Maybe you could have kept the exact conditions a secret, but even then they would be fairly easy to guess correctly.
There don't have to be "exact test conditions"; the testing procedure can simply consist of measuring actual emissions in real world driving. Manufacturers can deal with the resulting uncertainty in conditions by designing in a safety margin.
What you implicitly suggest, namely escalating criminal penalties until the behavior stops, doesn't work. The rewards of cheating on such tests are so high that no criminal penalty will deter companies from engaging in such behaviors. The only way such tests can ever work is if the EPA treats its relationships with manufacturers as adversarial and designs tests so that they are cheat-proof.
Faulty reasoning like yours, namely that if we just pass enough laws and make the enforcement and penalties tough enough, crime will stop, is responsible for the sky high prison population and police violations of civil liberties.
And yet we still don't have a reason why we are seeing Uber cars operating unlicensed in the UK....
The reason is that people like me use them in preference to government licensed taxis. That's also the excuse.
that doesn't mean they can operate unlicensed
Whether they "can" operate unlicensed is a practical and legal question. You were asking for a reason and justification ("excuse").
Uber in the UK is operating like a black market in a communist country. I think the latter is a good thing, so I don't see why I should have any problems with the former.
But then, Hammurabi was a crony capitalist too in your fantasy world I guess....
Hammurabi's "building code" is not a building code at all; it holds a builder liable for his actions, whatever they may have been. That kind of liability is a good thing, far better than building codes.
And look, more about fire and electrical. Like the great London fire, and several others, back when buildings were mostly wood and butted up right against each other, so a fire could destroy an entire city instead of just one home. and they solved it by....legally requiring them to be more spaced out...in a building code...
Setback requirements are not part of building codes, they are part of zoning or municipal ordinances.
another important part of the code, sewage and sewage hookups. because who wants to repeat the great cholera epidemic,
Sewage hookups aren't part of building codes either. Furthermore, of course, the sewage company should be able to impose requirements on its customers as part of the contract.
again: you're an idiot
You apparently don't even know what a "building code" is.
Note that opposition to building codes doesn't mean opposition to strict rules for how buildings are constructed, it means opposition to how those rules are arrived at. Building rules arrived at as part of HOA-like arrangements are overall stricter than building codes, but omit the corrupt portions of codes.
and I forgot....there also the little matter of the blatant ignoring that the entire ACA originated within fellow libertarian group the Heartland Institute
Here is what the Heartland Institute said about ACA:
Health care policy experts at The Heartland Institute and those affiliated with other think tanks warned during the debate leading up to Obamacare’s passage that the law would be a disaster for patients, doctors, and taxpayers. For example, in 2009, Heartland published a series of reports documenting how Obamacare would dramatically raise insurance premiums in the following states [...]
The idea that the ACA is a "libertarian" or "conservative" health care plan, or a compromise, is a blatant lie. Libertarians strongly opposed it, and no Republican voted for it.
But when the regulators try and do a thorough job then business interests start squealing like stuck pigs and scream about how "ebil gomment is distroying the free interprize". Then they go out and buy a few more congress critters, and keep on lying and stealing for profit.
In our system of government, it is Congress that determines whether something is a felony or not. In this case, Congress decided this ought not to be a felony. Regulators shouldn't be able to change that, and they certainly shouldn't be able to change it retroactively. That has nothing to do with whether VW executives deserve it or not, or whether it is good or bad rule making, it has to do with not giving the executive branch that kind of power, because it will invariably be abused sooner or later.
Too bad you didn't die in a defective Ford or Toyota... hat the companies they deal with are run by degenerate psychopaths
Too bad you have never lived in a fascist or socialist country, because you'd recognize that companies run by degenerate psychopaths are a minor evil compared to what you are advocating.
It's not an "opinion", it's simply what those terms mean.
It's very difficult to claim that any of these are not "culturally determined".
How can they be "culturally determined" when, within each culture, many people disagree on which of these are right and wrong? Cultures do not make moral judgments in any consistent sense, only individuals do.
But that's not even my main point. My main point is morality simply cannot be established by majority vote. Take mathematical truths as an analogy. "The majority of Americans believes that the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is about 3.1" is not a mathematical statement or argument, even if it's true; a mathematical statement looks entirely different. Likewise, "The majority of Americans believes that the death penalty is morally right." isn't a statement about right and wrong, it's simply a statement about a poll result.
Immigration is an important economic issue. It's lowers wages.
There may be other reasons you may not want large numbers of Muslim migrants coming to Europe, but economically, immigration is a clear win. It doesn't matter whether the immigrants are skilled or not, and the younger they are the better. It's an even bigger win for Europe with its aging demographics.
It's not only the housing but costs for providing social security is unsustainable with the current flow of asylum seekers.
Social security is unsustainable in Europe and the US with or without asylum seekers, due to simple demographics: social security is a pyramid scheme that assumes that there are many workers for every retiree.
I am afraid that if it this flood is not stopped in one way or another soon, there will chaos or even wars in large parts of Europe.
If these so-called "loopholes" exist in the Clean Air Act, they are probably there because people didn't want to taint the act with draconian criminal penalties and all the problems that brings with it.
The EPA used stupid testing procedures, and Volkswagen took advantage of that. VW should be shamed for that, and maybe even pay a fine. But the correct solution is simply for the EPA to use less stupid testing procedures.
The proposition we are discussing is: If the West had not destabilized the whole region for political ends, we would not be in this mess., not the worthiness of Islam, the personal hygiene and genocidal tendencies of Christian Europe. The simple fact is that the Middle East was unstable long before "the West" got involved. All your other b.s. is irrelevant.
You are going to have to provide some evidence that "the left" has moved farther to the left.
Where did I say it had "moved further to the left"? I said the "American left" has abandoned "free markets, freedom of association, and individual liberties". In fact, I think the American so-called "left" has actually moved more in the direction of fascism. Of course, in practice, and from a libertarian point of view, fascism and socialism are pretty much equally bad: both deny individual liberties, individual choice, and free markets. That is, from a libertarian perspective, it really makes little difference whether Democrats have "moved left" or "moved right". What matters is that Democrats have become a lot more statist and a lot less liberal. Republicans have simply stuck with their theocratic leanings, but at least some minority faction of Republicans still pays lip service to the benefits of free markets and capitalism.
Political positions are multi-dimensional. If you need a simple space to imagine this in, use the 2D space from the "World's Smallest Political Quiz":
Even the Affordable Care Act was a much more right-leaning approach to healthcare reform than what the Clintons were trying to achieve current the Bill Clinton presidency.
From a libertarian point of view, the ACA is just as much of a disaster as single payer health care would have been. Note that neither the Cato institute nor other libertarian publications had anything good to say about it.
If the ACA were "more right leaning" and libertarians were "right leaning", they would have to say something good about it, no? Of course, the way Democrats get out of that logical conundrum is simply to attribute the well-deserved vitriol libertarians and free market types heap upon the ACA to racism and partisanship.
The medallion argument is one of a high cost of entry, which doesnt exist in the UK - so why are we seeing more illegal and unlicensed Uber carriers here?
Uber is a global brand name and the service works the same way everywhere; I have the same customer service, the same payment mechanism, an English language app that communicates with the driver, and the same kind of information on drivers and service.
Local government-licensed taxi service may or may not be good. But for a traveler, it's hit or miss. Frequently, it's a rip-off or even a fraud. I simply have no interest in dealing with that local b.s. It's the same reason why, when I'm on business travel, I don't go to a lot of quaint local restaurants: it's not worth the risk or cost.
And the evidence that building codes are a necessary and effective way of preventing such disasters is... where? Where is the evidence that the bulk of our building codes are actually anything other than crony capitalism?
Most of the disasters you hear about abroad are in countries that do have building codes.
A large part of the cost of housing in the US these days is due to codes. Yes, that is a big drain on the economy and a big obstacle to housing affordability.
The term "copycats" implies that Toys'R'Us's accounting procedures are somehow the property of the US accounting profession. The fact that these procedures are so complex that they even require consultants to come in and "shadow" workers in order to figure out how to do them properly is itself a testament to the ludicrous complexity of US accounting rules (which are themselves in large part a consequence of lobbying by lawyers and accountants).
As for Toys'R'Us "outsourcing" these jobs to to India, the company is a global company, with half its stores outside the US. If any justification were needed for moving these jobs abroad, that alone would suffice.
I just hope we'll be able to outsource our personal taxes and financial services overseas as well, so that tax preparation and other kinds of personal finance become cheaper and more generic as well.
Eventually, regulations will catch up with the technology. Uber will be absorbed into Taxi-like classification and allowed to pick up airport passengers, or the distinctions among small, for-hire transport will be reduced,
True, that is what will happen.
and these entities will be able to compete fairly
What you call "fair competition" is simply a compromise between free market choice and crony capitalism.
But of course! Before the West got involved in the Middle East, it was a peaceful paradise, where unicorns grazed under rainbows, and peoples of all different religions lived together in blissful harmony! It's not like these people ever occupied large parts of Europe, oppressed non-Muslims, or abducted millions of Europeans into slavery, oh no, nothing like that ever happened!
What the population in general believes is a critical part of how morals or customs get made, and can vary profoundly from location to location.
Your response underlines again the cause of the problem: you are confusing "customs" and "morality". Customs are a statement about what the majority does. Morality is a statement about an individual judgment of right and wrong.
Customs depend on society, morality does not. My view that goat fucking is morally wrong doesn't change just because I travel to a place where it is an accepted custom and the majority of people view it as morally right.
Everyone doesn't know that they are not getting the protection of a licensed taxi.
Well, be that as it may, your response effectively concedes that if people understood the difference between an Uber and a licensed Taxi, there would be no justification for keeping them from making a free choice between the two modes of transportation. So, the obvious solution is not to regulate Uber out of existence, it is simply to require clear disclosure of the difference: require both Uber and Taxis to spell out their respective terms and liability limits.
And there are many regulations that people are legally not allowed to "opt out" of. For instance, I'm sure that many would be happy to build their house without following building regulations. Much cheaper. But they're not given that option.
Yes, another rip-off by which a politically well connected group of businesses enriches itself, responsible for needlessly driving up housing prices and putting people into poverty. And the irony is, of course, that wealthy people are least affected by that, while poorer people are forced to ignore the regulations but essentially end up as law breakers as a result.
Well, and if you like the "higher standards" that city-licensed cabs provide, you are welcome to pay for them. Your preferences are no justification to force me to pay for them. Personally, I have always disliked the official taxi cabs; I'm actually willing to pay extra for Uber just to avoid the publicly licensed taxi cabs.
The Cato Institute was founded by Charles Koch and while it proposes to be solely Libertarian it often leans Right.
Libertarianism means free markets, freedom of association, and individual liberties. Yes, in the US these days, that means "leaning right", because the American left has abandoned those principles. FFS, we have a self-declared socialist running as a serious Democratic candidate.
I'm not saying they're wrong, but what they publish cannot be detached from their public and, more importantly, private agendas.
Do you have any evidence that they have a "private agenda" separate from their public agenda?
And what source of funding do you think doesn't come with an "agenda"? Do you seriously believe that, say, academics don't act in their own economic and political interests, as well as that of their funders, when they publish studies?
Here in the UK, to become a licensed taxi in my local area, it will cost you less than £3000 in fees every four years - wheres the excuse for Uber to be operating unlicensed in the same location?
The excuse is simple: people like me like to ride Uber in preference to taxis. What other "excuse" is needed?
Uber has made travel much more pleasant. I don't have to worry about how cabs work at your ass end of the world, or whether your dinky little town's cabbies make a habit of ripping off tourists. I can get information on the driver and the car before I get into someone's vehicle. And I don't have to carry cash either.
What Uber is doing is wrong not because it's against the law, but because the laws it breaks are laws that the population in general see as being at least acceptable.
The rightness or wrongness of an act is not dependent on what "the population in general" believes.
But even your premise is unsupported: where is the evidence that "the population in general" wants taxi licensing and wants to prohibit Uber?
I don't know. How do you feel about Mafia during prohibition? Looks like a better fitted analogy.
Prohibition was primarily targeted against poor working class people, while the rich had cellars full of alcohol. So, I think it's a good thing that smugglers broke the laws of prohibition, just like I think it's a good thing that there was an underground railroad.
People on slashdot go all moist about Uber because they love the technology it uses. They don't care that Uber also ignores all the laws put there to protect passengers and drivers.
Uber "ignores" nothing; they are a broker between private riders and private ride providers. Everybody knows what they are getting and that the usual "protections" from a government-licensed taxi service don't apply.
The solution is for proper taxi firms to use the same technology.
No, "the solution" is what we already have in effect in many places: that government licensing of taxis is voluntary. If the government licensing is worth anything, ride operators will all want to get it because their customers demand it. If the taxi licensing is useless, people will simply ignore it.
break the regulations that are there for good reason
Slashdot Mirror
There don't have to be "exact test conditions"; the testing procedure can simply consist of measuring actual emissions in real world driving. Manufacturers can deal with the resulting uncertainty in conditions by designing in a safety margin.
What you implicitly suggest, namely escalating criminal penalties until the behavior stops, doesn't work. The rewards of cheating on such tests are so high that no criminal penalty will deter companies from engaging in such behaviors. The only way such tests can ever work is if the EPA treats its relationships with manufacturers as adversarial and designs tests so that they are cheat-proof.
Faulty reasoning like yours, namely that if we just pass enough laws and make the enforcement and penalties tough enough, crime will stop, is responsible for the sky high prison population and police violations of civil liberties.
The reason is that people like me use them in preference to government licensed taxis. That's also the excuse.
Whether they "can" operate unlicensed is a practical and legal question. You were asking for a reason and justification ("excuse").
Uber in the UK is operating like a black market in a communist country. I think the latter is a good thing, so I don't see why I should have any problems with the former.
Hammurabi's "building code" is not a building code at all; it holds a builder liable for his actions, whatever they may have been. That kind of liability is a good thing, far better than building codes.
Setback requirements are not part of building codes, they are part of zoning or municipal ordinances.
Sewage hookups aren't part of building codes either. Furthermore, of course, the sewage company should be able to impose requirements on its customers as part of the contract.
You apparently don't even know what a "building code" is.
Note that opposition to building codes doesn't mean opposition to strict rules for how buildings are constructed, it means opposition to how those rules are arrived at. Building rules arrived at as part of HOA-like arrangements are overall stricter than building codes, but omit the corrupt portions of codes.
Here is what the Heartland Institute said about ACA:
The idea that the ACA is a "libertarian" or "conservative" health care plan, or a compromise, is a blatant lie. Libertarians strongly opposed it, and no Republican voted for it.
In our system of government, it is Congress that determines whether something is a felony or not. In this case, Congress decided this ought not to be a felony. Regulators shouldn't be able to change that, and they certainly shouldn't be able to change it retroactively. That has nothing to do with whether VW executives deserve it or not, or whether it is good or bad rule making, it has to do with not giving the executive branch that kind of power, because it will invariably be abused sooner or later.
Too bad you have never lived in a fascist or socialist country, because you'd recognize that companies run by degenerate psychopaths are a minor evil compared to what you are advocating.
It's not an "opinion", it's simply what those terms mean.
How can they be "culturally determined" when, within each culture, many people disagree on which of these are right and wrong? Cultures do not make moral judgments in any consistent sense, only individuals do.
But that's not even my main point. My main point is morality simply cannot be established by majority vote. Take mathematical truths as an analogy. "The majority of Americans believes that the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is about 3.1" is not a mathematical statement or argument, even if it's true; a mathematical statement looks entirely different. Likewise, "The majority of Americans believes that the death penalty is morally right." isn't a statement about right and wrong, it's simply a statement about a poll result.
There may be other reasons you may not want large numbers of Muslim migrants coming to Europe, but economically, immigration is a clear win. It doesn't matter whether the immigrants are skilled or not, and the younger they are the better. It's an even bigger win for Europe with its aging demographics.
Social security is unsustainable in Europe and the US with or without asylum seekers, due to simple demographics: social security is a pyramid scheme that assumes that there are many workers for every retiree.
So it's back to business as usual for Europe.
If these so-called "loopholes" exist in the Clean Air Act, they are probably there because people didn't want to taint the act with draconian criminal penalties and all the problems that brings with it.
The EPA used stupid testing procedures, and Volkswagen took advantage of that. VW should be shamed for that, and maybe even pay a fine. But the correct solution is simply for the EPA to use less stupid testing procedures.
The proposition we are discussing is: If the West had not destabilized the whole region for political ends, we would not be in this mess., not the worthiness of Islam, the personal hygiene and genocidal tendencies of Christian Europe. The simple fact is that the Middle East was unstable long before "the West" got involved. All your other b.s. is irrelevant.
Where did I say it had "moved further to the left"? I said the "American left" has abandoned "free markets, freedom of association, and individual liberties". In fact, I think the American so-called "left" has actually moved more in the direction of fascism. Of course, in practice, and from a libertarian point of view, fascism and socialism are pretty much equally bad: both deny individual liberties, individual choice, and free markets. That is, from a libertarian perspective, it really makes little difference whether Democrats have "moved left" or "moved right". What matters is that Democrats have become a lot more statist and a lot less liberal. Republicans have simply stuck with their theocratic leanings, but at least some minority faction of Republicans still pays lip service to the benefits of free markets and capitalism.
Political positions are multi-dimensional. If you need a simple space to imagine this in, use the 2D space from the "World's Smallest Political Quiz":
http://www.theadvocates.org/qu...
You're absolutely right. And libertarians like neither Reagan, nor Democrats that channel Reagan.
http://www.cato.org/publicatio...
From a libertarian point of view, the ACA is just as much of a disaster as single payer health care would have been. Note that neither the Cato institute nor other libertarian publications had anything good to say about it.
http://www.cato.org/bad-medici...
If the ACA were "more right leaning" and libertarians were "right leaning", they would have to say something good about it, no? Of course, the way Democrats get out of that logical conundrum is simply to attribute the well-deserved vitriol libertarians and free market types heap upon the ACA to racism and partisanship.
Uber is a global brand name and the service works the same way everywhere; I have the same customer service, the same payment mechanism, an English language app that communicates with the driver, and the same kind of information on drivers and service.
Local government-licensed taxi service may or may not be good. But for a traveler, it's hit or miss. Frequently, it's a rip-off or even a fraud. I simply have no interest in dealing with that local b.s. It's the same reason why, when I'm on business travel, I don't go to a lot of quaint local restaurants: it's not worth the risk or cost.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c...
And the evidence that building codes are a necessary and effective way of preventing such disasters is... where? Where is the evidence that the bulk of our building codes are actually anything other than crony capitalism?
Most of the disasters you hear about abroad are in countries that do have building codes.
A large part of the cost of housing in the US these days is due to codes. Yes, that is a big drain on the economy and a big obstacle to housing affordability.
The term "copycats" implies that Toys'R'Us's accounting procedures are somehow the property of the US accounting profession. The fact that these procedures are so complex that they even require consultants to come in and "shadow" workers in order to figure out how to do them properly is itself a testament to the ludicrous complexity of US accounting rules (which are themselves in large part a consequence of lobbying by lawyers and accountants).
As for Toys'R'Us "outsourcing" these jobs to to India, the company is a global company, with half its stores outside the US. If any justification were needed for moving these jobs abroad, that alone would suffice.
I just hope we'll be able to outsource our personal taxes and financial services overseas as well, so that tax preparation and other kinds of personal finance become cheaper and more generic as well.
True, that is what will happen.
What you call "fair competition" is simply a compromise between free market choice and crony capitalism.
But of course! Before the West got involved in the Middle East, it was a peaceful paradise, where unicorns grazed under rainbows, and peoples of all different religions lived together in blissful harmony! It's not like these people ever occupied large parts of Europe, oppressed non-Muslims, or abducted millions of Europeans into slavery, oh no, nothing like that ever happened!
Your response underlines again the cause of the problem: you are confusing "customs" and "morality". Customs are a statement about what the majority does. Morality is a statement about an individual judgment of right and wrong.
Customs depend on society, morality does not. My view that goat fucking is morally wrong doesn't change just because I travel to a place where it is an accepted custom and the majority of people view it as morally right.
Well, be that as it may, your response effectively concedes that if people understood the difference between an Uber and a licensed Taxi, there would be no justification for keeping them from making a free choice between the two modes of transportation. So, the obvious solution is not to regulate Uber out of existence, it is simply to require clear disclosure of the difference: require both Uber and Taxis to spell out their respective terms and liability limits.
Yes, another rip-off by which a politically well connected group of businesses enriches itself, responsible for needlessly driving up housing prices and putting people into poverty. And the irony is, of course, that wealthy people are least affected by that, while poorer people are forced to ignore the regulations but essentially end up as law breakers as a result.
Well, and if you like the "higher standards" that city-licensed cabs provide, you are welcome to pay for them. Your preferences are no justification to force me to pay for them. Personally, I have always disliked the official taxi cabs; I'm actually willing to pay extra for Uber just to avoid the publicly licensed taxi cabs.
Libertarianism means free markets, freedom of association, and individual liberties. Yes, in the US these days, that means "leaning right", because the American left has abandoned those principles. FFS, we have a self-declared socialist running as a serious Democratic candidate.
Do you have any evidence that they have a "private agenda" separate from their public agenda?
And what source of funding do you think doesn't come with an "agenda"? Do you seriously believe that, say, academics don't act in their own economic and political interests, as well as that of their funders, when they publish studies?
The excuse is simple: people like me like to ride Uber in preference to taxis. What other "excuse" is needed?
Uber has made travel much more pleasant. I don't have to worry about how cabs work at your ass end of the world, or whether your dinky little town's cabbies make a habit of ripping off tourists. I can get information on the driver and the car before I get into someone's vehicle. And I don't have to carry cash either.
The rightness or wrongness of an act is not dependent on what "the population in general" believes.
But even your premise is unsupported: where is the evidence that "the population in general" wants taxi licensing and wants to prohibit Uber?
Prohibition was primarily targeted against poor working class people, while the rich had cellars full of alcohol. So, I think it's a good thing that smugglers broke the laws of prohibition, just like I think it's a good thing that there was an underground railroad.
Uber "ignores" nothing; they are a broker between private riders and private ride providers. Everybody knows what they are getting and that the usual "protections" from a government-licensed taxi service don't apply.
No, "the solution" is what we already have in effect in many places: that government licensing of taxis is voluntary. If the government licensing is worth anything, ride operators will all want to get it because their customers demand it. If the taxi licensing is useless, people will simply ignore it.
You haven't named a "good reason" yet.