Defending law violations only by arguing that they make "the economy" more efficient is not very convincing.
Especially in this case since the real innovations that Uber brings in terms of ride allocation are not incompatible with paying taxes and insurance. Rather, the technical innovations of Uber appear to in themselves not be enough to actually compete with existing taxis, hence why the second innovation of actually breaking the law under the guise of technology is so important.
Uber has clearly pivoted into a taxi service, and as such it must compete on price, but somehow the fact they have an app for hailing cabs means they can be a taxi company that doesn't employ their drivers? How does that argument really work?
Transportation being cheaper and more efficient means people save time and save money. Uber has also allowed hundreds of thousands of people with an income source.
_That_ is a convincing argument to me.
"Actually compete with existing taxis"
They are competing, Uber is doing 3-5x more rides in SF than the taxis as a whole were doing before Uber. That's without including Lyft. So they're expanding the market, meaning more people can afford to pay for transportation.
Indeed they are competing with existing taxi services, but not as a taxi company, but rather as a "ride share", despite providing a taxis service, and branding themselves as such.
Given that they had the choice between acting and probably-illegally, I can find no reason to act questionably except profit expectations. This in turn means that Uber can reasonable be expected to have come to the conclusion that their technological innovations alone do not provide sustainable growth in the taxi market.
My last post already addressed this but...The taxi system is not a free market, the supply was artificially restrained and prices monopolised. Hence for the Uber system to work as it does now it would be impossible to be a 'taxi company' because the laws, in effect, have outlawed a cheap and efficient means of transportation.
The SF market is proof that they are not only obliterating the former taxi market, their service is so superior that it's expanding the market 5 times.
It's not as cut and dried as getting rid of licenses.
A couple of examples:
- some things that come with licenses are plausibly desirable (commercial insurance, say) and have no other mechanism. Yes this argues for a different solution.
- adding vehicles to road networks at or near capacity (e.g. dense metro areas) can lead to systemic inefficiencies that are plausibly much worse that the positives from a putative increase in taxi efficiency.
- etc.
This at least deserves a broader policy discussion, and it may well turn out that in some areas there is a public policy advantage to constraining this market.
"More ubers actually mean less vehicles since people who would otherwise drive and park all day would take an uber"
That's a pretty strong claim - where I've see uber operate the vast majority of fares seem to be people who were taking taxis anyway, they just prefer uber. Do you have evidence that uber is actually eating into private car usage in any significant way in a dense metro area?
Maybe, maybe not, but the situation as-is is that you need a license to operate in that business, if you disagree with that fight to get it changed, but you can't purposefully decide not to follow the law including the fines as operating expenses when others keep abiding to the same laws, and then pretend the justice system is wrong when they apply the laws.
Sometimes it's exactly the best way to fix it. Have something so good and popular the law has to change.
Prohibition didn't end because people missed the taste of alcohol; it was because people kept on drinking (and the illicit nature brought with it the trappings of criminality - corruption, violence, and murder).
Gay marriage bans were hard to "ignore" because it requires cooperation with the government, but anti-sodomy laws were generally ignored until it became comical they were still on the books.
And in general, these kinds of things are the way change happens. The first people at my work switched to git on their own discretion and against the "rules", but it caught on and was productive/popular enough that it's now common practice and no managers ruffle their feathers at the thought.
The phrase is something like - "It's better to ask for forgiveness than for permission". That's because it's easy to say no when asked for permission ("The rules are there for a reason! Tradition!"); if someone has to think about why what you did was wrong, they may come to the conclusion that you were right.
Though the only comparison I think fits the most with Uber is prohibition (since alcohol can be considered as a luxury, while marriage is a legal right). Don't forget though, with prohibition there was a complex underground bootlegging market funding organized crime. Also there's the whole Great Depression thing which put the whole country in need of additional revenue streams...
Oh yeah. None of this is simple black and white. My main assertion is that systems are generally trying to maintain homeostasis. In order to change the system, it's sometimes necessary is disrupt/ignore the system; especially when other means of influencing the system are denied or ineffective.
It is, as paying fines is cheaper than paying for a license.
When you get to that point, it's obvious that the regulation is backwards, and it's nobody but taxi drivers that made it this way: they got licenses for free, then fought for their right to transfer them for money, then they fought to limit new licensing. Basically they lobbied for free money and screwing customers.
Not disagreeing here. However, fines are put in place as a deterrent. In this instance, their purpose is a punishment for breaking a law. Uber is treating them like a tax and the government appears to disagree with that interpretation. If this were a case of a chemical company continuing to improperly dispose of waste, i'm sure at some point you'd want the government to step in over continued violations (i.e., stop them when they are clearly not acting in 'good faith').
You're right, but in both cases each company is doing the same thing, repeatedly breaking a law with no intention of stopping. Wouldn't you agree that the government has a duty to treat both cases equally?
I'm not a public policy expert by any means, nor do i claim to be one, however there's a pretty charted history of how laws can be changed. Examples include protests, lobbying, and ballot measures just to name a few. Don't fool yourself into thinking that Uber is on the moral high ground like some civil rights movement. The are a taxi company that is not following well-established procedure. If they want to continue to operate they should either adapt, or lobby for changing that procedure.
First of all, the OP was making a general point about the best way to go about challenging existing laws. Since the point is general, a counter example suffice, even if it differs from the specifics of the situation being discussed. If those specifics make a difference in the OP's point, the onus of outlining why they make a difference is on the OP. This is how logical reasoning works, but every. single. time. someone points out a counter example to a general statement, there is someone like who who comes and moves the goalpost by saying "oh yeah, because X is like Y", and we're all worse off because of this lack of debating etiquette.
Second, you would be wrong to trivialize the importance of expanding the offering in cabs. Uber will go into neighborhood where Taxis don't, they can also be substantially cheaper depending on the city and the specifics. Having access to a ride late at night can mean the difference between being raped or not raped for many people living in high crime neighborhood. In addition, Uber provides a livelihood for a large number of drivers. The taxis that it compete are generally renting their license from a large company who is collecting the monopoly rent.
>Uber will go into neighborhood where Taxis don't, they can also be substantially cheaper depending on the city and the specifics. Having access to a ride late at night can mean the difference between being raped or not raped for many people living in high crime neighborhood.
This sounds like an American problem. Part of being a licensed taxi driver in Europe is that you can't refuse service in certain parts of town. Same for taxi hours. I have never not gotten a taxi by phone in Vienna.
Especially in this case since the real innovations that Uber brings in terms of ride allocation are not incompatible with paying taxes and insurance. Rather, the technical innovations of Uber appear to in themselves not be enough to actually compete with existing taxis, hence why the second innovation of actually breaking the law under the guise of technology is so important.
Uber has clearly pivoted into a taxi service, and as such it must compete on price, but somehow the fact they have an app for hailing cabs means they can be a taxi company that doesn't employ their drivers? How does that argument really work?