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Uber France Leaders Arrested For Running Illegal Taxi Company
An anonymous reader writes: Two Uber executives were arrested by French authorities for running an illegal taxi company and concealing illegal documents. This is not the first time Uber has run into trouble in France. Recently, taxi drivers started a nation-wide protest, blocking access to Roissy airport and the nation's interior minister issued a ban on UberPop. A statement from an Uber spokesperson to TechCrunch reads: "Our CEO for France and General Manager for Western Europe were invited to a police hearing this afternoon; following this interview, they were taken into custody. We are always available to answer all the questions on our service, and available to the authorities to solve any problem that could come up. Talks are in progress. In the meantime, we keep working in order to make sure that both our customers and drivers are safe following last week’s turmoils."
If taxi drivers have to buy licenses and following certain regulations, shouldn't Uber do the same or are they already?
They need drivers, and if they can arrest executives, they can likely arrest drivers as well. Interestingly, France has a heavily unionized workforce...so maybe the Uber drivers need to unionize (jk).
And while France may have a legal basis to take those actions, I hate that they give the union protestors, who damaged and disrupted so much, what they wanted. It sends a message for others to follow suit. France is in a pickle.
New Zealand liberalised its taxi system about 25+ years ago. The Gov't allowed anyone to setup a taxi company who had the appropriate car licence endorsement, log books and passed a vetting process for its drivers. etc.
Uber have shown up and decided that they do not have to have vetted drivers, log books etc. 'cos they are Uber!
The Police are investigating.
The barriers for entering the NZ market are quite low but even then Uber do not think they should apply to them.
New Zealanders are well balanced with a chip on each shoulder. One represents Australia, the other the rest of the world
It's their own fucking faults. They lobby to make sure this is the system that's in place to prevent competition from companies like Uber. They got the laws they paid for, it's the people who bought the first wave of licenses/medallions whatever that made bank, now everyone else has to deal with it.
An upstart breaking that system is exactly what real business needs.
Medallion owners bought the medallions with the understanding that they were buying into a limited monopoly.
I'm not opposed to changing this agreement, in fact I encourage it, but if you're going to do so you need to compensate who bought the medallions.
I stole this Sig
>Medallion owners bought the medallions with the understanding that they were buying into a limited monopoly.
Shit happens!
>need to compensate who bought the medallions
Nope! My shares went down in the last crash, noone compensated me!
How does that sound any different than the good 'ol USA?
Unions had their place. It's in history now, just like the confederate flag. Unions need to die, they do nothing any longer other than make a few wallets fat (the few running the unions), a TON of people lazy (nearly all union workers), and they disrupt commerce and trade and they artificially increase the cost of all goods due to their now over sized salaries for their skill sets. Union bus drivers easily make $80k+ No HS diploma needed. Dock workers, 6 figures on a regular basis, again no education needed at all. Most of these people's wallets are not fat even though their incomes are because they lack the basic education need to save money... Most of them still end up in the bars drinking their paycheck away. These are grunt jobs, no different than picking cherries or apples, however, everyone draws the line at paying an apple picker $60k+/year so those jobs are still in the hands of what Trump calls "bad people".
Medallion owners bought the medallions with the understanding that they were buying into a limited monopoly.
It seems that you are the victim of a common misconception: That the State is the one selling the medallions that cost so much. Wrong, ignorant fuck.
"His name was James Damore."
Maybe it should be clarified here that when you see someone claim that it's not the government charging $200,000 for a taxi medallion, that's just the going price on the secondary market. You know, good old capitalism, where people are bidding up the price of a necessarily limited commodity.
The taxi authority looks at population, traffic flow and transportation needs and comes up with a number of taxis that they think should be on the street. Every year, they add new medallions into the system, usually with a lottery. The idea is not so much to protect the cab drivers (cities don't care about cab drivers. If they did, they wouldn't make the minor traffic fines, like your cab being 10 inches over the line of a designated taxi waiting zone, as much as $500 (which practically wipes out the cab driver's week), but to keep the number of taxis from getting so crazy that you have cabs clogging up city centers, fighting for fares.
Another think medallions are used for is to ensure that someone in an underserved part of the city can get a cab. In my city, certain medallions are required for certain times to initiate or terminate a certain percentage of fares in certain parts of the city.
You are welcome on my lawn.
France can always be counted on to do things in the least logical way possible.
What part about "unregulated" did you fail to understand?
Pure capitalism can't work. If there weren't customer protection laws, corporations would get away with food that poisons you and it's your own fault for not reading the poison sign, devices that fall apart after a week so you need to buy a new one to increase profits, produced by workers in just bearable enough conditions so they don't die after a week, to maximize their workforce.
Pure capitalism is pure darwinism, something a civilized society should not embrace under any circumstance.
What do you think a law is that says food must not be poisonous? A law that mandates manufacturer warranties? Minimum wage? Union rights? Could it be STATE REGULATION? Why do you think those laws need to exist in the first place? q.e.d.
Which is damn nice in todays worls where CEOs are usually intouchable. It's good to know in some countries they can still be held personally responsible if they do something illegal.
France can always be counted on to do things in the least logical way possible.
In which alternate universe is arresting the people running an illegal business the "least logical way possible"?
The fact that it's illegal for a private person to accept payment for a car ride principally to protect politically-connected businesses practicing an outdated/obsolete business model is both corrupt and illogical. It's protectionist crony-capitalism. Rather than logically correcting such a corrupt system, they doubled down on it. Just because a government declares something "illegal" does not mean it is morally and/or ethically wrong, or a detriment to society and/or the economy.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
France can always be counted on to do things in the least logical way possible.
A bunch of taxi drivers start rioting in the streets, blocking traffic, and burning cars. France's response? Arrest the people they're protesting AGAINST.
Is it any wonder they keep getting invaded, or that the only decent tactician if the history of their country was from Corsica?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.