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by blackwater 12/31/2018, 12:19pm PST |
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In a lot of cases, what they did was technically legal because the local regulations only applied to cabs rather than to limo-type services. In other cases it was probably not legal. In any case, it's clear that they sidestepped the intention of a lot of local ordnances.
How you feel about this depends a lot on how you feel about the local rules limiting the number of taxi drivers. If you think they were wise and virtuous rules protecting the public from sketchy drivers, and ensuring that drivers could make a good living, you probably don't ike Uber. If you think they were unecessary restrictions benefitting a small group of rightsholders at the expense of the public, you probably like Uber.
Personally, I incline towards the latter view. In a lot of cases, the people who owned the taxi medallions and the people who drove the taxis were not the same people. So drivers were still not getting paid a lot. People who owned medallions were getting paid a lot. (Of course, it's a big country, and maybe there are cases where you couldn't rent a medallion. But in NYC at least, this was the case.)
I also think that the security aspects are overblown. The cashier at the gas station could pull a gun on you and shoot you. Should somebody be background screening all those guys? At some point you just have to accept that most people are not psycho killers and we'll have to have cops to catch the small number who are. It's not like privacy even exists any more, so the cops will have an easy time finding most of these clowns. At least when using a ride-sharing service, the guy has a GPS beacon active, you know what his license plate is, and so on. How is this worse than catching a random cab by the side of the street?
I'm writing this about Uber, but you could say the same thing about Lyft and all the other copycats.
As a side note, it seems like Uber's marketing department is hilariously terrible, which probably doesn't help people's perception of the company. And Travis Kalanick is the one person on earth who actually fits the press's stereotype of a "tech bro." That probably doesn't help public perception. |
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