My point is that there are potential criminal penalties enforced by the state if the driver of the cab isn't the licensee.
So? Is this supposed to be a good thing?! An advantage of the current model?!
Wow... And, by the way, you are yet to cite any stats showing, it actually works — that Uber drivers "share" their contracts with others more often, than government-licensed cabbies sublease their cabs...
I'm a libertarian and want Uber and Lyft shut down, or sued out of existence.
The only way a business is "shut down" in a Libertarian country, is by not making enough money — from happy willing customers — to continue to operate. If you want it to be shut down by anyone/anything else, you aren't a Libertarian. Thanks for playing.
Prove that the driver is actually the person with whom the Uber account was established by.
Prove, that the frequency of this occurring is higher among Uber, than among "official" taxis.
With private companies, if one develops a reputation of not properly enforcing its policies, the customers will flock to the others. With the city's government being the sole certifier, there is nothing to do but to avoid the whole city altogether.
Prove that the insurance meets passenger livery laws.
Guilty until proven innocent? Thank you for exposing yourself as a statist... You are the enemy, and you will be defeated.
Maybe, licensing taxies was a good idea at some point. There is very little competition among them, because their usage is sporadic — you need it, you raise a hand to hail one and take the first available without any way of figuring out the driver's and his company's reputation.
But Uber and Lyft and others have changed that. You can choose between these companies and you know the driver's reputation — and bad ones don't survive there long. A piece of government bureaucracy found itself irrelevant.
That is a very hard thing to accept and acknowledge even for honest men and women. For the corrupt ones — and, face it, government jobs tend to attract a higher share of such — it is something to fight tooth-and-nail. With laws, regulations, and PR-campaigns... Private victims of the old system may also be used as foot-soldiers against the new. It will not be pretty, but technology is destiny. We'll win, but not easily.
Having them working is efficient. Having them sitting in front of a burning house isn't.
Having them sit in front of their cute "fire house" all day is even more inefficient.
And that's what happens, when they are government employees — because each town has its own. The same would be happening, if each town ran its own restaurants — fortunately, the statism has not reached quite that far in this country.
They would do their best to save the burning house, but they would fail every time.
Now you are changing your argument — glad to see, we have the earlier one discarded.
Let's dispense with this new one. Service-providers, that oversell their capacity do not survive for very long either. Customers and insurers track them... Unless, of course, they are government-owned — the "trick" you described can be (and is) used by government-run fire-teams all the time. A mean annual wage of a New York City firefighter, for example, is over $73K, but they will refuse to even try to save your property, under the noble-sounding rule "We only save lives".
So you are saying that insurance is more expensive to cover for the fees in order for them to evaluate and approve private fire departments?
Somebody has to evaluate and approve all fire departments — whether they are monitored by the towns or insurance companies, it needs to be done on occasion. But insurance companies compete with each other and have "skin in the game" — their policies will be too expensive, if they aren't efficient about inspections. If, on the other hand, they are too loose in their standards, they'll lose money paying for houses destroyed by fires.
Town representatives do not have "skin in the game" and are swayed by personal sympathies if not outright bribery, which makes the system less efficient.
My point was just that the city shouldn't be providing a private corporation with free land and free water.
Maybe not. Something can be worked-out — after all, we do have private companies running cables (and even pipes) above and under the streets. Any resource available to government-owned firefighters ought to be — and is — available to privately-operated ones.
It's inefficient because they are not available in case there is a fire somewhere else
This statement makes no sense. Had they been actively involved in extinguishing the (uninsured) house, they would've been even less available for other engagements.
I'd open one in every town. Of course I wouldn't have any firemen or trucks. I would just collect the money and not answer any calls.
That's called fraud — a criminal act. Do you think, various criminals haven't tried this before? They have and still do, are you going to nationalize all insurance business because of this?
Those who get their house burnt would get a monthly refund
You'd be liable to much more than that — in addition to the above-mentioned criminal prosecution, you'd forfeit all the bonds you have posted and, of course, such a thing can only be tried once.
Most ordinary people might not have the attention span enough to track such fraudsters, but insurance companies do — and they will insist, you pick a fire-company from their "approved" list.
Of course, every private fire departement would need it's own aqueduc and private fire hydrant network, right?
Not necessarily. That's entirely up to them. You have mentioned in your previous post, that you find cooperation between neighboring towns' fireteams possible (and desirable). What makes you think, private players would be unable to cooperate with each other?
It is not efficient at all to move the whole fire department over to a house just to watch it burn and make sure it doesn't spread to neighbors.
Why is it not efficient? As long as they don't have to wear much equipment, nor spend much of the chemicals, nor risk lives and limb, the costs of such a move are negligible.
It's also a natural monopoly.
There is no such thing. "Natural monopoly" is a myth created by statists already in government to justify their control of our lives.
It wouldn't be efficient to have two competing fire departments in a small town.
Who said, they must limit themselves to one town? They don't — not any more than KFC does. On the contrary, the current situation, where each little town has its own department is inefficient. Multiple such companies could open shop in multiple places — competing with each other across town- and state-borders.
It's much better to have a larger one with better equipment.
Sure. But it does not have to be government-owned.
I see nothing wrong with it, actually. People want — and have a perfect right — to know, who they are about to trust with powers over them and/or their businesses. And the higher the position, the greater the powers and, consequently, the greater the extent people might go in their investigations.
The "opposition research" is just another facet of this. If it is legitimate for all of us to study, how Donald Trump parted with his ex-wide 30 years ago before we hire him, it is certainly legitimate for a would-be employer to check criminal history of a candidate, or inquire, whether he has done something, which may betray certain things about his character or judgement. Did he torture animals? Is he prone to binge-drinking? Has he burned the national flag? Is he a racist, sexist, or communist?
So long as private employers' hiring decisions remain their own, they ought to remain free to base them on whatever considerations they please — with the specific (if regrettable) restrictions imposed by the law, of course.
Well clearly I'm not going to have such studies to hand, not sure how you would study such a thing
Well, you made a wide-reaching statement about a certain fact. If you can not cite anything to confirm the fact, your statement remains unsubstantiated and the "fact" — highly suspect.
there is inbuilt racism / nationalism in CV selection
I can believe that — and in my not-so-humble opinion, those concerns ought to remain up to the employer as well. Both from the principled standpoint — being free must imply freedom to be wrong, as well as practical — the war on thought-crimes, waged in this country since the 1960-ies, is even less winnable than the coterminous war on drugs.
I don't agree with the murder of unborn children either.
Well, you may not, but the country's laws see nothing wrong with it — and it certainly is not considered "murder". And yet, what you do with that same child only a few years after he is born, is suddenly a matter of police concern. That's the inconsistency — in the general thinking, not yours — of which I'm trying to raise awareness here.
I am not trying to claim [...] I think
Wouldn't it be nice, if people applied their opinions on rearing children to their own children only?
And this is why we have privacy. That people have disconnected lives where they are one person at work and another with their friends
If, for whatever reasons, an employer wants to know, what sort of a person you are with your friends — and they all will, once the positions they are considering you for reach a certain height, they'll find out. With private investigators, if need be.
What you present to the employer being separate from your personal life is actually a really important part of how we function as a society.
Is it? How so? Can you cite any studies showing usefulness of such separation? Or how this separation changed over the years — for the betterment of society, or otherwise?
The problem isn't embarrassment, it's judgemental people with the power to affect your live.
Oh, thank you for identifying "the problem". For a while here, I thought it was the irresponsible statements and other behaviour of certain people. Turns out, it is the other people's opinion of same...
If we, as a society, trust parents with the decision to abort their children before birth, what possible "good reason" can there be for us to intervene in the decision to let them wonder in the park until dinner after the umbilical cord is cut?
I doubt, free trade with non-free countries is beneficial to humanity. Though one can argue, that it makes such non-free countries more free, it is not at all evident, that that's what happened to China, for example.
Meanwhile, the US is gradually losing freedoms as there appear more and more things we aren't allowed to do or even say, and the list of places requiring identification is growing.
Seriously? You are going to attack a message based on who delivered it? Well, my first link was from CNN, is that Ok with you? I then went searching for any report on what happened to them — is it my fault, that the CNN had no attention span enough to follow-up on the story?
Well, considering the fact, that they worked for SEC — and were supposed to watch for and prevent or, at least, soften the impact of, financial disaster that occurred, their dereliction of duty did prove rather dangerous.
You are comparing two very different things.
Point is, the actions are both highly outrageous and unimaginable to anybody — their bosses and critics alike — until both happened...
Ok, I have $200 burning here to pay you such a device. Can you make it installable outside? Under a roof, but still subject to temperature-changes? No? Ok, I'll set it up inside.
May need more than 10 hours, but doable within a day or so.
Sure. Take a week. But, if it does not work by then, you pay me back $300. Deal?
Wireshark for WiFi Sniffing and logging
Oops... I'm afraid, you didn't quite get it. I don't want to listen peer with their transmitters. I just want to log their appearing. My own side should be as passive as possible — to conceal my own capabilities.
Slashdot Mirror
Whatever you call it, the bottom line is, you are the "guilty until proven innocent" kind of guy.
That's really all you had to say.
So? Is this supposed to be a good thing?! An advantage of the current model?!
Wow... And, by the way, you are yet to cite any stats showing, it actually works — that Uber drivers "share" their contracts with others more often, than government-licensed cabbies sublease their cabs...
The only way a business is "shut down" in a Libertarian country, is by not making enough money — from happy willing customers — to continue to operate. If you want it to be shut down by anyone/anything else, you aren't a Libertarian. Thanks for playing.
Prove, that the frequency of this occurring is higher among Uber, than among "official" taxis.
With private companies, if one develops a reputation of not properly enforcing its policies, the customers will flock to the others. With the city's government being the sole certifier, there is nothing to do but to avoid the whole city altogether.
Guilty until proven innocent? Thank you for exposing yourself as a statist... You are the enemy, and you will be defeated.
Maybe, licensing taxies was a good idea at some point. There is very little competition among them, because their usage is sporadic — you need it, you raise a hand to hail one and take the first available without any way of figuring out the driver's and his company's reputation.
But Uber and Lyft and others have changed that. You can choose between these companies and you know the driver's reputation — and bad ones don't survive there long. A piece of government bureaucracy found itself irrelevant.
That is a very hard thing to accept and acknowledge even for honest men and women. For the corrupt ones — and, face it, government jobs tend to attract a higher share of such — it is something to fight tooth-and-nail. With laws, regulations, and PR-campaigns... Private victims of the old system may also be used as foot-soldiers against the new. It will not be pretty, but technology is destiny. We'll win, but not easily.
Am I the only one struggling to imagine a Beowulf cluster of these? What's /. coming to?
Because private generosity is supposed to decrease public expenditures, not enlarge them.
As long as he is dumping his own money, that is all fine and not even much of our business.
But, as recent history has shown, government politicians may choose to force the reset of us to follow his lead. And that should not be allowed.
Having them sit in front of their cute "fire house" all day is even more inefficient.
And that's what happens, when they are government employees — because each town has its own. The same would be happening, if each town ran its own restaurants — fortunately, the statism has not reached quite that far in this country.
Now you are changing your argument — glad to see, we have the earlier one discarded.
Let's dispense with this new one. Service-providers, that oversell their capacity do not survive for very long either. Customers and insurers track them... Unless, of course, they are government-owned — the "trick" you described can be (and is) used by government-run fire-teams all the time. A mean annual wage of a New York City firefighter, for example, is over $73K, but they will refuse to even try to save your property, under the noble-sounding rule "We only save lives".
Somebody has to evaluate and approve all fire departments — whether they are monitored by the towns or insurance companies, it needs to be done on occasion. But insurance companies compete with each other and have "skin in the game" — their policies will be too expensive, if they aren't efficient about inspections. If, on the other hand, they are too loose in their standards, they'll lose money paying for houses destroyed by fires.
Town representatives do not have "skin in the game" and are swayed by personal sympathies if not outright bribery, which makes the system less efficient.
Maybe not. Something can be worked-out — after all, we do have private companies running cables (and even pipes) above and under the streets. Any resource available to government-owned firefighters ought to be — and is — available to privately-operated ones.
This statement makes no sense. Had they been actively involved in extinguishing the (uninsured) house, they would've been even less available for other engagements.
That's called fraud — a criminal act. Do you think, various criminals haven't tried this before? They have and still do, are you going to nationalize all insurance business because of this?
You'd be liable to much more than that — in addition to the above-mentioned criminal prosecution, you'd forfeit all the bonds you have posted and, of course, such a thing can only be tried once.
Most ordinary people might not have the attention span enough to track such fraudsters, but insurance companies do — and they will insist, you pick a fire-company from their "approved" list.
Not necessarily. That's entirely up to them. You have mentioned in your previous post, that you find cooperation between neighboring towns' fireteams possible (and desirable). What makes you think, private players would be unable to cooperate with each other?
Why is it not efficient? As long as they don't have to wear much equipment, nor spend much of the chemicals, nor risk lives and limb, the costs of such a move are negligible.
There is no such thing. "Natural monopoly" is a myth created by statists already in government to justify their control of our lives.
Who said, they must limit themselves to one town? They don't — not any more than KFC does. On the contrary, the current situation, where each little town has its own department is inefficient. Multiple such companies could open shop in multiple places — competing with each other across town- and state-borders.
Sure. But it does not have to be government-owned.
I see nothing wrong with it, actually. People want — and have a perfect right — to know, who they are about to trust with powers over them and/or their businesses. And the higher the position, the greater the powers and, consequently, the greater the extent people might go in their investigations.
The "opposition research" is just another facet of this. If it is legitimate for all of us to study, how Donald Trump parted with his ex-wide 30 years ago before we hire him, it is certainly legitimate for a would-be employer to check criminal history of a candidate, or inquire, whether he has done something, which may betray certain things about his character or judgement. Did he torture animals? Is he prone to binge-drinking? Has he burned the national flag? Is he a racist, sexist, or communist?
So long as private employers' hiring decisions remain their own, they ought to remain free to base them on whatever considerations they please — with the specific (if regrettable) restrictions imposed by the law, of course.
Well, you made a wide-reaching statement about a certain fact. If you can not cite anything to confirm the fact, your statement remains unsubstantiated and the "fact" — highly suspect.
I can believe that — and in my not-so-humble opinion, those concerns ought to remain up to the employer as well. Both from the principled standpoint — being free must imply freedom to be wrong, as well as practical — the war on thought-crimes, waged in this country since the 1960-ies, is even less winnable than the coterminous war on drugs.
Well, you may not, but the country's laws see nothing wrong with it — and it certainly is not considered "murder". And yet, what you do with that same child only a few years after he is born, is suddenly a matter of police concern. That's the inconsistency — in the general thinking, not yours — of which I'm trying to raise awareness here.
Wouldn't it be nice, if people applied their opinions on rearing children to their own children only?
If, for whatever reasons, an employer wants to know, what sort of a person you are with your friends — and they all will, once the positions they are considering you for reach a certain height, they'll find out. With private investigators, if need be.
Is it? How so? Can you cite any studies showing usefulness of such separation? Or how this separation changed over the years — for the betterment of society, or otherwise?
Oh, thank you for identifying "the problem". For a while here, I thought it was the irresponsible statements and other behaviour of certain people. Turns out, it is the other people's opinion of same...
If we, as a society, trust parents with the decision to abort their children before birth, what possible "good reason" can there be for us to intervene in the decision to let them wonder in the park until dinner after the umbilical cord is cut?
I doubt, free trade with non-free countries is beneficial to humanity. Though one can argue, that it makes such non-free countries more free, it is not at all evident, that that's what happened to China, for example.
Meanwhile, the US is gradually losing freedoms as there appear more and more things we aren't allowed to do or even say, and the list of places requiring identification is growing.
Remember that 90ies joke about software engineers designing cars? How such cars would only run on certain roads, require reboots to fix, etc.?
Somehow we've entered that alternative reality now...
I must've missed the article about scientists identifying the fifth taste. For I have no idea, what the heck is "umami".
(Yes, I shall search the Internet and educate myself presently.)
Reading the articles, baby.
Seriously? You are going to attack a message based on who delivered it? Well, my first link was from CNN, is that Ok with you? I then went searching for any report on what happened to them — is it my fault, that the CNN had no attention span enough to follow-up on the story?
Point is, the actions are both highly outrageous and unimaginable to anybody — their bosses and critics alike — until both happened...
This is why the "honest" scammers can't have nice things.
Someone got greedy — a deadly sin.
It is highly illicit, if you are using employer-provided equipment to do that — contrary to the employer's wishes.
Lemon-squeezy.
Ok, I have $200 burning here to pay you such a device. Can you make it installable outside? Under a roof, but still subject to temperature-changes? No? Ok, I'll set it up inside.
Sure. Take a week. But, if it does not work by then, you pay me back $300. Deal?
Oops... I'm afraid, you didn't quite get it. I don't want to listen peer with their transmitters. I just want to log their appearing. My own side should be as passive as possible — to conceal my own capabilities.