Once automated cars are in place, companies can simply become dispatching services for privately owned cars. Don't want to pay for parking in the city after your car drops you off at work? Let it drive around town and make money for you, then pick you up at the end of the day to drive you home. Then, it can pickup your neighbors as they leave the local bar at night, and it is ready for you, charged up in the morning.
The point is that if your/Uber's car is making money for you, it is a business, whether you call it a taxi or not.
And despite what libertarians here like to pretend, there is a difference between business and personal activities, and yes this involves Evil Government Regulation and even, oh the horror, taxes.
Amusingly, a vast fleet of non-personally-owned automated cars seems more like socialism than the US's traditional rugged individualism of private vehicle ownership, but hey ho, maybe something good will come out of Uber (once they're nationalised).
Uber does not allow "hail". You must pre-book and request a private car pickup. This is not a hail. A hail is a street-side pickup from real-time signal based on the hailer seeing a taxi and signaling a stop.
For that reason, Uber is explicitly not a taxi in most jurisdiction
Here in the UK, most taxis are only allowed to operate from their office location, or designated taxi ranks (like at airports). I think it's only London black cabs that you can (legally) hail on the street like that.
So Uber is definitely operating as a taxi service here.
The government wants you to believe that you need EXTRA liability insurance and safety provisions than is already covered by your motor insurance.
If I give someone a lift, nothing extra is required. If that someone drops me a few bucks for gas, nothing extra is required.
How is Ubers model *any* different?
If you have an accident and let slip to your insurance company that you were acting as a driver for commercial hire (and I don't see that even Uber fanboys could deny they are), then you will not be covered under your private car insurance (at least here in the UK).
Companies pay commercial insurance rates for a reason. If one of their vehicles ploughs into a school bus, they don't have to find a few million in compensation out of the directors' personal bank accounts.
This appears to be a mainly US problem and does not reflect most people's experience of taxis. Where I live (UK), it certainly doesn't cost the hundreds of thousands that US posters often mention to get into the taxi business. It's not free, but nor is starting most businesses.
unraveling (in many cases) an absurd government granted monopoly
That's all it boils down to, and why Uber are so popular in places like slashdot on the internet and Silicon Valley in real life. Libertarianism.
Taxis are regulated by government, and therefore are bad. Because The Government is just automatically bad.
I look forward eagerly to the disruptive businesses selling cheaper mis-labelled food and drugs, lethal kids' toys, polluted water and fatal cars. Because at least they're not being regulated by The Government any more.
We also have laws against just randomly shooting your neighbors. Either you respect that some laws exist for good reasons or you chuck them all and live in anarchy.
Your logical fallacy is the False Dichotomy. You can also understand that laws against fraud, violence, and theft (the only real crimes) are valid, victimless crimes which are designed to produce revenue and which don't achieve their stated goals are evil (they themselves are a form of fraud, enacted to justify theft and/or violence) and laws which restrict economic activity in a society in which it is a crime to not have money (which is effectively true everywhere in the modern world) are slavery.
So the laws making slavery illegal are themselves slavery? They certainly restrict someone's economic activity, as do laws against child labour.
It's one of the standard rhetorical obfuscation devices on slashdot (and the internet generally) to throw out "that's a strawman/ad hominem/whatever fallacy" even when it's not even slightly applicable. To naive readers, especially if you include a handy link to an explanation of the fallacy, it makes it easy to overlook the actual content of a statement and try to match it to the relevant model.
Uber is definitely within it's rights to try to sway public opinion.
Yes, but Uber are deliberately breaking the law by pretending not to be a taxi service and so not complying with taxi-related laws.
It is absurd to say that you have a "right" to break the law, since I could then claim I have a "right" to murder you by calling it involuntary euthanasia or something.
There was a time when it was illegal for black people to drink from the same drinking fountains as white people. I am not equating these 2 laws. I am only pointing out that sometimes laws are not justified, and disobeying laws isn't always immoral or harmful. In fact it can occasionally be helpful in driving progressive changes to poorly thought out and/or obeselete and/or unfair laws. Surely you do not completely discount civil disobedience as a tactic with no redeeming social value, even if you are not specifically a proponent of Uber.
This argument crops up in every Uber thread. I assume it's on the script for Uber shills. It is both offensive and absurd, much like Uber itself.
"Even though we're competing directly with existing taxi services and taking customers off them, we're not a taxi service and so taxi lawss don't apply to us".
Just fuck off.
If the existing taxi laws are so fucking terrible, get them changed. Oh sorry, I forgot about the mysterious Taxi/Government Cartel which has some sort of Pynchonesque underground control of history.
That must be a US thing. In every job I've had in the UK you negotiate your salary before accepting the job offer and starting work. (Even if the negotiation just involves asking whether they can increase the advertised rate and being told no).
Your final offer letter then contains your salary, holiday entitlement, pension arrangements, etc.
I work in the public sector and it is exactly like that. There are "pay grades" based on job title. Typically there are 3 pay grades within a department: management, supervisor, and peon.... By rate of pay some the management are peons. I WARN YOU FROM MY OWN EXPERIENCE: NEVER GO INTO PUBLIC SECTOR WORK.
In the public sector you sacrifice some things (such as high pay) but gain job stability, reasonable treatment by employers, excellent pensions, relatively generous holiday entitlement, and so on.
Of course, in the UK at least, the idea is to get rid of all these benefits and so either literally or effectively privatise everything.
Price information is vital, no doubt, but why would it have to be 'perfect'? Surely the market is 'free' if you are voluntarily choosing to purchase something that someone else is voluntarily offering; regardless of whether you get an absolute 'best price' or not. Otherwise, you could say that a 'freedom to choose' doesn't exist in reality because we don't have perfect knowledge of anything. Is that a fair standard, or a ludicrous one?
If information is imperfect, some people can profit by it without doing any economically productive work, which is an inefficiency.
This is why there are laws against insider trading, as obviously a stockbroker is going to have an advantage over a random member of the public otherwise in the real world where information is not perfect..
They should really think about naming these planets (at least the Earth-like ones) alongside their Kepler designations. While there is the distinct possibility that we'll find thousands of these things, it would be good PR to have something to call it. The current names are tough to remember and don't do the huge discovery justice.
Wouldn't it be easier to wait until we find planets with actual intelligent life on, and ask the people who live there what they call it?
Why? Even individuals had many productive conversations on this planet when it took weeks to get a reply via snail mail.
There is a fairly clear difference between a delay that is less than 0.1% of your lifespan and a delay that is 2000% of it. In fact, once you're over 100% you are not in any real sense having a conversation.
It is 1400 light years away. It may be a good candidate for life, but we will never know. Even if we point SETI-type radio telescopes at it and monitor it for signals, they will have spent 1400 years getting to us and there is no guarantee that whatever civilization was there is still there. Chances of a "conversation" are nil.
If we detect life-emitting organic compounds on it, it also won't matter. We'd never be able to verify their veracity because we cannot get there.
Interesting discovery, but I can't muster up much excitement about this one.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm pretty sure travel agents are licenced.
Yes, but they're not licensed as taxi companies, and so therefore Uber aren't a taxi company and apparently that is a really big thing.
Once automated cars are in place, companies can simply become dispatching services for privately owned cars. Don't want to pay for parking in the city after your car drops you off at work? Let it drive around town and make money for you, then pick you up at the end of the day to drive you home. Then, it can pickup your neighbors as they leave the local bar at night, and it is ready for you, charged up in the morning.
The point is that if your/Uber's car is making money for you, it is a business, whether you call it a taxi or not.
And despite what libertarians here like to pretend, there is a difference between business and personal activities, and yes this involves Evil Government Regulation and even, oh the horror, taxes.
Amusingly, a vast fleet of non-personally-owned automated cars seems more like socialism than the US's traditional rugged individualism of private vehicle ownership, but hey ho, maybe something good will come out of Uber (once they're nationalised).
Simplistic economics like neatly shaped supply and demand curves do not necessarily reflect reality.
Uber does not allow "hail". You must pre-book and request a private car pickup. This is not a hail. A hail is a street-side pickup from real-time signal based on the hailer seeing a taxi and signaling a stop.
For that reason, Uber is explicitly not a taxi in most jurisdiction
Here in the UK, most taxis are only allowed to operate from their office location, or designated taxi ranks (like at airports). I think it's only London black cabs that you can (legally) hail on the street like that.
So Uber is definitely operating as a taxi service here.
The government wants you to believe that you need EXTRA liability insurance and safety provisions than is already covered by your motor insurance. If I give someone a lift, nothing extra is required. If that someone drops me a few bucks for gas, nothing extra is required. How is Ubers model *any* different?
If you have an accident and let slip to your insurance company that you were acting as a driver for commercial hire (and I don't see that even Uber fanboys could deny they are), then you will not be covered under your private car insurance (at least here in the UK).
Companies pay commercial insurance rates for a reason. If one of their vehicles ploughs into a school bus, they don't have to find a few million in compensation out of the directors' personal bank accounts.
I have serious issues with the 'medallion' system
This appears to be a mainly US problem and does not reflect most people's experience of taxis. Where I live (UK), it certainly doesn't cost the hundreds of thousands that US posters often mention to get into the taxi business. It's not free, but nor is starting most businesses.
If regulations exist that diminish your ability to acquire a chocolate bar,
and they were created by legislation spawned by powerful corporations successfully suppressing competition,
would you be wrong taking the sweets?
Um, yes.
I never said they shouldn't be punished.
OK, but they shouldn't be defending their actions by saying "we're not breaking taxi regulations because we're not really a taxi service".
Rosa Parks didn't say "I 'm not actually black, so you shouldn't arrest me for sitting in the wrong seat on the bus".
unraveling (in many cases) an absurd government granted monopoly
That's all it boils down to, and why Uber are so popular in places like slashdot on the internet and Silicon Valley in real life. Libertarianism.
Taxis are regulated by government, and therefore are bad. Because The Government is just automatically bad.
I look forward eagerly to the disruptive businesses selling cheaper mis-labelled food and drugs, lethal kids' toys, polluted water and fatal cars. Because at least they're not being regulated by The Government any more.
We also have laws against just randomly shooting your neighbors. Either you respect that some laws exist for good reasons or you chuck them all and live in anarchy.
Your logical fallacy is the False Dichotomy. You can also understand that laws against fraud, violence, and theft (the only real crimes) are valid, victimless crimes which are designed to produce revenue and which don't achieve their stated goals are evil (they themselves are a form of fraud, enacted to justify theft and/or violence) and laws which restrict economic activity in a society in which it is a crime to not have money (which is effectively true everywhere in the modern world) are slavery.
So the laws making slavery illegal are themselves slavery? They certainly restrict someone's economic activity, as do laws against child labour.
It's one of the standard rhetorical obfuscation devices on slashdot (and the internet generally) to throw out "that's a strawman/ad hominem/whatever fallacy" even when it's not even slightly applicable. To naive readers, especially if you include a handy link to an explanation of the fallacy, it makes it easy to overlook the actual content of a statement and try to match it to the relevant model.
Uber is definitely within it's rights to try to sway public opinion.
Yes, but Uber are deliberately breaking the law by pretending not to be a taxi service and so not complying with taxi-related laws.
It is absurd to say that you have a "right" to break the law, since I could then claim I have a "right" to murder you by calling it involuntary euthanasia or something.
If corporations are people and money is speech, then Uber could be a modern day Martin Luther King.
As corporations aren't people and money is not speech, your argument is slightly flawed.
There was a time when it was illegal for black people to drink from the same drinking fountains as white people. I am not equating these 2 laws. I am only pointing out that sometimes laws are not justified, and disobeying laws isn't always immoral or harmful. In fact it can occasionally be helpful in driving progressive changes to poorly thought out and/or obeselete and/or unfair laws. Surely you do not completely discount civil disobedience as a tactic with no redeeming social value, even if you are not specifically a proponent of Uber.
This argument crops up in every Uber thread. I assume it's on the script for Uber shills. It is both offensive and absurd, much like Uber itself.
"Even though we're competing directly with existing taxi services and taking customers off them, we're not a taxi service and so taxi lawss don't apply to us".
Just fuck off.
If the existing taxi laws are so fucking terrible, get them changed. Oh sorry, I forgot about the mysterious Taxi/Government Cartel which has some sort of Pynchonesque underground control of history.
The problem is, something like 90% of people think they're above average
It's exactly the same with driving: almost everyone thinks that they are better at driving than average, and that the roads are full of idiots.
Your final offer letter then contains your salary, holiday entitlement, pension arrangements, etc.
I work in the public sector and it is exactly like that. There are "pay grades" based on job title. Typically there are 3 pay grades within a department: management, supervisor, and peon.... By rate of pay some the management are peons. I WARN YOU FROM MY OWN EXPERIENCE: NEVER GO INTO PUBLIC SECTOR WORK.
In the public sector you sacrifice some things (such as high pay) but gain job stability, reasonable treatment by employers, excellent pensions, relatively generous holiday entitlement, and so on.
Of course, in the UK at least, the idea is to get rid of all these benefits and so either literally or effectively privatise everything.
Price information is vital, no doubt, but why would it have to be 'perfect'? Surely the market is 'free' if you are voluntarily choosing to purchase something that someone else is voluntarily offering; regardless of whether you get an absolute 'best price' or not. Otherwise, you could say that a 'freedom to choose' doesn't exist in reality because we don't have perfect knowledge of anything. Is that a fair standard, or a ludicrous one?
If information is imperfect, some people can profit by it without doing any economically productive work, which is an inefficiency.
This is why there are laws against insider trading, as obviously a stockbroker is going to have an advantage over a random member of the public otherwise in the real world where information is not perfect..
If you want to encourage your employees to quit, reducing their salaries is one way to do that.
In most sane places this is called "constructive dismissal" and you can sue your (ex-)employer for doing it.
Self-evidently, if employers could get round laws preventing unfair dismissal by reducing your salary to zero and waiting for you to quit, they would.
They should really think about naming these planets (at least the Earth-like ones) alongside their Kepler designations. While there is the distinct possibility that we'll find thousands of these things, it would be good PR to have something to call it. The current names are tough to remember and don't do the huge discovery justice.
Wouldn't it be easier to wait until we find planets with actual intelligent life on, and ask the people who live there what they call it?
Well it's been all but proven that the future influences the past
So how come no one has corrected your idiotic statement from the future?
Chances of a "conversation" are nil.
Why? Even individuals had many productive conversations on this planet when it took weeks to get a reply via snail mail.
There is a fairly clear difference between a delay that is less than 0.1% of your lifespan and a delay that is 2000% of it. In fact, once you're over 100% you are not in any real sense having a conversation.
Nah, we'll just send the message through a parallel universe with different topology where the distance to Kepler 452b is just 1.6cm.
Parallel universes can't interact or communicate with each other.
The proof is that we have had no such communications. (Same argument as that against time travel).
If there are a (near?)infinite number of parallel universes, you'd expect one of them to have managed it by now.
It's a similar argument to that against time travel.
How does one have a negative chance of something happening?
Even if you have apparent positive proof that it has happened, logic forces you to discount it.
It is 1400 light years away. It may be a good candidate for life, but we will never know. Even if we point SETI-type radio telescopes at it and monitor it for signals, they will have spent 1400 years getting to us and there is no guarantee that whatever civilization was there is still there. Chances of a "conversation" are nil.
If we detect life-emitting organic compounds on it, it also won't matter. We'd never be able to verify their veracity because we cannot get there.
Interesting discovery, but I can't muster up much excitement about this one.
*puts on Space Nutter hat*
It's just an engineering problem.