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Italy Bans Uber (thenextweb.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Next Web: A court just banned Uber from using its apps in Italy -- yes, all of Italy. The court ruled in favor of the country's taxi drivers -- who filed the suit -- claiming Uber was "unfair competition." Now Uber can't use it's apps -- including UberBlack, Uber LUX, X, and Select -- and it can't promote or advertise itself at all within the country. For all intents and purposes, Uber is banned in Italy.
The case is likely to bubble up to the EU Justice Court.
Where they will get banned across all of Europe.
Seriously? You think your comparison is apt? Uber isn't buggies vs taxis. Uber is unregulated taxis vs regulated taxis along with exploiting their unemployed drivers. Uber makes us all poorer.
But... have people actually stopped using Uber in Italy? After all, lots of things are banned in a lot of places. Porn. Prostitution. Drugs. Gambling. And yet...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Uber wants to be "more equal than others". If there are rules that you have to follow or you can try to get the government to change the rules for everyone. Instead, however, some companies try to break the rules to gain an unfair advantage:
Emission standards (I personally dislike those rules) are for everyone, except VW - "the competitors will spends lots of money developing better engines like idiots, while we can just cheat the test".
Taxi rules are for everyone except Uber, even though the service is the same, but "on a computer", like the patent trolls who manage to get a patent for some everyday action but "on a computer".
They had a great idea and it's spread across the world quickly and rewritten the rules of getting from a to b.
What is different about Uber compared to a regular taxi?
1. You arrange the ride (phonecall to a taxi company or by using an Uber app).
2. The car comes, you get in, get driven to your destination, pay for the service.
I believe that any type of business could provide a better service than its peers by breaking laws and regulations if the peers still follow those (for instance selling alcohol to minors, who would certainly consider such service excellent). However, if all businesses did that the desired positive effects of regulating an industry would disappear and everybody's situation would be worse. And if some laws are "bad" that doesn't mean that they should be broken, they should be changed (through lobbying by businesses, if necessary). Ancaps and their ilk will of course make some argument that there shouldn't be laws but "rules but no rulers" or whatever and such bs. but they aren't worth talking to since if all human history isn't proof enough that the concept is nonsense, nothing will make them accept certain facts about our species.