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Uber and Lyft Spend $8.2 Million To Lose Fingerprint Election, Vow To Leave Austin (examiner.com)
On Saturday voters in Austin, Texas refused to repeal a new regulation that requires fingerprinting drivers for ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft. In Austin's most expensive election ever, the ride-sharing services spent over $8.2 million pushing Proposition 1, apparently outspending their opponents by a 80:1 ratio. But on election day, the proposal to repeal ultimately received just 39,083 votes -- 44% of the total cast -- meaning the lobbyists spent $209 for each vote received. Both services have said they will cease operations in Austin rather than perform the fingerprint-based criminal background checks.
They could rather have spent this kind of money performing the actual background checks.
"I decided I could write something better than everything out there in two weeks. And I was right." - Linus Torvalds
They won't really leave for good, because someone else is going to come in and steal their lunch. It's not as if Austin will go without a ride sharing service just because they both leave. Greedy pigs will be greedy pigs.
I live in the city and got tired of the ad barrage about government overreach. What Prop 1 would have done is not have regulations that apply to taxi drivers apply to them, as well as giving Uber/Lyft drivers the ability to stop and park -anywhere-, which causes traffic jams as they can sit blocking a road for almost a half hour.
Taxi drivers also have to have a special licence in Texas, a chauffeur's license. This is not cheap. Ridesharing services? AFIAK, Nothing needed, so they get a free pass when it comes to this regulation.
My take... if they want to take their toys and go home... so be it. There are other ridesharing companies which will obey the law of the land, who will gladly take their business.
Imagine applying the same process to the November elections and completely purging the House of all incumbents. Let them have their Citizens United and spend all the money they want. With our votes, we can turn that money into confetti. No phony "reform" or term limits needed.
So, they "vowed" to leave Austin. Maybe that was the idea behind the rule. This is a vaporous company (really, what's this 50 billion "valuation"bullshit?) that is going to leave a lot of people holding the bag when it disappears.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Their objection is that they're a "disruptive" "startup" "app" so they shouldn't have to play by any rules, because rules are so last year. They'd rather piss away $8 million fighting the regulations than spend a fraction of that to comply with them. Welcome to the new dot bomb, with a bunch of entitled twats leading the way.
No, you've drawn the opposite of the correct conclusion. This demonstrates that no matter how much money you plough into a campaign, it's the votes that really matter.
That's a key detail, that is often lost on Slashdotters. You can't buy votes. You can buy attention and reputation, and that may lead to votes, but that connection is not guaranteed, and any attempt to ensure that votes are bought is illegal.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Sure, but the passenger still died. The regulation is designed to prevent the death, instead of just correctly assign blame after the death. Sort of the difference between the liberal and libertarian viewpoints I guess.
Property rights. Who do you think owns the roads?
I'm assuming regular taxi drivers also need to be fingerprinted
Taxi drivers do not currently need to be fingerprinted, but under the new regulation they will need to submit fingerprints by Feb 2017. The fact that nobody cared about fingerprinting drivers until Uber and Lyft came along, indicates that fingerprinting is not designed to address an actual safety problem.
I live in the city and got tired of the ad barrage about government overreach. What Prop 1 would have done is not have regulations that apply to taxi drivers apply to them [...]
This is what torques me off about Uber/Lyft.
It's not ride-sharing. It's a taxi service.
Ride-sharing is, like, "Hey, I'm going to work and I happen to drive past the airport. If anyone needs a lift to the airport and it's not too inconvenient, I'll give you a ride." Taxis, conversely, drive around to areas and wait for people who need rides and then take them where they want to go. When they drop off that person, they wait for someone else.
I would be more than willing to bet that the majority--even the vast majority--ascribe more to the taxi model than the ride-sharing model. Sorry--they're taxis. Uber/Lyft are, essentially, nationwide taxi companies.
my brother just took an Uber and both folks were recently laid off. Also, I hate to be rude but were you not listening? Uber doesn't pay enough to pay for the wear and tear you're putting on your car. You're making well under minimum wage when you factor in the actual costs. And that's before we talk about the risk of driving professionally without commercial insurance (which again, Uber doesn't pay enough for).
Uber was, is and always will be only viable so long as they can externalize their costs. That's why every single one of these "sharing" economy companies shut down the moment they were made to stop doing that. Remember that company that did the same thing with Maid services? As soon as the local government demanded they pay minimum wage by reimbursing the workers for mileage and supplies they shut down. Completely. Hell, they couldn't survive paying _minimum wage let alone a living wage. Neither could Uber.
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