Slashdot Mirror
Uber Demonstrations Snarl Traffic In London, Madrid, Berlin
Graculus (3653645) writes with news that, as threatened, cab drivers in several European cities mounted a protest against Uber today. From the article: "Uber Technologies Inc., the car-sharing service that's rankling cabbies across the U.S., is fighting its biggest protest yet from European drivers who say the smartphone application threatens their livelihoods. Traffic snarled in parts of Madrid and Paris today, with a total of more than 30,000 taxi and limo drivers from London to Berlin blocking tourist centers and shopping districts. They are asking regulators to apply tougher rules on San Francisco-based Uber, whose software allows customers to order a ride from drivers who don't need licenses that can cost 200,000 euros ($270,000) apiece."
The Guardian covered the London protest, which ended peacefully 3 p.m..
If Uber were really offering legitimate competition, I would be more sympathetic. But they're partly undercutting existing taxis through ridiculous things like using drivers who lack commercial vehicle insurance, which is rather irresponsible.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If it read, "*Anti-*Uber Demonstrations Snarl Traffic..."
Something new (i.e driverless Google cars) will come along to threaten their livelyhood. Wouldn't today be the best time to start evaluating a different way to earn a living? How many ways can you possibly protest and keep innovation away from people's daily lives?
Maybe the problem is not with Uber, but with the cost of being licensed. Is ~200,000 Euros really justified?
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
Yes, and the solution is to eliminate that requirement.
In Europe that isn't even usually the case. In Sweden, one of the countries where Uber is whining about "regulation", the taxi market is deregulated. Anyone can offer taxi services, at any price, providing they meet four basic consumer-protection requirements:
1. They have a commercial driver's license
2. They have commercial vehicle insurance
3. They post their rates openly and visibly
4. They have a functioning meter, which is inspected occasionally to ensure that it is billing the same amount as the posted rates
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The required licenses must be expensive for a reason.
Existing taxi companies lobby for restrictions on the number of cars... No reductions for them, of course. But we have to 'keep the roads clear'.
A LOT of the taxi requirements in many areas* amount to anti-competitive measures along the lines of the rules that ban Tesla from selling cars in many states due to independent franchise requirements.
*given that taxi rules will vary down to cities in most cases,
I don't read AC A human right
Pro or Con, Uber is pushing the boundaries and bringing some clarity to the old system. Some terms for discussion:
Rent seeking
Fascism
I find it particularly interesting that not only does Uber do background checks on its drivers and allows the rider to rate the cabbie and cab, it also allows the cabbie to rate the rider, potentially increasing safety for the cabbie in ways that the government model does not and can not. Cabbie murder is a real thing and government does not offer a solution. But it's still not surprising that the cartel members are upset that their cartel membership is losing value.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
You would think MADD would support deregulation of the taxi industry. Afterall, a big reason people drink and drive is because of the high cost of cabs. It's almost as if they care more about keeping people from drinking them keeping them safe...
If people start losing their driver's licenses when they're caught doing commercial driving without being properly insured, I would guess fewer of them will take the risk.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Also, their coverage is considerably higher (in dollar amount) than commercial taxis in major cities. Uber provides this for their drivers. The drivers do not need to purchase this.
source: http://blog.uber.com/uberXride...
It's generally riskier for the insurance company. People who offer transportation services for a fee have heightened liability to passengers (which is passed on to the insurance) than people who are driving friends/family. They also typically have a higher risk of incurring a payout in a given year.
Vehicle insurance is a fairly competitive market, and most of the rates are set pretty straightforwardly by actuaries.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Competition sucks. Gotta keep that privileged access to the market.
I am hardly wholly sympathetic to the taxis; but there is one important aspect that is often elided in the hagiographic "Hail Uber, destroyer of corrupt taxi monopolist cartels!" pieces: In regulated markets, taxi operators are subject to a variety of rules, some of them costly (insurance, metering accuracy consumer protection stuff, getting the much-coveted and supply limited taxi medallion in the first place), that Uber is just too hip and 'disruptive' to bother with.
If you wish to adopt the 'bring on the competition and let the cards fall as they may" view, it is an imperative that the existing taxi providers be released from the assorted regulatory burdens that Uber just ignores. Failure to do so is, in effect, a substantial subsidy to Uber under the guise of 'competition'.
If you take the position that taxi regulations exist for good historical reasons, founded on what happened before there were such regulations, it is similarly imperative to keep them from being flouted by assorted twee distinctions-without-difference "Oh, this isn't a taxi, it's an independent entrepreneur(who just happens to be hardwired directly into our business' software systems; but never you mind that, having 'employees' might expose us to obligations) offering social ridesharing!".
Regardless of whether you prefer the status quo, or would prefer to set the status quo on fire, anyone who does abide by taxi-related regulation and has to compete with people who don't has a very legitimate grievance. Whether that ought to be resolved by eliminating that regulation or extending it is a different matter; but either position still leaves the existing taxi guys getting the short end of the regulatory situation as it is now.
>That privileged access is a requirement from the government itself.
And they are lobbying their governments to keep that privileged access. Being undercut by a cheaper competitor is certainly competition.
Party A plays by the rules and therefor has higher costs. Party B does not play by the rules and has lower costs. Party A is angry at the unfairness of this situation. I agree that the rules are dumb, but unfairness rankles me more. Either Uber buys taxi licenses for its drivers or we abolish taxi licenses. Until then, the should both play by the rules.
Yes, if these are people who's job it is to drive people around in order to make money then that is a limousine or taxi service and it should be regulated the same way.... but $270,000 license fees sound more like glorified bribes to prevent competition than something close to a legitimate license fee.
If the taxi drivers were protesting the absurd license fees, then I would be more sympathetic.
On the other hand if part of the uber service is simply a better way of matching people for sharing the costs of carpooling and ride sharing, then that is a service that is sorely needed and really isn't a taxi or limousine service.
I'd be less pissed about the competition from Uber and MUCH MORE pissed about the ridiculous cost of those licenses. I mean, $270,000, REALLY???
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
The reaction is an illegal impedance of traffic, disrupting economic activity and costing millions of dollars. In the United States, peaceful protests are protected speech; physically impeding the movement of any person is not peaceful protest, and you can be arrested if your protest does not part and allow safe passage to all who don't care for your shenanigans. Clogging the streets in protest is, thus, a criminal act; I would be surprised if the UK considered such things legal, rather than an organized protectionist racket.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
A couple examples: the slang for rides in NYC is "yellow" for a taxi and "black" for a limo. The limos can pick anyone up but AFAIK can only charge a fixed fee for a given destination. Taxis are metered for time and distance (w/ airport exceptions).
Here in the Boston area, limos are fixed-fee either per hour or per location (airports again), and are barred from being flagged down--they're reservation-only. Taxis can be flagged, but I think they are not allowed to pick *anyone* up if they are outside their designated geographic zone. E.g. pick up in Boston, deliver to Worcester, but not allowed to pick up any ride in Worcester.
So part of the big question is: is Uber a taxi service or a limo service?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Lawmakers in Britain don't have to do anything, as Uber is already able and does comply with all licensing requirements.
Regulation is fine. Insist that Uber drivers have commercial insurance. An insurance company will offer "uber insurance" for a few extra euros and they'll make some money and the public will be safer. Uber could even partner with an insurer to make that happen more quickly and smoothly. But there's no reason you need a 200k euro license to drive people around.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Other than all these regulations I'm about to list, it's completely deregulated!
How the heck does this make the public safer? It makes it more likely to get money from your opponent's insurance if he kills you on the street, but that's about it.
Insurances never make anything more secure. They make the loss more bearable. At best.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm looking at it from a bottom-up perspective. You're looking at it as "industry exist, industry is regulated, therefore anyone who wants to do something similar should be regulated exactly the same way." I'm looking at it as "why do we need the regulation that exists? What justifies each specific regulation? Are those justifications sufficient to reasonably support the regulation? What is the definition of a "taxi service" and how does it apply to Uber?"
Also, a correction to your statement: Uber is NOT giving anyone a ride. Uber is a middleman service. They don't employ any of the drivers. By your logic, anyone who organizes a carpool is a taxi service and subject to the same onerous regulations that a taxi service is. If that means paying exorbitant amounts of money to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars for a "taxi license" then so be it. Don't like it? Don't set up a carpool or vanpool.
but $270,000 license fees sound more like glorified bribes to prevent competition than something close to a legitimate license fee.
I don't know where the article got that number from. In London, a taxi driver license incurs fees of a few hundred dollars. And a Taxi vehicle license is less than a hundred. Perhaps they are quoting the cost to be a licensed taxi operator (the company that runs many taxis).
(NB: Uniquely, London does require potential Taxi drivers to know all the streets, important locations and routes for central London. A monumental feat of memorisation that generally takes 2-5 years of hard work to complete, buzzing around the city on a scooter. Called "Doing The Knowledge". So it's certainly hard to become a taxi driver there. It's far more of a bar then the costs.)
And do what, pay back those taxi drivers that already bought their hack license? Sure, that'll happen. Cause the government loves to give back money.
The reason is to create a barrier to entry into the taxicab market so the established players can charge higher fares. That's the only thing those licenses provide. The cab companies are complaining about the system that they themselves set up.
I read the internet for the articles.
Some of the other problems are nonsense, too. Background checks are social: if your cabbie is a rapist, you can report that; if you disappear in transit, there are records of where your phone was and what cab drive you had. Service is, likewise rated rather than a company promise; and they use GPS to track distance. Most of these mechanisms are satisfactory to the average user, and out of the control of the driver and passenger alike.
Round One had a bunch of people talking about some highly-arrogant sense of self-importance black cab drivers derive from a specialized certification. They have full knowledge of the area's history, sports, current events, and the best route through the city in their head, so they can chat you up while they drive and can find the shortest path. A lot of folks weighed heavily on this idea that you get the shortest path and thus the best deal; but, if Uber is cheaper, a less-optimal path may come out at a lower dollar cost. Likewise, GPS navigation with real-time traffic largely handles this; and many people don't want an enforced premium just so they can ride with a cab driver who knows everything about everything.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
If insurance is your only beef, then like sibling said - most insurance companies can offer an "Uber" rider for a couple extra pounds/euros each month, and that's that.
Otherwise, I do have a question: why the demand for "commercial insurance" in the first place? If you and your rider get in a wreck, you're the driver, and would theoretically face the exact same liabilities as a commercial driver would - prolly less, since the plaintiff would be more likely to jack up the monetary demands against a commercial taxi. Also, most auto insurance setups actually do cover the passengers in your vehicle should they get injured, so, well - what's the beef?
If the rider gets injured, sure he can sue you - just like a hitchhiker could, or a friend riding along, or anyone really. If you're signing on to drive someone around, that's the risk you accept. One caveat, though: if the rider signed a waiver online that lists the risks, and requires him to acknowledge and agree to them before ordering a ride, he very well wouldn't have much of a case unless the driver were drunk or high or etc.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
If people start losing their driver's licenses when they're caught doing commercial driving without being properly insured, I would guess fewer of them will take the risk.
Uber provides a $1M liability policy, so they are properly insured.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
You are assuming that Uber drivers only go places they would go anyway. Numerous previous stories indicate otherwise. So drivers are on roads they may not know with a stranger they may not be comfortable with next to them, who may be talking on the phone or doing other things typically done in a cab. Plus the odds of having a passenger are higher, and you are less likely to know their past medical issues, and they are more likely to take you for all they can get than a friend would be.
I'm not an actuary, but those all seem like things that would result in higher premiums to me. And that excludes flat-out higher liabilities for commercial drivers.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
When you share something you don't charge for it. Uber drivers charge so this is a very simple vehicle/driver for hire setup we commonly call a taxi. If they are a taxi then they must abide by the taxi laws: meters inspected by weights and measures, taxes paid, licensing requirements met. (call them a Limo if you want, the term is irrelevant for most all regulation issues)
To be a "ride share" scenario the driver would have to have already been going to, near to or past the place you want to be. You could pay a little bit of money to cover the cost of fuel for the time the passenger is in the car.
This is all pretty well spelled out in the aviation laws already and my guess will be those laws/regulations will wind up as precedent against Uber/Lyft. As a commercial pilot you may charge whatever price you can for flying a passenger to a destination. As a private pilot you may only share a minority of expenses with the passenger and not make any profit. Ex: if it costs $50/hr to fly your plane then you can share that cost with the passenger up to $25/hr. The passenger must also have a common destination/purpose. I suppose you could itemize your charges as $25 for flight sharing, $200 for valet service on the airport ramps but due to oversight and licensing I don't know any pilot that would risk that maneuver.
So let's apply those same tests to the Uber/Lyft services:
Cost to operate a vehicle: in the range of $.12 to $.25 per mile, Uber rate: ~$1.50 per mile, 6 times the actual operating cost:
cost share: fail
Common destination/purpose: The driver's goal is to get the passenger to the destination, the driver has no business at the destination:
common purpose: fail
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
While I agree Uber and similar services are skirting and even openly defying regulations, these protests are self-defeating. The public will see the cab drivers as greedy and annoying.
Uber needs to simply sit back and do nothing about it. The less said the better.
In the U.S. these protests won't happen, unless the owners pay the drivers to protest. American cab drivers can't afford to take a day off to protest. The cab drivers are probably making less than the Uber drivers..
Why is losing your license when specifically operating your motor vehicle in express violation of your license somehow "way, way out of proportion"?
It seems exactly in proportion.
Uber most certainly is, but the drivers driving 'for' Uber most certainly are not.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Also, their coverage is considerably higher (in dollar amount) than commercial taxis in major cities. Uber provides this for their drivers.
$1m isn't enough. Most commercial taxis are run by companies which have other assets besides 1 taxi which might be involved in a major accident. They usually have more taxis, the taxi license (which can be sold for a high price, about $1m each in NYC), an dispatcher office somewhere, etc. They also have other sources of income- if one taxi is destroyed and the driver disabled, the others still generate income. If their insurance only partly covers an accident, they can pay it off using the income from the other taxis, sell some of their (considerable) assets, get a business loan, etc.
Compare this with Joe Blow with his 1 car, 1 employee (himself), and no other significant assets. Let's assume a very serious accident involving multiple cars with multiple injuries. At best, Joe escaped the accident unharmed, and only has to buy a new car. More likely, Joe himself was probably injured in the serious accident, can't work for several days/weeks/months, and has his own medical bills to pay. His "normal" vehicle insurance won't chip in for Joe's injuries since it doesn't cover commercial use of the vehicle. The passengers' medical bills exceed $1m, which can easily happen in a very serious accident. What recourse does the passenger have? They have huge bills to pay and need to recover damages from someone, but Joe Blow might very well be destitute. Uber keeps their drivers at arms length so recovering from them is unlikely. The passenger gets screwed and has little legal recourse against a destitute Joe. Getting a $20 check from Joe every month for the next 50 years isn't going to pay their huge medical bills.
Even though the commercial taxi company has less insurance, the passenger is better protected against out of pocket accident costs.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Yes, and the solution is to eliminate that requirement.
That requirement exists for reasons besides money.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Fortunately, or unfortunately you don't need a 'commercial' insurance. A normal one is just fine, Except for trucks I doubt that there something like an 'commercial insurance' even exists.
For Britain, you are most certainly wrong. I suspect for most of the rest of the world you are wrong too.
The fascist control of doctors in America comes indirectly via the American Medical Association. They only accredit so many medical schools, and medical schools can only take so many students. But there isn't a hard limiting of doctors like there is taxi cab drivers via the medallion system.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
>That privileged access is a requirement from the government itself.
And they are lobbying their governments to keep that privileged access. Being undercut by a cheaper competitor is certainly competition.
Party A plays by the rules and therefor has higher costs. Party B does not play by the rules and has lower costs. Party A is angry at the unfairness of this situation. I agree that the rules are dumb, but unfairness rankles me more. Either Uber buys taxi licenses for its drivers or we abolish taxi licenses. Until then, the should both play by the rules.
Uber is playing by the rules (at least in the UK). In London you need a license to drive a cab and that license comes with various rules but also various benefits. Cabs are allowed to stop for passengers who flag them in the street, which Uber drivers and other services aren't. In the past this was fine with cabbies because it wasn't easy to get a non-cab quickly. Now with services like Uber it is often cheaper to do so. In London cab licenses are for 12 months. If Cab drivers think that they would be better off driving for Uber then they are free to stop paying for a license and to do so.
If you make it so that there are too few taxis in a city it doesn't work, the same if you give a licence to anybody. Too many taxis and you end up with each taxi not making enough for a living.
There has to be an equilibrium somewhere. And no sometimes the market does not self regulate, hence laws and regulations. Uber is a taxi system without calling it explicitely a taxi system. It evades the rules and regulations put by the legislator to enforce a viable taxi system. Hence why taxis are demonstrating in london, madrid, paris, berlin, rome etc... It's not a small issue and no I'm not a taxi driver.
It's nonsense to think that taxi services need a state mandated 'correct number' to operate. They don't across the vast majority of the earth's surface and yet taxi services still exist pretty much everywhere. If there are too many taxi drivers and costs go down then less drivers will enter the market and more will leave, when prices go up it will draw in more supply. Of all occupations this is likely one of the best examples of one where the free market can quickly come to an equilibrium. It's extremely naive to assume that regulation is automatically proof that the market can't self regulate. Just look at the price of taxi medallions in New York which is a system created in the 1930s to see how badly wrong regulation can go if allowed to continue because "regulation must be needed if regulation already exists". Taxi drivers aren't demonstrating in the UK because Uber avoids regulations. They're demonstrating because their market is being taken from them.
Because it's just driving a passenger around for money. I've done that with friends and acquaintances quite a few times, albeit in a less formal setting.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Simple Solution:
Take away their licenses. Re-issue them to somebody else who doesn't break the law by blocking traffic.
There is no insurance. You agreed to release Uber from all liability as a condition of using the service. They have insurance in case that waiver is invalidated in court, which will take many months of time and many thousands of dollars in lawyers fees, but until them you have NO COVERAGE!
Update: As others have pointed out, Uber already addresses the question of liability coverage by providing the coverage itself... so the potential problem arising from drivers not having coverage is already handled via another mechanism, making the law irrelevant (not inapplicable in a legal sense, just irrelevant in the sense that it's not actually accomplishing anything).
Taxi forums show that the necessary full "legit" insurance can cost $50 US a day for a commercial taxi driver, those these will vary (and drop with an experienced cabbie)
http://www.taxiforums.co.uk/Home/tabid/87/aff/3/aft/8552/afv/topic/Default.aspx
Uber does not provide that level of insurance. It provides only insurance to the passenger, not the driver or third parties likely to be injured/killed/damaged in an accident and not at values that would reasonably cover one "WASP" fatality much less a couple of barrister's kids. The typical uber driver will be disowned by their non-commerical driver's insurance and on the hook for the entire amount. of damages. Since uber drivers tend not to be wealthy, that means that a severe injury and medical treatment will be paid for by the taxpayers since the uber driver will have to default on those huge debts. That's why licensed taxis actually have to carry high dollar/pound/euro insurance in the first place and why a cab costs much more than the price of gas.
Actually, in New York City, a Taxi Medallion (required on a per-car basis) is around a million dollars.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
So if I come to your house, stand on the sidewalk, and refuse to let you reach your car so that you can go to work because you work for a disgusting coal power plant that spews radioactive mercury waste into the sky, that's legal?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
That sounds like secondary picketing. Which is illegal. What the taxi drivers did was:
a) Demonstrating, not picketing.
b) Where they work. Not in a secondary place.
Some professions have a closed number. Think doctors or notaries for instance. Do you find that anticompetitive ?
Yes.
Milton Friedman - The Real World Effects Of Unions.
I thought "where they work" was "the public roadway", meaning it's impossible for people to drive on those roadways to go from their house to their place of work, their place of shopping, a restaurant, and so on.
In the US, you are allowed to have a voice; you are not allowed to restrict the movement of others. You can picket in the streets or in front of businesses or in town square in front of city hall all you want; but when someone wants to pass, you move out of the way. You can raise signs and call them bad names, but you can't impede them.
This stems largely from the concept of a peaceful protest being peaceful, rather than forceful. Unions engage in peaceful protest all the time; you're allowed to cut a picket line, and they have to let you through. In some cases, the protesters refused to move, while a wage-worker who depended on the income from actually working their job wanted to pass. Abusive language coupled with a desperate need to collect paychecks to feed families eventually transitions to fists and broken faces, which is suddenly not peaceful; we like to interpret the forceful barring of entry to the place of work as passive-aggressive, and prohibit that sort of thing.
The opposite behavior is completely separate, but also comes up here: sometimes people throw buckets of animal blood at other people, both at abortion clinics and fur shops. That's direct aggression, rather than passive aggression, and, I would assume, is universally illegal.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
From what I've read, it's more like.
Passenger: "Uh, hi! Are you Dave from Uber?"
Driver: "Yup- please hop in and we'll head to the zoo."
Passenger: "Okay, here's the 17 dollars for the ride"
Driver: "Thanks"
Policemen Passenger: "And here's your $500 ticket. And btw, we'll be impounding your car so you need to find a ride home."
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
In what way? Do you have any evidence?
well here in Scotland a taxi driver has to be vetted for criminal records etc, then licensed. If he is an owner/driver then his car has to be passed through a "TAXI MOT"(MOT being an annual test for all cars here BUT this one is more stringent).
Also there is specific commercial insurance.... to suggest otherwise is just plain fucking ridiculous, seriously fucking ridiculous.
For vehicles used for commercial/business application, most especially passenger transportation, then specialised commercial insurance is required.
All private hire (ie non black taxi/hackney) vehicles licensed for passenger transportation have to display a special license plate on their rear bumper and also display this information, including the drivers taxi permit inside along with his photograph.
This is why Uber has no operations in Scotland as far as i know... because they, most likely, would be illegal in some respect here or not up to spec in some way.
It also doesn't imply that the driver can drive or anything like that, because the medallion doesn't have to be held by the driver. The driver can be changed out under the medallion by a taxi company. That's why that medallion proves absolutely nothing to the prospective taxi customer, and offers them absolutely no protection.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Because we routinely hold people who engage in some activity for profit to a higher standard than those that do it for fun. It's the difference between flying yourself and running an air taxi, between having friends over for dinner and opening a restaurant.
As opposed to getting hit by john on his way home with the minimum required insurance. That's a whole 10k for property damage and $25k medical in my state. Which has been the same for quite some time. The numbers seem a little outdated to say the least. Anything past a bent bumper and broken arm and you probably have to sue him anyway :(
Something seems a bit shady with them but it probably isn't the insurance issues. Of course the taxi business seems a bit odd on its own when they only allow X number or Y company to wait at the airport. Waiting 20 min for a taxi to show up at the airport was rather retarded.
Rather doubtful any pay all the right taxes to all the right places, try that route.
Those pages are about pickets, but refer to laws that cover any demonstration.
Article 11 of the Convention of Human Rights (1998):
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
(2) No restrictions shall be placed on the exercise of these rights other than such as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. This Article shall not prevent the imposition of lawful restrictions on the exercise of these rights by members of the armed forces, or the police, or of the administration of the State.
The important part of this is "for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others." In UK law, use of the highway is considered a legal right. A partial blockage of a road is OK, but a total blockage infringes on the rights of others.
Some professions have a closed number. Think doctors or notaries for instance. Do you find that anticompetitive?
Yes, and the point is?
If there's too many taxis to the point nobody can make money they'll go out of business until the number is at a sustainable level, with only the most efficient surviving.
Same with doctors, really. Increase the number of doctors and availability would increase even as you need to work them fewer hours.
I don't read AC A human right
Uber exists because taxi service in San Francisco sucks, big time. Anywhere Uber is catching on, they're filling a public need. Customers are not property: if your competition does a better job serving them, you SHOULD be out of business.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."