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Court Orders UberPop Use To Be Banned In All of Italy
An anonymous reader writes: A judicial court in Italy has ordered the UberPop app to cease offering its services [original source, in Italian], as it constitutes "unfair competition" again the taxi sector (taxi licenses in Italy are numbered, each can cost more than $100k to obtain). This sentence should be valid at the national level and comes after an injunction from taxi drivers in Milan, where a Universal Exhibition is incidentally bringing in thousands visitors from all over the world on a daily basis. Sources mention a judicial request to "block" the app, though no one is sure how this sentence has to be enforced and what the fines would be in case of violations.
"(taxi licenses in Italy are numbered, each can cost more than $ 100k to obtain)."
There's the problem. Piss off Italy...
No, it means they start with $100k of debt.
Wait, so they have to make back their entire initial investment every year?
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
It's called amortizing the cost of an investment. Before setting-out for a business venture, the potential business needs to evaluate costs and how those costs will be managed. If the license, once obtained, is the holder's for life, then spending $100,000 for the license could be lucrative if the financing can be found to afford it. I also expect that if Italian tax law is anything at all like American tax law, that the cost of the license and other business expenses could be written-off to at least an extent depending on how the financing is structured.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
each can cost more than $ 100k to obtain
Holy shit! No wonder the last time I was in Rome it was ~€80 taxi fare from the airport to my hotel.
Kicker: Got to the hotel and found out they had a free shuttle.
The Western European champion for having the largest part of GDP as undeclared "underground" economy.
https://www.atkearney.com/fina...
Only the Greeks and former soviet countries do "better".
This, plus the fact that the Italian economy is not improving, and that the country is bust, will only push this trend.
"Unfair competition", against government laws whose purpose is, against the concept of freedom, to restrict competition? Against a government/big business coalition to carve up the rights to sell to people-qua-owned cattle?
How ludicrous.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
No, it means they start with $100k of debt.
or they are the employee of someone that paid for the licenses...
If there is an absolute limit to the number of licenses, I could see companies hoarding them forever...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
In most cities, taxi drivers usually end up taking home about $25k/year after paying all of their expenses.
In cities like NYC, cab drivers make a little more, but have a $800k medallion to finance. It is not unlike financing a home where you don't plan on paying it off before you move again. When a driver wants to get out of the business they have to sell the medallion to someone else and hope they've paid off enough on it to break even. The financing tends to be rather high interest, so drivers end up mainly only covering the month to month interest and rarely makes any significant progress on the principle.
Default means a driver loses his medallion and the lender gets to sell it, the driver may still be responsible for the interest owed on the medallion even after it is sold.
In Europe you can take public transport if you are not rich. In Europe a taxi is a luxery.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It's faster than a donkey...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Put yourself in their position. Let's say as a software engineer, in order to ply your craft, you are legally required to obtain a certificate from the government that costs 100 grand, up front, before you can ever get a job. You can't get around it, you can't operate out of Belize, you can't just do it on the side on the downlow. You want that job at google? Pay the 100K. You want that freelance job developing your cousin's business website? Pay the 100K or get arrested when the IRS finds out you didn't get the 100K token. It's not your fault, you have to do it.
Now say some startup bullies their way into the market with offshore workers out of India and places them in the jobs you are competing for for free, without having to get the tokens for them, without having to pay malpractice insurance, without having to even file taxes.
You gonna be cool with that? I mean it's not your fault you had to jump through the hoops to ply your trade.
Solution? Either make this startup pay for tokens and get insurance for them and do everything YOU have to do, or have the token system abolished and make it so you don't have to have insurance to work AND make the startup compensate you by refunding your token for you as a requirement to enter the market and compete with you.
A judicial court in Italy has ordered the UberPop app to cease offering its services, as it constitutes "competition" again the taxi sector (taxi licenses in Italy are numbered, each can cost more than $ 100k to obtain)
FTFY. A government solution to a government created problem. Granting taxi companies an oligopoly (a monopoly for all intents and purposes), hurts consumers by limiting supply and artificially inflating prices. Get rid of the $100k numbered taxi licenses, and let the market set the price for getting rides. A glut of drivers would result in lower fares, which in turn would cause some drivers to drop out, allowing fares to rise to a reasonable level for both drivers & riders.
If there's concern for safe drivers, that can be handled with an additional test for drivers by their DMV. For instance, the State of Michigan allows drivers to take a chauffeur's test and get the license for an additional $35. This isn't a guarantee of safety, but neither is the $100k medallion system.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Until Uber came along, buying taxi medallions had been a quite good investment. They're crashing now, though.
The 5 million private car commute twice per day. The taxi works upward to 24/7. If you got a commute of 1 hour, that is 10 hours per week. Compared to 24*7=168 that is 17 times about a normal commuter car. So more like 4.25% to 8.5% doubling.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Good.
When a driver wants to get out of the business they have to sell the medallion to someone else and hope they've paid off enough on it to break even.
First, most cab drivers in NYC don't own a medallion. The cab company they're working for owns it and essentially rents it out to it's drivers. They also rent out the cab itself, but the cab is actually cheaper(rent wise) than the medallion. There's a limited number of 'owner-operator' medallions where one of the requirements is that the owner drive the cab for X hours/day on average, and they tend to be cheaper than the unrestricted ones.
Second, medallions, especially owner-operator ones, have generally appreciated in value sufficient that they're more often treated as part of the owner's retirement plan/investment than 'hope to break even'.
That's crashing right now, which kind of sucks for those that invested under the assumptions of the 'old system'.
I don't read AC A human right
If you want fair competition, you have to do it under the same rules as everyone else.
Uber is under the same rules - might makes right.
Both taxis and Uber have drivers working for a large organization with lots of money trying to compete. It's just that governments fight competition through fear and intimidation; companies like Uber fight competition through better service.
If you like fear and oppressive rule, by all means cheer the taxis on.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
These protectionist type measures might work for now but the whole transportation field will be turned head over heels in next few decades. Self driving cars will mean few in the cities will need to own a car. You will just hit a button on your phone to summon one when necessary. All the space and resources tied up in parking lots, taxis, large scale public transport all might be seen as archaic soon.
Remove the licenses for other taxi companies, and they will offer the same price as Uber.
Those companies already got the cars, trained drivers, a complete support network, decades of experience...
They would bury Uber in any case where they would be allowed to play by the same rules.
Hell... they could probably forgo on the whole "mobile app" thing.
Calling a dispatcher and getting assigned and forwarded the closest car is nothing particularly innovative and has worked since... well since one was able to use a phone to call a taxi.
No need for GPS or touch screen or whatever...
Hell... call it a feature. "Retro-Taxi". For all the hipsters out there.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It is not the role of government to protect investors from competition with new technology. The medallion price drop will benefit the vast majority of drivers who as you mention only rent them at rates which leave little profit for themselves.
My worst Uber ride was about as good as my best taxi ride, all things considered.
The taxi/medallion system should wrinkle up and die, plain and simple. There are a few factors yet to consider, but the bottom line cannot be far from that if the interests of the passengers and the largest population of would-be drivers are fairly valued.
tone
If the new technology messes with a government-limited asset, the government really does have to take the price drop into account. A normal business that's shoved aside by new technology doesn't deserve government help, but a case like this where it's a change in regulation the problems are caused by the government and should be addressed by the government.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
In areas of the US that have a medallion system, the usual result is that the medallions get bought by large ownership companies which then rent them out to operators. The rates are such that the medallion owners make most of the money and the drivers are poorly paid sharecroppers. The result in Italy is likely to be similar unless they have a restriction that the licenses can only be used by their owners.
Well, I was just correcting what I saw as mistakes in the AC's posting. There's a reason why I said 'kind of sucks.' It's my expression for 'well, that didn't work out, but there's really nothing that can be done to recover from it'.
As for benefiting the drivers - not really. You have to remember that they're also losing fairs to the cheaper and more lushly equipped Uber drivers who, not having to pay for the medallion or follow the cumbersome NYC taxi rules, can afford to run a nicer vehicle than the cabbies.
Note on following NYC taxi rules - Uber is, to my knowledge, operating perfectly legally in NYC. NYC has several categories of 'hired vehicle'. There's two categories of taxi and several for non-taxi private car. Uber is NOT operating as a taxi service per NYC rules, but as a 'black car' service. It's drivers hold a chauffeur license, do not respond to street hails(IE putting out a hand and yelling as opposed to the app), have certain destination and pickup restrictions, etc... Matter of fact, Uber would likely fire any drivers found responding to street hails in NYC.
That being said, I have the feeling(not confirmed) that due to Uber's rating system and having superior pay, that cabbies that can do customer service better are being lured away by Uber. I remember reading somewhere that Uber effectively fires any driver whose rating drops below a 4.4 out of 5 stars.
So a guy who's friendly and shows up with a Tesla model S* will retain his position in Uber while the grouch with an old smelly Crown Vic might as well stick to the cab side.
I don't read AC A human right