What's the point of a legal system if it can't deter lawbreaking? Fines should scale the way they do in Scandinavia. Baristas and doctors can both get speeding tickets, but they pay it as a fraction of their income, to ensure it acts as a deterrent.
Course, the thing is in America there is in many ways no true proletariate. It isn't the same. Pay cut after firing after pay cut after saying "take any job, any job" after firing--all that--just means they don't have children. It's not like in other places or eras where capitalistic oppression would bring forth great numbers of workerlings.
I like that word because it illustrates America better. You're always on the edge of multiple cliffs:
the deportation cliff;
the prison cliff;
the insurance doesn't pay the doctor the half million they extort cliff;
the no financial aid cliff;
the debt cliffs (more like a mountain range unto themselves);
the you're fired or unemployment on your resume or bad resume cliff;
the addiction cliff;
the fertility (especially for women) cliff;
the sickly child cliff;
the disability cliff;
the homelessness or lose your house or get evicted[1] cliff;
And my personal favorite: the lobotomy cliff. It's the beautiflest as seen from below!
There's others I'm sure. Lots of cliffs to go around! Everybody gets lots of cliffs! No parachutes though, but if you're looking for a good time you can ride a motorcycle off them!
[1] So this one is...it's weird. I talked to a homeless kid (over 18 yeah but still a kid) and asked him, "so what do I do if I end up on the street? What strategies..."
"Just don't end up on the street."
"But if I DO end up on the street then what I do is I..."
"No. The street is cruel. You wake up with people spitting on you, or pissing on you, depends on the night. You for one, you specifically would get gutted and murdered by the guy you pissed off the other time who threatened to do just that. Just do whatever the FUCK you have to do WHATEVER ANYBODY ASKS to not end up homeless."
1. U.S. population growth has been slowing for years, and in 2021, the population grew only by 392,665—or 0.1%, which is the lowest rate since the nation’s founding.
2. The U.S. will be older and more diverse but also unable to meet the workforce demands of a dynamic and competitive economy.
3. Of the 92.2 million adults ages 55 and older in 2018, 15.2 million (16.5%) are childless, defined here as having no biological children...childlessness is more common among the younger cohort of older adults. This suggests that childless adults will make up an even greater share of the older adult population in the future.
In Australia, for this particular crime the ACCC can impose:
> For corporations, will be the greater of:
$10,000,000
3 times the value of the benefit received, or
10% of annual turnover in preceding 12 months, if court cannot determine benefit obtained from the offence.[1]
$26M is a significant penalty for the Australian arm of Uber.
In the Netherlands we had a fine given to the Dutch Tax office for a huge scandal, which is even more ironic.
In politics, and maybe corporates, there has to be a line that at some point also personal charges can be made, or persons can be held responsible in some way or another.
These huge organizational structures have all been created to defer personal responsibility, which is good to an extent, but it got a little bit out of hand.
In the particular case that you mentioned, the details of the scandal are so horrifying, that as you stated, the fact it only come to a fine is an example of the lack justice not the presence of any proper governance or personal liability on the part of the individuals making these decisions...
From the racist criteria, used for years to identify and bankrupt innocent Dutch nationals. The destruction of documents by government officials, or the taking of children from families of innocent victims of said Tax office. To finally the reelection of the same prime minister that oversaw all for 6 years and lied to parliament about it...
Fractional fines are perhaps better than flat-fee fines for law breaking without a clearly assignable dollar value, but still face the problem of log-ish utility of money. A person living paycheck to paycheck will be extremely burdened by any kind of fine, whereas a richer individual is much less likely to be, and even if they are - have more ability to make downward lifestyle adjustments to absorb the burden of the fine.
To put it another way, it is more painful to lose $250 when you're making $25,000, versus losing $3,000 when you're making $300,000.
is false. I went in winter and it was dark by 3pm. I love the cold and dark, so it was awesome for me
> the people are beautiful
is true. I was constantly stupefied by how attractive people are there. Also, I'm a 184cm male, and every single day I saw multiple women taller than me, just going about town. Not like I was at a basketball training center or something.
I hear this a lot and I just don't understand. People in Stockholm seem about as attractive to me as the people I see in the US in NYC. I sometimes think it is just a blonde-fetish or something.
I guess you were walking around a city and had to see thousands of people to see multiple women taller than you? The average female adult height in Sweden is still only 165cm, with > 95% of women being less than 178cm. I'd imagine 99+% of Swedish women are < 184cm.
> People in Stockholm seem about as attractive to me as the people I see in the US in NYC.
I live elsewhere in Scandinavia and although I sometimes have a feeling the people are more attractive here than in the states as a general rule, I think it's actually that I have a preference for the local fashion. I tend to like Pacific Northwest fashion as well, and there are some similarities.
However, people in Scandinavia also generally walk a lot more than their US counterparts (since European cities are built for walking and American cities are generally not) so I find it plausible that they're more fit on average. I don't know if NYC is unusually walkable for an American city.
Generally in the more left-leaning European countries, there is a greater emphasis put on personal health, dress, and presentation. You can see it just walking down main city streets, while ever city has more and less fashionable areas, the average for self-manicurement seems to be higher in urban left/western Europe than in corresponding US cities.
Additionally, the more left-aligned European states also have a few other factors going for them. With stronger welfare states comes less homeless, and obviously impoverished people (on average) that you will see in public than say, on the streets of New York City. On the opposite side of the spectrum, people on average, simply appear to be healthier in such cities than one finds in the USA, and this is reflected in statistics like average national height.
Going further, most European cities (not all) tend to take some form of civic pride in the design and caretaking of their cities, while equivalent US cities stress some form of architectural individualism, which has its advantages, but means you are more likely to see random pieces of squalor or ugliness even in nice areas.
You put all of these things together, and one of the things people visiting Europe from the US find, is a feeling that wow: "These people are dressed more nicely than I'm used to, look healthier/taller than I'm used to, are living in nicer settings than I'm used to."
You hear it more about Sweeden (which I cannot attest to, having never been), but yeah, it lines up with the above.
This isn't to say there aren't advantages to the US system, but that's a different topic : )
> I hear this a lot and I just don't understand. People in Stockholm seem about as attractive to me as the people I see in the US in NYC.
It's my subjective opinion. I've been to NYC multiple times and found the people totally average, same as Munich, LA, Miami, Seoul, etc.
> I guess you were walking around a city and had to see thousands of people to see multiple women taller than you?
Yes I was in a city. But again, not in LA, nor NYC, nor Seoul, nor Munich did I see that many women taller than me in as short a time
edit: another commenter made a good example, which is weight. I barely saw overweight people in Sweden. I find being overweight extremely unattractive, so that plays into my subjective view of the Swedes I saw as more attractive in general
It scales in Finland though which is probably what parent was thinking of. And we do have scaling fines here in Sweden, just not for minor traffic offences. I think we should change all normal fines to scaling fines (dagsböter).
In general as a percentage of the last year's income. "In 2002, a Nokia executive was fined the equivalent of $103,000 for going 45 in a 30 zone on his motorcycle."
Elon's fine could easily be 10x that but maybe not 100x. I don't know his finances and I'm not sure how capital gains are included.
You have the law in both Aus and Scandinavia wrong, but that’s been covered.
There are a few reasons not to make fines scale overly aggressively, from the perspective of a western government. They feel capricious and encourage expatriation, they punish (potentially hundreds or thousands of) innocent employees who want financial security, and they incentivize worse behavior. This last principle is counterintuitive but has been repeatedly discovered over the last thousands of years. An immoral person is incentivized to behave by a reasonable grade of punishments and will risk the worst behavior of all punishments are equally deadly or above a certain threshold.
Hopefully that answers your question; this is just an explanation.
Ok Finland is not in scandinavia but we’re all nordic countries and it works roughly the same.
We have fully scaling fine. The concept is päiväsakko (literally day fine) that’s determined linearly by your net monthly income. Cops give you X dayfines.
In code terms the formula is max(6, (net_monthly_income - 255)/60));
That means there is regularly some person in newspapers whining about their 30000€ speeding ticket (iirc the highest was 100k€ in 2004). In reality that’s just an acceptable way to brag how much you’re making.
This is complete nonsense. You’re clearly not an Australian lawyer.
Deterrence is regularly a factor in civil infringement cases brought by regulators.
In other civil lawsuits, ordinarily damages are strictly ‘compensatory’. However, ‘exemplary’ damages also exist in some circumstances; and functionally identical to punitive damages.
In Australia, criminal behaviour can incur fines[1]:
> Fines are monetary fines (criminal penalty) imposed by courts in criminal proceedings. Criminal standard of proof is required.
The ACCC has pretty significant ability to impose penalties:
> The maximum penalties per breach of the ACL [..] maximum penalties for breaches [..] will be the greater of:
$10,000,000; or If Court can determine "reasonably attributable" benefit obtained, 3 times that value, or if Court cannot determine benefit, 10% of annual turnover in preceding 12 months.
Meanwhile nonviolent drug offenders landing in prison 5x'd between 2005-2013 in VIC, AU. Conveniently coinciding with the percentage of prisoners being held in private prisons increased substantially.
> There are no "monetary payments to deter future crime" in Australian civil law.
I might be missing something but it seems like a good idea that a civil court is unable to punish people after deciding it is necessary to encourage them not to break a criminal law in future.
Australia does presumably have punitive fines and other punishments that are for deterrence in criminal punishments?
> I might be missing something but it seems like a good idea that a civil court is unable to punish people after deciding it is necessary to encourage them not to break a criminal law in future.
If I can steal $5 from you, and the worst thing that happens if I get caught is that I have to give the $5 back, what sort of incentive do you think that creates?
> If I can steal $5 from you, and the worst thing that happens if I get caught is that I have to give the $5 back, what sort of incentive do you think that creates?
Theft is a criminal matter, and there are punitive remedies for crimes.
It's the same concept. If a corporation commits a civil crime, the maximum in damages it can repay is the amount of damage it caused, give or take interest.
> It's the same concept. If a corporation commits a civil crime, the maximum in damages it can repay is the amount of damage it caused, give or take interest.
It sounds like you're just making that up. I found the agency and the page on the regulation being breached:
The maximum penalties per breach of the ACL including unconscionable conduct, making false or misleading representations, and supplying consumer goods or certain services that do not comply with safety standards or which are banned:
For corporations, will be the greater of:
* $10,000,000*
* 3 times the value of the benefit received, or
* 10% of annual turnover in preceding 12 months, if court cannot determine benefit obtained from the offence.
The penalty for this particular "civil crime" (if that is actually what it's called), does not talk about repaying damages at all, and it can be 3 times the value of the benefit.
So what's the basis for what your seemingly contradictory claims?
> None of these things can practically happen to a corporation.
But the corporation didn't break a criminal law like the person in this example.
> But maybe you're on to something, here - perhaps they should.
Directors and executives can absolutely get convicted of crimes relating to their operation and oversight of the company. Whether the laws and investigating agencies have as much power as they should is very debatable but the legal framework is there.
>Only criminal charges against corporate officers and punitive damages promotes change.
That's a factual statement without any evidence supporting it. There's plenty of punitive damages against drug abuse and do you see any signs of it working ?
Absolutely. The discussion is centered on fines to companies but the other side is personal punishment of the actual physical people who made the decision to break the law.
EDIT: Reading further it looks like the English usage of the word Scandinavia is often used in a broader sense (to include Finland) whereas local usage of the term tends to refer to a more narrow definition.
Interesting. I never knew this difference in definition existed.
> They also have something similar in Germany IIRC.
citation needed!
german here, business ppl routinely joke about the fine for illegal parking on public gounds is mostly far less than a few hours at a commercial parkinghouse.
Germany has it, but not for things like parking tickets[0], speeding tickets, etc.
But criminal law (Strafgesetzbuch, StGB) makes extensive use of it. Every time you see the StGB talk about a fine, unless explicitly stated otherwise, it will be a scaled fine based on the daily income of the convicted party (Tagessatz). Courts can estimate the income if need be.
A court may e.g. find that somebody committed minor battery, and issue a fine of 12 Tagessätze. If you make 3000 EUR a month (net), that's 3000EUR/30 = 100 EUR for a Tagessatz, and then 10 Tagessätze is 1200 EUR.
However, it's not fully scaled, as it is capped at 30,000 EUR per Tagessatz. E.g. a football (soccer) player was recently convicted[1] of battery against his former partner, and fined 60 Tagessätze. He makes (or used to make) significantly more than the 30K cap, so "only" would have to pay 1.8M EUR instead of the probably 3-5M EUR he'd have to pay if there was no such cap.
Personally I'd welcome if traffic and many other fines were scaled fines, too. The reason it isn't is probably because fine issuance would not scale itself: too many violations and each violation would then involve a court deciding what the net income of somebody is and therefore what the scaled fine will be. With a flat fine you can avoid involving the courts most of the time (most parking tickets will be uncontested).
[0] The parking violation joke was common, indeed, but not so much anymore, as the fines for parking violations have been drastically increased this year, from 15 EUR to 55 EUR per violation or even 110 EUR if you obstruct traffic, including pedestrian and bicycle traffic. Obstructing traffic also earns you one point in the traffic register now, so even people who still think a ticket is cheaper than paying for a proper parking space will not like it when their license is suspended eventually due to too many parking violations.
[1] The sentence is not final yet. The defendant, the prosecution (state) and the accessory prosecution (victim) each appealed the decision.
Parking is an exception. How would you do it? Scan your latest tax report when driving in?
They do it for other stuff:
[1] "Day-fine"
"...A day-fine, day fine, unit fine or structured fine is a unit of fine payment that, above a minimum fine, is based on the offender's daily personal income... "
"...Jurisdictions employing the day-fine include Denmark (Danish: dagbøde), Estonia (Estonian: päevamäär), Finland (Finnish: päiväsakko), France (French: Jour-amende), Germany (German: Tagessatz), Sweden (Swedish: dagsbot), Switzerland, and Macao...."
Also, what is the point of a fine if it doesn't go to the people that the company wronged? Where does this money go? To the corrupt government entities that don't give a shit about the fees consumers have been charged?
To put a cost on lawbreaking. The legal system is only supposed to disincentivize law breaking. It's not supposed to nor can it completely stop law breaking.
Perhaps because they're not profit focussed. When people becry the evils of capitalism, this attitude is what they're talking about: that it is ok and expected to do the thing that maximises profit and that if we want people to not do something then we need to make it financially uninviting.
It is not possible to arrange the world so that the financial incentives are always aligned with what is the right thing to do. So if we want to "have nice things" and live in the sort of world that most people will want to live in then we need to have some kind of ethical system which guides our action independently of the profit motive.
This seems to be one of the bigger cultural differences between the US and Europe. In the US the attitude seems to be "if there's some situation you can exploit and it's not illegal then why would you not do so". In Europe there is much more emphasis on societal-level reciprocity: not just "will there be negative consequences to me if I do this", but "will this lead to the sort of society I want to live in if everybody does this". Of course there are still bad actors. There will always be bad actors. But the assumption is that most people won't be, rather than that most people will be.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
The overton window in america is so far to the right that the prospect of charging rich people for breaking the law is unheard of.
Counterpoint from Jean-Baptiste Henri-Dominique Lacordaire:
"Entre le fort et le faible, entre le riche et le pauvre, entre le maître et le serviteur, c’est la liberté qui opprime et la loi qui affranchit."
("Between the strong and the weak, between the rich and the poor, between the lord and the slave, it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free.")
To clarify without requiring link chasing: the quote is not from the political scientist Frank Wilhoit (1920-2010) but the musician Frank Wilhoit (https://www.broadheath.com).
Income? Won't the ultra rich pay $0 then? Also- devil's advocate but a speeding ticket is a speeding ticket. They should pretty much all cost the same. Minor cost for minor crime. It's not the same as something like VW emissions scandal or opioid epidemic stuff.
It's not a business transaction, you aren't paying for the opportunity to go too fast, it's meant to be a deterrent. As such scaling with income makes sense, it's only a deterrent if it affects you, and realistically people with lots of money aren't going to be deterred by a relatively (to their income) fine that's going to deter people who are less well off.
In some places, tickets are strikes on your license. So even if you can afford to pay the measly $500 fine, you can only do so maybe twice. Your third time in two years (or whatever your laws are) will cause your license to be suspended.
People don't typucally drive at speeds they think are unsafe. When someone is speeding, they generally believe that they are capable of safely operating their vehicle on that stretch of road under the current conditions.
Avoiding the time wasted while pulled over does sound like a reason not to speed but even there it's a tradeoff. How much time do I save off my commute vs how long a stop would take weighted by the probability of being pulled over.
But this is a solved problem in Scandinavia, you just have someone else do the speeding for you and pay them a low salary.
The fines will be scaled based on the income of the chauffeur, not the highly paid executive in the back. Even if it’s actually the executive who’s paying them.
The law should apply equally to everyone. The sole purpose of the legal system isn't only to provide deterrence. Fairness and equal treatment under law are cornerstones of the legal system. Some discrepancies make sense (e.g. higher bail amount for someone with means as an incentive for them to show up to court), but this is a huge overreach IMO.
Also begs the question, do wealthy people speed more than non-wealthy people? Do they need a deterrence?
> The overall TA mortality rate was 26.6(95% CI 13.4, 39.8) per 100,000 person-years, which was almost three times higher in men than that for women (40.4 vs. 12.1 per 100,000person-years). Lower economic level was associated with increased incidence and mortality of TA.
Optimizing for deterrence maybe means charging poor men a larger ticket. You see how this way of thinking is wrong?
Also imagine having to disclose your entire financial status to some court because you got a speeding ticket? It's a gross violation of privacy.
You're focusing way too hard on the example of risky traffic behavior, which has a deterrent far more potent than any fine: potential loss of life (one can even argue that how much you value your life scales with your wealth, partially explaining the findings of that article). What about parking tickets, for example? Wealthy people often park illegally and just eat the fine because it's more convenient than the alternative.
You don't get it. I reject the whole premise of optimizing on "deterrence" based on [group]. If you accept the premise that we should base fees on deterrence, you have to accept where that leads. And that may not lead to your image of the world as being full of honest law abiding working folks and cigar chomping awful fat cats.
> Wealthy people often park illegally and just eat the fine because it's more convenient than the alternative.
Where do you come up with this stuff? Your vision of how "wealthy people" behave is so off from what I've observed.
> Using parking ticket data in 2016 from the City of Los Angeles, this study shows that the number of parking tickets is higher in neighborhoods with a larger presence of renters, young adults, and Black residents.
I'm not sure why you think that article proves your point. Of course poor people will get more parking tickets, they're often the ones who don't have proper parking arrangements. Do you think I was saying that wealthy people are responsible for the majority of illegal parking?
You still don't get it. I reject all of that. My point is that varying fees based on "deterrence" wouldn't necessarily lead you to charging rich people more. It could end up hurting poor people if someone makes the argument that they need more "deterrence". That's why its wrong and we should apply the law equally to everyone
What is the law, and what is equal? There's a law saying you have to pay taxes, so do you object to the fact that this law is applied unequally to rich people who have to pay more? And the crime of not paying taxes is also punished with a fine that is proportional to the amount unpaid.
Your viewpoint makes absolutely no sense, so yes. I don't get it. Arguing against proportional measures for deterrance is equivalent to saying you're okay with rich people committing crimes and paying a minuscule fine for it (unless you have a totally different framework of punishment in mind).
I don't know, bud. When other people aren't accepting your idea of where something leads, it does not always mean they are wrong. It is easy to cherry-pick data and studies that seem on the surface to support your preconceived conclusions, but I feel you are missing the forest for the trees.
> It is easy to cherry-pick data and studies that seem on the surface to support your preconceived conclusions, but I feel you are missing the forest for the trees
That's exactly my point. That's why some people have this fantasy of Scrooge McDucks throwing around money and disobeying all laws just because they have money, when its just not true.
Is a fixed fine fair and equal treatment? The punishment is much more significant to someone poor than rich. Sure the dollar amount is equal but that is a very narrow view. The same arguments can be made about a flat tax vs. progressive tax systems?
If your goal is deterrence you have to ask who's more likely to commit an offense. When you lump someone into a group and apply different levels of punishment based on their group, that's just wrong and evil. You think its fine because [group] is some group you may not like (rich people). But if you start treating people differently based on [group] you risk losing control of who is defining the group. The simplest and fairest way is to treat everyone equal in the eyes of the law. That's the ideal and when possible we should reach for that ideal
When the consequences for the same crime can vary from [entire paycheck] to [below rounding error on personal finances], the effect of treatment is not equal.
Should we also have a single lump sum tax rate that everyone must pay equally?
As LeBron James once said, 'two points is not two points'. If 'fairness and equal treatment' are context-blind, then they are just another empty platitude.
We're talking about different fines based on your socio-economic status. I said its wrong to think of fines only as a deterrence. Additionally if you're optimizing for group deterrence it could lead you to some uncomfortable scenarios where the group that needs to be deterred may not be "wealthy people".
What does this have to do with tax rates? Are tax rates punitive or a means for raising money for collective spending?
It's kinda wild to see people here dismissing this.
The US equivalent to the ACCC is the FTC is absolutely toothless and ineffective. The ACCC has teeth and has had real impact on many industries. For example, ISPs were essentially forbidden from saying their plans were "unlimited" unless they actually were unlimited (which they never were so there were no "unlimited" plans, which is fine because they were all fake anyway).
This particular complaint is about something relatively minor: misleading messaging about cancellation fees. Like do you think that didn't happen in the US? Where's the FTC action and settlement on that?
As for the fare estimation part, it's hard to say what the impact of that was.
The only US equivalent to this is a class action lawsuit where the lawyers get paid (a lot), several lead plaintiffs will get paid something and everyone else will get a check for $2.35 in 8 years after printing out a form and mailing it in.
Even in the really egregious cases like the Equifax hack, the cash settlement part was capped at $31 million [1].
Yes, because these plans are actually unlimited. There are no quotas. There are no soft caps. There are no hard caps. There is no throttling of your traffic beyond a certain threshold. Why? Because the ACCC outlawed any plan calling itself "unlimited" if it had any of these. That's the point.
10+ years ago, actual "unlimited" plans were really uncommon because ISPs included some or all of these on all their plans.
Compare this to any of the cable Internet "unlimited" plans and you'll find a world of diffference.
They might have teeth, but they didn’t use them here. Uber’s 2021 revenues were around 6000 million USD, and the fine was 21 million USD.
”The FTC is even more useless” isn’t really a good argument, and I don’t disagree - the whole Uber/AirBnB business model is built on the realization that you can just blatantly ignore regulators, and pay the miniscule fines out of petty cash
In what world do you think the ACCC, which only really has jurisdiction over Australia, should fine Uber some large portion of their worldwide revenue of $6B for misleading messaging about cancellations?
GDPR fines are based on worldwide revenue, so it’s not outrageous to think that other policies/organizations would do the same. If they don’t, fines aren’t going to be effective motivators.
The EU has a big enough market that access outweighs the cost. If Malta tried to fine Uber a percentage of its global revenue they'd pack up shop and leave immediately. Australia is about one fifteenth the size of Europe in population.
This is roughly equivalent to saying we should put people in jail for 5 years for speeding because for some people a $50 fine just isn't that much.
Punishments need to be proportionate. Executing people for stealing hub caps may well reduce the incidence of that but that doesn't make it OK.
Misleading cancellation messaging just isn't that big of a deal. I really wish people would focus on the severity of what happened rather than just saying "it's not enough" just because they seemingly hate Uber.
People's personal dislike of a company or person is not a basis for determining a punishment.
The US also believes in punitive damages, i.e. "We fine you $1000 for what you did, and then add $1000,000,00 because you don't really care about $1000"
It's not about a particular company it's about global/international companies in general. Plus imposing a global revenue fine for this kind of issue would be absurd. It only needs to be enough for their bottom line to look better by complying rather than making the change.
Because otherwise, multinational companies will use their global profits to bankroll illegal activities within any nation's borders, and will keep on doing so until the nation relents.
A world in which an Australian regulatory agency should protect Australian consumers by levying a fine which makes it financially untenable to operate in Australia with these deceptive practices.
Wife needed to take an uber to work today... it was 7:50am. App said "UberX, drop off at 8:13". Her office is about 15 minutes away. She books it. "Your UberX will pick you up at 8:15" - meaning she wouldn't get there until 8:30. It's horse shit. I get that shit changes for a myriad of reasons. But I've taken uber 4 times in the past month and every fucking time they do this. It isn't a drop off time. It is a fucking pick up time.
Does the same free cancellation apply in the UK? I couldn't find it on the website (and I've long since uninstalled the app as I'm fed up of their drivers cancelling on me constantly).
I uninstalled the app(s) after watching Super Pumped. Even though I'd articles about the whole management ordeal, the dramatization struck a chord in me.
We need something on the order of a constitutional amendment stating that fines for breaking the law must be at least equal to the monetary gain obtained by committing the crime.
It was deceptive nowhere, and Australia is just over protective. Surprised at how many people are treating this as a small fine compared to what was done, or as if this should be the standard everywhere.
Someone should do something similar with Lyft, who will allow the drivers app to report you’ve been picked up and dropped off all the while the rider is still standing waiting for the car to show up. Adding insult to injury they ask you to “rate” the ride that never occurred before providing a button to report it.
I dislike Uber but worse than taxis? I don't know which area you've had experience with but taxis have been consistently terrible in my experience. It's the perfect scam: price is mostly determined at the end, no repeat customers, the majority of customers lack the ability to tell if they were scammed (this has gotten a bit better since gps/maps).
Taxis in my areas are a municipally regulated monopoly on fare-for-(uncontracted)-hire services.
There are a lot of reasons why they devolved to the level of service that we associated with them:
1) lack of competition
2) internally there is no reward for excellent service
3) as a regulated industry, the internal players will try to stretch the margins to make it more profitable to address either a) greed, b) actual operational needs--cash only, "my terminal is offline", fake terminals, tourist routes
Most of this points to failings with how the models are implemented:
- diffuse reward system that doesn't account for fare-taker's feedback
- slow, high-effort negotiation modification to a) fares, b) license / medallion holder needs, c) driver's needs, d) fare-taker's needs and feedback
Consider the differences between Uber and Taxi:
1) feedback is tied directly to driver and passengers
2) feedback is instant
3) Uber dictates pricing and can do so based on a regional, time, legal games, and overall load basis on a low latency regional authority's direction (one person could make that decision based on their local knowledge of upcoming concerts and NFL games, or the status of their application for licensing with the city)
4) individual drivers are now the liability / cost holding party
One thing that I think should be in your mind is "who is losing in either model and why?"
It seems we need to have this discussion whenever an uber story is posted so here we go again.
You must take into account that uber is global, you are not aware of markets that were very much improved by Uber and subsequently the competitors that were created in its wake. In Romania for example it was popular culture that Taxi drivers were universally shady and if that you were not careful there was a higher chance than not to get scammed. Uber, and now its competitor Bolt which I believe has become more popular than Uber have introduced a massive amount of competition in the market that it is now universally a good experience to order a ride.
Even taxi drivers have gotten nice because of the market pressure
The you can't see out of your own country is a rhetorical trick to make people question themselves and feel bad. People say the same things about US cabs before Uber, but somehow when taking hundreds of them I never noticed I was supposed to be in hell. Instead I met a lot of nice cab drivers from places I've only read about. My worst experiences were when annoying ones were too talkative when I was tired because they heard somewhere that it would raise their tips (and it probably does.) That didn't go away with Uber.
I am not convinced they are doomed. They seem to operate just fine here in Sweden as a normal taxi company. Yes, they cannot have their insanely low prices that they have in other countries but running a regular taxi company is a real sustainable business.
The issue with Uber is that they spend too much money when they enter new markets and that they are too inefficient in general. They need to slim down.
The original plan was to start out with human drivers while developing the technology for self-driving vehicles. This was a solid plan because owning self-driving tech is a good moat.
However it’s clear by now that Uber won’t be anywhere near the first to bring self-driving tech to market.
Ridesharing itself has only weak network effects because drivers are interchangeable and can easily switch apps. All Uber have in this case is their brand, which is more toxic than a Machineel tree.
If self-driving does eventually pan out then they are also in a bad way because whoever develops that tech will likely directly compete with Uber, at lower margins.
Because the taxi business is a commodity. The returns are ~2%.
Uber doesn't have any geographic or other advantages. "Self driving" is a nonsense claim that doesn't stack up because it's not going to be available for at least another 5+ years. Even when it does happen, Uber doesn't have the capital to establish the necessary fleets of vehicles and is currently "outsourcing" that to the owner/drivers.
There have been any number of articles about Uber's lack of a sustainable business model.
Uber does have the advantage of operating globally and having a single app that will get you a taxi almost anywhere in the world. Given that traditional taxi companies often only operate in a single town or city that's quite an advantage. They would easily have a sustainable business if they dramatically cut their costs. Whether they can do that having taken the amount of VC money they have is another question.
I'd assume a decent chunk. I don't generally use a taxi in my home country, but used Uber a few times when traveling. That being said, I have 0 issue downloading a local taxi app and deleting it afterwards.
They're bleeding money and have no path to profitability. They have no competitive advantage over the various local competitors, so the moment they increase prices ( their only chance of increasing revenues enough) consumers will shift and use Bolt/Lyft/Freenow/Deliveroo/Glovo/whatever.
This can be seen in markets like Ireland, Germany, where Uber are prohibited from using their ride sharing model so are only fielding out to taxis. Free Now is already dominant in those markets as they got established while Uber was still fighting it out with legislators to go for their unlicensed model and Uber has nothing compelling to offer when it can't undercut by pushing the costs to their staff.
Uber is one of the worst companies on the planet. Their culture seems related to the huge amount of cash the House of Saud dumped on them ($3.5 billion initially). Their pricing and employment models are blatantly exploitative and their business model seems to be using a huge pile of cash to drive the competition out of business so they can achieve monopoly status:
> "Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said in a statement that the company is partnering with Saudi Arabia to support its economic and social reforms. Uber first began operating in the kingdom in 2014.(businessinsider 2016)."
Their drivers are the absolute worst in my region - see someone driving erratically and staring at their phone and doing Crazy Ivan manuevers in traffic, it's an Uber driver 90% of the time. They're poorly trained and dangerous to everyone else - pedestrians, other drivers and bicyclists.
If there was ever a boycott movement I'd get behind, it's a boycott Uber movement. Might be able to leverage the Ukraine war for this as well, as the Saudi princeling MBS is so in bed with Putin at present (MBS won't take Biden phone calls, but will take Putin phone calls, according to press reports).
Uber drivers’ most consistent bad habit of is stopping mid block to drop off or pick up a passenger. If it isn’t a parking spot or a traffic light, you shouldn’t be stopping there.
I don't quite see why this would be the case. People decided to get in a car they didn't actually need because they wanted to avoid the cancelation fee?
They'll toss this on the "unexpected expenses" line of the multiple billions they lose every year, right below the "cocaine and hookers for c-suite" budget.
So they just displayed the wrong message as in people could cancel rides free of charge but the message said they couldn’t? It seems a bit of an excessive fine for something that mostly seems harmless. Like booking.com seems to be using all the dark patterns they can find and I never hear them being impacted by fines.
