While this is a good general topic, nowhere is it more true than in human spaceflight:
Sometimes the new competition wins anyway. Uber has been good at generating a large base of mobile customers, then using them to pressure politicians: When New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio went after Uber, Uber used its app to let its users pressure de Blasio.
Happy Uber customer Kate Upton weighed in, producing more pushback than de Blasio could withstand — especially when it turned out he’d gotten over $550,000 in donations from taxicab interests.
Other services aren’t so lucky, and the ability to do an end run around regulators, though welcome, isn’t universal. And if, on top of setting up your lemonade stand, you need licenses, permits, lobbyists and subsidies to make it, not many new lemonade stands will get started. That’s good news for existing lemonade stands, and for the politicians they support, but it’s bad news for everyone else.
Including people who actually want to affordably accomplish things in space.
I wonder if there is something about monopolies (not the capitalist kind, but the socialist kind) that raises the cost of a service. This is weird, because I thought any time the government stepped in it was for the good of the consumer.
I must be wrong. No, I can’t be wrong because the government does not have any graft or corruption whatsoever.
Jim, a little help here?
There’s no consumers in the “public good”, only workers.
It isn’t a state monopoly. It’s a segment with state enforced licensing. e.g. a doctor needs a license to practice. a taxi driver needs a license to practice as well. Does it increase minimum prices? Hell yeah. Ostensibly the law exists (supposedly) to protect both consumers and the taxi drivers from egregious behavior.
I’ll give you some examples of rules in the segment. The drivers are supposed to use a publicly affixed price table of some format, their meters are supposed to be inspected to ensure they aren’t somehow misleadingly gouging the client by claiming they drove more than they did. Some cities, e.g. New Orleans, have a city established fixed price for some popular routes to ensure tourists aren’t gouged and to keep them coming to the city. Some places, e.g. here in Europe, also have laws so that a taxi driver can own a gun to protect himself if he works at weird hours in bad neighborhoods. The taxi can also install bulletproof separators if it works in such areas.
The drivers are also obligatorily registered and identified and the taxis must be clearly marked to make it easier to catch any misbehaving taxis (e.g. some people use taxis and pseudo-taxis to kidnap people especially tourists in airports). One example where this happened with an Uber driver recently was India in case you don’t remember.
Then there are those places which actually earn money by selling taxi licenses. I don’t dispute it much. Taxis do travel a lot more on average than a regular car and often have dedicated parking spaces so it’s not incomprehensible that they should pay more taxes for road and parking place upkeep.
Uber needs to think of ways to provide these facilities in some way to cities or they will keep getting sued and banned all over the world.
e.g. you can dispense with the meters if you use a system like theirs. You can use client and taxi driver GPS data to know if there is a mismatch or not.
But the rest needs to be attended somehow. You can be sure they will start requiring them to disclose driver personal information, doing a background check on drivers, and yes for them to pay local taxes.
When your argument is predicated on the notion that driving a taxi requires the same regulated skills as practicing medicine, you have established yourself as a homer for the government.
Do you know what else requires the same regulated skills as driving a taxi? Driving a car. Yet, we have lowered the standards for obtaining a license with the argument that previous standards prevented minorities and hampers motor voter. Prior to motor voter, obtaining a licenses required a skills test where an officer road along and observed the operators ability to drive a car. Now there is no skills test, and the written test has been simplified such that a mastery of any language (i.e. being literate) is required. But hey, we supposedly have more equality.
If you want to have regulatory standards, raise the standards for all drivers. Don’t try to explain that taxi driver is an equilavent profession as being a doctor or nurse. It truly is laughable to attempt that equivalency.
I do like the notion that Über needs to provide various facilities to governments, because that seems to be exactly Glenn’s article. Über is being attacked because it is not paying sufficient graft. That argument undercuts everything else, because it is not about prevention of bad behaviors or improved driving standards. It is about paying to play. It is not enough to pay for your license, your cars registration, vehicle inspection, tolls, and fuel taxes. You also have to pay for a token made artificially rare, because money can be made in the trade of those tokens.
The road test hasn’t been eliminated, because of minorities, motor voter, or anything else. This website gives instructions for scheduling a road test in all 50 states:
http://www.dmv.org/appointments.php
How about standards for voters based on knowledge of the law and governance, rather than language or place of birth?
Place of birth is only a consideration on voting if the person is not a citizen. Only citizens, either native born or naturalized, should be allowed to vote. That’s pretty much standard practice everywhere, not just the US. As for language, many districts already print ballots in multiple languages. However, there are hundreds of languages in the world. It would be cost prohibitive to print ballots in all of them for every election.
“or place of birth?”
Why even have a country?
My daughters didn’t have to take the driving exam. I see that it is there now, but there are exemptions. I don’t know how my daughters met any of those exemptions, but then they obtained their licenses many years back. But I remember being shocked that they didn’t require a driver skills test.
The road test was removed from Texas driving requirements and then reinstated. I discussed the issue over dinner with several people, who all felt the same that the standards for obtaining a license is still too low. And unlike Edward, we didn’t jump to racist conclusions. Rather, the discussion was about lack of basic skills and drivers that are distracted by cellphones, which occurs regardless of race, but then we don’t think like Edward.
Place of birth is only a consideration on voting if the person is not a citizen.
That’s like the old joke about Ford automobiles. “They can have any color they like as long as it’s black.” If you define citizenship based on place of birth, your statement is a vacuous tautology,
Only citizens, either native born or naturalized, should be allowed to vote. That’s pretty much standard practice everywhere, not just the US.
Not true. Citizenship is not a necessary/sufficient condition for voting everywhere in the world. Even if that were true, why should US law be based on what other nations do? That’s an argument we hear constantly for national healthcare, handgun bans, etc. Children call it the “Johnny does it” argument. But as mothers have been saying since time immemorial, just because Johnny does something doesn’t mean you should.
If you base your opinions solely on what happens to be popular with foreign nations at the present time, you ignore the lessons of history. The Founding Fathers, who studied the lessons of history limited voting rights to those citizens who were literate, of sound mind, and had a stake in the community (which, in the pre-industrial era, meant owning land). The purpose of voting was *not* to ensure that each group got its share of the goodies but to promote the commonweal. It isn’t obvious why your system, which bases eligibility solely on place of birth (with a few exemptions for selected foreigners) is superior.
As for language, many districts already print ballots in multiple languages. However, there are hundreds of languages in the world. It would be cost prohibitive to print ballots in all of them for every election.
Why do you think a ballot needs to be printed on paper? It could easily be electronic and translated by Google or Mechanical Turk. (And since literacy tests have been eliminated, why does it matter what language the ballot is written is? It might as well be Klingonese, if voters can’t read.)
I’m sure that a Chinese engineer who lives in Vancouver, works for Microsoft, and reads technical documentation in English every day could figure out an election ballot. I’m sure you know that, also. And if allowed entry into the United States, he would still need to pass a citizenship test, which requires studying the Constitution of the United States (a bit harder than an election ballot) before being allowed to vote. So, what’s the real reason for excluding such people?
Why even have a country?
That’s probably a rhetorical question, but I’ll answer it anyway.
We have a country because a small group of patriots believed that all men were created equal and endowed by their creator (meaning God, not the King or Parliament) with certain inalienable rights.
It wasn’t until many years later that others decided only men born on American soil had natural rights.
So now Leland calls me a racist because I believe in treating all people equally, regardless of birth? I guess he’s still living in 1984. 🙂
It isn’t a state monopoly. It’s a segment with state enforced licensing.
A rose by any other name…
State licensing has run amok. By lobbying state governments, industries are able to cut out the competition through methods such as licensing. At first glance, these “regulations” make sense. But it is nothing different than any other cartel who uses the government to increase economic rents. Uber is threatening these cozy, rent-seeking industries who have the backing of corrupt city and state officials. A taxi medallion in NYC can cost up to a million dollars. How’s that for stifling competition?
Many industrial monopolies are caused by lobbying groups who use the government to remove the competition. (See FDR and the tire industry.) Thus, I see no difference between industrial monopolies and “state-enforced licensing.”
This NY Times editorial has many good points.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/29/opinion/why-license-a-florist.html?ref=opinion&_r=4
Some places, e.g. here in Europe, also have laws so that a taxi driver can own a gun to protect himself if he works at weird hours in bad neighborhoods.
In the United States, we have the Second Amendment so anyone can own a gun without needing to a taxi driver or pay political bribes. New York does not need to issue licenses for this purpose; it merely needs to respect the Bill of Rights.
The taxi can also install bulletproof separators if it works in such areas.
I’m pretty sure you can install polycarbonate without a license, even in New York City.
taxis must be clearly marked to make it easier to catch any misbehaving taxis (e.g. some people use taxis and pseudo-taxis to kidnap people especially tourists in airports).
How many people? Which airports? Sounds like an urban legend to me,
Kidnapping for ransom is a crime that’s has almost completely disappeared in the United States. (And anyone worth kidnapping can easily afford to take a limo, if taxis and Uber drivers suddenly start kidnapping people.)
There have been a few reports of women being kidnapped or detained, and in some cases assaulted, by Uber drivers. None of those appear to involve airports. But if that’s your concern, it should be obvious that putting the driver behind a protective bulletproof shield is the wrong solution.
According to Wikipedia, taxi kidnappings are common in Latin America. Wikipedia also reports that this is due to police corruption: i.e., the people who issue the taxi licenses are in on it. In any case, there’s no reason for New York City to enact laws and regulations for a problem which does not exist in that part of the world.
Thank God, the Soviet and American politicians did not get to together to form the CoDominium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoDominium.
Can someone clue me in why taxi companies can not compete with the convenience that Uber provides its customers? Is Uber cheaper than the average taxi or do they just offer more convenient service?
Actually, they’ve been forced to start doing so. The main advantage of it is convenience, not price. You don’t have to call a cab; you just use the app and it shows you where the nearest driver is.