Why is the duty of a paid driver to care for the old, disabled or children? Their responsibility is simply to transport an individual safely from point A to point B. Any extra services are optional and a company that wants to provide those can, even charging an extra fee if that makes sense for their business model.
Your pizza boy example shows the hypocrisy of your viewpoint. If they are so dangerous to the public then shouldn't they be equally regulated, if not more so? Why do you think it's okay for incompetent drivers to fill the streets of London as long as they don't do it with a willing passenger?
You have a fundamental difference with Basil that will never be resolved, this is crystal clear when he says that smoking is never good for anyone. His philosophy is not only impractical, but hypocritical as almost everyone who espouses such a view takes part in some activity that is not for his own long term best interest or that of society.
However, what you have to acknowledge is the external costs imposed by individual actions. If individuals truly had informed consent and took responsibility for their actions then there would be no issue. But they don't. Take the so called ban on large sodas, for example. It is an imperfect solution, but a reasonable one. If someone really wants 64oz of soda they can still buy two 32oz sodas, it is just slightly more expensive. More importantly it adjusts their behavior to a typically more healthy and sane direction, one that won't cause them long term health costs (which are often subsidized by the rest of us who make better choices).
Likewise, I'd be totally okay with someone who opted out of wearing a seatbelt if they guaranteed the costs of their medical care and were okay with us leaving them dying by the side of the road if their coverage wasn't good enough. Until we're willing to make those hard choices (i.e. never) we do have to put in some limits, simply as a practical alternative.
Ability to drive, insurance and suitable vehicle are all things that every driver should have. Why add extra constraints that you wouldn't have for a pizza delivery boy or even someone with a long commute?
It may not be a huge barrier, but it's still an unnecessary barrier without a legitimate or fair purpose, IMO. At one point it probably made sense to license drivers who you call to your house or who pick you up on the street - it provided at least a minimal level of safety and reliability for customers. In cities or countries with high crime and corrupt or incompetent police it might still make sense. However, now that just about everyone in most western countries has a mobile phone and internet the safety and accountability has gone way up so the barriers to entry should likewise go down.
All the problems you describe can be solved by the economists that you disparage and with newer technology it's really not that hard. You implement a road use fee (by mile or by time) so that the roads aren't clogged with useless or unused vehicles (e.g. taxis driving around with no passengers). You allow them to charge extra to drive people "south of the river" (and charge less to come back so taxis don't come back empty).
This is very different and much more flexible than the crude methods of limiting the number of taxis by law or mandating that drivers MUST take you to any destination you specify. It's simply about allowing the market enough flexibility to find the right equilibrium while forcing drivers to pay for the external costs (e.g. pollution, congestion,...) of their activity.
If taxi companies had a quality app with the same features as Uber and the same level of skill and professionalism as the typical Uber driver thus providing the overall Uber experience then Uber would never have been created. They didn't do that and now they're playing catch up, but it's probably too late for most of them.
Good for you! I fully support your efforts to get rid of ridiculous, outdated laws - you are truly a man of principle. Of course, part of being such a standup guy is paying the price when you get caught, even if it's unfair, so you should be prepared for that too.
I'm totally with you that jaywalking should not be a crime when it does not cause a hazard, but you're going to have to explain to me why you think zipping through a red light should not be illegal or that a day care need not be licensed.
Breaking laws just because you think you're special and you think you can get away with it just makes you an asshole. Not getting a license for your daughter to babysit a neighbor == principle. Not getting a license to run a day care with dozens of toddlers == asshole. Can you really not see a difference?
However, someone who's doing this is likely going to be driving far more than your average driver. Which is where the more likely to result in an accident thing comes from.
Which is why insurance for all drivers would be more accurate if they charged per mile driven, rather than use this crude estimation.
Also, the "higher risk" is mostly due to commercial drivers driving ALL the time while "normal" drivers will only do so when they need the car, i.e. the higher risk is due to them being on the road far more often and far longer.
If drivers are significantly more likely to get into an accident because they are tired and overworked (see Tracy Morgan incident) then they should be taken off the road, not charged more for insurance.
Because we routinely hold people who engage in some activity for profit to a higher standard than those that do it for fun.
That is far from a universal standard, but even if it were I'm asking why that should be?
It's the difference between flying yourself and running an air taxi, between having friends over for dinner and opening a restaurant.
Opening a restaurant or flying a jumbo jet are large operations that require special skills and special attention from the government. An individual who flies you in his private plane which he has flown a hundred times or a cook who comes to your house to cook for you should not need a special license or qualification, even if they're paid. I also don't see the need to license every pizza delivery boy, maid, gardener, or babysitter either. Perhaps a business which employees them, but not they themselves.
Whether or not it is fair depends on how much you paid for those licenses and how much you got out of them, doesn't it? If you weren't making a lot of extra money per year because of the license than you were a fool for buying it in the first place. If you bought one last month and haven't had a chance to recoup some of the costs then you're a fool for not seeing the potential risk to your business from Uber, Lyft, et al.
I don't think your example proves your point at all.
First, I don't think it says anywhere in that article that she will be fired from her job. It says that she won't be given a guaranteed job and that if politicians had their way she might be let go ahead of others, if layoffs are necessary.
It may be that one years worth of data is aberrant, but if a teacher consistently underperforms then he deserves to lose his job if there are other more qualified teachers available. If the tests and the metrics used to evaluate teachers are truly irrelevant then, by all means, they should be scrapped in favor of better ones, but there is no evidence to support that theory. IF, as you say, these were already good students then that should be reflected in the formula (going from 3.5 to 3.6 may be more impressive than going from 3.0 to 3.25) - if it isn't then you tweak the formula rather than throw it out.
Statisticians would NOT tell you that that 7% is meaningless and even with the low confidence she would be in the top half, but just by a tiny amount. If you read in your medical studies that there was a 7% correlation for a drug with blindness, but that it might be 0% or as high as 52% would you still take that drug? Do you still think it's NO correlation or that that 7% number is not worth considering?
Of course you wouldn't want a ticket from a cop if you knew you were going 35, that is not the situation here. If we knew for certain which were the good teachers and which were the bad we wouldn't have a problem. The analogy is that the cop knows driver A was going between 35 and 70 and driver B was going between 60 and 100. If he has to give a ticket to one of them who does he give it to.
If the teacher in question consistently does poorly relative to other teachers on the best metrics that we can devise then perhaps she's not as good a teacher as everybody seems to think. It seems a bit of a double standard to praise her for the number of students she sends to Stuyvesant or Bronx Science which are based on standardized testing and then say that teachers don't significantly affect standardized testing.
This is not to say that any system that uses some rigid formula as PART of it's system for evaluating teachers will ever be perfect. Some good teachers may not be able to work in the system, but if it weeds out a ton of bad teachers then it is worth it. If that misdiagnosed "good" teacher is really good then he/she will easily be able to find work as a teacher in a private school or other profession as the teacher in your article did/can. Also, as you and other stated elsewhere it is preferable to turn "bad" teachers into "good" teachers wherever possible, but without some metrics in place those "bad" teachers will never be identified (or motivated).
I consistently feel the same way in all the cases you mentioned. I have no issues using "Luft" to have a private pilot in his Cessna fly me to Las Vegas for a fee - no special FAA license required as he is doing the exact same thing he has been qualified by them to do (take off, fly and land his plane safely). I have no problem with using "Lyfe" to hire a private chef to come to my house to prepare a meal for me without requiring a special food preparation license, inspections or oversight. I rely on the government to license the minimal skills required for the task and the services (Lyft, Luft and Life) themselves to inform me as to which providers go above and beyond that in terms of quality and professionalism.
That seems like a reason to increase the requirements for a basic driver's license, instead. If someone is a competent driver (whatever the state says that is) then that should be the same whether they are driving themselves, their friends, or a paid passenger. If they're not competent then they shouldn't be driving under any circumstances.
I could see a case made that drivers who drive a large number of miles per day or per year could be subjected to more rigorous requirements, but that would equally apply to a Lyft driver or someone who had a very long commute, IMO. The goal there being that you don't decrease the number of bad drivers, just the relative number of bad drivers on the road at any given time.
Repeating myself since you skipped it the first time:
Didn't skip it, just pointing out that you refuse to address the obvious contradiction that either good teachers make a significant difference in a child's education or they don't. If they don't then why should we pay better or more experienced teachers any more? If they do, then let's figure out which teachers are better and reward them for it. You can't have it both ways, no matter how hard you try.
Thus the problem in standardized testing and "merit" based pay.
It's a problem, one that happens all the time in every industry, every profession, every incidence of human interaction. It's not an insurmountable problem, unless you just refuse to address it.
Teachers are already measured. What they are "afraid of" is nakedly bullshit measures like...standardized testing, "merit" based pay, and the farce of forcing schools to compete for money. All of which undermines the professionalism and compensation of the job - by design.
Again, you want to have it both ways. Are some teachers better than others or not? If the millions of teachers can come up with a better system than standardized testing, then we'd be totally okay with it. However, sticking your head in the sand and saying that there is absolutely no way to tell a good teacher from a bad teacher just makes you look silly.
Willfully obtuse. Unless you're going to tell me that you tell your supervisors that you shouldn't have raises based on expereince because there's little difference between your work now, and when you entered your profession 5, 10, 20, 30 years ago?'
No, just like you I want to get paid far more than I'm worth. However, if I were going to set up a system to pay other people, I would do it fairly, which means that I would pay them for their current skills (which include their relevant experience). Just being around for 20 years doesn't automatically make you better, in some cases it makes you worse.
Tell that to this girl.
First off, I tolerated your analogy in your previous post even though it was a ridiculous extreme - one minor mistake by an elementary school teacher is not going to cripple a kid for life. However, even in this case I would still rather have 50% more children getting the necessary surgery than pay twice as much to a doctor who can better handle a very rare case.
Grossly over paying? Please, not one of you Bircher-Baggers would touch a teaching position for less than six figures, so take your cheapsake crocodile tears somewhere else.
If teacher A would gladly do a job for $50k and teacher B who is 5% better wants $90k, then yes, teacher B is grossly overpaid. It is completely irrelevant how much Lebron James or the person who serves your McNuggets earns.
Most states in the US have a "chauffeur license" needed to drive anyone commercially, that applies across taxis, livery cars (limos) and personal drivers. That should really be a requirement here for Lyft and similar services.
I could say that my personal gripe is that people assume Uber's model is bad, and that deregulation will lead to anarchy. So let's agree that people who make unfounded assumptions should both be griped at.
It's hard not to see that Uber is better in many ways than the existing model and it fills an important niche, so in that sense it's hard to say it's not good. There is certainly a case to be made that there are downsides, but I haven't seen any that aren't fixable. This is not to say that the current Uber model is the best possible, that it is the only viable system or that there shouldn't be a completely new set of regulations that apply to all services (e.g. a fair cost for traffic congestion based on time of day, miles driven, etc.).
Of course the taxis would like the rules to apply to both, because it would saddle their competition with outdated regulations that don't necessarily apply to them or make sense. For example, requiring a driver to have encyclopedic knowledge of the street map is next to useless in today's GPS world. Uber is a business and I'm sure they'd take whatever advantage they can get, but I'm sure they'd settle for reasonable rules for the modern age that applied equally to all. That seems fair to me and the hacks being obstructive (in both a physical and regulatory sense) is not going to win any fans to their side.
What recourse does the passenger have if they get into an accident in their own car, or if a friend were driving them, or if they get hit by a random driver while crossing the street? There seem to be a lot of assumptions in your post that I, personally, don't find warranted.
There are many legitimate reasons to limit the number of cars available for hire
Granted, but such a crude tool like limiting the number of medallions is one of the old methods that made sense long ago, but doesn't any more. Without services like Uber it would be nearly impossible to implement a more modern, more efficient and more useful solution.
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Why is the duty of a paid driver to care for the old, disabled or children? Their responsibility is simply to transport an individual safely from point A to point B. Any extra services are optional and a company that wants to provide those can, even charging an extra fee if that makes sense for their business model.
Your pizza boy example shows the hypocrisy of your viewpoint. If they are so dangerous to the public then shouldn't they be equally regulated, if not more so? Why do you think it's okay for incompetent drivers to fill the streets of London as long as they don't do it with a willing passenger?
You have a fundamental difference with Basil that will never be resolved, this is crystal clear when he says that smoking is never good for anyone. His philosophy is not only impractical, but hypocritical as almost everyone who espouses such a view takes part in some activity that is not for his own long term best interest or that of society.
However, what you have to acknowledge is the external costs imposed by individual actions. If individuals truly had informed consent and took responsibility for their actions then there would be no issue. But they don't. Take the so called ban on large sodas, for example. It is an imperfect solution, but a reasonable one. If someone really wants 64oz of soda they can still buy two 32oz sodas, it is just slightly more expensive. More importantly it adjusts their behavior to a typically more healthy and sane direction, one that won't cause them long term health costs (which are often subsidized by the rest of us who make better choices).
Likewise, I'd be totally okay with someone who opted out of wearing a seatbelt if they guaranteed the costs of their medical care and were okay with us leaving them dying by the side of the road if their coverage wasn't good enough. Until we're willing to make those hard choices (i.e. never) we do have to put in some limits, simply as a practical alternative.
Ability to drive, insurance and suitable vehicle are all things that every driver should have. Why add extra constraints that you wouldn't have for a pizza delivery boy or even someone with a long commute?
It may not be a huge barrier, but it's still an unnecessary barrier without a legitimate or fair purpose, IMO. At one point it probably made sense to license drivers who you call to your house or who pick you up on the street - it provided at least a minimal level of safety and reliability for customers. In cities or countries with high crime and corrupt or incompetent police it might still make sense. However, now that just about everyone in most western countries has a mobile phone and internet the safety and accountability has gone way up so the barriers to entry should likewise go down.
All the problems you describe can be solved by the economists that you disparage and with newer technology it's really not that hard. You implement a road use fee (by mile or by time) so that the roads aren't clogged with useless or unused vehicles (e.g. taxis driving around with no passengers). You allow them to charge extra to drive people "south of the river" (and charge less to come back so taxis don't come back empty).
This is very different and much more flexible than the crude methods of limiting the number of taxis by law or mandating that drivers MUST take you to any destination you specify. It's simply about allowing the market enough flexibility to find the right equilibrium while forcing drivers to pay for the external costs (e.g. pollution, congestion, ...) of their activity.
If taxi companies had a quality app with the same features as Uber and the same level of skill and professionalism as the typical Uber driver thus providing the overall Uber experience then Uber would never have been created. They didn't do that and now they're playing catch up, but it's probably too late for most of them.
FWIW, you were clear the first time.
But breaking the rules is absolutely unfair to the competition that feels compelled to follow them because of ethics or morality.
It wasn't until I saw this part that I realized your entire post was meant to be ironic. Good job, made me laugh.
Good for you! I fully support your efforts to get rid of ridiculous, outdated laws - you are truly a man of principle. Of course, part of being such a standup guy is paying the price when you get caught, even if it's unfair, so you should be prepared for that too.
I'm totally with you that jaywalking should not be a crime when it does not cause a hazard, but you're going to have to explain to me why you think zipping through a red light should not be illegal or that a day care need not be licensed.
Breaking laws just because you think you're special and you think you can get away with it just makes you an asshole. Not getting a license for your daughter to babysit a neighbor == principle. Not getting a license to run a day care with dozens of toddlers == asshole. Can you really not see a difference?
However, someone who's doing this is likely going to be driving far more than your average driver. Which is where the more likely to result in an accident thing comes from.
Which is why insurance for all drivers would be more accurate if they charged per mile driven, rather than use this crude estimation.
Also, the "higher risk" is mostly due to commercial drivers driving ALL the time while "normal" drivers will only do so when they need the car, i.e. the higher risk is due to them being on the road far more often and far longer.
If drivers are significantly more likely to get into an accident because they are tired and overworked (see Tracy Morgan incident) then they should be taken off the road, not charged more for insurance.
Even if they have no legal obligation it may still make sense from a business or public relations standpoint.
Because we routinely hold people who engage in some activity for profit to a higher standard than those that do it for fun.
That is far from a universal standard, but even if it were I'm asking why that should be?
It's the difference between flying yourself and running an air taxi, between having friends over for dinner and opening a restaurant.
Opening a restaurant or flying a jumbo jet are large operations that require special skills and special attention from the government. An individual who flies you in his private plane which he has flown a hundred times or a cook who comes to your house to cook for you should not need a special license or qualification, even if they're paid. I also don't see the need to license every pizza delivery boy, maid, gardener, or babysitter either. Perhaps a business which employees them, but not they themselves.
Whether or not it is fair depends on how much you paid for those licenses and how much you got out of them, doesn't it? If you weren't making a lot of extra money per year because of the license than you were a fool for buying it in the first place. If you bought one last month and haven't had a chance to recoup some of the costs then you're a fool for not seeing the potential risk to your business from Uber, Lyft, et al.
http://autos.aol.com/article/A...
In any case, you can verify what I said is already reality with a trivial google.
If he were willing and able to do that simple task he would have already. For some people reality is overrated.
I don't think your example proves your point at all.
First, I don't think it says anywhere in that article that she will be fired from her job. It says that she won't be given a guaranteed job and that if politicians had their way she might be let go ahead of others, if layoffs are necessary.
It may be that one years worth of data is aberrant, but if a teacher consistently underperforms then he deserves to lose his job if there are other more qualified teachers available. If the tests and the metrics used to evaluate teachers are truly irrelevant then, by all means, they should be scrapped in favor of better ones, but there is no evidence to support that theory. IF, as you say, these were already good students then that should be reflected in the formula (going from 3.5 to 3.6 may be more impressive than going from 3.0 to 3.25) - if it isn't then you tweak the formula rather than throw it out.
Statisticians would NOT tell you that that 7% is meaningless and even with the low confidence she would be in the top half, but just by a tiny amount. If you read in your medical studies that there was a 7% correlation for a drug with blindness, but that it might be 0% or as high as 52% would you still take that drug? Do you still think it's NO correlation or that that 7% number is not worth considering?
Of course you wouldn't want a ticket from a cop if you knew you were going 35, that is not the situation here. If we knew for certain which were the good teachers and which were the bad we wouldn't have a problem. The analogy is that the cop knows driver A was going between 35 and 70 and driver B was going between 60 and 100. If he has to give a ticket to one of them who does he give it to.
If the teacher in question consistently does poorly relative to other teachers on the best metrics that we can devise then perhaps she's not as good a teacher as everybody seems to think. It seems a bit of a double standard to praise her for the number of students she sends to Stuyvesant or Bronx Science which are based on standardized testing and then say that teachers don't significantly affect standardized testing.
This is not to say that any system that uses some rigid formula as PART of it's system for evaluating teachers will ever be perfect. Some good teachers may not be able to work in the system, but if it weeds out a ton of bad teachers then it is worth it. If that misdiagnosed "good" teacher is really good then he/she will easily be able to find work as a teacher in a private school or other profession as the teacher in your article did/can. Also, as you and other stated elsewhere it is preferable to turn "bad" teachers into "good" teachers wherever possible, but without some metrics in place those "bad" teachers will never be identified (or motivated).
I consistently feel the same way in all the cases you mentioned. I have no issues using "Luft" to have a private pilot in his Cessna fly me to Las Vegas for a fee - no special FAA license required as he is doing the exact same thing he has been qualified by them to do (take off, fly and land his plane safely). I have no problem with using "Lyfe" to hire a private chef to come to my house to prepare a meal for me without requiring a special food preparation license, inspections or oversight. I rely on the government to license the minimal skills required for the task and the services (Lyft, Luft and Life) themselves to inform me as to which providers go above and beyond that in terms of quality and professionalism.
That seems like a reason to increase the requirements for a basic driver's license, instead. If someone is a competent driver (whatever the state says that is) then that should be the same whether they are driving themselves, their friends, or a paid passenger. If they're not competent then they shouldn't be driving under any circumstances.
I could see a case made that drivers who drive a large number of miles per day or per year could be subjected to more rigorous requirements, but that would equally apply to a Lyft driver or someone who had a very long commute, IMO. The goal there being that you don't decrease the number of bad drivers, just the relative number of bad drivers on the road at any given time.
You're assuming that using a taxi actually reduces the number of traffic fatalities. That's not clear.
Although you are correct that they care more about keeping people from drinking than actual traffic safety.
Repeating myself since you skipped it the first time:
Didn't skip it, just pointing out that you refuse to address the obvious contradiction that either good teachers make a significant difference in a child's education or they don't. If they don't then why should we pay better or more experienced teachers any more? If they do, then let's figure out which teachers are better and reward them for it. You can't have it both ways, no matter how hard you try.
Thus the problem in standardized testing and "merit" based pay.
It's a problem, one that happens all the time in every industry, every profession, every incidence of human interaction. It's not an insurmountable problem, unless you just refuse to address it.
Teachers are already measured. What they are "afraid of" is nakedly bullshit measures like...standardized testing, "merit" based pay, and the farce of forcing schools to compete for money. All of which undermines the professionalism and compensation of the job - by design.
Again, you want to have it both ways. Are some teachers better than others or not? If the millions of teachers can come up with a better system than standardized testing, then we'd be totally okay with it. However, sticking your head in the sand and saying that there is absolutely no way to tell a good teacher from a bad teacher just makes you look silly.
Willfully obtuse. Unless you're going to tell me that you tell your supervisors that you shouldn't have raises based on expereince because there's little difference between your work now, and when you entered your profession 5, 10, 20, 30 years ago?'
No, just like you I want to get paid far more than I'm worth. However, if I were going to set up a system to pay other people, I would do it fairly, which means that I would pay them for their current skills (which include their relevant experience). Just being around for 20 years doesn't automatically make you better, in some cases it makes you worse.
Tell that to this girl.
First off, I tolerated your analogy in your previous post even though it was a ridiculous extreme - one minor mistake by an elementary school teacher is not going to cripple a kid for life. However, even in this case I would still rather have 50% more children getting the necessary surgery than pay twice as much to a doctor who can better handle a very rare case.
Grossly over paying? Please, not one of you Bircher-Baggers would touch a teaching position for less than six figures, so take your cheapsake crocodile tears somewhere else.
If teacher A would gladly do a job for $50k and teacher B who is 5% better wants $90k, then yes, teacher B is grossly overpaid. It is completely irrelevant how much Lebron James or the person who serves your McNuggets earns.
Most states in the US have a "chauffeur license" needed to drive anyone commercially, that applies across taxis, livery cars (limos) and personal drivers. That should really be a requirement here for Lyft and similar services.
Why?
I could say that my personal gripe is that people assume Uber's model is bad, and that deregulation will lead to anarchy. So let's agree that people who make unfounded assumptions should both be griped at.
It's hard not to see that Uber is better in many ways than the existing model and it fills an important niche, so in that sense it's hard to say it's not good. There is certainly a case to be made that there are downsides, but I haven't seen any that aren't fixable. This is not to say that the current Uber model is the best possible, that it is the only viable system or that there shouldn't be a completely new set of regulations that apply to all services (e.g. a fair cost for traffic congestion based on time of day, miles driven, etc.).
Of course the taxis would like the rules to apply to both, because it would saddle their competition with outdated regulations that don't necessarily apply to them or make sense. For example, requiring a driver to have encyclopedic knowledge of the street map is next to useless in today's GPS world. Uber is a business and I'm sure they'd take whatever advantage they can get, but I'm sure they'd settle for reasonable rules for the modern age that applied equally to all. That seems fair to me and the hacks being obstructive (in both a physical and regulatory sense) is not going to win any fans to their side.
What recourse does the passenger have if they get into an accident in their own car, or if a friend were driving them, or if they get hit by a random driver while crossing the street? There seem to be a lot of assumptions in your post that I, personally, don't find warranted.
There are many legitimate reasons to limit the number of cars available for hire
Granted, but such a crude tool like limiting the number of medallions is one of the old methods that made sense long ago, but doesn't any more. Without services like Uber it would be nearly impossible to implement a more modern, more efficient and more useful solution.