A few years ago, I was in NY for a conference in Manhattan but had switched to a hotel in Jersey for a few days to see a friend. Once I switched back to Times Square, as I was getting dressed for a Broadway show it hit me: I had left all of my dress shirts in the Jersey hotel.
Long story short, I request an uber in the middle of NY rush hour saying that I was at the Jersey hotel. After a minute, I called the driver and explained the situation. He was happy to help and the hotel front desk had the shirts waiting when he arrived. He took them to the resteraunt that I was eating at on Broadway and much to my shock, the hour long process had only cost me $21.
Needless to say I tipped the driver with cash.
I remember thinking: This is going to be a thing VERY soon.
Conversely: "Hey Uber driver? I need you to pick up a duffel bag located at Cicero and X, under the bridge. Do NOT look in the bag. You will be tipped an extra $500 in cash if you obey these instructions."
Take it further. Is a lock Pelican case suspicious? I've used them constantly to ship technology equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars. Now what if I'm moving coke around in them, with Uber drivers doing the deliveries. Who is going to question locked gear with a bunch of mundane shipping stickers on the outside?
I'd imagine it'd play out pretty much like any other courier service? So long the couriers are plausibly not involved they're not gonna get in trouble right?
It's a boon for LE. They'll have access to the data. If they make enough fuss, they might even get Uber to encourage drivers to report suspicious activity. (What do they have to lose? No one wants to stick up for evil drug dealers.)
Remember how some of the Silk Road vendors were caught. LE found a couple suspicious packages confirmed to contain unlicensed medicines (supposedly via random inspection, but could have been secret spying, or regular gumshoe work). Investigators go to originating USPS office, look for suspicious activity. Quickly find it, make a bust.
Really, it should just point out the silliness of such contraband laws in the first place.
If you ship drugs with UPS or Fedex, law enforcement will dress up as the driver and personally deliver your package. They arrest you as soon as you sign for it.
What? I doubt that would hold up in court. I sign for packages all the time without knowing what they are, does signing for a package really mean anything other than "I've received a package and it doesn't look damaged"? Should I be making the UPS and FedEx guy wait as I open every package in front of them to confirm someone isn't maliciously sending me drugs?
I remember this happened to a minor league baseball coach for the Red Barrons back in the '90s. Basically, someone who knew the guy wanted to send the coach an envelope with cocaine in it. So the genius gave the envelope to his secretary to mail. The secretary accedently spilled some coffee on the envelope and decided to open it to check the contents. She found the drugs and called the police.
The police, now having the drugs and the guy that was going to send them, hatch a plan. First, they mail the drugs to the coach. Then shortly after the envelope arrives they search the coach's room. Low and behold they find cocaine and the coach is arrested.
I'm not sure how it turned out but it looks like the coach is still coaching to this day:
This happens in LA already a fair amount in my experience. It's perfect for many productions where instead of picking up gear across town and sending a PA back and forth. The only down side is the repeatability and consistency that is valuable with using the same people who know where exactly to go and how to navigate the sometimes odd places.
Very interesting. Assuming that the drivers doing a "Rush" order can gather delivery items from multiple businesses in one geographical area, it could mean greater delivery efficiency (and shorter delivery times) overall. Example: orders come in to 4 businesses within within a few blocks of each other. Businesses send their Rush request in to Uber. Uber Rush driver indicates that they are in that area and picks up all items, then delivers them to target area(s).
Another thing this implies is that that these businesses could switch from a staffed delivery service to a completely on-demand one. One of the things the businesses and their customers could see an improvement with is the case where all their delivery people are out making deliveries, and new orders come in. With this, they just make a new Rush request and get a new delivery person.
This is something I've always thought about Uber- they're just a courier service that happens to deliver people. The reason taxi drivers are unhappy with them has never really made sense to me since the oh-so-expensive taxi medallion gives them the right to pick up people hailing them from the side of the street. All of the problems consumers have with taxis are because they're trying to use them as a car service to schedule rides and go further than just the downtown area of a city.
Well, that line of reasoning assumes that taxes on Uber's revenues would be commensurate with and used to offset losses in wages for drivers. So, in that sense, it's still a real concern that cannot simply be waved off.
That said, expecting Uber to continue to pay drivers after the advent of safer, cheaper autonomous cars is silly. Bring on the autonomous cars, I say. And, while it's someone's job to ensure an economic system with opportunity for all, it isn't Uber's job any more than it's yours or mine.
> And, while it's someone's job to ensure an economic system with opportunity for all, it isn't Uber's job any more than it's yours or mine.
Agreed! That's why government exists, to create a social safety net, and to extract taxes from corporate and personal income revenue to support those services.
That might be the reason you accept/support the existence of government, but it is not clear that is why government exists. Your statement assumes a two things:
1) People want "to create a social safety net, and to extract taxes from corporate and personal income revenue to support those services."
2) People are getting what they want, or at least supporting government in the hope they will achieve the previous point (#1).
I am not sure what level of support either of these two points garners, but I am certain that it is not 100%, and it may be that less than an outright majority of people support both.
A more plausible explanation of why government exists (in my view) is that like any other monopoly, it has used tools including propaganda, suppression of opposing views, and incentivizes for collaboration to build and maintain its strength.
Facebook paid £4,327 in corporation taxes. Uber's scale allows them to do tax optimization so I believe they will pay a similar amount of taxes. The government obviously still gets it's money from income taxes on the employees but if you don't have employees the only thing that remains is VAT which is likely to be lower than incometax+vat.
