property" and "the responsibility to cover damage to other's rights".

The second example, even though you wrote it as Uber vs. the cab driver, is more about Uber vs. the municipality. By the fact that almost all over the world people wanted Uber (or the other brands) over the imposed limitation of their municipalities, shows that the deal was wrong. In places where it was artificially limited, people have showed to prefer the alternatives. It has little to do with Bob the driver, and more to do with Alice the mayor who decided unilaterally that a taxi cab should require a 100k/yr medallion. That's what's changed, and society accepted it.

The third example is weirder still. Again you pose it as AI provider vs. average Joe, but here I struggle to even see what rights / who's rights are being infringed upon. I don't see any. While we generally have a right to work, there is absolutely no right to work in a certain industry, if the industry doesn't have demand. If someone else doesn't need your output, your right to work in that particular field has absolutely no basis in reality.

Unless you want to go back to the places and regimes that decided who works where, modern society has no place for such thinking. A right to work protects you from employers choosing not to hire you because of things that you are (race, age, gender, etc.) It absolutely doesn't protect you at all against "people don't need elevator operators anymore". And I say this as someone who's worked in this industry 20+ years. If tomorrow people don't need software done by hand anymore, tough luck for me. But it's absolutely not the problem of rights. I don't have a right to demand people wanting my services. That's not the social contract at all.

[KPGv2]

> over the imposed limitation of their municipalities

This was really just a few cities in the US. There's no artificial taxi scarcity in Houston or London or Tokyo.

You might reflexively say London has strict regulations, but it regulates safety not imposing an artificial cap. That's a NY/Boston/Chicago/Philly thing.

Uber won because:

1. on-demand app

2. VCs subsidized rides to destroy taxi companies by driving the customer cost to well below provider cost.

[steveBK123]

> 2. VCs subsidized rides to destroy taxi companies by driving the customer cost to well below provider cost.

Not sure about other regions but in NYC this is 100% the case. Ubers used to be nicer cleaner newer cars, better drivers.. for less than a taxi. Now they are about 4x what they cost in the 2010s, with cars about as dirty as a taxi and equally surly drivers.

[anjel]

1st example was the progenitor of what eveolved into strict liability. (If you make money putting stuff into the stream of commerce, you're liable for unintended and evenunforseeable downstream damages. 2nd example is an illustration of that longheld legal precedent's being curiously ignored (nevermind the cost savings was a bum rush and livery costs are now higher than before the innovative advent) 3rd is a call to at least litigate who bears the downstream effects. Or perhaps we should just cancel public health measures and employ pestilence to solve the problem *organically.*

[ahepp]

> If you make money putting stuff into the stream of commerce, you're liable for unintended and evenunforseeable downstream damages

So if you’re a business offering poor quality services, and I come along and start offering higher quality services, I owe you damages for the impact I have on your business?

[wahern]

Morally, maybe? It's what people tend to implicitly assume when a large chain displaces local mom & pops. You can argue it's for the greater good in the long-term, but that doesn't settle the question of the immediate injuries. Is it the fault of the stock boy who lost his job that he worked for a less efficient employer? Maybe?

The whole encyclical's argument is that morality requires an accounting and response to the pain inflicted upon each individual, and human morality is a distinct set of rules and norms than economic, physical, or even civil laws. I think it also follows that it's not just, e.g., Walmart or OpenAI who bares some responsibility for ameliorating temporary suffering. And to the extent people use the encyclical as fodder in the usual anti-corporate rhetoric, then that's unfortunate.

And this is coming from the Catholic church. It turns alot of people off who in isolated contexts often perceive hypocrisy, but in its charity it has always considered the personal responsibility of those receiving it. It understands the struggles and inherent tensions that comes from trying to square individualized justice & mercy, selflessness, and the "greater good".

[s1artibartfast]

you gravely understand #1 if you apply it in a blanket manner. You are not liable for all damages and consequences, only a vary narrow subclass.

[NitpickLawyer]

> you're liable for unintended and evenunforseeable downstream damages.

so the people vs. otis, the people vs. IBM608, and so on? Has it ever worked?

[kelnos]

No, the 2nd example has nothing to do with that. You're drawing a false equivalence.

[ses1984]

People especially wanted uber because uber charged below market rates by subsidizing rides with vc money.

[NitpickLawyer]

Maybe. But the fact that they're still in business shows that different people value different things. Be it rating schemes, payment alternatives, choosing their music, choosing their cars, one click hailing and so on. The people have spoken, the social contract has changed.

[KPGv2]

that's just goalpost shifting

The argument was "governments restricted taxi availability so Uber won" and now you've mott-and-bailied yourself down to "people want to pick music they listen to on the ride"

[basisword]

>> But the fact that they're still in business shows that different people value different things.

No it doesn't. It shows they could undercut the market, monopolise it, and then charge more once they'd killed the competition.

[solenoid0937]

Except NYC taxis and the taxi cartel is still trash compared to Ubers, despite Uber being out of its subsidization era.

[arjie]

Amusing. By yoking taxicab drivers to the other two, the argument attempts to make them seem like victims. However, most people’s direct experience with taxicab drivers and the resulting improvement under Uber directly contradicts that sentiment. This probably has the opposite effect and makes it seem like the AI companies aren’t so bad if they’re akin to the guys who freed us from cabs.

[kergonath]

> However, most people’s direct experience with taxicab drivers and the resulting improvement under Uber directly contradicts that sentiment

You can be both a victim and a bully, it's not mutually exclusive. A scam artist can get mugged or burglarised, and so on. In general, in civilised countries, being a horrible person does not prevent someone from being recognised as a victim.

[solenoid0937]

You're not a victim if you chose a bad business model that someone else disrupted.

[KPGv2]

I always feel like this take is exclusively made by New Yorkers. I never had a problem with taxies in Texas. I had to schedule a pickup time, yes, but they always showed up, the taxis were clean, they were fast, they were helpful, and they were kind. Like that whole "medallion" thing and taxi driver retirement livelihoods being destroyed because their medallion became worthless. Gotta be like five cities that use the system. Nowhere else does.

Uber/Taxi discussion is so transparently centered around New York City, it makes all discussions irrelevant to most of the US.

In fact, I still use a taxi to go to the airport with my family instead of taking an Uber. Uber is for being mid-run in city limits trails and running out of energy in the heat and the water fountains have stopped working due to low water pressure. Uber gets me to safety, and I tip big because I just sweated all over their car.

[huhkerrf]

I've taken plenty of taxis in both NYC and Texas, and pre-Uber they were terrible in both. Calling a taxi in Austin meant a 50% chance that it would get there on time, or you'd wait 30 minutes. Calling back didn't help, you would just get the dispatcher saying, "Well, I guess it's not coming then, huh?"

[madars]

Similar experiences in Boston area. Hailing a taxi at a taxi stand (e.g., at Prudential or Logan) - good experience to this day. Calling dispatcher - half of the time they don't show up (esp. so for scheduled airport rides) or show up late or arrive in a smoke-filled car. Hackney carriage medallions might have been bad investments for some cabbies, but Uber/Lyft are simply a much better service for the customer. Uber/Lyft takeover had little to do with price (though, yes, they were cheaper) and everything to do with reliability and overall quality of service.

[kelnos]

SF resident here; taxis were always terrible here too. Calling dispatch was hit-or-miss whether or not they'd even answer you. If they did, they'd always say "20 minutes", regardless of where you were and what time of day it was. A decent chunk of the time the taxi would never show up, and if they did, it wouldn't be 20 minutes. And, unlike Manhattan, good luck trying to hail one on 95% of SF's streets.

[bittercynic]

I've only used cabs a few times, but it seemed to be the operators were both. They were squeezed deep into the economic margins, and they were also often terrible to their passengers.

Same for Uber/Lyft, but they really tried to earn a good review while still providing a pretty unpleasant experience.

[Aurornis]

> Meanwhile, 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's problem.

It’s weird to see the completely broken NY taxi cab medallion system brought up as a good thing.

Most taxi drivers didn’t own a medallion. They had to rent one from one of the operations that had bought them up. It was a government granted monopoly in the control of companies that charged the drivers for the right to be able to work.

The price was high partially because the supply was artificially limited, which made getting a cab bad for people of the city.

People like to criticize Uber but let’s not glorify the past system. It sucked. The Uber model that let anyone work without having to surrender their pay to some company hoarding the tokens was great for drivers and for people of the city.

[addaon]

The whole point of the medallion system was to artificially limit supply — not with the purpose of driving up cost (although, yes, that was a secondary effect), but with the purpose of making the city more pleasant. There’s a trade off in the number of taxis — if you want a taxi, more is better; if you want to walk, drive, take a bus, bike, or basically do anything but take a taxi… fewer is better. This was a conscious choice and a control that made the city more pleasant, that we’ve lost.

[hunterpayne]

That a driver (who already owned a car) had to pay 2x the price of an average house (which is already overpriced) to do the job isn't a secondary effect. Its a primary effect and drives up price and down the driver's pay. That that happened is a 10000ft giant red sign pointing out that it didn't work. That you can't understand that means that you fundamentally don't understand good public policy in any way. Anytime a policy creates such an outcome, that system needs to be scraped and a new one needs to be created because its rotten to the core.

[saimiam]

What would this new system look like that doesn’t involve the trade offs between having cabs on demand if you need them and having a walkable city if you don’t that the person you replied to spoke about?

Uber and friends have indeed democratised giving rides to people - though where I am, a few rich people have bought numerous cars and have daily wagers driving them finding fares via Uber - but at the cost of far more cabs on the road.

Others, notably motorbikes and scooter ride aggregators have emerged to replicate Uber. These motorbike cabs are even harder to regulate than cabs.

Uber, imo, has broken the equilibrium that existed before.

[kelnos]

You make the medallions non-transferrable/rentable, and use a lottery system to grant them.

Uber has absolutely increased traffic levels in the places where they operate. I don't personally think it's to a level that is actually a problem, but I also avoid driving myself around in cities whenever I can, so I may not be the best at observing this.

[Aurornis]

> if you want a taxi, more is better; if you want to walk, drive, take a bus, bike, or basically do anything but take a taxi… fewer is better.

You used driving as an example. I don't see how it's better for the city if we encourage more people to own and park cars because taking taxis is too hard.

The nice thing about Uber is that it lets those cars used for personal driving double as taxis when demand is high. Instead of having your own car and parking it, you can have someone else use their car to drive you.

I think some people have become so desperate to make Uber evil that we're intentionally ignoring what's gained.

Finally, regulating taxi medallions is an awful way to address traffic. If traffic is the problem, you regulate vehicles and traffic. Creating a system where you have to buy something approaching the price of a house just to do a job with a low hourly rate because the city wants to regulate traffic is beyond broken.

[maxerickson]

Say you own a well and sell the clean water.

I learn that boiling the stream water makes it safe and tell people about it.

What do I owe you?

Uber and AI are certainly more complicated than that, but you are pretty close to arguing that the constructed rights of some people inhibit the rights of other people.

[esafak]

How does that analogy apply to AI, where a handful of companies are attempting to replace the entire white collar market with computers? It fits neither qualitatively, nor quantitatively.

[maxerickson]

If somebody thinks the computer can make a better PowerPoint, what business is it of yours to stop them from using the computer to make a PowerPoint?

There's a big political problem to solve, but it's how to give most people decent material standards of living if computers are doing all the work, not how to freeze things in place so that people can keep doing tasks that (assuming success) the computer is better at.

[esafak]

Again, this analogy makes no sense. People use PowerPoint, they don't get replaced by it.

The goal of AI companies is to replace workers entirely; that is the only way their valuations make sense, and OpenAI's charter says this explicitly.

[maxerickson]

The displacement will rather obviously be task by task, not job by job.

Okay, edits it is. The displacement will rather obviously be incremental and be task by task, not job by job.

[inglor_cz]

"cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless"

Doesn't it strike you that if licenses for a banal service like taxi are that expensive, that this likely indicates political corruption?

Good riddance to this sort of rent-seeking. I wonder if the NYC taxi service was provided by the mob.

In Central Europe, I don't have to wonder. Prior to Uber, the local taxi services were operated by the mob, and the taxi drivers basically robbed naive tourists through exorbitant, illegal prices. Stories of rape or abuse of intoxicated women abound. Some of the drivers were so sketchy and creepy that people refused to board their cars. Scammy Prague taxi service was legendary, but by far the worst sort of tracksuit-and-gun wearing mobsters behind the wheel I ever encountered was in late 1990s Bratislava.

This ugly rotten web was swept clean by Uber, where people have a reputation to maintain. Thanks god. My wife is no longer afraid to take a cab at night. Hooray.

[kergonath]

> Doesn't it strike you that if licenses for a banal service like taxi are that expensive, that this likely indicates political corruption?

Not necessarily. It indicates a profession that can be very easily abused to harm the general public and that requires some level of trust.

[inglor_cz]

Not necessarily, but it surely reeks of corruption and requires extra scrutiny.

Most professions can be abused to harm people and require some level of trust. Imagine that a developer's medailon cost 300 k.

[kergonath]

I think FAANG developers would be better equipped than taxi driver to manage this. And besides, I don't think I am really against some kind of professional certification like actual engineers do. Right now SWE do not manage any of the downsides of what they inflict upon the world, and it's a damn shame. That said, having a limited number like taxi medallions in some cities would be stupid, even though I can see how it might make sense in a city.

I agree with you that it requires scrutiny and the process must be open and fair, like most things in a working democracy. I also think that it is not out of line to have mechanisms to ensure whoever is in a situation to kill, mug, kidnap or ransom you has no interest in doing so.

[inglor_cz]

"I also think that it is not out of line to have mechanisms to ensure whoever is in a situation to kill, mug, kidnap or ransom you has no interest in doing so."

The problem in practice seems that those mechanisms get hijacked by the very people whom they should prevent from being in that service.

IDK about NYC, but here in Central Europe, taxi services regulated by municipal governments were consistently treating their customers worse than Uber/Bolt. Outright murders were rare, but sexual harassment, fraud, verbal abuse, even "minor" things like the cars smelling of tobacco smoke were worse. Occassionally, there were cars set on fire or brandishing of weapons when those drivers got into conflicts. That's not ancient history and people still remember.

That happens when guys with deep pockets capture the regulatory services and make them into their own cash cow, using force of law to prevent any competition from emerging.

If you had a ballot about canceling Uber and going back to the old model here, that would lose by something like 15:85. The improvement in service and safety is just staggering.

[froh]

I love the animal-owner analogy of owning something and being responsible for what it does when set loose. the concept is the same in todays Germany. you own a pet, and if it's friendly it's all nifty but if it creates my damage, the owner is liable. not the person who guided it at the time. no. the owner. "Halterhaftung"

is it ok if I skip the Uber part? I think that leads as try s evidenced by the other reactions.

the "who is liable for the damage an ai creates, in the hands of an incompetent or even malignant guide?" question is fantastic. and who "owns" an ai?

[Joker_vD]

Welcome to the New (fifth, I believe) Industrial Revolution! It will not quite as brutal as the first and the second ones were, but it still won't be gentle.

[solenoid0937]

> 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's problem.

Why is this Uber's problem? Do you realize how ridiculously dumb, inefficient, and corrupt a 6 figure taxi license is? It is not Uber's job to compensate for that ridiculousness.

They provided a better and more cash efficient solution for passengers. That is enough.

If you required every technological venture to cover the cost for every person it "disrupts," you would halt progress entirely.

[andrepd]

> They provided a better and more cash efficient solution for passengers. That is enough.

They burned half a billion dollars a month of VC money at their peak to undercut taxis across the world; in quainter times this used to be called "dumping", now it's just the standard way of doing business. All the while basically flaunting the law with their whole "we're just a platform connecting people who happen to drive a car with people who happen to want to go some place, it's totally not a taxi guys". No regulations, no expensive licenses or professional certifications, no need even for a minimum wage or basic social security or insurance or any kind of protection. Amazing!

Essentially the same in spirit as Airbnb, only this latter had far more destructive consequences than screwing over taxi drivers.

[solenoid0937]

Most businesses require sunk costs or debts, and it's also often what is required for new ideas take place in an established market. Whether they burn VC money or the bank's money to gain a foothold, is immaterial.

Uber did a great thing here and made a product that people like more, for less money. More drivers, way more global availability, more customers, and better cars, all while being cheaper. That is a quintessential success story.

If people liked taxis more, they'd use them. But taxis are still shit and the only reason we use them is because of the taxi cartel bullying weak city governments into restricting Ubers.

[jeremyjh]

Uber sold dollars for $0.75 until their competition was destroyed, and then they raised their prices.

[kelnos]

And yet somehow Uber and Lyft (and Waymo) in San Francisco are still usually cheaper (inflation-adjusted) than what taxis used to cost 15 years ago here.

I agree that dumping is generally bad, and perhaps laws against it should have been enforced against Uber. But the taxi system deserved to be destroyed. They sucked, and there was really no political/business way out of that system other than someone violating regulations on "what is a taxi" until it stuck. I'm not a "means justify the ends" guy in general, but in this case I think it worked out how it should have.

[meowkit]

I see this line of thinking a lot but lets look at it a different way.

Changing peoples behaviors >cost money<. Using your number here, taxis had a 25% value prop. That was just the cost of getting people to change.

I don’t care for Uber, but many many many businesses give people initial discounts and then full price later

The whole argument is moot though given self driving cars are going to wipe out the industry.

[KPGv2]

"B-but my philosophical argument was aesthetically pleasing," he shouted over the sound of eight billion people starving to death.

Setting aside your implicit assumption that what nigh-unregulated AI is set to do to humanity is "progress," having a sound argument is pretty pointless if it leads to tremendous human suffering.

Reminds me of the paradox of intolerance, where bad faith actors say "it's intolerant to be intolerant of intolerance" (i.e., argue for zero exceptions to a maxim) when it's much more preferable to say "you should be tolerant, except in the case where tolerance leads to tremendous suffering [as in the case of allowing the rise of fascism because you have to be tolerant of it]."

See also libertarianism, where simple rules are preferable to good outcomes.

[solenoid0937]

How dramatic! No one is starving to death. Things will just be rough for a bit. People will get over it, as they always have, and the QoL gains will have been worth the cost many times over, just like they were for literally every Industrial Revolution before us.

[mekael]

Ummm. Plenty of people starved to death as a result of the industrial revolution.

[solenoid0937]

Far fewer than before it. The Industrial Revolution dramatically lowered food scarcity.