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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 ($270,000) apiece."
The Guardian covered the London protest, which ended peacefully 3 p.m..
If Uber were really offering legitimate competition, I would be more sympathetic. But they're partly undercutting existing taxis through ridiculous things like using drivers who lack commercial vehicle insurance, which is rather irresponsible.
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If people start losing their driver's licenses when they're caught doing commercial driving without being properly insured, I would guess fewer of them will take the risk.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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.