Companies don't get to pick and choose which laws they deem worthy of following. If you want the laws changed support an advocacy group. To let them off for blatantly ignoring legislation in a democratic society is setting a dangerous precedent.
You could apply the same logic to gay legalization, feminism & female emancipation, weed legalization, India's independence lead by ghandi, the civil rights movement and other forms of civil disobedience leading to legal changes, cultural shifts and even national holidays.
In these examples you have illegal organizations, for profit organizations, non profit organizations and individuals demanding the changes.
It's very easy, civil disobedience is one of the fastest ways to change laws. Especially if you have a large base of support, which uber has. Uber uses civil disobedience very well to achieve its goals and move into new territories. Just because we aren't talking about freedom or human rights doesn't mean that this isn't the same exact behavior.
I think of civil disobedience as a way toward justice where an obvious and protracted injustice has existed.
While I think there are good things about Uber, like breaking the Taxi co monopolies and lowering the barrier to entry for anyone to become a taxi driver, it would be a stretch, a big stretch to comparing how civil disobedience can help to bring change where civil injustice exists and allowing a company to co-opt this mechanism to enable it to enter markets more easily.
I think you can apply the same logic to gay legalization and feminism, yes. The logic is stretched too far if you try to apply it to Gandhi or the Civil Rights Movement. Those are completely different situations. A company didn't choose which laws to disobey to enable those movements.
Somehow it doesn't seem quite like "civil disobedience" when it's a multinational company breaking the law. As an example, if a more established company just started breaking laws that were inconvenient to their margins (especially safety sensitive ones) I really doubt it would be so easy to support.
Which is why I'm in favour of penalties being set by a judge and being significantly burdensome enough most of the time, that they will think twice before trying. Company A has 10 million in the bank, fine is 5 million, company B has 100 billion in the bank, the fine is 75 billion.
On what basis are you assuming that the_ancient wouldn't also support a regular person who was also breaking a law that the_ancient believes shouldn't exist?
Which is why allowing them to undertake acts of civil disobedience is just letting in the Visigoths.
If money and power is allowed to buy a company greater ability to ignore the law than an individual human citizen... We all may as well call it a day, write the entire system off and start thinking about how the next one should work. Unless I see a counter example of say Google or Apple ignoring a stupid encryption must have back doors type law then we have zero examples of corporations ignoring the law for good... Vs hundreds of examples of them ignoring the law for evil, and a handful of examples where the good vs evil question is uncertain but should still be considered bad because they are breaking the law.
You're ignoring the history that caused those laws to be on the books in the first place. We had more or less unregulated capitalism up through the industrial revolution, and companies screwed it up. They were disregarding safety, making children work 14 hour days, spreading food borne diseases, adding cocaine to their products, etc.
Relatively few laws are on the books just to f* people over. The vast majority of them were enacted because they addressed real issues.
There is definitely a need for a lot of them, like mandatory safety inspections, vetting of drivers, etc. However, certain aspects of how they're implemented, like the medallion system, are obsolete and need to go away.
These regulations pre-dated the internet. They existed in a time before information was easily shared and available. If I wanted to know how "Yellow Taxi Co" vetted its drivers in 1980, I would have needed to write letters and wait weeks for a response. That's not practical when I desperately need to get somewhere stat.
But now, I can open up my phone and find out how exactly Uber vets drivers in a minute. If I don't like that, I can use Lyft. Or SideCar. Or, call a cab. I see these regulations like forcing drills to come with a OCR "Don't it yourself" failsafe. I'm an adult. I can choose my own 'risk vs cost' profile. Let me decide, and cut the red tape.
Do you know how the highway construction is vetted, how your cell phone batteries are vetted, how the gasoline additives are vetted, how the driver's licensing scheme in California is vetted, how vehicle import regulations are vetted, how traffic signals are vetted, etc?
Any of these could cause non-negligible personal risk, none of it your fault. For extra fun, imagine changing jurisdictions frequently and doing all that research over again.
Uber's economic model is maybe not my business, but my safety using them sure as hell is.
I don't want to second-guess whether drinking water is safe, food, etc. Nor do I want to have to Google whether it's safe merely to hail a cab-like service.
It's absurd to expect everyone to take 100% responsibility for all external factors beyond their control. At least some common, important factors need to be regulated simply to spare redundant burden on the populace.
But as Uber itself shows, the fact that a licensing system exists doesn't mean that all services are compliant. So you already can't assume everything is safe - you're just self-deceiving yourself into a sense of false security.
In 1980, I'd be able to tell how Yellow Cab vetted their drivers by the fact that their ad in the phone book had a PUC license number. I could then call the PUC and ask what requirements there are for a taxi cab. With the driver, I'd see a card prominently placed in the vehicle, which gave the driver's taxi license number, a photograph, and when the license expires. These are the bits of vetting that uber doesn't do, and turns a blind eye when people discuss how they work around uber's requirements for vetting [1]. The problem with uber is they've made it entirely too easy to game the system, because they'd much rather have drivers than safety.
> These regulations pre-dated the internet. They existed in a time before information was easily shared and available.
That's cool, any tips on how I can easily pull driver's arrest record and history of traffic violations?
I would also like some data on his last inspections to ensure that he's doing proper maintenance to his vehicle, and I'm not going to ride a beater who needs some break fluid and whose tires skid just a little in rainy weather.
> I'm an adult. I can choose my own 'risk vs cost' profile.
How does that work if you are drunk, otherwise incapacitated or raped ?
Pretty sure you are going to begging at that point for more regulation.
You can't just throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Some regulations
generally make the situation safer for everyone.
You mean raped and robbed, like the Brooklyn woman who entered a licensed NYC cab in February? Or raped and kidnapped, like the victim of licensed NYC cab driver Gurmeet Singh? Or maybe sexually assaulted while sleeping, like the passenger of licensed Chicago taxi driver Tajamul Syed?
That means absolutely nothing. People were capable of making decisions before the internet, you know.
"They existed in a time before information was easily shared and available. If I wanted to know how "Yellow Taxi Co" vetted its drivers in 1980, I would have needed to write letters and wait weeks for a response. That's not practical when I desperately need to get somewhere stat."
And even with the internet, verifying all of that, and making sure that it's accurate, up to date, and not just astroturfing isn't practical either.
Why do you believe there is a need for this? Vetting of drivers, saftey etc can all be done under private insurance and/or review systems
This idea that the government should protect everyone from everything is very dangerous.
Further I have never really felt safe in government approved taxi's so the idea that the government today is providing proper safety inspections and vetting of driver is laughably naive, Taxi regulations is a money scheme for government and has 0 to do with safety
Because I've ridden in non-regulated gypsy cabs before. The driver was terrible, the cab was in worse shape, and there was absolutely no systemic set of metering, just a negotiation of what the both of us felt was fair after the fact. The whole reason the medallion system was created was because prior to the medallions, taxis were a real risk to the general public.
The government shouldn't protect everyone from everything. They should, however, protect people when market failures do happen, like what happened in the taxi industry in the 20s and 30s. Uber's stonewalling here, when they were the ones who helped craft the law, shows how unconcerned that they aren't concerned with working out how to make taxis safer, just that they want to make money on an industry that needs rethinking, consequences be damned.
The whole reason the medallion system was created was because prior to the medallions, taxis were a real risk to the general public.
Nope, the reason it was created was because the taxi drivers where annoyed with the increase of competition during the Great Depression and started striking and destroying property until they got a monopoly over the business.
From the nyc.gov site: Widespread poverty prompted many New Yorkers to opt for less-expensive forms of transportation, decreasing the demand for taxis. This put many companies out of business and caused many cabdrivers to lose their jobs. The situation was made worse by the tactics of “wildcat” (unlicensed) taxis who used what some considered to be “underhanded tactics,” such as drastically lowering fares, to get more business. The situation in the taxi industry was dire; frustrated cabdrivers turned their anger into violent protest and the demands for industry regulation increased.
Another source: Striking taxi drivers was nothing new–the first strike took place in 1908, a year after the first taxi company was founded. But this strike had a hostile energy to it, as strikers went hunting for scabs to punish. As one driver put it, “the bastids that was scabbin’, we pulled the doors off their cabs.” Independent cab owners, who had nothing to gain by striking, had their windows smashed by blocks of ice and passengers thrown from their cabs. Police who tried restore order had their tires slashed and marbles thrown under their horses. By February 5, angry crowds of driving were brawling in the street with the police and torching independent cab cars.
>Because I've ridden in non-regulated gypsy cabs before. The driver was terrible, the cab was in worse shape, and there was absolutely no systemic set of metering, just a negotiation of what the both of us felt was fair after the fact. The whole reason the medallion system was created was because prior to the medallions, taxis were a real risk to the general public
So do Uber rides have terrible drivers, cars in bad shape, no consistent metering, or ride negotiation?
If not, then it seems like the regulation intended to accomplish the above is either obsolete or irrelevant to this case.
I am assuming those gypsy cabs where not connected to a real time database where thousands of users are reviewing the drivers actions where 1 bad review can cost the drivers their ability to book new riders
You that is the difference, technology it replacing government, and that is a good thing.
You do not need the government to know the uber driver is good or not, other uber users will tell you that
Because uber's assurances that a driver that's picking you up is the driver who was interviewed are laughable [1]. It would be trivial for uber to create, and mandate their drivers display, information that had their photo, driver id, etc. Technology would be replacing government if uber provided the same assurances I can get right now. They don't.
First past the post voting schemes are less than useless, wasting your time voting in American elections is not a way to effect change. If you believe your vote matters I have a shit ton of math I can throw at you to show you how it does not
Your vote has the statistical significance it has been apportioned by your continued choice of living locale. Don't like that level of significance ... Move or convince others to agree with you.
IMO, it's a good thing that no individual's vote "matters" in this kind of stuff. If it did, voting would be pointless and everybody would just go around doing whatever they wanted.
As it stands, society has decided that we don't want people and companies doing whatever they want, and we want them to follow certain rules. We tried the laissez-faire system and in almost every case the end result was giant corporations screwing people over in some way.
"Why do you believe there is a need for this? Vetting of drivers, saftey etc can all be done under private insurance and/or review systems"
Not really, considering none of them have worked very well so far.
"This idea that the government should protect everyone from everything is very dangerous."
This idea that companies should be able to do whatever they want because profit is even more dangerous.
"Further I have never really felt safe in government approved taxi's so the idea that the government today is providing proper safety inspections and vetting of driver is laughably naive, Taxi regulations is a money scheme for government and has 0 to do with safety"
Except Uber wants those laws on the books, because they consider disregarding the law a competitive advantage. Otherwise they'd be lobbying for the laws to be changed. Instead, they're just flaunting the law everywhere, and crying when they get called out on it.
Disgraceful attitude. Uber and its supporters should wake up and realise that they alone do not get to usurp the laws made by democratically elected representatives. This kind of imperialist behaviour is antiquated, disrespectful and selfish. And is even more unacceptable from a company with a long history of childish, petulant behaviour hell bent on disrupting as much as they can.
Whilst I agree that here in Australia our taxi laws need to be improved I am not happy for Uber to just ignore important safety conditions that people have fought for e.g. security cameras.
Well get back to me when you have figured this utopian vision out.
In the meantime I will trust my local members and health/safety experts in the public sector over one US company trying to make billions as quickly as possible.
Nice False dilemma... How about you trust neither....
I do not trust uber, and I damn sure do not trust the government.
As far as a utopia, that is the dream of a statist. Statists believe if they elect just the right people, and pass just the right laws everyone will be safe, happy and life will finally be bliss for all....
Nonarchic (Anti-Statism) libertarians like myself do not believe in a utopia, we believe in a rational foundation of ethics we accept that bad things will happen to good people. We believe that over the long term allowing individuals to be free provides the best method for most people to be able to live happy and fulfilled lives as they desire.
You realize the law at issue is a law Uber supported which legalized ridesharing services in California?