What happens when Google, Apple, Amazon or other company with a solid cloud app team steps in?
Austin's homegrown competitors may not be fearful, but one of the existing majors could single-handedly shatter Uber's image with a half-decent app, esp if it's integrated with something like Google Maps or Apple Wallet or equivalent feed.
> What happens when Google, Apple, Amazon or other company with a solid cloud app team steps in?
This is sort of a fundamental problem with our entire conception of a digital economy. Google, Microsoft and Amazon are fundamentally the only games in town that can compete. Our regulations, laws, and economics are not well set up to deal with the fact that there is a wholly new type of meta-entity that is so overwhelmingly important for modern business.
We can barely regulate (and often fail to regulate) the energy industry appropriately and that's a way more competitive market.
I read a poignant comment on Twitter the other day, about how nowadays public libraries and fire services would never be funded - perhaps we'd give illiterate people tax credits for buying books, and insurance companies would have private fire engines.
The neo-liberal agenda of not allowing any public entity to provide services that could possibly compete with a private corporation has succeeded too well.
I pay for fire protection as part of my property taxes. In this case, it's a separate item that must be purchased separately. That's what makes it "a cancer"?
As the morons in the article said: Bell and her boyfriend said they were aware of the policy, but thought a fire would never happen to them.
Yeah, I agree. I also move to let sick people die if we can't verify that they have insurance coverage, and bar children from education if their parents can't pay (or if they are orphaned). I mean, screw poor people! Right?
No sympathy for people who lost their home and possessions over a $75 fee?
I had a friend who had no sympathy for another friend who was diagnosed with throat cancer, because he smoked cigarettes. Didn't matter that the person had cancer, what mattered is that they smoked cigarettes and knew the risks. It was forgivable on the first friend's part because he was also heavily medicated for a psychiatric illness.
No sympathy for people who lost their home and possessions over a $75 fee?
Well, yes, sympathy from me as in "sucks to be them". But they were adults and made a voluntary decision to forego paying for fire protection. They made a bet and they lost.
As for cancer, when I was in high school some 40 years ago, I knew a US Army Major (i.e. Gung-ho military) who smoked. Even then, smoking was starting to be frowned upon. So he used to say "any fool can quit smoking. It takes a man to face cancer."
At a personal level, if I ran into that person now and it turned out he indeed had cancer, I would of course have sympathy for him. But perhaps he and I would both agree that adults sometimes make bad decisions, and they then should accept the consequences of those bad decisions.
As Niven and Pournelle explained it back in 1981: "think of it as evolution in action".
I respect your different point of view on this matter. But if I may act as the devil's advocate: what if it was your brother (or father) that said that to you? Would you not volunteer help to them if they said those things and are now suffering from cancer?
Personally, I don't think we should reward people for making bad decisions; you are implicitly punishing the people who made the good ones, which are often hard. However, rewarding is one thing; saving from death/destitution is quite another.
Would you not volunteer help to them if they said those things and are now suffering from cancer?
Yes of course families help each other no matter the previous bad choices.
On a societal level we try to help people with cancer even if they don't have health insurance. That's what Medicaid is. Unfortunately that only helps save them from death; destitution probably feels almost as bad and we don't have an easy solution to that.
Can you, for certain, tell if someone who is diagnosed with cancer 100% directly caused that cancer?
At the point that someone is diagnosed with cancer, what is gained by saying "I told you so"?
Would you go as far as to say that to someone who got stomach cancer? That they should accept the consequences of eating cured meats while they and their family suffer?
What about prostate cancer? Did you know that the risk of prostate cancer is decreased by 20% - 30% for each of the following: 1) regular prostate massages 2) increased number of orgasms 3) drinking coffee 4) ingesting more lycopene 5) exercising (41% decrease in risk of developing prostate cancer!) 5) consuming more omega-3 fatty acids.
Would you hold the same "I told you so" attitude towards someone diagnosed with prostate cancer because they didn't have enough kinky sex, drink enough coffee, exercise and eat the right foods?
I'm having a hard time differentiating between "didn't pay $75" and "didn't exercise or rub their prostate hard / often enough".
There's a big difference between having "no sympathy" (which is what I said) and "I told you so".
"No sympathy" means indifference. The problems of people who didn't pay for fire service should be a cautionary tale, a warning to society at large. As the article said: by now, everyone should know about the city's fire policy. "After the last situation, I would hope that everybody would be well aware of the rural fire fees, this time"
"I told you so" is much different. It's "rubbing it in" at a personal level. I would never say "I told you so" to friends or to random people. I would, however, say it to my children in the appropriate situation. Pointing out consequences of bad choices helps children learn to make better choices.
I'm having a hard time differentiating
In "didn't pay $75", the people who don't pay but still expect to be covered are making a deliberate choice to freeload off the goodwill of their neighbors who are paying. How does a fire department exist if paying for it is optional? There is no 'fire department tooth fairy' that periodically delivers money to pay for salaries and equipment.
Cancer is much different. As you note, there isn't 100% certainly what causes a cancer. Lung cancer is one that can be closely linked to smoking, but even there it's not absolute. A quick search turns up a CDC web page that links 80% to 90% of the cases to smoking.[1]
In the case of cancer, interestingly enough it's once again an issue of insurance. Even when I was 20 years old and working a shitty no-benefit low paying job I still paid for my own health insurance. I was only being paid $4 per hour but I prioritized insurance highly enough to pay $100 per month for it. (Granted, that was 40 years ago, it's much harder to afford individual insurance today without some sort of subsidy or group policy).
In your hypothetical situations, did the stomach cancer or prostate cancer patient have insurance? If not, how is it once again not a freeloader problem? There's certainly no reason to say "I told you so". That appears to be a strawman you invented to avoid discussing the real issue which IMO is freeloading.
Hmmm... interesting idea. I wonder it autonomous vehicles would enable this even more? I wouldn't mind paying a little extra tax to my local government to enable them to maintain a fleet of self-driving vehicles that I could summon with an app.
Imagine the beauty of this tax if it were not mandatory. Kind of like a gov. service, but without any threat attached to it. Like a private startup out something..
Austin's homegrown competitors may not be fearful, but one of the existing majors could single-handedly shatter Uber's image with a half-decent app, esp if it's integrated with something like Google Maps or Apple Wallet or equivalent feed.