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Voting With Dollars: Politicians and Their Staffers Roll With Uber
The Center for Public Integrity, an anonymous reader writes, has conducted an analysis of the relationship between one interesting group of riders (275 federal politicians and political committees) and ride-sharing services like Uber. From their report, it seems this group "together spent more than $278,000 on at least 7,625 Uber rides during the 2013-2014 election cycle." That's a roughly 18-fold spending increase from the previous election cycle, when federal committees together spent about $15,000 on Uber services. It represents a veritable monopoly, too: Almost no political committee used Uber's direct competitors, Lyft and Sidecar, according to the analysis, and traditional taxi use declined precipitously. Bipartisan love of Uber abounds, with politicos of all stripes composing a de facto Uber caucus, voting with their money for a wildly popular but controversial company.
Politicians are nothing if not hypocritical. They'll vote wherever the campaign donations are biggest, regardless of whether they use Uber or not.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I don't understand the hate for people who drive without a license. I mean, I know people who have licenses and have had many accidents. And a lot of people I know who have no driver's license are good drivers. Why the hate, man? It's a free country you should be allowed to drive without a license or insurance if you want...
I think the point is people who have to jump through certain legal hoops to comply with laws, bylaws, rules and regulations of an industry don't feel too happy when any John Doe can offer the same service without having to do any of the above. The regulations are there for a reason, just like the driver's license is there for a reason.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Uber is cheaper than a real taxi. They have better customer service. The drivers generally drive in a much more polite way. It probably *feels* safer. But you're taking a huge risk of financial ruin if there is an accident. Likely *nobody* will pay for your injuries and you will end up bankrupt. But that risk is hidden. It's unlikely that most uber users are thinking about this possible consequence. Look how many automobile owners view liability insurance a something that the evil government makes them buy rather than something that protects them financially. See the same example in the US wrt health insurance. I was without insurance for about three months between jobs one time. Whenever I went out to do anything active (like play soccer or roller skate) I would think about the fact that, if I got hurt, the financial damage would be devastating. Ann Swidler uses this example in her Sociology classes. Imagine an airline that claimed they were half the price of anybody else because they didn't maintain their planes. Some people would chose to take this. But it's not allowed in the market. At some point, if uber isn't stopped, traditional taxi companies will end up going out of business. They have insane costs between medallions and insurance (Around 2k/vehicle/month). Then all we will have are cowboy uber drivers and we're back in the wild west. This is a classic example of why we need *enforced* regulations. When there are *unenforced* regulations, the honest businesses lose to the dishonest ones and that's a shame.
That is patently wrong. Once you get in the car, it and you have a million dollar commercial insurance policy.
You may not agree with it, but surely you must understand it? For what it's worth I am ambivalent about Uber and I am a Bitcoin developer, so I'm hardly someone to have kneejerk reactions against libertarian positions. But I do fully understand why Uber makes people uncomfortable.
The basic issue here is we are all raised in a social environment where it is assumed that law and morality are the same thing. Children aren't exposed to the difference at all - if a child asks their parents "why can't I do this thing?" and get an answer like "because it's against the law honey" then they aren't likely to enquire any further, and if they did, it's unlikely their parents will launch into a deep discussion of the history and theory of state power. It's just something you don't do because it's against the law.
In parallel children observe something else - things that are illegal are very often bad, and things that are bad are very often illegal. If a kid doesn't like it when her older brother steals her toys, and then her parents tell her that (a) stealing is wrong and (b) stealing is against the law, the link between law and morality is reinforced. Keep doing this over and over and the two notions develop as one.
Eventually, when we're much much older, we may start reading in the newspapers about miscarriages of justice. We realise the system is flawed. We may encounter laws or regulations that don't make much sense. We may decide that laws in other countries are unjust. But the notion that breaking the law is inherently immoral is ingrained very deep and is very hard to discard. Does English even have a word for an act which is illegal yet moral? I can't think of one. The closest is the concept of civil disobedience, but somewhere along the line that notion got linked with the idea that you have to put yourself up for arbitrary punishment as part of the "protest". So all governments have to do is make the punishments incredibly severe and hey, now there's no civil disobedience anymore, thus all law must be moral, right?
Laws are especially important because they are intended to give people stability, certainty and the ability to make long term plans. Some philosophers argue that the entire purpose of the state is to give people the ability to make long term plans. Certainly, stability is how regimes like the PRC justify their existence. The ideal body of law is precise, easy to understand, minimal, just and yet robustly enforced - thus everyone knows where the line is drawn and everyone can stay on the right side of it. Of course, real law falls short of this ideal quite often.
Now throw technological change in the mix. Larry Page once observed that it seems every time someone invents something new it starts out by being illegal. I can't quite remember where he said this unfortunately, so I can't give a citation. It might even have been some internal Google event. But he's said very similar things in the past in public.
So, enter companies like Uber. Or Lyft, or AirBnB, or even PayPal (it had a world of legal pain in the early years). Does anyone seriously think it'd be possible to build a service like Uber in the legal way? Bear in mind that many of the taxi regulations that governments want to mindlessly enforce specify details of things like how CB Radio is to be used (irrelevant with smartphones), how to print license information in the vehicle (irrelevant with smartphones), that the vehicle should be bright yellow so it can be spotted from the street (irrelevant with smartphones) .... in India they even specify that you must have a minimum of 12 phone lines going to your New Delhi based HQ! And you can forget about just asking nicely for change. Taxi regulators appear to be pretty much the opposite of dynamism, and taxi regulations are so boring that no parliament
I hate Uber, but its not for the driver safety reason.
Here we have an app that is putting the entire taxi industry out of work, while the apps creators become billionaires. So all the drivers, dispachers, mechanics, etc employed in the entire taxi industry are facing job losses. Instead of taxi money supporting thousands of families in every city, the same money is going to support a part time job, and fill Uber's bank accounts.
Disruptive capitalism at its finest. Sure uber is cheaper for the consumer, but is it better for society? The money is feeding fewer people, and making a tiny number of silicon valley elite uber-rich.
As a Canadian, my taxi money isn't even staying in the country! Do taxis really need to be colonialist?
I and most other reasonable professional adults are carrying massive amounts of insurance, health insurance, umbrella, long term disability, short term disability, life insurance. You have to because you cannot control what someone else's insurance will and won't pay. And because of Uber's advertising the passenger as covered when the accident inevitably happens the insurance company will go after Uber and get their money. The people who are really at risk are the Drivers as their insurance policies do not cover the car for hire and realistically insurance companies prefer to keep the limited market cash cow that is commercial taxi insurance. The truth is Uber is getting big enough that they should branch into the insurance business and market policies to their drivers that they arrange through an insurance company to administer.
Of course if you are a black man, getting picked up immediately, rather than watching 20 cabs ignore you may make you willing to spend more for Uber.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
So you hate Uber because it makes some people rich? At least you are being honest. You are right: people hate Uber because they see the Uber execs getting rich.
"So all the drivers, dispachers, mechanics, etc employed in the entire taxi industry are facing job losses."
Uber cars also need drivers, dispatchers, mechanics, etc. That isn't a reason to hate them. You pinpointed the reason in your first sentence. It is jealously because some guys in California are getting rich off of it.
As opposed to the owners of New York taxi medallions, who do no work at all whilst still getting rich?
Eh? Uber, at most, replaces the taxi cab dispatchers at the other end of the phone line. The cars still need drivers. If anything they're creating more jobs by making it easier to go everywhere by cab, so increasing the demand for the labour intensive service of driving.
Now when Uber start to phase out drivers entirely in favour of robots, then you'll have a point. But it'll be another round of the same debate that's been rolling for centuries.
What, you only get driven by immigrants who cross the border each morning? I think you'll find plenty of the money goes to the driver and some gets kept by Uber. Well, why not use the Canadian competitor to Uber then? It's not like they have any kind of cutting edge technological advantage. It's just a mobile app and some databases.
Yes, but that's a risk that the driver takes not the Uber customer. And coverage when the app is on but not being used is a relatively minor detail of insurance - it will get worked out in one way or another.
Uber isn't even cheaper than a regular taxi in many places. It can be more expensive. When I was last in SF there was never a time without surge pricing. Seems it doesn't hurt them though. Lots of people seem to prefer the Uber experience regardless of price.
Hiring David Plouffe was a smart move for Uber. The man knows, how to improve pubic perception of anything. Not that I disapprove of his current employer, but to sell the country the shit-sandwich we have in the White House today — that's a sign of a true master.
While we are repeatedly told to hate on rich donors like Koch brothers, it is people like Mr. Plouffe, who really run the country...
Of course, the first sign of his coming onboard at Uber was the spike of spamming by the company. And not just the specials and discounts, which are legitimate things a business may send to existing active customers, but propaganda crap like "women equality at Uber" or "Uber for safer cities". I was disgusted and now begin my search for a ride with Lyft, but it must've been a win with most of their customers...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Uber is cheaper than a real taxi. They have better customer service. The drivers generally drive in a much more polite way. It probably *feels* safer. But you're taking a huge risk of financial ruin if there is an accident. Likely *nobody* will pay for your injuries and you will end up bankrupt. But that risk is hidden. It's unlikely that most uber users are thinking about this possible consequence.
Recently I saw an Airbnb horror story where by a guest ended up being savaged by the owner's dog, while on the property and had to spend 2 days in hospital (this occurred in Argentina, and apparently the dog had been OK with this guest for a couple of days prior). Until a journalist got involved, the Airbnb response was "Nah, not our problem". Then Airbnb came back with "Can we take a second look at those hospital bills?" and apparently they have now rolled out some sort of liability insurance - but on for the US.
It makes me wonder if any Airbnb operators ever consider what would happen to them if someone slipped and fell in the show and became paralyzed - because I know who the insurance companies would be targeting first.
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I've used Uber 4 times and found it convenient and user friendly, especially for rides to the airport where getting a cab on demand in a residential area is not easy.
Most of the hate directed at Uber seems to boil down to one of two things;
1) They're dangerous -- poor insurance, poor screening, etc.
Whatever the risk potential actually is (and I seem to hear a lot of competing claims about coverage and when its in effect), in practice it seems smaller than many everyday risks. In December Uber claimed something like a million rides a day. If half of those are in the US and the average ride is 5 miles, that's something like 300 million ride-miles in the first four months of this year.
If Uber's security and insurance practice risk lived up to its hype, wouldn't we have heard about it by now on a consistent basis, especially with the fairly vocal critics of Uber harping on these issues?
2) They're unethical and shifty
I've seen some news stories that seemed a little sketchy and this may be a reasonable critique of their management, but again, it doesn't actually seem to have impacted riders. I also suspect that this may be somewhat explainable or defensible as the kind of bare-knuckles tactics it takes to compete against what amounts to a state-sanctioned and enforced taxi monopoly. You're not going to compete against that by being nice and playing strictly to the rule book,.
The "traditional" Uber - Uber Black - is almost certainly what's being used by politicians. It provides a nice black car (complete with a registered driver who already holds all of the necessary permits, etc) for slightly more than the cost of a Taxi and in my experience has always been great. UberX is the "new" Uber, where random people are driving. Don't confuse the two.
Personally, for the money I'll take "Uber Black" any day. It doesn't command a very significant premium and gives a generally nicer and more professional experience all around.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
I am assuming that your risk of death is constant regardless of whether you are in a medallion taxi or an uber taxi. That seems to be supported by the data. From an economic standpoint, dying is cheap. It's staying alive with serious injuries that gets expensive.
What if the law itself is unethical?
I think you can make a reasonable argument that a number of laws surrounding the taxi business are themselves unethical in that they in effect use the force of law to guarantee a healthy profit margin to a select (and likely politically influential) group of local businessmen who are allowed to operate a cartel that has poor service, high prices and bad working conditions. It's naive in the extreme to believe that this also hasn't involved bribes, payoffs and organized crime as well.
Uber's business would have never gotten off the ground AT ALL if they had followed strict black letter law. The existing cartels and their political patrons would have never allowed them to operate a competitive business and the law itself would have prohibited it through artificial limits on licenses and medallions.
Uber breaking the law seems on balance ethical -- the laws they break really aren't intended for public welfare, they're to setup private cartels and restrict competition -- state sanctioned, private profit. Uber is actually contributing to public welfare by improving transportation and the economics of the taxi business through competition and innovation in service.
And what damage can you show? Uber's customers don't feel damaged, they get more convenient transportation at a lower price and the ridership volume shows it's a very popular model.
I think Uber's ethics with regard to lawbreaking would make more sense if you could show harm, to the public at large or to individuals. I think Uber has operated long enough and with enough riders that we would easily see negative trends if the purported risks of their law violations actually were causing harm.