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UberX Runs Into Trouble In Australia With NSW Suspending Vehicle Registration
Harlequin80 writes: RMS (Roads & Maritime Service), the New South Wales' governing body for transport, has begun suspending the vehicle registration of UberX drivers. After failing to deter drivers through prosecutions, with Uber covering fines and legal costs of its drivers, RMS has begun suspending the registration of the vehicles as it forces the vehicle off the road for three months. Under the NSW Passenger Transport Act, paid ride sharing is illegal, and this will see UberX drivers losing the use of their vehicle for both Uber and personal use.
Hilarious.... but sadly might be true shortly.
The whole point of the new Trans Pacific Trade (and its Euro equivalent) agreement is Corporate Sovereignty, the right of corporations to sue countries for violating their rights to ply their trades however they see fit.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131024/11560725004/what-does-isds-mean-corporate-sovereignty-pure-simple.shtml
If they win the lawsuit, the country will be required to change the law to make whatever they blocked legal, regardless of the democracy or elected government. These cases will be heard by a tribunal of ex- Corporate laws (I kid you not, corporate lawyers will sit in private session and decide if the country needs to change its laws to make it legal).
http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/2013/10/investors-are-increasingly-challenging-states-constitutional-court-decisions-in-investor-state-tribu.html
So Uber might one day be able to sue countries for daring to have long standing rules about Taxis that interfere with Ubers advantage. Ubers advantage is not be bound by the laws of taxis!
+1000 insightful. That's literally what that trade agreement is about.
Sure, fire off the sarcasm. See if s/government/big corporation/ makes it any better.
If I have to choose between the benevolence of big corporations or the goverment, my choice would be easy as hell. One I can vote for/against, the other I have minimal influence over. But then again, I don't know where you live, I live in a democracy.
Are corporations people in NSW? If so, like in the US, this violates their rights.
They need to bring out GNUberX...
Thanks, bro. They're reading this and you're proposing extortion, which they are totally fine with. You've just given them more weapons.
I'm rooting for the Aussies, because this is stupid. Every other industry I've seen 'disrupted' in this way has ended in a race to the bottom and ceasing to even be an industry anymore.
The only way I'll buy this 'Uber disruptiveness uber alles' foolishness is if you go full Star Trek and abolish money. Everyone, ride free everywhere you want to go, on Uber's well, there are no dimes anymore. With Uber's blessing!
Failing that, you're just a bunch of Somali pirates. The end game is either Trek utopia, or a mind-mangling dystopia of total surveillance and techno-feudalism, with nearly everybody on the planet as the serfs.
Assuming humans even count as people! Imagine if AI begins running corporations this way. Very quickly humans will be outclassed and the only people with money will be literally thinking corporations. And they don't need to drive anywhere, so goodbye Uber.
Google Pinkertons. Historically, companies can have you killed if they like. Absolutely they can take away your right to drive your car if they can have you killed.
So you remove their only way to make a living?
They should be making their living legally, not illegally - the same would happen in any other circumstance where you are earning money through illegal means...
A well known trait of the nominus A. cowardice is an inability to comprehend history, accept history, think logically, or understand reasonably abstraction or extrapolations. But, by all means, throw fecal matter at the wall to see what sticks.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I have more trust for the government than I have for a benefits-dodger like Uber. The company shows hate by using contractors as a dodge against benefits as well as implying a second-tier status.
The government responds and answers to me without regard to stock ownership, while Uber responds primarily to some faceless individuals.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
No that was Queensland that passed those laws. Unlike NSW, Queensland has a single house of parliament at state level (no senate) so it's easy for a government to pass all sorts of weird laws.
That's still too much for Uber/UberX. Their business model is derived solely from insufficiently insured cars and misclassified workers.
To services like Uber, a minimal inspection package is still too much. They prefer a special deal that makes them the taxi company.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
They should be making their living legally, not illegally
I'm more concerned about whether people are making their living ethically. I'm still undecided as to which thing Uber represents. I'm fairly certain that the company itself is sleazy, but I still think the concept itself is sound and I hope they "win", where "win" == achieve substantial shift in the legal landscape that makes actual ride-sharing with cost-sharing feasible.
It's clear that taxi services do not adequately provide for the needs of the car-hiring public, and it's also clear that taxi services are entrenched interests in many markets. In some places, "taxis" are a little more loosely-defined than they are in e.g. NYC. But I also am against any law which effectively prevents people from using their property to make money in a capitalist system which requires that you have money to exist.
I am not against regulation, I am for fair and sensible regulation. Uber provides additional insurance for drivers while they are transporting a fare. If the additional miles that drivers put on their vehicles between (and during!) fares add up to anything, then they are already assessed additional insurance premiums to pay for that mileage. Drivers already pay taxes for vehicle registration which are at least in some cases tied to environmental impact and/or road wear. Though the degree to which that is accurately accounted for is somewhat lacking, the problems with it are not in the area of hire cars, but primarily in "over-the-road" (heavy) trucking. The vehicles which do the most damage should pay the lion's share of the ongoing maintenance costs, while major infrastructure which is assumed to have to be replaced on a schedule should come out of a fund for the purpose.
What are the other objections? People not getting paid a fair wage for their time, these people aren't working already and I don't see any solutions being offered. The taxi companies won't hire them anyway. Taxi driving is more dangerous for the driver than for passengers, so that one's out. What's the problem?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...as opposed to merely "sharing" their car? Then they need to adhere to taxi regulations.
In a true ride sharing, the only cost should be half the gas. Any more, and now you're in the taxi business.
The whole reason why Taxi regulation and limits were introduced in many cases is because there used to be large amount of bad actors before and regulation was demanded by the clients (Poland, and many EU countries), or there was _to many_ actors (eg. NY during Great Depression) which led to race to zero where noone was making money.
The pendulum swung to far, and Uber came to life to restore balance, but we (and goverment) needs to make sure that the pendulum doesn't swing to much into another direction and we don't get repeat of what we had before.
An "illegal market" is the kind that arises naturally.
I'm more concerned about whether people are making their living ethically. I'm still undecided as to which thing Uber represents. I'm fairly certain that the company itself is sleazy, but I still think the concept itself is sound and I hope they "win", where "win" == achieve substantial shift in the legal landscape that makes actual ride-sharing with cost-sharing feasible.
Uber is run by Libertarian psychopaths (but I repeat myself), so "sleazy" would be a ringing endorsement. Their business model is build around facilitating and encouraging individuals to break the law while hiving themselves off from any risk or legal responsibility for the consequences thereof.
That being said, the taxi industry in Australia, as in most countries, is a hive of lazy rent-seekers who need a rocket up their arses. I should be clear, here. I'm talking about taxi plate ("medallion") holders - particular the ones that have had them for decades - than drivers, who are by and large just trying to make a crust in a shitty job with long hours and crap wages.
Hire car regulations serve a useful purpose: driver qualifications and background checks, minimum vehicle standards, mandatory audio and video recording equipment for passenger *and driver* safety and accountability, ensuring appropriate insurance coverage, etc.
However, it's hard to see why this needs to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop to monitor and enforce, and impossible to see any reason why anyone prepared to meet the standards should not be issued a hire car plate on application.
Fix the real problems - arbitrary supply constraints and outrageous costs of taxi plates.
(Disclosure: I drove taxis in Brisbane for four years about twenty years ago while I was studying.)
You say this like it is a bad thing.
That's because companies being able to sue Governments (ie: the People) for preventing them from doing whatever they want in the name of making money is indeed A Very Bad Thing.
Most taxi regulation is about keeping out competition.
No, very little taxi regulation is about keeping out competition - basically the artificial limits on how many plates are issued and requirement to use a specific dispatch service. Most of it is about protecting passengers, drivers and the public.
That the service is so popular shows The People like it.
It's nowhere near as popular as taxis.
mmm, in much of the UK we have a middle ground which seems to work fairly well. What people loosely reffer to as "taxi's" are split into "hackney carridges" and "private hire cars". The fomer are heavilly regulated and limited in number (so the streets aren't flooded with taxi's looking for jobs). The latter are regulated more lightly and AIUI they are not limited in number but they are only allowed to take journeys pre-booked through an operator.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
... that treaty would trump any laws of a government in the USA. According to the Constitution, it would even trump the Constitution.
A common misconception. Treaties don't "trump" the U.S. Constitution, they form the highest law of the land alongside the U.S. Constitution and U.S. law:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the Contrary notwithstanding.
Treaties do take precedence over state constitutions and laws. The only thing that would trump the U.S. Constitution, however, would be an amendment or constitutional convention. The federal government cannot bypass its own constitutional limits by entering into treaties any more than it can grant itself unconstitutional powers by passing laws. Only the states can do that, by amending or replacing the Constitution.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
I think that the cellphone could provide for the camera requirements, and the normal regulatory process ought to handle the rest without any special investigation. Vehicles ought to be safety inspected based on miles traveled, Uber provides insurance while carrying a fare, and drivers are already carrying insurance adequate for the time when they're not doing that.
A mobile phone camera isn't adequate in terms of coverage. Small cameras are dirt cheap, so requiring a few inside a vehicle isn't even close to burdensome.
Many states in Australia (and the US, and presumably every country) have little to no ongoing vehicle safety inspections.
Uber has no legal obligation or requirement to provide insurance. That's not good enough.