Reading things like this make me OK with startups bending an even breaking the occasional law if they're truly providing something of value. The legal system is rife with regulations and actors that are often not intended to benefit the public. There is nothing inherently right or efficient about it, and it's the oldest and most inflexible of the man-made institutions, behind Comcast.
Organizations deliberately breaking the law for profit is generally called "organized crime".
Drug dealers provide something of value and personally I think we would be way better off if drugs were legalized. So we're going to call our local drugs-gangs "disruptive startups" now?
90% procent of the time these companies are simply breaking privacy, consumer protection and labor laws for one reason and one reason only: greed. So occasionally they may stumble upon a law that actually needs reform. Even a broken clock is right twice per day.
That doesn't make me okay with OK with breaking the law as a business strategy, especially since most of the time it isn't the Comcasts of this world that suffer the consequences, but individual workers and consumers.
This Robin Hood worship is pathetic. These startups are not making the world a better place.
>> Organizations deliberately breaking the law for profit is generally called "organized crime".
You know, I actually agree with you, by the definitions of things we have in place today, that is, in fact, organized crime. And since most people violate three laws a day, and we use various corporate affiliations to do it, it would follow that we are all members of a vast organized crime syndicate.
>>Drug dealers provide something of value and personally I think we would be way better off if drugs were legalized. So we're going to call our local drugs-gangs "disruptive startups" now?
Don't know about "local drug-gangs," but yeah, I see my friendly, neighborhood reefer dealer as an entrepreneur who provides a valued service.
Agreed, but I also hope that the regulators catch up and make sane decisions to correct the current environment. For example, at the forefront of my mind is the need for consumers and the state to have assurances that the drivers of these services have commercial insurance. Or that it truly is a ride-sharing lookup, not a taxi service.
I'm sure there are other issues that need sorting, but as an outsider much of the taxi industry's regulations seem like they can be modernized for a post uber/lyft world.
"assurances that the drivers of these services have commercial insurance."
I'm not sure about the situation in California but I looked into how taxis were insured in Maryland and it turns out they basically don't have insurance. They are only required to have a certain amount of cash in an account that acts like insurance if something happens. I believe the amount was around $30,000 which is very very little if something legitimately serious were to happen. Which is why I find it funny when people think taxis are some how better insured than ride share services.
What? They must have insurance, and the state minimum is $30,000 per person.
> The Maryland General Assembly approved the increase in April, slightly upping legal minimum insurance coverage to at least $30,000 per person and $60,000 per crash.
Yeah, but they have a special program for Taxi's that allow what they call "self-insurance" where the taxi is insured by a bond or letter of credit with the MVA.
Yup, the difference between a taxi and an individual though is the taxi company will create an individual llc for each taxi so if a given taxi is in a bad accident they will just bankrupt that llc and try to skip out on paying anything.
When there is an accident, injured parties go after rich people, like the expression "deep pockets", and juries aren't sympathetic to them. Rich people are advised to get (and can afford) insurance more than middle class people.
I believe bonds in lieu of insurance are commonly allowed across the US, though maybe not for taxis?
As the fleet size increases, the amount of the bond goes up as well -- essentially giving companies the choice of self insuring. I'd be surprised if many independent operators were self-bonded.
And of course, it's not like the minimum insurance requirements are great across the board either.
> And of course, it's not like the minimum insurance requirements are great across the board either.
The alternative is something like Toronto where personal car insurance costs upwards of $300 a month for a 23 year old male with no tickets or accidents because the minimum coverage is so extensive.
Absolutely. I'm not advocating that we do away with the regulatory system, but that those drafting the rules look at startups like Uber/Lyft as signals and catalysts for change as opposed to reflexively treating them as threats on the system that Has Been And Always Shall Be. The world is changing rapidly, new needs and demands emerge, others die, and the red tape should be in constant reapplication, in tow.
The lines between Mafia and tech entrepreneurs are not very clear. Threatening competitors of legal action and keeping salaries of employees lower sounds more like a Mafia and less like a tech entrepreneur to me.
Just because the mafia doesn't simply break knees randomly doesn't mean that the threat of violence doesn't underpin the mafia's operations.
Yes, this includes targeted killings and violent extortion when required. Since this threat has been proven credible it's normally not required to actually break people; people simply give up before the tire irons have to be brought out.
Yes and large co bosses also behave in a similar fashion. Very often the kind of people Mafia deals with is the one that normally does not have anything other then their life to lose, but when it comes to large co bosses they are dealing with people who have too much to lose and hence a mere threat of legal action works even if that legal action is totally frivolous.
Rob a man, and you're a criminal. Get half the people in some arbitrary geographical region to put your name on a piece of paper and rob a man, and you're a statesman.
Thanks. The only line is when a mafia boss says "I will fix that for you" you can rest assured it will be fixed. When government guys says "we are gonna fix it" you better run..
That is true but then USA is a Republic where the rule of law matters more than will of the people. The only way people's will can be executed is by first making it a law, at that point all the people who have an interest against the law and unite and put a defense.
However there is a clever trick that the current President has used. Pass laws that are ridiculously long and large. When you pass a law that is 1000 pages long with another 1000 pages of appendixes, no sensible man can read and make sense of it and hence does not have much credible ground to oppose it.
"You think clause 9, subsection B poses a problem for X ? We have taken care of in clause 204 sub-claue 11c when taken into context of Annex. Z" a trick that was mastered by British and Indians.
Ultimately, it is rule of man, since man can change the law.
However you call it, it is ultimately power (of man) that rules other men. Having to push it through the frictional and slow law process merely makes powerful men less powerful by the amount of the systemic friction. But the power gradients still exist and lead to the same consequences.
It merely prolongs a "i dont like him, behead him on the spot" into "i dont like him, make the state attorney accuse him of rape and murder, drag him through courts for 20 years and execute him". But the intimidating effect of power differences is the same. Rule of law is just the same ol rule of man cloaked into law.
In theory it could be rule of machine, if the justice system was composed of some kind of immutable law-enforcing robots, but you're right that in practice rule by law is just roundabout rule by man. Nevertheless, I'd take "dragged through the courts for 20 years" over "beheaded on the spot" any day.
Just occasionally dumping arsenic in your drinking water. Occasionally some rat droppings in your meal. Just a little bit of bait and switch scam. Occasionally sneaking in hidden fees.
Napkin design for a p2p ridesharing network: Create a cryptocurrency. Send a message with a bid for a ride to a new address that you control with the start and end point locations with how much you want to pay. Insert it in the blockchain. Driver sees bid in block chain and answers with a similar self message and arrives. When the driver arrives, transfer half to him and the other half when you get out.
1) Write a script to answer requests without ever intending to pick up.
2) Get out of the car, don't transfer the other half.
3) Sign up as a driver, and wait until you find an attractive/rich fare. Lock doors and do what you will.
Deregulation is not the answer for everything. Uber/Lyft works precisely because they are very well regulated to stop the cases I outline above, and more.
Anonymity is tough with physical stuff like cars and passengers. All the CPUC needs to do is have one of their people pretend to be a passenger and you're busted.
These have existed since the early days of the internet, and before that in bulletin board form. In fact, many were (are?) even run by state transportation departments.
I think he probably means something that is a little more comprehensive and with higher visibility than the forum style ones like Craigslist or whatever.
Don't know if this is exactly what you mean, but in Slovenia, there is this website called http://prevoz.org (which translates to "ride.org"), where users/drivers can post when and where they're going, and others can contact and ride with them.
It's worked remarkably well for the past 5+ years and right now, there are almost 500 rides available for today.
As much as I love the idea of true peer-to-peer decentralized marketplace, it's a pipe-dream and I'll explain why.
- Every node is potentially untrustworthy therefore additional verification must be performed on the results of any query. To verify a piece of information, a "paper trail" must be transmitted as well (who created what when).
- This overhead causes information to move much more slowly in a system (if at all, if the threshold is set too high it's possible for all queries to fail).
- To counter this cost, each node can build its own map of trusted nodes based on the validity of previous information. This "network of trust" can be used to throttle the amount of verification performed.
- To illustrate, let's take what happens if you're totally new to a fully decentralized ridesharing platform. You start off not knowing any of the other users (nodes) and so you select a few at random (trusting all mutually), perform a query on all nodes and select the driver with the best rating (according to popular rating from those few users). You take a ride from that driver, have an awful experience, and therefore don't trust the ratings shared by those users anymore. You're back to square one. Building trust takes a lot of time and first-hand validation.
- There's potential for trusted nodes to turn "bad" (untrustworthy) therefore each node must continuously "police" neighboring nodes and relay any changes in behavior to mutually-trusted nodes.
- What's more, there is a certain "cost of competition" that comes with truly decentralized systems. You cannot roll out "system-wide" changes as easily as a centralized one since a majority of the system must first agree (and many times that majority is too small to even consider it a consensus, which ends in grid-lock).
- These five costs (paper-trail, verification, building network of trust, policing network of trust, cost of competition) makes the overall performance of a distributed platform very inferior to that of a centralized platform like Uber.
- Of course there are downsides to centralized platforms like Uber. The quality of ratings is less trustworthy since all users use separate criteria (and could be untrustworthy Lyft proponents). Also, Uber (as a system) does not make decisions in the best interest of its users and is only kept in check by its competition (which is diminishing each day).
- You can look to human civilization as a way to illustrate some of the challenges and solutions of purely decentralized systems. It would be pretty hard to survive if everyone didn't trust anyone outside of himself. We built our own networks of trust via our family and friends (our tribe). As human populations grew, so too did competition between tribes. Centralized governments and services were then built to offset some of our individual responsibilities and promote unimpeded, fair flow of certain resources while still preserving those aspects that benefit the most from decentralization.
- These hybrid systems (platforms with both decentralized AND centralized aspects) work the best in the real world as long as those centralized parts keep working for the majority of nodes and a healthy balance of decentralized/centralized is maintained. (You'll notice we struggle with both of those caveats today in modern civilization).
Whoo! Sorry for the long-winded post, I have a lot more to say on the subject but I'll save the rest for a blog post :). (I'm working on decentralized authority and identification in my spare time so this is a hot area of research for me!).
Let's say you require each user to use a valid credit card that matches their name and billing address to verify their unique identity. Then you implement the same star rating system as Uber for both drivers and riders. Then you let driver's set their mile and time rates. When I request a ride, the system gives me a list of time-to-arrival, mileage, and wait time charges. I pick the one I want.
It does seem like that would not require an overseers anymore than Bitcoin does.
To explain what you're missing, I have to talk about how decentralized networks are actually implemented.
Think of the "system" as a large crowd of people in a room. Only certain people in the room have the information you want. It is totally unfeasible to ask every person in the room, you can only ask the three guys closest to you.
What do you do?
The best strategy to maximize query performance mimics the real-world— each person occasionally gossips information to each other, which replicates data across a network and increases the chance that someone nearby will have the answer you seek.
The problem then comes down to trust-- say you ask three guys nearby a question: "Do you know if there are any cabs nearby?"
Let's say those three guys did happen to know of a cab nearby but wanted it for themselves (they just got an invite to this AWESOME party in the Haight), so they lie to you and take the cab for themselves.
Or, in an alternative case— they are all three sons of a rather horrible cab driver and tell you that he is the ONLY one available.
If we had a global view of the system, the chances of this abuse might be minimized but this is just not feasible in real-world implementations.
There's also other implications for privacy (nodes in the middle might log your queries) which might also introduce new vectors for abuse.
You could dump your ratings in the bitcoin blockchain. Decentralized, hard to forge, automatically archived in lots of places and outside of centralized control.
Thinking about it this way, the real value of bitcoin might not be in the coins but in the blockchain itself.
It's essentially a write-only log that you can append to by paying a minimal fee.
I wrote earlier that information must be transmitted with a "paper-trail" for it to be independently verifiable by every node. The bitcoin block chain is essentially a single, massive "paper-trail" that could potentially be used like a shared database for synchronizing information across nodes.
Using the block chain as a single, shared, decentralized database is an interesting solution but has serious flaws when used as you describe:
1. Transactions are not added immediately (and by added, I mean a consensus has been reached by a majority of the network on the state of the block chain), it can take up to 10 minutes for confirmation to be reached [1] with modern networks and hardware.
2. Each transaction increases the size of the block chain. To independently verify a transaction, each node must have a complete copy of the block chain which is about 21 GB today [2], and growing ~1 GB per month. This rate is expected to increase with time which presents one of the biggest flaws of Bitcoin today. Several strategies exist to reduce the size (pruning of the data, using lightweight clients that only store headers instead of full data) but all of these reduce the ability for an individual node to verify a transaction.
3. Transactions can fail for various reasons: data is too large, transaction fee too low, fork in the blockchain, orphaned blocks, etc. What's even worse is that you won't know (and can't try submitting the transaction again) until confirmation fails ~10 minutes later.
4. Transactions fees for storing arbitrary data in the block chain is dependent upon the real-world price of bitcoin. What's more, once the block reward approaches zero (the reward is cut in half approx. every four years) the rewards of mining will shift entirely to voluntary transaction fees. This will likely cause transaction fees to increase.
5. The block chain is only secure as long as there doesn't exist a single group with a majority of processing power (it is kept in check by competition between miners). If a monopoly develops it can abuse the system very readily.
These various reasons (latency, size, failure, fee increases over time) make the block chain a pretty bad back-end for the implementation of a shared, decentralized database of a real-time P2P app.
The idea isn't completely unsalvageable however, another way of looking at the problem is to realize that the block chain file itself is used as a shared resource between many "threads". Each thread has its own local copy but reconciliation must be performed across all threads to ensure consistent state (which introduces huge amounts of synchronization and contention).
To parallelize the problem, we must reduce the amount of resource contention required. The best way to do that is to use separate databases (eg, separate block chains) for separate, logical clusters of threads. Eg, for a ridesharing app, you can use a separate database (block chain) for each city. This way, only the data that is relevant to each thread must be synchronized.
There's a few problems with this approach (could allow local monopolies to develop more readily) as well but it better emulates natural models for decentralized systems.
It might also be better to use a hybrid approach based on the type of data involved:
1. Use a secure DHT (distributed hash table) to store data that isn't necessarily transactional (such as individual ratings that could be aggregated via an unstructured query).
2. Use a local block chain to synchronize shared resources (such as driver availability).
I've been discussing the idea out-of-band earlier today and all your remarks are spot on.
Yet another option: re-design bitcoin in such a way that these problems can be addressed and then convince miners to adopt that since it will in the long run result in increased fees for them because of a larger number of 'riders' on the transactions. This could offset the loss of mined coins and will effectively allow bitcoin a smoother transition from the 'mining' to the 'transaction' stage, it adds sufficient value to the blockchain that it might even replace the mined coin reward completely or surpass it before that reward goes to '0'.
You've just described some possible flaws in a p-2-p system. Are there no flaws in the current cab system? Are there no flaws in Uber?
You've pointed out why it can't be perfect. You haven't proven that it can't work.
Perfect is the enemy of good. It doesn't have to be perfect. I was going to say it just has to be better than our current system. But it doesn't. It just has to be legal. Maybe it's better, maybe it's worse. But we're allowed to give it a try (generally speaking -- maybe not in California, but possibly in another state that doesn't have the same rules).
If the flaws you point out occur often enough, then people will stop using it and the experiment will fail.
"you require each user to use a valid credit card"
Who is "you"? Someone, somewhere would be creating a system that verifies unique identities, aggregates ratings, etc. Even if the logic is peer-to-peer, the system requires an extremely robust engineering infrastructure to keep it going, and the people that build that thing take on all the issues Uber is dealing with, but without real control over the system.
Or to put it differently, it's not a coincidence that all big peer-to-peer systems are anchored in weird spots around the world. In any major country the government will hunt down the keepers of the system and hold them accountable for the content.
So, to answer your question directly, you're missing a whole lot.
Fair, but I think if Uber truly does remove the regulatory hurdle, than their high-overhead model is not necessarily going to flourish, unless they 'kick the ladder out from behind them' with Uber-specific (ha!) regulatory exceptions. Is the software that handles all these issues really worth XYZ% of the revenue, or could it be done leaner?
Thanks for the link, their whitepaper [1] is pretty interesting (they've put a lot of thought into the "network of trust" optimization I mention above).
Seems they use the bitcoin block chain heavily as the basis for trust and security. Both of their "proof of burn" and "proof of timelock" techniques require each user to have a complete copy of the latest block chain (currently >20GB) to independently verify global trust.
I mention a few other pitfalls with this approach in another comment [2].
One obvious one for me, being an east coaster transplanted to the Bay Area: most people don't want to share a ride with a stranger. Bay Area (and perhaps the rest of the Northwest) upper middle class people are somewhat different. A more extroverted culture.
Zimride (where afaik Lyft got started) was all about longer distance p2p rideshares, and I was a driver and passenger on rides between SF and LA a bunch of times through that site before Megabus started up again.
As a driver, I got as many as 10 viable requests per seat regardless of my ride schedule. I saw a lot of empty seats in other SF-LA rides so I was confused at the disparity...until one ride, a college-aged woman that bought a seat showed up with her mother. Both of them expressed visible relief at the fact that I, a woman, was driving, and with two adults that were obviously my parents in the back seat just like my blurb said. They really were just going to walk away if anything was different, and they didn't even consider male drivers.
It clicked in my head that most messages were from women that must have felt safer riding with another woman. I naïvely assumed all the happy riders were just happy about a fast 5-6 hour ride with fresh fruit and snacks from my parents.
tl;dr I think it's about intimacy. Even for an extroverted culture, plenty of people didn't use Zimride and similar even if they knew about it. Sharing 1-6 seats (most private cars) is way more intimate than 6-10 (airport shuttle-types) or a bus/train and is typically not backed by a company with a professional driver. Not sure that there will ever be a solution that provides enough trust and support to get over that problem before we get better mass transit and self-driving cars.
Because no one else had set up an as well-known and well-regarded service before they did it. It takes someone to offer deals and build the app and train drivers to get things rolling.
Does anyone know why laws like this exist? What's the value of regulating carpool ride-sharing and single-user ride-sharing, and what's the additional value of having separate regulations for each.
This particular law is consumer protection. Taxis are required to charge per trip, not per passenger. If you are standing on a street corner, hail a cab and say 'anyone else going uptown?', that is purely between you and the other passengers, and not between you and the driver.
I suspect that if Uber had a second app, or maybe a second marketplace within the same app, which matched Uber passengers with each other -- instead of multiple passengers with a single driver -- it probably would have been legal.
When you take a taxi, you pay a fare, plain and simple. This farce of calling it ridesharing via an independent contractor with a mobile app that happens to connect you all is exactly that: a farce. If we want to redefine what a taxi service is, that's another conversation.
If you want to look into it, the field that studies these things is called "public choice theory". It basically boils down to the fact that concentrated interests can impose diffuse costs (which they partially harvest in the form of rents) quite easily.
this law however, is to protect consumers. it prevents taxis from charging multiple people for the same ride (as separate fares). this law actually makes sense and should stay in place.
No it doesnt. If the law stated that it was not possible to ask the full price, then it would protect consumers. But now it includes cases where the price is halved, which means I can't get cheap transport.
Can anyone explain how this is different from services like Super Shuttle? I get charged an individual fee, but the actual times are subject to other passengers and that can change at any time.
> Can anyone explain how this is different from services like Super Shuttle?
Super Shuttle is a Passenger Stage Corporation (of the subtype defined as a "Door-to-Door Shuttle Service"), whereas Uber, Lyft, etc. are Charter Party Carriers, of the recently-defined subtype defined as "Transportation Network Companies".)
The rule at issue here applies to Charter Party Carriers, and therefore does not impact Super Shuttle and similar services, just as there are many rules that would apply to Super Shuttle as a PSC that do not apply to Uber/Lyft.
Actually, SuperShuttle is a PSC rather than a TCP, and the rule here applies to TCPs (including TNCs, which are a new subclass of TCPs to which Uber, Lyft, etc., belong.)
Frustrating to see another letter from CPUC trying to slow Uber and Lyft down. How can CPUC deem this a bad thing? Carpooling means less ubers/lyfts on the road so less traffic and pollution. I've used Lyft Line numerous times and really enjoy it.
CPUC isn't deeming it a bad thing, its deeming it an illegal thing. While part of what the CPUC does is adopt regulation, this isn't that kind of action -- this is the CPUC looking at the law adopted by the legislature that it is charged with enforcing, looking at the action going on, and saying "this action does not comply with the law; under the law as it stands, you must apply for a different permit to do this action. Or you can ask the legislature to change the law."
This is not a judgement of good/bad. (You will find such judgement in regulatory actions where, given the law, the CPUC must choose what regulations to adopt to implement the law given the discretion it has within the law.)
It's not so much that they're deeming it a bad thing, as that nobody bothered to consult them before going live with the service, as they are legally required to do.
If people have a problem with a service and don't get satisfaction, they (or their attorneys) typically call up the CPUC and say 'why are you letting company X get away with this?' which is why companies are supposed to apprise the CPUC of what services they're offering in advance.
I'm not a big fan of CPUC (for example I think they have far too cosy of a relationship with PG&E), but they're not making it up as they go along.
the CPUC says that under California law it's illegal for these ride-sharing services to charge passengers an individual fare when carrying multiple people in one vehicle.
It seems pretty clear to me. CPUC isn't against multiple passengers in the same car. They are against billing those passengers individually, for whatever reason that rule was originally enacted. Perhaps to prevent cabbies from charging pairs of passengers $4 each when a single passenger would be charged $5.
> for whatever reason that rule was originally enacted
Most likely the law is simple protectionism for unionized bus drivers, to stop private jitneys from putting them out of business. The use case is: you commute every day from point A to B, so you go along El Camino following the bus route, picking up people FROM BUS STOPS to share your ride and charging them what the bus would have charged. This is great news for the bus riders - they don't have to wait for the next bus so they get to their destination quicker - but if it catches on the bus lines ride empty, lose more money, and eventually political support for the bus route goes away.
> Perhaps to prevent cabbies from charging pairs of passengers $4 each when a single passenger would be charged $5.
Nah, that's not it. Normal cabbies (that use a taxi meter) have no flexibility over rates - the whole point of the meter is to make sure they're paying the right amount of taxes and kickbacks; accepting any extra regular fare (other than tips) would be illegal.
Car pooling/sharing is supposed to be sharing, i.e. split the cost. If you charge every pessenger individually you're trying to make a profit, not sharing or pooling.
Since the government considers the existing public transport infrastructure worthwhile to keep (buses, taxis), it doesn't want non-dependable competition to undercut it. Non-dependable meaning that these services aren't guaranteed to have a schedule, or to even transport you, like a bus will.
So if it is illegal to charge people individually to carpool, how do the airport shuttle vans operate? [serious question]. They charge everyone separately and everyone rides together.
Airport shuttle vans typically operate under a passenger stage corporation permit and charge a flat-rate fee per-person for transport. Charter-party carriers (which is what Uber/Lyft/etc currently operate as in CA) charge based on mileage or time and are prohibited from individual charges for multi-person rides (with a bunch of exceptions, like if they're in Lake Tahoe or if they're going to or from a hot air balloon).
True. It's a flat rate for a given town or neighborhood. You won't be charged for traffic delays as you would in a cab however nor can the driver charge you more if he needs to detour around road construction or some other issue.
The rate is the same for everyone in a given "zone" regardless of the specific route the driver must take.
My assumption would be local ski bus operation? No idea if that's the actual justification though. Also, looks like I was wrong about the hot air balloons -- it's only back from the balloon landing, not to the balloon: http://leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=puc&group=...
Presumably, the shuttle services have different permits,
the statement
"If the companies would like to add a carpool feature, they first have to request an adjustment to their existing permits with the CPUC"
would seem to hint that its possible to have that permit, uber and lyft just haven't successfully applied for one yet.
Not sure, but from the article: "If the companies would like to add a carpool feature, they first have to request an adjustment to their existing permits with the CPUC or petition the state legislature to modify the law."
Presumably, the airport shuttle vans have a different type of permit than the ones Uber et al have. Seems more like a temporary paperwork issue than a genuine showstopper.
Seems like they could just structure the "billing" of one person for full fare, then assist/force the other passengers to reimburse the paying party. Loophole?
They didn't get the permits they needed to run the service. I'm getting so sick of people whining every time "the man" steps in to enforce the rules which these "disruptive technologies" didn't even bother to read. Not every law is absurd and intended to block innovation. C'mon people, it's just a fucking permit.
Maybe not every law is absurd and intended to block innovation but these laws most certainly are. It's a permit that the authorities don't have to grant and won't grant in exactly the cases where the new service is most needed. These laws are intended to preserve for existing bus drivers and cab drivers some monopoly power that they haven't earned via providing reliable superior service.
Do we know that? In this case it seems that they just didn't bother to apply. Unfortunately, that seems to be the normal way these ridesharing companies operate: ignore the law knowing that when they're called on it the media will spin it as "Evil Government Bureaucrat Does Job"
As others have pointed out, running the service inside of the regulation would probably require some changes on their part. In particular, I bet they won't be allowed to directly bill based on time or distance driven: if I'm on a bus that gets delayed in bad traffic or forced on a long detour I won't be asked for more money, but in a cab I would be. They should be able to still bill for distance-by-shortest-route though which should work well since it should be highly correlated, especially if they charge more during rush hour when travel is expected to be slower and thus costlier.
> I bet they won't be allowed to directly bill based on time or distance driven
Before jitneys were generally outlawed in the US a popular billing method was based on zones. You take a map of the city, chop it into regions and there's a flat charge for travel anywhere within one zone, a different charge to travel between two or more zones. The zone map and payment schedule can then be printed on a business card the driver hands passengers or painted on the side of the vehicle. This is a LOT cheaper and simpler and more predictable than a taxi meter and removes any incentive to take a longer or slower route, but regulators tend to hate it because without metering it's too easy for the cab driver to take payment in cash and avoid paying any taxes on the income.
Many cities have a form of this for a subset of rides. For example, it's quite common for there to be a fixed fare from the airport to the downtown core.
> California deems carpooling via all ride-share services illegal
The whole reason that charter party carrier laws and regulation are applied to Uber, Lyft, etc., in California is that they fall outside of the ridesharing exemption to those laws.
> Why is it that almost every time I hear about a stupid law on the web, 90% of the time it comes from California?
Because due to its population and economy, and other factors that increase the attention to what goes on in California, you (and the web) or more likely to hear about anything in California than similar things in other states.
I spent a year in a relationship between SF and LA, which meant a lot of driving up and down the state. I almost always had one or two people sharing the ride with me who I found on Craigslist. Given that at least some of these people could have driven themselves but didn't feel like it and just wanted to split gas money, why in the world is this illegal??
Hmm I remember the blue ride-share info signs out on the highway years ago. but doing a web search cant seem to find info on them. Was wondering if there was any info in there about carpools sharing gas money and such... ahhh, here it is:
None of this will matter is a decade or two. Autonomous taxis will take over, and then a handful of gents will rake in all the money and everyone else in the industry will be chronically de-employed.
Unless Uber/Lyft have management that is blind to reality, they'll be using autonomous vehicles.
They have no long-term obligation to the drivers, and they have no business need for actual human drivers. What makes you think they won't be early adopters for autonomous vehicles?
Most likely, they aren't Charter Party Carriers -- their purpose and operation in general don't seem like that kind of carrier -- and therefore aren't covered by the laws that restrict what Charter Party Carriers can do, but by entirely different sets of rules.
They're not charging individuals fees. I don't understand all the intricacies of how they're breaking the law (I posted a separate question about how Super Shuttle has been around so long) - but Google and Facebook buses aren't doing it as a business.
I remember when California passed the no smoking law for indoor establishments. One way around it was to make all of the employees of the bar or restaurant an owner in the business - therefore the law didn't apply because you didn't have any employees. Maybe if Lyft just made every user own .00000000000000001% of the firm, that would be a way around this asinine argument.
I also remember bar and restaurant owners saying it would devastate their industry and so on. Still waiting for that particular section of the sky to fall.
That section of sky did fall, but the effects aren't evenly distributed. A few kinds of bars and restaurants are predictably unaffected (or even positively affected) so averaging them all together can produce misleading results. Meanwhile other kinds of related businesses are devastated, but rarely considered in studies of the issue.
Anyway, here's a pretty good rundown of where to look for the biggest fallen pieces of sky:
"Don't look for bingo halls in the anti-smoker studies - you won't find them.
Bowling alleys are also ignored in most of these studies. They have a unique problem - shoes. A smoker can't just step outside for a smoke while wearing bowling shoes. They'd have to change their shoes twice each time they wanted a cigarette. Most of them won't bother. Laurel Bowl, in San Luis Obispo, CA, had been successful for thirty-four years before California's statewide ban. Three Hundred and Eighty-five league bowlers quit because of the ban, which cost the business $200,000 in annual revenues. The place struggled along for another year, then closed its doors."
Most regulations have a minor negative effect on businesses, balanced with a significant reduction in cancer risks it's probably a net win for society.
That would certainly help (albeit at a rather large expense for existing businesses) but probably wouldn't really solve the problem. The core issue is that bowling in a team involves an awful lot of waiting around and watching while other people on your team or the other team are bowling. A hardcore smoker would like to take a few puffs during those pauses while waiting for their turn....and that used to be okay. If the smokers in the group have to take turns running out to a patio to puff, they can't continue to cheer/boo their teammates/rivals and might miss or delay their turn. Which destroys the group dynamic. The bowling alley used to be selling (to some) the experience of smoking while bowling, just as music clubs used to be selling the experience of smoking while listening to a band; taking smoke breaks between sessions of bowling is not much of a substitute.
Sorry about the delayed reply, I often take a break from the internet over the weekend.
just as music clubs used to be selling the experience of smoking while listening to a band
I find it hard tor ead that with a straight face. I was a hardcore smoker when the bar and restaurant ban was passed and I only quit about 5 years ago. I though the ban was a fantastic idea at the time it went into effect and thought the inconvenience of having to go outside to smoke was a perfectly reasonable tradeoff for the sake of patrons and staff who did not smoke and didn't wish to sit in a cloud of others' smoke.
To an inconsiderate smoker anything could be defined as 'the experience of smoking while (doing something else).' I'm afraid I'm not very impressed with your Dave Hitt polemic, which is studded with gems such as:
Business that sell and service air cleaning units are affected. If there are no smokers, there's no reason to buy an air cleaner.
...which is equivalent to saying that air pollution is a good thing because it creates jobs in the manufacture of respirators, asthma drugs and so forth. This is essentially a fancy version of the 'broken window fallacy' in economics.
Then you'd have to worry about securities laws (both California and federal). Also, I doubt there's some sort of employee-owner exception to the CPUC rules.
