Company-owned marketplaces are wonderful for the 95% of people who never run into problems, and some people such as Blake Ross may wonder why we don’t just retire the publicly regulated markets. What he is missing is that there is no due process on company marketplaces. If you happen to have a streak of bad luck, or you are targeted or discriminated against and you get too many bad ratings, you are kicked off with no appeal process. Uber does not care whether the complaints are legitimate. Similar problems happen to a small fraction of users on Google Adwords, eBay, and other company-owned marketplaces who ultimately care about their own profit instead of justice. As public markets are replaced with private marketplaces, I think the loss of due process is not something that we should give up without some forethought.
Perfect is the enemy of good. What you're describing happens just as frequently in regulated markets (the police works fine for a certain sector of this country and not so great for another...), its just that regulated markets offer the false promise of perfection. At the end of the day there's no magic, its people at the end of all these services. So what's important, as Milton Friedman used to like to say, is not finding the right people, but getting the wrong people to do the right things.
The people that visit Las Vegas don't vote in Las Vegas, so what incentive is there AT ALL for the government to protect the customer? This is basically the worst edge case for a regulation: the regulators only receive votes from one side of the arrangement, so who do you think they'll bias? Unless taxi abuse got so bad that it actually affected tourism, then I assure you it will always slip between the cracks. On the other hand, a business that cares about solely this problem will actually figure out a way to solve it.
As a customer, I want an easy button to affect my contractors' businesses based on their performance. But when I am on the receiving end, I want to know that the negative reviews are legitimate (not subject to discrimination or gaming) and that the punishment is proportional to the crime. These goals are at odds, and I hope the latter is not sacrificed in the app economy.
You're right that the tourism industry is probably the worst case for democracy to ensure accountability of regulators to the people. But at least all punishments imposed by the government are subject to the court system; the government does not take away your license to make an income without evidence that you actually violated a law. Furthermore, government is subject to other mechanisms to be accountable to the people e.g. FOIA requests (vs Uber, who keeps their data exclusively for themselves). I worry that industries will be controlled by companies that care only about the aggregate revenues and are not accountable to the people,
"without evidence that you actually violated a law" - oh, you mean the laws/regulations written by politicians who do so at the behest of entrenched, crony corps to control markets, suppress innovation, and defend their stagnant products/services?
"But at least all punishments imposed by the government are subject to the court system" - Guess what? There's this nifty thing called civil court, and if we just made filing legitimate small claims easier, faster, and more effective, people could use this outlet to organically push back on bad behavior without the need for centralized regulation.
"its just that regulated markets offer the false promise of perfection"
No: it is just that regulated (I prefer the name public but anyway) markets offer the possibility of legal defense by definition. Thus, the customer is not left defenseless.
However, this applies possibly much more to Roman-law derivative States than to the US.
Who cares what you have by definition? What matters is whether you're on average better off in practice.
It's cold comfort to have legal recourse technically available, if it's never worth the time and money to pursue it. If you have to seek recourse at all you've already "lost" --- the recourse never really makes you whole, given your broken expectations, time to pursue, etc.
Consumers have a defense with private markets -- use the competition. The problem with regulated public markets, such as taxis in NYC, is that a consumer has little choice, thus, unless they want to spend hours of their time dealing with an inherited embedded and political bureaucracy, there's little alternative. It's like restaurants, the bad ones tend to go out of business eventually. But imagine if restaurants all sucked and they were enabled in their suck by a government imposed "medallion" system and a supply of those medallions not controlled by market demand but by the restaurant mafia themselves, then there isn't any alternative, so your stuck with inferior quality and impossible barriers to entry controlled by your competition. Removing barriers to competition is the absolute best way to improve a market. Prices drop, service has to also improve. Those that perform a bad service at a high price quickly die because, if I don't like it, I can easily choose a substitute. Restaurants are a great example. You certainly want some level of regulation, but only the minimum amount to protect the health of the public. So in the public transport area, background checks should be required, insurance should be required, safety inspections should be required, but silliness like taxi medallions ought to be eliminated. To be clear, I am not against regulations, but I am against market regulation. There is a subtle but important difference.
"It is just that regulated (I prefer the name public but anyway) markets offer the possibility of legal defense by definition." - I think you may be forgetting an entire area of the judicial branch: Civil Court. You can, in fact, sue a business for: representing their product incorrectly, providing service other than described, not sticking to the contract you signed, etc, etc.
We could just as easily simplify, streamline, and reform the civil tort system to allow people to file and address legitimate issues quickly through organic, judicial means. But instead, people, for god knows why, believe it is easier and more effective to have politicians appoint a bunch of crony farts to pass hundreds of thousands of pages of regulation that make the 95% case of good business operation harder, while most often failing to catch/fix the 5% of time things go wrong.
Civil court is a venue in which action based on existing laws and regulations are pursued. It does not substitute for actually having the laws and regulations which provide the bases for actions.
"[...]regulated [...] markets offer the possibility of legal defense by definition. Thus, the customer is not left defenseless."
I don't know about the US but in Germany and Austria this could not be more wrong. Your ability to object through legal procedures is highly dependent on the regulatory field you are working in.
Is is most awful in fields with state monopolies like work permits or licensing.
It also happens in highly regulated markets. For example, due primarily to my outward appearance (I'm not a member of the majority race), I'm often asked for 2x the normal fare in auto rickshaws. If my girlfriend (a different non-majority race than me) is with me, 3-4x [1].
I'm mostly denied access to banking (except for some legacy accounts) due explicitly to regulation.
This also happens in private markets without a company marketplace. For example:
> It also happens in highly regulated markets. For example, due primarily to my outward appearance (I'm not a member of the majority race), I'm often asked for 2x the normal fare in auto rickshaws. If my girlfriend (a different non-majority race than me) is with me, 3-4x [1].
Uh, that sounds like it's due to nonregulation. In my city that simply couldn't happen - licensed taxis all have to use the same meters (and display their license number prominently, making it easy to report one that's violating the rules).
In my city, licensed autos all use the same meters and display their number prominently. And if I want to wait on line for a day to complain (Marathi only, no Hindi, no English, from what I'm told), maybe something will eventually be done. Sounds as effective as the Vegas regulatory system.
In theory a perfectly enforced set of perfect regulations might fix these issues. In practice the industries that regulators are deeply involved in controlling still seem to have these issues.
> In theory a perfectly enforced set of perfect regulations might fix these issues. In practice the industries that regulators are deeply involved in controlling still seem to have these issues.
In practice regulation as it's actually practised in e.g. Germany manages perfectly well. Sounds like your regulatory system has issues. Doesn't mean all regulation is fundamentally broken.
You have obviously never spoken to a cab driver about the "due process" and fairness they are treated with by cab companies. There is a reason cab drivers are abandoning their corrupt, inefficient, and oppressive employers for Uber and Lyft.
The appeal process in a private market is called competition.
It doesn't always work, certainly. Then again, it would be foolish to say the State-owned alternatives always do. Or that "justice" is what motivates public administration. They're just people, no more or less self-interested than private actors.
Due to network effects, it is very difficult to compete with incumbent networks. Google AdWords and Uber do not need the people that they wrongfully kicked out. Facebook does not need the people who find their privacy policy untenable. Unless the grievances affect a large fraction of people, competition is not a strong enough force to correct major problems that affect few people.
Why not? I don't use Facebook, yet I still communicate with everyone I care about. Many people earn their living through ads without using AdWords.
Does their preponderance in the marketplace make it more difficult to avoid? No doubt. But have you ever tried to appeal a procedure of a calcified administration?
Is your question why competition isn't strong enough against market-dominating incumbents to effect change, or why the named companies don't need the customers or service providers they expunge?
I see. The parent's "effect change" was that the banned or disaffected customers, even if they use other services, will not damage the market position of the service they were banned from or left.
I.e., Facebook doesn't have to care that you send emails and make phone calls instead of Facebook messages, because your individual contribution to their income is negligible, and, I suppose, you don't represent a pervasive or effective force in their target demographics.
What parent's effect change? You were the first to use that expression in this thread.
will not damage the market position of the service they were banned from or left.
We weren't talking about their market position, but whether customers had recourse, and I said they have in the form of competing services.
But if we're going to discuss the effects that an individual can have in changing overall practices of an organization, I'm not sure if public institutions will come out very well in the picture.
That may be true, but I don't see how that is different with publicly run marketplaces. Regulators and civil servants also tend to only care about the majority rather than protecting the minority.
The article has nothing to do with company-vs-regulated marketplace. It has to do with how horrible the government ideas were so far. If the city of Nevada wrote an iPhone app for rating cabs and the cabs had to display their stars, it would be better any of the other hilarious ideas they've come up with. Of course, the article implies they could have let Uber compete with the taxis like in so many other places, but the point is that 'due process' failed in this case, so even imperfect company would be better than that.
>> If the city of Nevada wrote an iPhone app for rating cabs and the cabs had to display their stars
I don't think consumer ratings are that great a plan. I can see from the article that all of those ideas are pretty awful. But making a cabbie display ratings from consumers rather than a ratings agency is open to all sorts of abuse.
Here in the UK a restaurant has to display its food hygiene rating on the door. This is a the result of a real assessment by an expert and as such is useful information. Unlike, say, a tripadvisor rating, which is more or less useless (5 stars! So much fun! I really enjoyed the baked rat and whatever that crunchy brown thing was in my lasagne!)
It's horrifying how you think government regulators are inherently smarter and more knowledgable than ordinary customers, who you apparently think are idiots.
It's horrifying to me that my food safety might be left up to what is effectively a popularity contest, when there are objective criteria that can be used.
I'm not really sure how this maps on to cabs, mind.
I suppose so. The commonality was the idea of forcing display, which I can really only see being a good idea for objective measures.
The article is talking about objective measures too - the problem it's trying to address is naive customers being taken the long way round. I don't think satisfaction ratings will actually help there.
In the example of the hygiene rating, the government regulators at least have the possibility of being fair and using objective standards for evaluating and measuring a large number of restaurants against each other.
If it's left up to customers, it's completely subjective, all the time. It's not that customers are idiots, it's that the wisdom of the crowds is often wrong.
By similar token government-regulated marketplaces have a long-term problem with corruption.
We already observe the cases where teacher unions sponsor political candidates who will negotiate with teacher unions, police unions approving or disapproving of mayoral candidates who will sit on the opposite side of negotiating table when police contract is being discussed, insurance companies (ahem, industry) supporting (or not) state insurance commissioner candidates, or financial companies paying a bonus to a manager who departs for a government job.
How do you prevent corruption and align incentives properly in a government-run marketplace?
Very well said! I have seen livelihoods completely devastated by these sorts of things. Google Adwords, getting banned from there, can destroy a content producer who has structured his entire life upon it.
If your real estate business is heavily built around advertising in a local newspaper, and you get kicked off that by a competitor locking up an exclusivity deal, or the newspaper goes out of business - then what? Then you have to change your business.
There's absolutely nothing unique or new to Google Adwords when it comes to resting your fate with a platform. There is no such thing as a world without platforms, such that you can never be dependent on one; the only choice you have is what platform you're going to depend on.
I just had my first Las Vegas cab experience, it was at 11:30pm. The taxi driver picked us up from the airport and took us to our hotel 30 minutes away. He was pretty helpful and seemed to know the area quite well. Then we got to our destination and he demanded that I pay cash, even though the taxi had a touchscreen terminal behind the front passenger seat for paying with card.
He said that he needed the $55 fare in cash because he needs to take some money home and it is midnight. I told him that I didn't feel comfortable, he was apologetic, explained he needed the money and so, to save trouble, I went into the hotel and got out the cash for him because I just got off a few hours plane ride, I didn't want to deal with this nonsense at this time of night.
I told the man behind the desk at the hotel and he explained that it happens all of the time. He said a lot of the drivers pocket the cash for themselves which is why they demand cash. He then advised us not to hire taxis and to use a hotel recommended private driver service that is the same cost (no doubt a nice referral fee for them). An ulterior motive there, but I don't doubt that this happens all of the time.
This experience, other experiences from colleagues and friends as well as online paints a picture of a pretty broken and corrupt taxi system in Los Angeles especially. While I am not a big fan of Uber (ethically) I do like the idea of ridesharing and the rating system. If Lyft, Uber and other companies were operating here, perhaps things would be different.
"He said a lot of the drivers pocket the cash for themselves which is why they demand cash."
Uh. No. Where else would the money go? Cabbies pay everything upfront. They keep all earnings.
The problem here is that both cabbies and customers are in a bad deal. The bulk of the profits go to taxi medallion holders which are typically investors.
It's much easier to not pay taxes on cash income than on credit card income.
Also, cabbies don't pocket the income, the medallion owner pockets the income. If that happens to be the cabbie, great, but frequently, cabbies simply lease the medallion from an investment company. If you're a non-medallion-owning driver, you can increase your hourly rate by requesting and not-reporting cash transactions.
They are the cheapest option (usually <$15 round-trip) to get from LAS to your hotel but, like any shared-ride setup, it's gonna be a wait for the bus to arrive and a longer wait while you drop others off. Las Vegas is a unique situation where people try to scramble as fast as they can from airplane seat to casino seat and they tend to miss this option and sprint straight for the cab line.
This is a useless comment, I'm not saying Uber is ethical but saying "Ha, have you not been paying attention?" adds no value. I think artursapek poses a valid question to be answered with facts and sources not an off the cuff reply that expects everyone follows everything that happens. People have questions, why do you have to pretend they are stupid for not know every last detail?
As long as the laws prohibit Uber from operating, why is it strange that the government would take steps to ensure that?
Perhaps the laws should change - certainly Uber wants them to. But flouting the law isn't often the best way to make that happen. They're not protesting injustice, they're jamming a foot in the door of a multi-billion dollar industry with technology that is still very new to regulators. The "we're just an app that connects people who want a ride with willing drivers" dodge is disingenuous, and the alternation between wounded and scoffing attitudes is grating. I don't like Uber as a company, and personally I hope it fails and the next guy picks up the torch and does these things with a bit of tact. Neither driver nor user will care.
There are lots of outdated laws, and executives work around them all the time. In fact, the chief executive of the US just recently did exactly that, and not for the first time. So proclaiming "oh, it's the law, there's nothing to be done" is ignoring the reality at best. At worst, it's a trick since the people who talk about "nothing to be done" are exactly the same ones who ensure the law stays in place as is.
>>> technology that is still very new to regulators.
So the natural reaction of course to ban it. Just in case.
>>> I don't like Uber as a company
You understand you liking or not liking them has nothing to do with their rights to do business, moreover - their rights should not depend on them being likable in any state that wants to call itself the state governed by laws and not by whims?
The thing I find grating is that Uber takes everything they perceive to be broken in some local US taxi market (bay area?) and project it onto the world.
Even though taxis seem to be regulated pretty much everywhere, the reason for regulation, the way things are done, and its effects can vary a lot.
Doesn't matter, Uber still feels the need (at least according to their PR) to crush the evil taxi monopoly in Germany. Even though there is no monopolist.
If anything, Uber is the best match for that (international company with deep pockets vs local companies with typically 5 cars or less)
I don't like Uber itself either. But what if flouting the law - and getting customers on your side after experience your product - the only way to make it happen?
That doesn't mean the law shouldn't be upheld, and they fined if necessary. But that's the government's job, not Uber's.
The purpose of law should be to benefit the public. Uber and Lyft empirically demonstrate, in most cities, that taxi regulations--a textbook example of regulatory capture for decades--do not benefit the public when they protect taxis against competition.
Some people have an authoritarian worldview--laws are handed down to us by our betters, and we'd better follow them no matter what. I prefer a democratic worldview--laws are an artifact created by the people for the benefit of the people, and once they hinder that purpose rather than promote it, there's nothing sacred about continuing to follow it to our own detriment.
In many cities acrozs the world there is both comprtition and consumer-oriented regulation. London is like this. Uber's business model isn't even novel there.
I think even Uber's star system pales in comparison to a better solution: calculate fares in advance (maybe based purely on distance and average travel time).
We have GPS, we can estimate costs before the trip. If we do so, the only incentive for the cabbie is to get your service completed as efficiently as possible.
And it's weird that it's one of the only services where we can estimate the cost in advance fairly accurately in 99% of cases, but there's no price transparency. Cabs and medical services, maybe. There's no reason cab drivers should need a "billable hours" system of payment (at least not since gps mapping technology was invented).
I'd settle for that much. But my more controversial rider is that costs shouldn't vary by the time of the trip.
The risk of traffic flows should be borne by the party that will experience all the variations enough to be able to average it out. In consumer goods, if you buy a the one out of ten thousand products that are broken off the shelf, (or explodes in your hand), the merchants accept the loss, because they can even out this loss across all of their sales. In cabs, if there's suddenly an accident a mile ahead of you, and you're just stopped in a parking lot doubling your cost, that's your fault.
On an individual level, maybe just underpay if you've been jerked around. If the cabbie complains, tell them to bring the cops so you can both talk about the route and they can decide what's fair. If that behavior became widespread, taxis would lose the incentive to cheat in this way. (Though you'd probably get a few people shot in the street. I strongly prefer the "pre-calculated fares.")
I get your traffic jam problem, but in big cities its more complicated than that. There are supply demand imbalances and a traveling salesman type problem.
Technology could solve some of these issues but I don't see it happening in the near future.
Oh, sure, on supply demand imbalances, I'd be ok with surge pricing if that's what you mean. I don't need prices to be constant for days, I'd just like them to be fixed at the moment both sides agree to the transaction.
It seems like that should be doable with current tech, without even affecting the price of many transactions (except the ones where drivers are going intentionally slowly).
The inputs for Uber's pricing are time, distance, and the demand multiplier. Google maps does a pretty good job at giving an expected time and distance for a driver taking the ideal route. The driver / Uber can toss in a demand multiplier. If we agree that the Google Maps (or some other mapping service) time estimate is "close enough," then we should be able to calculate the fee before I sit down.
The driver can then feel free to take a scenic route, but it comes out of their pocket, not mine, so they probably won't.
Or we can do nothing. I'm just really tired of cabs missing my exit "accidentally." Three of the last four times I came back from the airport. The last trip I directed every lane change from the backseat. I feel like I shouldn't have to do that.
It's amusing to point out the failures of government bureaucracy, and while it's admirable that they're trying, I think we can all agree that the people responsible for these measures aren't exactly blessed with an overabundance of competence.
> he was clearly falling short of Uber’s standard... I gave him five stars, of course.
Why? I wonder if the author would continually frequent a deli that regularly served him rotten meat out of some misplaced sense of guilt.
> He wouldn’t let us out of the cab until she promised to [give 5 stars]. Afterward, we agreed: That was a pretty annoying ride, but not so bad it was worth punishing someone financially over it.
Yeah, I always find it annoying when I get quasi-kidnapped too. But who's to blame the kidnappers? Petty corruption and extortion is a totally acceptable part of life in a civilized society! It's not as if there were some sort of completely anonymous, dead-simple mechanism to instantly eliminate this sort of behavior.
> Most regular Uber users have a story like this.
I don't, nor have I heard any such thing from anyone I know. Where's the data to back this statement?
> my sample wasn’t big enough to generate anything I’d call data
Ergo, you have no business writing authoritatively on this subject.
> Why would Uber invite riders to use a scale of one to five unless it wants them to make fine distinctions? But in practice, it means a rating intended by a user as a gesture of approval is in fact a vote to have a driver fired. That’s screwed up.
If it's so screwed up, then why would anyone drive for Uber? Surely, all of their drivers would be getting fired and no one would want to work for them if that were the case. The fact is, it's not, and the reason is clear if you have a basic understanding of statistics, particularly normal distributions.
> Uber likes this system because it enjoys being able to say all of its drivers have near-perfect ratings. But it’s a harsh one for drivers, and also for customers, who find themselves repeatedly forced to choose between guilt, spite and ignorance.
Again, if it's so harsh, why would either group voluntarily participate in the system? Nobody is forcing either side to participate, and yet they both do so in droves.
> Fundamentally, a five-star rating is far too simple.
And yet the article you cite advocates something radically simpler.
The author in the article you linked to is too far on the "Mercy" side of Mercy vs. Justice. Five stars is my default, but I don't have a problem giving out 2-stars. In a nearly endless labor pool, this is appropriate consumer behavior, and I see it as improving rides for other consumers.
Downvote me like the other commenter who expressed this, bitches!
//edit: At the time of writing this, sneak's comment was in the downvoted greyed-out font.
It seems to be working sufficiently for Uber and their happy customers. Uber is a premium service. Drivers should be fired if they don't know their way around, have a dirty or smelly car, or otherwise request things of me as a customer beyond my destination address. I routinely give out two and three star ratings, knowing it could well get people fired. 5 stars is for a perfect trip that could not be improved.
Say I pick up an uber, and everything goes exactly as planned. No weird side streets, no funky smell in the car, and an amicable driver. Not the best uber experience - I've had uber drivers free water bottles and nightlife recommendations at the ready in the past - but we got exactly where we wanted to go.
The service was satisfactory, but not above average. What do I rate this driver?
The answer to this question varies depending on who you are. The problem is that there is no standard for riders to objectively rate uber drivers. It's the equivalent of the easy-A teacher in high school versus the strict grading-on-a-curve teacher.
People have their own biases and experiences that affect the scale they rate on. The differences in my own personal grading syllabus versus another persons can get people on uber fired for the exact same ride experience.
If Uber has anyone statistically competent on staff, they'll normalize your scores and compute an individualized scale for you. I.e., let i = individual rider, j = individual driver. Then they'll use a model like:
score[i,j] = a[i]z[j]+b[i] + noise
Then they store the z[j] for each driver.
So if I consistently rate drivers between 2 and 4, while you consistently rate drivers between 4 and 5, then a[me] = 3, b[me] = 2 while for you a[you]=4 and b[you]=5. If you rate a driver as 4 (i.e. z[j] = 0), then Uber will tell me the driver is rated a[me]0 + b[me] = 2.
Uber can then rate their drivers internally based on z[driver], not the individual ratings.
It is of course possible that Uber is completely statistically incompetent, but I doubt that.
Uber aren't incompetent, they just don't care, much like any other marketplace with a huge market share. Most of the time the variance in how customers rate drivers will average out. Even though they'll accidentally fire and ban a few good drivers due to random bad luck it doesn't affect Uber much since they still have plenty of other drivers. Same reason why companies like Amazon are willing to ban reliable Marketplace sellers on spurious grounds like moving into an address that someone once scammed them from years ago.
Why do you believe Uber (with hundreds of employees, and in vicious competition for drivers [1]) doesn't care enough have one employee devote a week to doing textbook linear regression?
[1] Uber is willing to pay Lyft for the privilege of having their recruiter sit in the car with the driver.
Yeap. For example, Criticker (movie ratings site) simply ranks everyone on a 10-tier scale, so if you only rate movies up to 30%, a movie with a 29% rating with be on the 9th or 10th tier.
I wish the 5 stars system worked like that. I love UberX, but I don't like the negotiation at the end of the ride over ratings. It hasn't been as bad for me as in the Forbes article, but there's a definite read-between-the-lines of always giving 5 stars.
I'd much rather give my feedback/rating in private once I'm out of the cab, and for the driver to do the same with me. I really don't need/want to know how they rated me. The "I gave you 5 stars, now you rate me" conversation is always awkward.
There is no criteria for a five-star rating. Did he get me where I needed to go at the expected price? Pretty much - that seems at best to rate average.
I don't even know what a five-star rating would be.
I gave him one because I really didn't feel the need to spend the time figuring out exactly what I should give him.
However, the problem I have, in retrospect, is this:
DON'T FRICKIN' ASK FOR A FIVE-STAR RATING WITHOUT A GOOD REASON.
They shouldn't ask, which I would explain; if they persisted, I would give a low rating for that.
In terms of stars, drivers get dropped if they are below around 4.5 on average, so 5 stars basically means "keep this driver" and anything less means "fire this driver".
I've had a driver tell me he would give me a $20 coupon for future rides, pull my phone, input the coupon code (which didn't work, since it was first riders only) and rate himself five stars.
Yep. This is in Perth, Australia. At least one of the UberX drivers specifically said "See, I've just given you 5 stars, now you rate me" before I left the car. UberX has only been here a month though, so maybe drivers (and riders?) aren't sure how the system is meant to work. I've had 4 rides on UberX now.
No one's stopped me from leaving the car, and the rides were all okay so I'm not complaining about any drivers. But the implication I got was of reciprocal 5 stars.
You know, I really wouldn't put it past Uber to game HackerNews. If they're willing to dig up dirt on journalists, can you imagine that they'd have a problem with 'employee advocacy' on HN?
This comment may have been mistaken, but it's so much more decent than the usual "Did you even read the article" swipe that I'd say some corrective upvotes are called for. Thanks for keeping your temper, even when wrong!
Not an Uber employee, not an Uber investor. Just had a terrible cab experience in Vegas last month and it finally spilled out on a plane ride yesterday.
Blake that was one of the funniest articles I have read in a long time. The content wasn't particularly interesting to me but coffee blew out of my nose at "Bankery Robberson" and I had to read to the end. Your high school English teacher would be proud.
Really? If that's the case then presumably you didn't take the photos in your article, so you should be attributing them to their owners. If you did take the photos then either you're doing more than just recounting a bad experience, or you take the weirdest holiday snaps ever.
It's funny, but people think there is something inherently inefficient about government, but inefficiency and unresponsiveness are usually more a function of incentives, as well as obvious stuff like organization size and structure.
Medicare is on average more efficient than private health care, for example. Health care might be a situation where profit incentives don't create the best outcome. In the case of the Nevada officials, there is no incentive whatsoever to actually fix the problem.
Something I recently learned in Vegas; if a taxi driver picks you up from a casino on the strip and offers to take you (or does it anyway) the "quicker way" to your destination [also on the strip] via taking some off-strip highway, reject him. A bit of traffic on the strip is nothing compared to how fast the meter flies upwards when a taxi is speeding along a highway via a long detour and it's going to result in you paying a lot more for the journey.
I hope I'm not getting Uber drivers in trouble by asking them to take longer routes (that are quicker because I know the traffic near my office better than the route planner does).
I'm surprised one of the smaller ride share companies hasn't pivoted into licensing/partnering with municipal governments. Share revenue and let them control the processes for accepting drivers and regulating them. Tada you're partnered with a entity that can legislate your competition out of business.
I'll naively give the government the benefit of the doubt and assume there are good arguments for being anti-Uber/Lyft. What are they? I'm curious to know if there are valid reasons besides dollars being shuffled into the right pockets. I'll assume preventing disruption is not a valid argument.
The best reason I can think of is labour protection for the drivers. Even though the US is pretty laissez faire when it comes to employee protections, Uber and similar completely strip all rights from drivers. The almighty Rating determines who gets fired, with zero transparency and zero second chances. Imagine working as a waiter, but if your tip percentage drops below a certain threshold, you're fired and banned from the restaurant business forever, even though you might just have gotten a bunch of asshole customers in a row.
Also, if the bar to entry into the profession is simply to have a car and a smartphone, it will quickly become a race to the bottom in terms of wages.
All of this is good for the consumers, they get a lot of power over the drivers, they can threaten to give them a bad rating and so on, but there should probably be a balance.
Then again, it's not like the existing taxi cab unions and medallion systems and regulations are a guarantee of a good environment.
And on the third side, this profession is going to be eradicated by self-driving cars within fifteen years, so who cares?
>Also, if the bar to entry into the profession is simply to have a car and a smartphone, it will quickly become a race to the bottom in terms of wages.
If that's all that is required to be an effective driver, why should cab drivers be overpaid?
As a software engineer working in California, I (and many others here) enjoy the labour protection of non-competes being unenforceable here. That drives up the cost of hiring software engineers, i.e. we are being overpaid.
This is why we have labour laws, to shift the balance, to make work suck a little bit less for everyone.
(In principle. In practice in the taxi-cab case, I can't say that the various regulations and systems improve things for anyone, it's mostly captured by the rent-seekers anyway, so everyone gets screwed)
Yes, in Liberty Utopia, where bad companies are swiftly punished for not treating their employees fairly.
Meanwhile, in the real world, people take jobs for all sorts of reasons, and often do not have the luxury of choosing freely. The whole reason we have labour laws in the first place is because the free market has shown, again and again and again, to be completely inept at guaranteeing fair tratment of workers.
I know that with a purely US perspective it's hard to see the benefits of labour protections, since here jobs are either unionized into stupidity, or completely at-will. There's no middle ground, and then it's fair to come to the conclusion that it's all crap. However, there are plenty of countries outside the US where job markets have a healthier balance between protections for workers and company interests.
There are a couple of arguments to prevent discrimination against riders. The current regulation of Taxis and Public Transit are such that disabled persons and wheelchair-riders can get rides about as easily as able-bodied people. Uber and Lyft have no such provisions.
My own concerns about Uber/Lyft have to do with properly following regulation that are legitimately in the public interest. From what I understand, in additional to the 800 lb gorilla (medallion licensing), there are other areas where Uber and Lyft skirt regulation. For example, I have read Uber argue that they are insured, but is it to the same level that taxi company drivers are required to be? How about other licensing? If we believe that the taxi regulations are unnecessarily burdensome, then lets redraw the rules for all parties. We need a common set of rules that everybody follows. Only then can we have proper competition among Uber, Lyft, Yellow Cab, etc.
Here's an outlandish idea: let people choose whether to take rides from insured drivers or not. Hell, why not let drivers openly advertise their insurance levels to attract customers! Letting people choose their risk level for themselves - it's so crazy it might just work.
We know that people are hopeless at assessing risk. And an un-insured driver and their passenger are not taking risks for only themselves -- other people using the roads need coverage. If you cause an accident their insurance company will come after you. A seemingly minor injury - sprained wrist with bruised fingers - becomes overwhelmingly expensive if it's an eye-surgeon who is injured and who is suing for loss of earnings for two weeks. Why should that person lose money because you chose to go uninsured?
1) As a customer, I don't care at all what insurance my driver has to protect him or herself in the event they cause an accident. Should I?
2) The requirement that road users have insurance is in my opinion completely separate to what those road-users do with their vehicles. Shouldn't it be?
3) People are not "hopeless at assessing risk." That's a ludicrous assertion. Everytime anybody buys anything, goes anywhere, or does anything, they are assessing risk. Buying goods off Ebay = assessing risks. Eating at a restaurant = assessing risks. Walking down the street = assessing risks.
3) People are not "hopeless at assessing risk." That's a ludicrous assertion.
No, you are wrong. People over-estimate the probability of rare events and under estimate the probability of common events. There are a bunch of biases that make people really bad at assessing risk.
The examples you give - all of them needed extensive modification to help people assess the risk or to protect people from the risk. (Ebay introduced reputation systems and gives stern advice about not paying for goods with Western Union cash transfer; retaurants have to comply with hygiene laws backed up by inspection - how many people bother to ask to see the kitchen or the staff loos before eating somewhere?)
Licensing can also be used to ensure competence and familiarity with safety regulations (there's a reason why we require people to be licensed to operate a vehicle in general and a reason why even in the age of GPS, London cabbies are required to pass a test of their knowledge of the city's streets.)
There's a false dichotomy in considering Uber/Lyft and Government as singular units.
One aspect of the government side is securing that drivers and cars are safe and properly insured and making sure that the handicapped and minorities aren't discriminated against. But it's also, in many cities, running a rigidly planned economy, ostensibly for the benefit of drivers, but in reality often more so for medallion holders and unions, and having allow those vested interests to capture the system - and surely against the benefit of consumers.
On the other hand, Uber clearly brings huge benefits to the consumer: better cars that actually show up, politer drivers, better price/choice, easy grievance process etc. But there's also ambiguity about how they threat their drivers, whether insurance is always completely correct (especially in UberPOP) etc. Then of course, there's some questionable ethical dealings.
I'm a big fan of Uber, so obviously biased, but the idea is that benefits and drawbacks exist on a spectrum, and there's no reason we couldn't get the best of both worlds: properly regulated and insured cars, without the planned economy of medallions, and decent labour-protection of drivers without completely screwing over consumers. In London, Ubers are fully regulated under the "Private Hire" scheme which is unlimited in the number of licenses provided, but require commercial insurance and a background check of drivers and I think this strikes the balance very well.
I would suspect that driving a taxi in most places reuqires some sort of driver exam. (Even if not everywhere is London with "the Knowledge") Anyone can start driving Uber/Lyft. Also, Uber is pushing subprime loans on its drivers and withholds their income against it essentially creating indentured servitude.
All in all, taxicabs suck but Uber should burn in hell.
Uber allows people with poor credit scores to purchase a vehicle so they can make a living? That seems fundamentally different than the "subprime crisis" involving mortgages.
Are you alleging that all lending to people with poor credit scores is wrong, even in the cases where doing so might be the only way to give that person a job and help them improve their life?
The point about indentured servitude seems like hyperbole. Certainly the drivers can decide to just stop driving for Uber (they can't withhold income that doesn't ever come through) and/or allow the car to be repossessed if they really can't afford it. It also looks like Uber is helping buyers get manufacturer discounts (http://uberwest.weebly.com/la-vehicle-financing.html). Maybe I'm missing something here, but it looks like a good program for a number of people who can't afford to buy a car but want to become a driver.
I don't think the parent said it was creating a "subprime crisis". I believe his point was that people with poor credit are buying a vehicle under "sub-prime" terms, meaning high interest rates and other onerous terms, that somehow binds the driver to Uber. That's a pretty shady tactic if true. Can somebody validate this claim?
Uber and friends need to pay a tax which pays back (at least in part) all those who've invested in the current infrastructure based on assurances from Government. I'm not saying they have to get paid back for anything they have done that is speculative, but they need to get paid back something. Is it really that huge a tax to pay? I'm sure they could pay it back over 20 years or something and the government can write bonds against it to pay back taxi drivers immediately.
Just so we're clear, you're saying that a monopoly should be granted tax revenues to cover the loss of revenue incurred by a viable competitor emerging in the market, because they didn't anticipate that competitor emerging?
I think the OP is saying that they need to be paid back because they made a purchase based on the government's promise to enforce a monopoly.
If I paid a million bucks for a taxi medallion, and then 6 months later medallions aren't necessary--either because the government changes the law or because the government fails to enforce the law--I'm going to want a refund.
If I make any business decision that turns out poorly for me, I'm going to want a refund. It doesn't mean I should be entitled to one.
This is, ostensibly, what contracts should cover. The medallion issuer should be subject to a series of conditions under which the medallion purchaser is entitled to some sort of recompense if the issuer breaches those conditions. Entering into a purchase contract for an item that is literally the life and death of your career, agreeing to terms in which the other party basically says "trust us, we'll do what we promise so you aren't completely ruined" is a terrible way to do business.
This isn't an article promoting Uber to flaunt the law. The article is pointing out that the nevada government is completely incompetent and Uber being legalized would be much better for everyone except for the cab drivers that rip people off.
It's a crazy theory that, if you are intelligent and believe that laws and civil arrangements in your society are against logic and moral reason, the best way to change them is to break them, to help raise awareness so that more people realise their perversity.
It helped end British control of India and racial segregation in America. Cool huh?
We're talking about a large company making a profit, not a lunch-counter protest.
Uber isn't doing this because of some deeply held belief, they're doing it to make a profit. I don't want corporations breaking regulations they don't agree with and claiming it's "civil disobedience".
> Flying to Vegas? Look to your left. Now look to your right. Statistically speaking, one of you is about to get ripped off by a cabbie. And it’ll probably be you, the imbecile who chose the middle seat and paid $15 for plane wifi.
Just a side-note: I wouldn't open an article with brazenly insulting the reader.
> The signs are done now, and I doubt they’ll ever need to be updated: Vegas is a sleepy town, and the dollar is a stable currency
This is a sarcastic remark, but: the US dollar is, in fact, a stable currency, and inflation is currently very low. Cab fares are regulated. If getting from point A to point B takes $20 in 2014, it will not be difficult to determine how much the fare should be in 2020, and to send some people around with new signs or price stickers.
I'm surprised at how many of these points seem to treat the low-tech methods used by the Nevada state government as patently absurd. I guess it comes from a mindset that technology is the obvious solution to society's problems, which is something I do not find to be obvious. It took me a while to catch on to the sarcasm as a result of that mismatch.
I can agree that the Gov's solutions are not absurd - at least not half as absurd as this post makes them out to be - but the overall point that the Uber rating system is superior to advisory signs stands strong.
I found the sarcastic writing style a pleasure; it was enjoyable humorous and obvious in intent to me.
Uber has the benefit of employing the drivers, handling transactions, and controlling pricing. This allows them to refund unfair fares and to punish drivers for poor ratings. The technology is secondary.
As is so often the case, much of the expense and inefficiency of the government regulatory apparatus here stems from an aversion to intervene directly in markets.
I think the article is less poking fun at the non-technological nature of the government solutions, but at their ineffectiveness, when a proven solution with widely deployed infrastructure to support it already exists in the marketplace.
If Nevada could put a magic rock for $0.03/unit in cabs that made cabbies stop longhauling, with no extra technology in play, nobody would complain that it wasn't technological enough.
Up until the last few months when Uber came in and put the heat on the local Dallas (TX) taxi market, government was driving at the behest of the largest taxi company via local council and board members pushing ordinances[1] that squeezed smaller cab companies. What a shit show that's been...
Leaving aside the pro-Uber aspect of the piece, the criticism of the existing solutions was spot on.
If you add a huge amount of friction before you can offer feedback, the only people to do will either be normal people who had truly horrific experiences, or incredibly entitled and annoying assholes who complain about everything.
In practice, it's really difficult for the government to be as nimble as a private company, but even people who support strong government regulation (like me!) have absolutely no ground to stand on when defending that particular status quo.
I wonder if the next step in the evolution of public transport is something akin to Uber. It may be more entropic come the day self driving cars come along.
Given that each car heads to its destination without a transit route where passengers are buffered would be good.
Additionally, since the road is shared unlike the subway, it may be more efficient on resources.
Perhaps when the option becomes available, the government of some affording country may be able to pilot such a thing.
The big problem is scale. You can replicate the capacity of a smaller bus route with efficient self-driving cars, but bigger routes and higher-capacity transit move tens and hundreds of thousands of people per day to a destination, and loading/unloading capacity near those destinations is just not going to fit.
Demand is already centralized both geographically and time-wise, with business districts, downtowns, rush/peak hour. Self-driving cars might replace feeder networks but they'll only strengthen the case for high-capacity trunk transit.
Some numbers for context because I was thinking about it. Let's say it takes a person five seconds to get in a robocar at an organized terminal area (car pulls up with door already open, people are lined up - getting in on the street in front of a building would be slower). Let's say you can weave five terminal lanes into one traffic lane, so cars can leave the terminal at about 1 car per second per lane. In five minutes you can ship out about 300 people per lane.
In those same five minutes, a Calgary C-Train would have pulled in, loaded, and departed with capacity of about 700 people. Or three Skytrain trains, each with capacity of about 500 people. Or two Victoria Line trains, each with capacity of about 1000 people (non-crush load). Or two double-decker RER trains, capacity over 2000 people each. You'd need a lot of robocar terminals...
Lots of us fly there on business (usually conventions) and spend very little time in the casinos. But yeah, the restaurants can be a ripoff if you eat on-strip.
From my experience, long-hauling complaints are handled quite effectively. You just go here: http://taxi.nv.gov/Complaints/Complaints/ and spend ~5 minutes copying info that is present on your receipt.
Did this three years back. Within days, the offending cab company called me and issued me a complete refund.
From my experience, long-hauling complaints are handled quite effectively. You just spend ~2 minutes filling out the text box Uber asks you when completing a ride.
Did this three days back. Within hours, Uber emailed me and issued me a complete refund.
I always wonder about micro-long-hauling anytime I go to new areas of Brooklyn or visit new cities. I pretty much know where I am, but if they went a little out of the way I would not notice.
If you drive a cab for 40 years, do 25 fares a day and "reroute" 4-8 extra blocks (~=$1.25) you'll see an extra ~$30/day or even if he/she does every other fair $15/day.
Depends. The starting fare means that if you have a decent chance of getting another hail (which is the case in many parts of NY at most times of day) it's actually more profitable to get to your destination as efficiently as possible and be able to pick up another fare than to draw out the one you have. There's a reason cabbies hate sitting in traffic even though the meter is running.
The advantage of a cab over Uber is that you don't pay until the end of the trip. If you know you've been ripped off, get out of the cab and walk away without paying. Tell them to call the cops and explain why you aren't paying. What are they going to do?
Of course, this requires that you know you're getting ripped off.
I don't think you need to actually fight, just walk away. I'm thinking specifically of Las Vegas, and you've taken the cab from the airport to your hotel. Is the cab driver going to run through the lobby of the Bellagio and tackle you? No. Who is the hotel staff going to side with, their customer or a cab driver where they know cab drivers routinely rip off their customers?
The cab driver is exploiting your reluctance to make a fuss to get a small amount of extra money. You can turn right around and exploit the fact that by breaking the law they've removed any recourse they have for getting you to pay. If enough people did it, eventually the scam would not be worth trying anymore.
Living in Amsterdam makes me wonder... only $10 extra? Seems like a fair deal. On average it's more than 30 euro extra over here.
To be fair: we have signs displaying cost & travel time for bus, car, taxi and train. Train (for once) is the clear winner by being cheapest & fastest.
He's saying that route is $10 more than the shorter (and quicker) route via taxi.
From McCarran International Airport to the strip you can either go on the highway or via the local streets. The highway is slower and costs $10 more, and yet 1/3rd of cabbies will take you that route.
Well, our taxis take longer routes as well to get to the 30 euro extra.
The train costs 4 euro, by taxi it's on average 45-50 euro, but could also easily be 60 euro's.
For a tourist it's not very clear what is the best way of transportation; hence, very easy to get ripped off. When the price differce is 10-15 times the price of a train ticket that is supposed to make you wonder
For a single rider that's not pressed for time, sure a taxi is going to be 10x costlier than rail, but add in multiple people (esp. kids) and a healthy dose of luggage and suddenly it's 2-3x as expensive and possibly quite worth it.
Is that really the taxi's "fault" though? I mean it is in everyones best interest to get paid the most. And in the end you arrived at your destination. Sure you don't want to pay more. But I don't know if it should be illegal...
I mean there are tons of companies/people who "do stuff" to make more money from you...
That's kind of the point right: with Uber, there was a solution that didn't involve making anything illegal. Customers were allowed to easily express unhappiness with their ride, and Uber is able to provide customers better service. Seems like an ideal solution that, as you put it, simply balances everyone's best interests.
Uber is making the decision to get rid of drivers that take advantage of their customers, not the government forcing anyone to abide by some law. Its the same as how a restaurant can take action against a waitress if they provide bad service. Personally I think that system is way better than trying to create a series of laws that make it illegal to be a bad waiter.
But I don't quite see the solution to the problem here.
The Vegas scam is that they are taking tourists with no idea of the traffic layout on a longer trip than an experienced driver would take.
If an Uber driver takes this longer route, the passengers still don't know that this happened. They got to their hotel in one piece and everyone is happy.
The only levelling factor is that the Uber ride is a fixed price, so it's in the driver's best interest to take the shortest route.
If the Vegas cab authority mandated fixed prices for the rides, this would all go away on their end as well.
Uber emails you a map with your route on it and a final price after each trip. If you are unhappy with the route, you can complain and uber will refund whatever you overpaid compared to optimal trip. They can also easily implement algorithm that checks if driver uses optimal route and fire/warn drivers that don't.
Biggest difference between Uber and any taxi authority is that Uber is interested in providing good service while taxi authority does not.
This is one of the big problems I have with taxis and Uber and Lyft or whatever other company: There's too much profit motive to "cheat" or to try to skim or act just-slightly-unfair. Why is it unreasonable--not aimed at you, mostly a rhetorical question--to expect that a taxi driver not try to screw as many riders as he or she can?
This "interaction," or lack thereof, is why I stick to Metro and other transit in Seattle. If I need to go somewhere in a car, I grab a car2Go or a ZipCar. Metro has a set timetable, set routes, set fares, and set stops. I get on, tap my card, and I'm almost certainly guaranteed to follow a route I know in advance and pay a known price. Walking a couple of blocks at the beginning and end of my trip is worth it, to me, to not have to wonder how badly I'm gonna get taken.
(Yes, I can talk to the taxi or Uber driver to go another way if this is the "long way around." Yes, I can complain to the ride provider. But why do I want to put up with that?)
> Is that really the taxi's "fault" though? I mean it is in everyones best interest to get paid the most.
In a competitive market, no, you're right. But that's a self-solving problem because customers will select the option which gets them there the fastest for the least money. The problem is customer-abusive behavior, which is a hallmark of a captive market; when a consumer has no viable alternatives, they basically have to put up with being scammed, shaken down, and otherwise abused to the limit that they can tolerate (see also: regional monopolies in last-mile internet service).
The issue at hand is fundamentally the lack of competition, which is enforced through government action. If you're going to maintain a state-granted monopoly, then you're going to need to be subject to state-imposed restrictions on how you can use that monopoly.
Of course, even making it illegal doesn't seem to be stopping taxis from doing it.
How the heck is it in "everyone's best interest" when the customer gets screwed by paying a higher fee for a longer route? Not only does the customer have to pay more, but he's had his time wasted as well.
When they built the Monorail, that was the idea. Taxi companies put a stop to it. The Monorail could still be extended from the south end to the airport.
