Slashdot Mirror
The Sharing Economy Fights Back Against Regulators
An anonymous reader writes in with a story about the advocacy group "Peers". The group says their goal is to “mainstream, protect, and grow the sharing economy.” "The growth of the 'sharing economy,' a loosely defined term generally referring to the internet-enabled peer-to-peer exchanges of goods, has brought with it a shift in the way we think about consumption. Its rise has been fast, and loud. What started with a few enterprising individuals willing to let complete strangers sleep in their homes and use their possessions has now developed into a formidable economic force that threatens to upend several different industries. Along the way, it has posed some major legal challenges. The companies that are pushing it forward have continually undermined local ordinances, consumer safeguards, and protectionist regulations alike. As a result, governments around the country are trying to reign them in. That’s where Silicon Valley’s newest advocacy group comes in."
You rein them in, you don't reign them in. They're horses, not kings.
The food trucks park in public, they have to adhere to normal regulations and are a far better method for many downtown areas. Why use up valuable real estate for a restaurant people will only be in for a few hours a day? Ride sharing seems fine to me, cars have to be inspected for a reason.
If you really believe that about most people you are a sad husk of a man.
The "Sharing Economy" is a race to the bottom. The people engaged are selling time and use of the only things they have left (houses, cars, and their personal time) for money to people still working because they cannot find a job that pays enough. It's people hanging onto a shard of what they used to have while renting out the rest. This can only implode, and the faster it grows, the bigger the implosion will be.
The predictions of the 40s and 50s about the future are coming true - robotics will do most menial labor, people will have more free time, except that free time is not evenly divided up among the population. There's the group working 80-120 hour weeks, and the unemployed or sub 20 hours per week minimum wage slave. That will continue until there are not enough consumers to support the people working, and then more layoffs ensue, until we're back in the serfdom and squalor of a good middle ages city with a wealthy elite and beggars and almost no one else in between.
OK, maybe that's a little extreme and apocalyptic view of the future, but where we're going is somewhere between now and there unless some major things change. Automation will remove more manual labor and service type jobs going forward, and there really won't be anything replacing it.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
This has been going on for at least 60 years. HomeLink and Intervac have been around since 1953, using printed books at arrange person to person swaps long before the internet.
The smarter home exchange, http://switchhomes.net
But never mind - anything which could allow the riff-raff from the gutters to save a little dough, maybe climb out of the gutter, we need to put a stop to that. Can't have 'em catching up to me (now that I'm no longer giving plasma to get food).
fyi - car inspections are a thing of the past in many states....
Oh my god, people are doing things I wouldn't do! I demand men in uniforms be sent to make them stop, through the use of physical violence if necessary! I'm just not prepared to live in a world where everyone isn't forced to be exactly like me.
Where do you live, that food trucks are so predatory? The vast majority of food trucks I've seen hang out around office parks at lunchtime and bars at night. In both situations, they're stealing customers really only from fast food chains and sandwich shops, the targets of people who want a quick lunch or late-night drunk food. It's not like people go to a food truck to get a quality meal.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Food trucks may or may not be registered and inspected. That driver sharing with you might be this one. Still feel safe?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
My kingdom, my kingdom for some mod points!
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
They swoop in, scoop up money and split, leaving existing local businesses struggling in the aftermath.
Ugh. We must have read different stories on food trucks. You're either jealous or wearing pink glasses. Neither is good for objectivity.
Ezekiel 23:20
That's the major problem, eh? Can't tax it, can't regulate it. As government gets larger and larger, it needs more and more money to sustain itself. It seeks out new forms of revenue from wherever it finds weakness. Renting out your spare bedroom in New York City causes a lot of losses. No bed tax (in NYC it's something like 20%, or used to be when I worked in hotels), no income tax for the housekeeping staff, no sales tax from the gift shop, etc.
Let's not even get into room owners picking and choosing clients. I've seen them proudly say that they check Facebook and such beforehand, only allow professionals and other clean people, etc. Yeah, what they really mean is "no Negroes". When the "sharing economy" is beyond the reach of government regulation, problems like this that society thought solved re-appear with disturbing frequency.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Just ask Jerry Rubin and Abby Hoffman, the profits of this whole movement.
*slaps forehead* Prophets of the movement. Prophets.
Some people really jerk off to trendy BS like ride sharing, but I'd rather pay for a cab that has to adhere to safety standards and background checks than get in some weirdo's jalopy.
The funny thing is, cab companies have no reputation checks, but shared cab services like Lyft DO! Conventional cabs have no feedback system and the drivers can be horrible smelly weirdos and there is no system in place to prevent it. You simply can't do this with Lyft, because drivers actually DO get real reviews and get quite easily banned from the system.
If you really believe that about most people you are a sad husk of a man.
Reality isnt pretty, nor are most people. I would put forth that anyone who doesnt think they are capable of truly horrific things, hasnt truly examined the state of their own heart and their capacity for justifying just about anything.
Hyperbole, thy name is Forbes.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Well, of course not. After all, land owners never charge anyone to set up businesses on their property. And as everyone knows, food trucks all have Mr. Fusions to power their cooking equipment, and are staffed by magical elves who can create water out of thin air.
Or you're an idiot. One of those.
The food trucks park in public, they have to adhere to normal regulations and are a far better method for many downtown areas.
Food trucks take up public parking spaces, and they are free to leave the area when an inspector shows up, avoiding any regulations that they don't feel like complying with. They pay no property taxes to support the infrastructure (like the parking space they use). They can show up for an hour a day, just to service the lunch hour crowd and then vanish when the customers do, having poached from fixed businesses enough to make a profit.
The brick and mortar (as opposed to tin and rubber) business has permanent employees, pays income and employment and property taxes, draws people to a downtown, and cannot easily flee to avoid whatever rules they don't want to comply with. The owner has risked his money and a large amount of his time building a business and depends on the customers, and is unable to simply park in a different lot a few blocks away if things don't go well, or to get away from a predatory roach wagon that is sucking his business away.
That they are a "far better method" is an unsupported opinion.
Why use up valuable real estate for a restaurant people will only be in for a few hours a day?
Why use up valuable real estate for a computer store that people will only be in for a few hours a day? Why use up valuable real estate for an office that people will only be in a few hours a day? Why use up valuable real estate for a house that people will be in only a few hours a day? Why use up valuable real estate for a school that people will be in only a few hours a day? How does the time someone is in a building change anything?
Ride sharing seems fine to me, cars have to be inspected for a reason.
Not where I've lived. Yes, there are reasons some should be inspected, but they don't have to be.
I wouldn't say "predatory", and I would even agree that food trucks and permanent-location restaurants generally fulfill different niches, but I would argue against your statement that people don't "go to a food truck to get a quality meal". At least around here, these days people generally go to a food truck to get generally-overpriced hipsterish fusion silliness, the same sort of food they'd get from, for instance, a gastropub minus the booze. Food is often (though admittedly not always) indeed quite fantastic, just almost always also overpriced. Totally different from the pre-2000s roach coach type food truck concept.
If you trust humanity you'll end up paying for it, every time.
The same goes if you trust nobody. On this approach, you have two major choices:
* don't share. You'll lose nothing but opportunities/potential (of which some others may derive value)
* share under strict risk control. This control is going to cost you each and every time.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Regulation does have its value. Civilization is better off when food, buildings, etc. are safe, and freeloaders are not cheating. There are risks associated with the unregulated enterprises. Still, even simple things like barter and sales of second-hand merchandise are important contributions to quality of life.
But do the benefits outweigh the costs? That question doesn't get asked enough.
Of course, sometimes 'economy' is just a euphemism for 'bank accounts of the already ultra-rich', which is what some economists seem to think.
So do you take strawmen with you everywhere or just whip 'em out for Slashdot?
Others of us have, and decided we will resist such temptations, large and small, and speak out against abuses. We call ourselves christians, Buddhists, secular humanists, jedi, whatever. Basically, people who have decided to not be dicks.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
For better and most often worse the U.S. economy requires continuous economic growth in order to support it's debt-based structure. A $1.00 of debt today requires $1.03 of consumption next year otherwise the debt interest can't be serviced. This is why the Federal Reserve is so hell bent on preventing deflation, even going so far to say that a moderate amount of inflation is a "good thing". This fact is most critical for the U.S. Government itself since it is the largest issuer of debt in the economy. Sharing and frugality are incongruent with such a system so we'll see much more pushback if the sharing trend picks up steam.
Good Lord, Gr8Apes, how far are you willing to stretch your wire to whup up a pseudo-scare for the imbecilic (the only ones who will gasp and say "Oh, God, Yes, What IF???" to such a yo-yo pull from beyond left-field)? For your information, in case you should ever take your courage in your teeth, don an absorbent garment and step out into the real world to ride-share, the normal drill, that every professional driving-instructor knows, and everyone else should know, and refresh recall of every time they get in a car with they suspect might have drunk more than he or she remembers, is to reach over and turn the ignition key off (counter-clockwise one click [to kill the engine, but not lock the steering]) as soon as anything looking hairy begins. In real life there is not always a cop to call to jump from his motorcycle through your passenger window and do this for you, so, in real life you sometimes have to do things for yourself.
The issue of enforcing standards is a serious one.
It's also easily corrected. Pass a law that states the following:
1. Food inspectors may arrive without notice, in plain clothes.
2. Upon arrival, inspectors may compel mobile business owners to remain stationary for a period of up to fifteen minutes to permit inspection (How long can inspecting a one-room business take?)
3. Inspectors may pose as customers to purchase sample product.
It's easy to be cheaper than the established players when you're not paying taxes.
The issue of enforcing standards is a serious one.
It's also easily corrected. Pass a law that states the following:
1. Food inspectors may arrive without notice, in plain clothes.
2. Upon arrival, inspectors may compel mobile business owners to remain stationary for a period of up to fifteen minutes to permit inspection (How long can inspecting a one-room business take?)
3. Inspectors may pose as customers to purchase sample product.
4. Require both the business license and the health dept inspection certificate to be publicly displayed in a conspicuous location, so any informed customer can phone in a violation. Note: Nearly all jurisdictions already do this. Next time you are in a restaurant or at a food truck, look for the permits, and you will see them 99% of the time, often taped to a side wall or sometimes on the ceiling. Before I buy from a food cart, I check, and the only time I didn't see the permits was an ice cream hand cart. But I didn't care since everything he was selling was pre-packaged anyway.
Where do you live that food trucks might not be registered and inspected? They are licensed with the city they operate in just like any other food-service business.
+1 Disagree
Don't worry, a Charles Manson-like character will eventually come along and wake people up from their Hippy 2.0 daze as the rainbow and flowers take a shit on their face.
Table-ized A.I.
Excessive consumption means big money for businesses. You can bet they will fight any changes in society tooth and nail. And they will not play nice. To them sharing is just another pinko-commie-socialist activity with evil advocates.
Maybe you live in a weird place... maybe you just don't know how food trucks work. In my town (in wild west Nevada) food trucks fall under the same guidelines as restaurants. In fact, the majority of food preparation must be done in an inspected and licensed commercial kitchen - not in the truck itself. The trucks and kitchens are both inspected by the health department - and contrary to what seems to be popular slashdot belief, it is really quite easy to track down a food truck if it's known to be out of compliance. They're bit, and slow, and have logos and adverts printed on the side. They're registered as food service businesses just like a restaurant paying all the same taxes. On top of all that, they have additional regulations on where they can park. So sure, you can open a restaurant next door to an existing one, but you can't park your food truck in front of the bar next door to an existing restaurant (at least, not in my city).
I wouldn't go so far as to say they are a "far better method" than a regular restaurant, but they serve a niche and are far from the robber barons you guys are trying to portray them as.
+1 Disagree
Others of us have, and decided we will resist such temptations, large and small, and speak out against abuses. We call ourselves christians, Buddhists, secular humanists, jedi, whatever. Basically, people who have decided to not be dicks.
I prefer the term "ethical" as it covers the specific individuals that act that way, without including the unethical asshats that also happen to use the other terms for themselves.
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
I'm with you on this one. When food trucks come by my office, we swarm it because it's better than the Del Taco within walking distance. If we worked downtown where there are real restaurants, we wouldn't be so excited for them. All that said, I've never had a meal from a food truck that I couldn't get cheaper (or better) at a comparable restaurant. We pay for the convenience. Nothing wrong with that.
+1 Disagree
I don't know why but I feel the need to correct you here. "They are supposed to be licensed with the city they operate in just like any other food-service business." Supposed to be is a key modifier there. You really have no way of knowing if they are or the license thing they show isn't a forgery. I suppose you could go to the health department and check but that sounds like a lot of trouble for a taco and soda.
Also, as I have found in my state, if any city or county health department passed you and gives you a license, it is good anywhere in the state.
Whether you like it or not, that's what he was implying.
Tennessee requires street vendors and food trucks to comply with all food-related regulations and laws--licenses, taxes, inspections, safety, etc. Food Trucks collect and forward sales tax to the state and local governments. Food Trucks pay road taxes (license tags, gas taxes).
At out city's "downtown" area, a seat in a restaurant is a 45 minutes wait on a Saturday. A Food Truck means that food can actually be purchased and eaten in the same 45 minutes. Plus, Food Trucks, of various sorts, have been used on construction sites every place that I have lived. It's nice to be able to buy an apple or banana to supplement the dull sandwich from home. They also help people earn a living and stay off the dole. They also train people for working at other jobs.
I'd be happy if the restaurants are inspected regularly. Food trucks? Seriously? I take much care where I get my food from, thank you.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Its odd you'd bring Christians up; Im one myself, and last time I checked one of the core doctrines was the fallen nature of man:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans%203:10-19&version=NIV
All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.”[a]
13 “Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit.
You could argue that Christianity gets it wrong, but this is perhaps the most obviously true of all christian doctrines: All you have to do is open your history book, flip to a random page, and read about how man's feet are "swift to shed blood".
"Deciding to be better people" is utopian nonsense. People can try to do better, and should try to do good; but the notion that that is sufficient to make people "good" -- in the face of all the evil in the world-- is nonsense.
Maybe you live in a weird place... maybe you just don't know how food trucks work. In my town (in wild west Nevada)
Maybe you live in the weird place. Yes, it would seem so.
In fact, the majority of food preparation must be done in an inspected and licensed commercial kitchen - not in the truck itself.
The next time you walk up to a mobile taco truck, remind yourself as you see them making your taco in front of your eyes that they've made the taco in a licensed commercial kitchen. That the sound of the frying hamburger patty coming from inside the burger-mobile is just a tape loop for ambiance and the actual hamburger you're getting was cooked in a licensed commercial kitchen somewhere.
and contrary to what seems to be popular slashdot belief, it is really quite easy to track down a food truck if it's known to be out of compliance.
An inspector comes across a truck parked at location A. (There are so many inspectors this is likely to happen?) He does an inspection, finds problems. (While he's doing this, the other two trucks parked nearby close up and drive away, avoiding the inspector altogether.) "You have 30 days to fix this..." The next day that truck is ten miles away, open for business. You say it's "quite easy" to find the truck after it's driven away. I'd like to know your magic; I am a SAR volunteer and we'd love to know the trick for finding someone who doesn't want to be found. You could probably make a fortune as a repo man, finding the cars that the deadbeats aren't paying the loans on since it is so easy to find vehicles.
They're registered as food service businesses just like a restaurant paying all the same taxes.
Just how do they allocate a share of property taxes to a vehicle that is parked someplace for two hours a day? Economic development district fees?
So sure, you can open a restaurant next door to an existing one,
It costs a LOT of money to open a brick and mortar anything, much less a restaurant. While you're busy opening that operation, the city will be lining up to inspect it. If you forget to have the inspectors (building and health, both) come by, your neighbor will be happy to schedule appointments with the city on your behalf. If you walk away from the site to avoid legal issues, you leave behind the hundred thousand dollars or so in equipment and improvements you've made.
On the other hand, I can buy an old food vendor truck for a LOT less money, keep it in my garage while I outfit it, and then park it someplace and be open for business with zero notice to anyone. Not many people are going to look for a business license or health certification posted anywhere, and if they do they won't be able to detect the ones I have as forgeries. Every customer I draw from a legit business is lost profit for him, and tomorrow I may be a dozen miles away doing the same thing to someone else. And the only thing I lose while avoiding the law is ... a tank of gas.
As for the guy who posted the comment about inspectors buying food undercover, I'll just say that it takes a LOT more than buying a taco from a mobile vendor to do a real health inspection on his operation. You may be able to see the sink where employees are required to wash their hands, but you won't know that there is no running water or that the drain is clogged with grease and dead rats. You won't be able to measure the temperature of the hot food containers, or the temperature of the refrigerator.
but they serve a niche and are far from the robber barons you guys are trying to portray them as.
I'm not trying to portray them as robber barons. Unfair and lacking the same kind of controls that a real restaurant has, yes.
Our food trucks have the same dine safe (colour coded sign with date and any inspection warnings issued) display requirements that our non-portable eating spaces have.
"He is so stupid. And now back to the wall!" Moe Szyslak
That tidbit could have been useful and/or interesting if you'd mentioned WHERE that is the case.
The way this will play out depends on economics.
If the USA and dollar finally lose reserve status as some have predicted then I can see it going the way of Argentina. There, there are a lot of things that go on that are illegal. Especially in sharing and things like the black market dollar market. At first the police and government did all they did to enforce rules but in the end attrition set in. So many people were breaking the law just to survive. The police had to be corrupt to survive too. In the end the police relaxed and just stopped acting on petty rules for things like resturant licensing for the government as they finally came to relise that having an empty street is pointless. The governments authority was eventually greatly reduced. Unfortunatly it took many years for this to happen.
My main point in this is that the laws are still there. Nothing changed. It was just a case of people, police etc just ignoring those laws.
So these petty laws in the end just undermine the authority of the government. It's a waste of their power. Try to take away from this that this is a good thing as most governments are filled with good people trapped by things like the military-industrial complex, central banks and popularism.
In the end economics will be the decider.
But until then check out all the options. It's good to see society rerouting around it's restrictions. Sharing is amoungst a number of groundswell trends. I can't see companies being able to do much about this in the long term other than being better companies. It's good to see avocacy speeding up the process.
Here's another example. In Spain they've banned 3month home lettings under pressure from hotels. This took away income from the more efficient decentralised small businessness and individuals making cash on the side. In turn this will effect the economy there - it's funny how the exact opposite of what is needed causing a self feedback cycle of regulation. As a result people have been doing it anyway as they are so desperate for cash in some cases they have nothing to lose. The gov have been sending round stooges testing letting agents to see if they will let and then throwing them in jail, or fining people heavily. Yet still it goes on as people have little choice. Then there's AirBNB and subcontracting for hotels - a way round the problem. AirBNB recently showed how it has boosted the economy in San Francisco. No wonder - it's increased competition and that always leads to efficiencies. It's also greater choice.
So sharing is not only a social trend but it can also be more efficient than money and regulation.
Viva la resistence.
A blog I run for the wealth
You are not forced to participate.
Just how do they allocate a share of property taxes to a vehicle that is parked someplace for two hours a day?
Tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance, on the other hand, is legal, and people pay tax professionals big bucks for avoidance advice. Food trucks avoid property tax by not occupying as much property. This makes them more tax-efficient. Think of it this way: Does a higher MPG (or lower cL/km) vehicle dodge fuel taxes? And is that a bad thing?
Not many people are going to look for a business license or health certification posted anywhere
Are dumb customers enough of a reason to ban food trucks entirely? It'd be better just to figure out a way to make certifications easier to check and harder to forge. This is a technical problem that admits a technical solution. Photograph the food truck's license plate with your Android phone and get a history of its reviews, code violations, etc.
Let's see, let's see, what color are like 98% of politicians
True, only 2 percent of the sitting U.S. Senate (Sens. Scott and Cowan) are black. But I count 42 black Representatives in the 113th House, making up 9.7%. And for the past twelve and a half years, the United States has had an African-American President or Secretary of State.
Wow - I didn't realise that top quality proof-readers can earn that amount of cash.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Maybe you live in a weird place
Texas - home of the no-gummit regulation for hazardous factories?
They're bit, and slow
They're BIG, and slow. And I see you have the same precise typing skills that I do!
Yes, if you visit a food truck in my town - and that includes the ones at the county fair - there WILL - by State Law - be a certificate displayed in a prominent location. And you can't just roll up to a street corner and open up. Within 15 minutes a cop will be by, not merely to check the certificate, but to determine that you have the proper permits to be on that particular street corner.
Yeah, why bother improving yourself!
Crime is down, people are more moral than ever and you want to say the whole world is evil. Sounds like your religion is clouding your judgement.
I'm a Catholic. Pretty sure I was redeemed by this dude who died for my sins. I try to live as he taught, I make mistakes, repent, am forgiven, and I manage to do a little better each time. I know I'll never be as good as he was, but I'm gonna try.
It's not utopian nonsense. It's the fundamental idea of religion as an avenue of self-improvement (and by self-improvement, familial improvement, community improvement, world improvement), rather than being simply an assemblage of the self-satisfied.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Yeah, why bother improving yourself!
If you read carefully, I did not say that-- I just said that it would never be enough to fix the world.
Crime is down, people are more moral than ever
Bull. You display ignorance of the world, current events, and history. Look at the past 100 years for some truly horrific displays. In china today you can see forced abortions, where past societies would have considered it nothing less than murder. In the past decade there was a big fight over whether a ban on "partial birth abortions" (Read: the baby is ready to be born) should be allowed (whereas third trimester abortions had been recognized as murder since the 12th century under common law).
There are countless examples of where you are just wrong; the trick is, society just has to make evil look acceptable. See common opinions on slavery and how otherwise "good" men justified it simply because it was societally acceptable; then consider the news commentary on the Gosnell abortion clinic; then consider again whether we are more moral.
Perhaps I worded it badly if people are thinking im saying "dont try". Im saying "try, but nevertheless it will not be enough to fix humanity".
Consumerism convinced us to buy a lot of things that we don't really need or seldom use so, now that times are getting tougher, we're lending/renting our excess.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Abortion was far more common in the past. Even forced abortions via abortifacients. Even the puritans were okay with abortion until the quickening, which when the child first moved. Partial birth abortion was not a major argument in the last 10 years. It was a fake argument meant to fight all abortion. Third trimester abortions are illegal unless the life of the mother is at stake. Abortions are way down too. In fact that only places where teen pregnancy are high are in locations where sex education is non-existent.
The commentary on it was this man was doing horrible and illegal things. It is a simple fact that as we become more wealthy and more secure we are allowed to be more moral.
Where I am (I'm sure this is pretty normal, and kind of surprised I have to repeat myself here), the trucks must work from a "home base" licensed commercial kitchen at a real live street address. Just like *any* business must have a street address. This is where they store their food and do the majority of their prep-work. They won't cook their burgers there, but they'll do things like season meats, form patties, chop veggies, make cookies, etcetc. And, you'd be delighted to know, they pay property taxes for them, too.
Now, this statement here is a real gem:
Every customer I draw from a legit business is lost profit for him
...because it sounds exactly like "Every downloaded song or movie is a lost sale for the music industry." Would you say every cup of coffee bought from Starbucks is a lost sale from the local shop down the road? Would you say my restaurant is stealing customers that might otherwise go to your food truck across the street? This is competition in business and it's how the world works!
Who knows, maybe your town has a problem with pirate food trucks sneaking in and selling grease-ball tacos before running off to Canada to live fat on their profits, but I'd say that's more an issue with your town's enforcement than the food trucks. It's clear you have a bone to pick here, and I'm not going to convince you otherwise.
+1 Disagree
But it has been. Slowly and inexorably for 2000 years. The world is getting more peaceful every day, despite what the news would have you believe.
One can certainly attribute humanity's progress to science and learning, but we wouldn't have western science and learning if it weren't for Christianity. That concept of the separation of religion, government, and economics that allows scientific investigation to proceed is only born of an outsider religion like Christianity. For all the talk about the Arab world being the center of learning in the early part of the last millennium, they didn't practice "science," and their concept of learning was more like "knowledge" than experiment. Asian cultures produced some marvelous engineering, yes, but not the scientific method by which we understand the world. The God-emperors of eastern religions and the bureaucrat generals of Islam do not allow for experimentation.
Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of stumbles and falls along the way, but the fact that the western world corrects mistakes and has reformations and social revolutions is what fuels the march of progress. But it's because of the christian concepts of the fall, the fallibility of man, the imperfectability of man, and the great, great value placed on forgiveness, redemption, and the resultant progress that forms the foundation of scientific, moral and ethical progress towards a peaceful and enlightened society. Christianity, science, and democracy go hand in hand.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Even the puritans were okay with abortion until the quickening, which when the child first moved.
Thats from English Common law (in fact thats exactly what I was referencing), not representative of what the Puritans "were OK with". The only clear thing I found in a google search regarding their opinions was from John Owen, where hes pretty clear that its a particularly heinous type of murder. Id be interested to see any source that you have saying they were "OK with it"; even common law frowned upon it-- it just wasnt a crime until the quickening.
It is a simple fact that as we become more wealthy and more secure we are allowed to be more moral.
As we become more wealthy we care less and less about the atrocities overseas, less and less about the morality of wholesale killing of infants (eg Gosnell case, Casey Anthony, et al), and generally less about any sort of self-restraint. The morality of today is "if it feels good, Im OK with it", just as it always has been; however, the mentality of today is rare (seen only occasionally in history) in that society is actively encouraging these vices.
Facts do not back you up. The cases you mention are famous simply because they are so rare and so far outside the norm.
Also the ethos is "If it feels good, and harms no one else, I am OK with it. As it should be. What you call vices, are likely victimless and should not be seen as such. If you want to invent crimes and immoralities then of course you can claim those are on the rise.
That may be the case in some places, but many places it is not.
For instance, in NYC and WDC they are regulated on where they can park, and must take out permits to be there. Of course, they often stay there all day to get all the tourists too. I'd be its the same for most other places they go - like Fairs, Air Shows, Ball Games, etc; often places where it makes no sense to have a restaurant as people will only be there for a couple hours once ever week or so, may be less often.
Further, many times a food truck won't be able to move away so quickly. They can't just close shop and move - they have to "batten down the hatches" so to speak, and then move the beast of a vehicle out of the area.
Of course, all this is backed up by a nice little reality show too - where they went over a lot of that kind of stuff - The Great Food Truck Race where they went all over the country with the trucks. (And no, I'm saying this solely based on that show.)
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
I brought the exceptional cases up not because of how common they are, but because of how little anyone seemed to care. A clinic where a doctor was murdering newborns with scissors-- and NPR did a "balanced" piece on how he was providing a service to underprivileged locals (that being almost the sum total of the attention paid to the issue). A court case where a woman pretty clearly murdered her child-- and public opinion was on how sad it was that this womans life was being ruined.
THIS is the morality im talking of; the morality where the discussion on abortion isnt on "is it murder", but "is it convenient".
Im not clear what crimes you suppose are on the decline; you might look to homicide rates, and I might remark that abortions performed annually so far outweigh historical homicide rates as to make them insignificant. I might remark that human trafficking seems to be at a high, and is growing annually. Fraud certainly isnt in decline; in the last decade we have had several high-profile, multi-million/billion dollar fraud cases, not to mention the rampant internet fraud.
What exactly are you using as your marker for morality? Petty street theft? What is it that gives you cause to think people are more moral these days?
Lots of people cared, hell he will never be free again. What more can you do?
Bullshit, most people wanted to see her hang, but the prosecution failed to prove she did it.
Abortions are not homicides, you can't make that comparison. An abortion at a few weeks is just a clump of cells. Claiming that is murder, makes me a genocidal freak for masterbating. Fraud is actually declining, even if you hear about it more now. I am using the FBIs data on crime.
Lots of people cared, hell he will never be free again. What more can you do?
We could have a media that doesnt look that sort of thing in the face and try to present "both sides of the story".
but the prosecution failed to prove she did it.
Baloney, the media made a circus out of the whole thing.
I am using the FBIs data on crime.
The FBI does not cover China, Romania, etc etc etc. They also do not get involved at all unless the gross damages for an incident are in excess of $5000; and no local police department has the wherewithal to even deal with the issue. If youre talking about their overall crime rate, a quick bit of research shows that the population of the us has roughly doubled since 1960, but violent crime has gone up 5-fold. I see no cause for thinking people are more moral.
An abortion at a few weeks is just a clump of cells. Claiming that is murder, makes me a genocidal freak for masterbating.
The two are not equivalent, but that aside, I am talking more of the general tenor of the discussion where public figures will have the audacity to argue for third trimester and beyond abortions, and will actively challenge bans on "partial birth abortions". We dont even have to get into the sticky issue of "when is it a human" (which we clearly disagree on).
Oh I definitely live in a weird place, but from the rest of these comments it seems food trucks really are quite well regulated across the board.
There is a significant difference between "there are regulations" and "enforcing the regulations". I'm saying that mobile food vendors are in a position to avoid those regulations much more easily than any brick and mortar. It takes a lot more money to enforce the rules on taco trucks than on a Taco Bell.
To do business legally in just about any town, you must have a business license for tax purposes.
FTFY.
You can tell me about all the wonderful laws in place to protect the public from less than scrupulous mobile food vendors, but you can't ignore the fact that unscrupulous mobile food vendors have a much easier time avoiding those rules than a restaurant with a fixed location.
Now, this statement here is a real gem:
Every customer I draw from a legit business is lost profit for him
No, it does not sound "exactly like". "Every customer I draw" means that the customer was going to buy something and wasn't just collecting electrons for free because he could. That was a paying customer who came to me instead of to the legal fixed restaurant. "Every downloaded song" isn't downloaded by someone who was a "customer draw[n]" from a legit seller. I wrote specifically about someone who was going to buy something from someone else and you've tried to paint it as if I were talking about a random passerby who wasn't really going to buy anything at all.
People who go downtown to get lunch are going to buy something, and if they buy it from me in my roach wagon instead of the sandwich shop then that is profit that I've taken away from that sandwich shop. You can try to deny it, but most people would accept that as a fact.
Would you say every cup of coffee bought from Starbucks is a lost sale from the local shop down the road?
It probably is. It's called "competition" in business terms, and businesses face it every day. What they shouldn't have to face is "unfair competition", which is what an unlicensed food truck who parks next to your fixed restaurant to cherry pick the lunch crowd is doing.
Would you say my restaurant is stealing customers that might otherwise go to your food truck across the street?
No, because your restaurant is more likely to be licensed and inspected and complying with all local laws. You'll probably have a lease, and the lessor will have vetted you to some extent. You'll have a loan and the bank will want to see your business plan and that is more vetting. That makes the competition more fair. And that means it isn't stealing.
but I'd say that's more an issue with your town's enforcement than the food trucks.
Right. It's the fault of the people who are spread too thin to enforce all the laws and not the fault of the people who take the chance breaking the laws. "Honest officer, it's your fault I was speeding because there usually isn't anyone here writing tickets..." At least you admit that there is a problem enforcing laws on mobile food vendors that don't exist for fixed ones, so maybe you've heard at least a little bit of what I've been saying.
It's clear you have a bone to pick here, and I'm not going to convince you otherwise.
No, I have no bone to pick, I'm just pointing out that mobile food vendors are not the pristine excellent resource that they're being presented as. And you won't convince me otherwise because you've never actually dealt with the issue, you've just claimed that laws exist which, if followed and enforced, might mitigate the problem. What you haven't recognized is that the diff
Top tax rate for corporations is less than that of individuals in the US by about 20%.
So yeah, it should be cheaper for corporations to supply products than individual tax payers.
So why isn't?
You statement is loaded with an assumption that people don't pay taxes -- they do. It's the corporations that have lower tax rates, yet have many rights as people including owning many politicians.
So if it is easier for corporations to be cheaper, why aren't they?
Sharing or not sharing, Govt expects you to pay taxes.
Govt can print currency. But Govt is imposing taxes to keep us subservient. http://www.lietaer.com/2010/03/the-worgl-experiment/
Casteism
Then you would complain when they did not present both sides of the story for another nutty case. Sometimes there is only one side.
The media does not try someone, the courts do.
Violent crime reporting has gone up you mean. Compare murder rates, a more well reported crime and get back to me. Bar fights would not have been violent crimes until the last 20 or so years. You simply cannot compare categories that had their definitions change. In the same vein it appears sex crimes have gone up, while most likely they were simply underreported in the past. We know this based on surveys of adults reporting about their experiences as children. Molestation by parents often goes unreported and until recently was essentially ignored by the community.
We only disagree because you want someone to listen to your silly side of the story, but complain when the media does that otherwise. Not very consistant of you. Please link to some of these politicians statements, all I can find fall into two camps"not your body" and "for medical reasons".
Partial birth abortion is a bullshit term anyway, if you remove a fetus when it is the size of a walnut through the birth canal you would argue that is a partial birth abortion. I would call you a loony and here we are.
Now you're talking about unlicensed food trucks and unscrupulous owners. That's not how this conversation started - it was about food trucks in general. Generally speaking (again, at least where I am), the food trucks operate above-board. *That's* what I've been talking about and all you've had to reply on has been some mystery roach coach driving in from the sticks to steal your customers and beat your dog. As I've repeated over and over again, if your town has an enforcement problem, that's a different story. You can have unscrupulous people in any business (yes, even brick and mortar restaurants skirt the law and health codes!).
In any case, I've wasted far too many keystrokes on this conversation already.
+1 Disagree
That's not how this conversation started - it was about food trucks in general.
"Food trucks in general" includes those operated in a shady and illegal manner. I suppose we could go down the "no true Scotsman" path and say they aren't really "food trucks" if they don't obey the laws that food truck operators must obey, but I find that to be rather unproductive.
*That's* what I've been talking about and all you've had to reply on has been some mystery roach coach driving in from the sticks to steal your customers and beat your dog.
Since you've chosen to discuss what we're discussing, I'll point out that "beating dogs" has never been part of the discussion, and is not even a proper subset of "food trucks".
(yes, even brick and mortar restaurants skirt the law and health codes!).
Of course. But when they do, they are stuck in one place so the inspectors that found the problem to start with can trivially find them again. The people who see the violations and report them have a fixed point of reference to report. The owners have a massive investment in property and capital to protect. The Taco Bell down the street can't just pick up stakes and move across town, it has a fixed address and a known appearance, and the franchise fees are huge. The "Buy Tacos 89 cents" truck has a canvas banner on a truck that leaves at 2PM and goes somewhere out of sight, may not come back the next day, and would cost less than $50,000 to abandon completely.
If you want to convince me that the chances of finding a substandard fixed restaurant are the same as finding problems in mobile food vehicles, you'll have a very very hard time and need a lot more evidence. I've been behind the curtain at local events where food trucks serve, and I'd dare say that even in that situation, where the truck is parked in a known location for a week 24/7 and the inspectors can drop in at any time, the health and sanitation regulations are often skirted if not directly broken.