to summarize: regulatory capture is an existential threat to the American economy, and any regulation that restricts a silicon valley firm is prima facie regulatory capture.
I, too, am alarmed by the changes in campaign funding we have seen in the last 20 years. The author applies his alarm narrowly to problems in his private equity portfolio. I do not share his alarm on that particular topic.
By and large, I prefer to live in a world with taxi and hotel regulation, even if it impairs the ability of some bay area millionaires to add to their fortunes. Not all regulation is a sign of regulatory capture. Not all lobbying is intrinsically bad. Not every improvement in efficiency improves outcomes for society.
I prefer to live in a world with taxi and hotel regulation
Please enjoy them, then. The rest of us whose judgment is sufficient to choose our own taxis would appreciate if you kept the cops out of our private choices.
You judgement is sufficient because you live in a world where taxi are regulated and as such any legitimate unregulated competition will strive to provide you the same guarantee you get with the regulated ones.
Now I'm not saying that the current regulation shouldn't get refreshed to consider what is currently available. But I'm amazed how people are just all or nothing about regulation.
You should want enough regulation so that a basic level of service is guaranteed. If that is not the case, it becomes too hard for customer to efficiently compare services. Like in this case, you should be able to compare taxi companies in less than a few minutes. If you need more than that, then chance are that you will stick with the reliable provider you know. Good competition happens when consumers are willing to try alternative.
Stockholm, Sweden, has a fairly unregulated taxi market in that pricing is set independently. This causes massive issues, specifically for tourists who have no idea what to pick. They end up paying $500 USD to go from the airport to town, a ride that is usually closer to $60-70 USD.
I guess what I'm saying is judgement is contextual.
*can help you choose the best taxi [registered through that app] at the best price [available through the app].
Do not forget that Uber, TaxiMagic, etc. are still closed and managed environments -- they are simply more opaque, as a corporation is choosing the makeup of that market instead of a government entity.
Laws are already version controlled and debugged when necessary, where does that come from? Laws are amended and repealed all the time, in every level of legislation.
Well, dividing the world in them and us is certainly not a very good beginning of a conversation :-|
But aside, the problem is not in the individual problem theirselves.
The problem is that an excessive deregulation is a part of a large process of demolition of the human rights of the great majority of the population.
Paradoxically, such huge problem is difficult to notice, because it requires vision.
In a world where there would be an excess of human rights and slow economy, deregulation would be fine. In such world, I would agree to liberalize the taxing and housing.
We're on the opposite side, though. So keeping deregulating is going to make the disaster we're already in even worse.
The irony with your statement is that your position is to make the choice for everyone in the market in a one-size-fits-all fashion.
His choice is to allow variety, competition, and customization so that more people get a chance to find the service that satisfies their needs.
I don't think anyone is saying to completely do away with all regulation in every instance - but have you seen the competitive barrier taxi regulation in most metro areas? It's specifically designed to prevent competition from those without massive resources. It's the stereotypical big guy keeping the little guy down with their million dollar medallions and special connections to lawmakers.
Upvoted for a fair point. Regulation must work effectively for it to deserve support going forward, and I am 100% with you when it comes to opposition to excessive or prevents-fair-competition type regulation in this kind of space. I'd probably prefer improved regulation than zero regulation though: regulate what matters, but otherwise step aside.
Taxi and hotel regulation IMO comes with a safety aspect which should, for example, protect lone or vulnerable travellers from harm (to a limited extent, of course, but some is better than none). Personally, I will accept a bit of restriction to my options in return for widely vetted service provision.
Quick, tell me which ISP provides fiber to the home with unlimited bandwidth? Only 1, so far, and only in limited areas. If it was ONLY our judgement that determined the quality, then I would be all for it. Unfortunately, there's sometimes a race to the bottom. Regulations help, to a certain extent, to control that. I know I wouldn't want open heart surgery provided by the lowest bidder.
You don't need to care about the millionaires in silicon valley, but you should care about the poor unemployed guy who is denied the right to earn a living by driving people around in his car.
What about the guy driving the car and the family of the girl who were killed accidentally by an Uber driver, and Uber trying to skate responsibility? Regulations aren't in place contrary to popular opinion here just to make rich people richer...
It's a great question. As a contractor, is the Uber driver forced to carry his own liability insurance? How much? Is Uber liable, too? What is the answer to those same questions for a regulated taxi or limousine service?
I don't have time to look up the answers because of work, but I'm genuinely curious if anyone knows. It seems like these are reasonable questions to ask, and could lead to a constructive conversation about the role and necessity of regulation.
If the driver worked for Yellow Cab or some other official service and had proper insurance, liability coverage, indemnity protection he wouldn't be liable for $100k in damages or whatever it may be, or other bills which could arise from this due to that dreaded regulation word.
Many things that keep you safe every day are due to regulation, not hindered by it.
If the driver worked for Yellow Cab or some other official service and had proper insurance, liability coverage, indemnity protection he wouldn't be liable for $100k in damages or whatever it may be, or other bills which could arise from this due to that dreaded regulation word.
The first question is, why should we care if the driver is liable? If the driver wants to share the liability with the employer; we have a system of enforced agreements for that, it's called contracts.
But regardless, that didn't answer my question. When someone is killed, there's a trial to judge who is responsible for the tragedy. If the judge/jury thinks that Uber is (in part) responsible, we don't need regulations to force them to pay. If they don't, why should they pay?
Regulations seem like a way to replace the justice system with blind rules.
Many things that keep you safe every day are due to regulation, not hindered by it.
Who says I want to be safe? Why do you need to force that decision on me?
I can understand that you and others want to be safe. But the solution is easy: you keep a program with all those checks and certifications and you provide a nice symbol that only those drivers can use on their cabs (everyone else would be prosecuted for fraud).
Then drivers can choose to take the certification, and people can easily choose if they want to only use certified taxi services or not.
> By and large, I prefer to live in a world with taxi and hotel regulation
I can see why you'd want licensing for taxi drivers (to help against customers getting ripped off or mugged), but what's the point of limiting the number of taxis (which is really one of the main points against taxi regulation)? I'm not sure it restricts the number of cars in the streets, if people who would otherwise take a cheap taxi now have to own a car instead. My point is there is such a thing as too much regulation.
> My point is there is such a thing as too much regulation.
Or just poorly constructed regulation. I agree with you. I want taxi regulations, because I've got enough historical and international perspective to know what will happen without them and to know that they are, at worst, the lesser of two evils.
However, I absolutely want smart regulation that gets out of the way where it isn't helping anyone and ensures that the services people want can be delivered.
That being said, I would prefer better public transit than more taxis, but that's just another side of the same many-sided die.
In some places we have this thing called public transport. In some very odd places we even use bicycles.
Taxis, like all other cars, clog up the roads with their inefficient size to passengers ratio, and pollute the air. Limiting the number of taxis can be a matter of maintaining a half way liveable city.
If there were plenty of cheap taxis in my town (Amsterdam) I would use them a lot, because I'm a big fat lazy motherfucker. Unfortunately, there are too many people like me, and our selfishness would be detrimental to the society around us.
(I'm typing this as it's pouring outside and I have to get to the office. I would love a cheap taxi right about now, but the world doesn't revolve around me.)
Regulation isn't an appropriate response. If taxi's are cheap to operate (hence ample supply but artificially limited) then personal vehicles are cheap as well. "Big fat lazy motherfuckers" will just buy their own vehicle and make an even larger mess.
Pardon my idealistic views, but it would be better to curb demand for taxis with:
a. cheaper, more consistently on-time public transportation
b. safer bike routes
c. casual carpool programs
The real question is why you rather take a taxi than your local public transportation.
The previous poster is from Europe, I'm guessing that you're from North America. In which case your definition of an "appropriate response" to societal problems and market externalities is completely different.
Regulating in order to maximise the value to all of society is perfectly appropriate for Europeans.
Sorry - super late reply on this. I wasn't trying to imply that regulation was the 'correct' response as that's a value judgement. I was just trying to point out that the USA and Europe broadly have different views of what a legitimate response is.
"The real question is why you rather take a taxi than your local public transportation."
Eh, probably because public transport would have to cost twice as much as a taxi to make it even half as comfortable? Not even counting that a taxi will take you door to door?
bike routes are so over rated, other than strict diehards they are fair weather routes only. Otherwise its too hot, too cold, to wet, I don't feel like it, got to carry something, going to the store, etc/etc/etc
taxis arose because public transportation doesn't always go where people want and is not as timely. Regulation is required for safety, it should not be used to curtail competition against entrenched interests
Models of NYC traffic show that increasing the number of cabs would not cause a proportional decrease in the number of private cars, and that the congestion would make the average taxi trip take longer, even including the time spent waiting for a taxi.
Well, for a start, if you buy or rent an apartment in a nice quiet building, you didn't sign up for one of your neighbours deciding to run a hotel with strangers coming and going at all hours.
Regulation prevents people getting profits by externalizing their costs onto others without their consent.
Why is this person renting or buying an apartment in a building whose management allows their residents to rent their apartments out like hotel rooms? Why can't this function through contracts with disputes being adjudicated through a court system rather than through comparatively blunt statutory regulation? For example, replace "run a hotel with strangers coming and going at all hours" with 'smoke cigarettes' or 'own a pet.'
The answer is, management usually doesn't allow this, and they flaunt the rules anyway. Which is why the guy in the story I posted below is getting evicted. And how many AirBnB types pay taxes on the income either?
My response is, statutory regulation usually doesn't allow this, and they flaunt the rules anyway. I don't see how statutory regulation solves the problem you're arguing it's supposed to. Is your concern that courts do not punish contract violators as harshly as those who violate statutory regulation? Or maybe that allowing different management policies places too great a burden on consumers? Alternatively, I can see why hotels would favor blunt statutory regulation and that anti-competition aspect of it is of concern to me.
How many stay-at-home parents pay taxes on their income? Or would you be ok with AirBnB if payment mostly occurred through barter or a "gift economy?"
I'd be OK with it if the people who wanted to do it got the rules of their building association changed! Usually the residents would vote. Strange how that never seems to happen. The hotel regulation gives people who play by the rules they freely accepted when they move in a tool to use against those who flout them.
Absolutely, it would be awesome if people utilized voluntary collective action rather than coercion or fraud to assert their preferences. But why create a new, coercive tool that carries additional negative consequences instead addressing the inability/inefficiency to deal with the problem through contracts and the courts? What do you think causes the inability/inefficiency? I can't help but get the impression that people think that issues can't be addressed without statutory regulation such that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
So the amount of foot traffic going in and out of my (quiet) apartment is the issue? I hope I'm not exceeding this limit already by myself especially since none of my neighbors know who I am. As for having my friends over, this is an issue as well?
Yes, having my friends over. We talk, drink, play video games, code, etc. This one scenario necessitates regulation to punish all other people who use or would potentially use Airbnb/Lyft/Uber in a responsible and professional manner?
I, too, am alarmed by the changes in campaign funding we have seen in the last 20 years. The author applies his alarm narrowly to problems in his private equity portfolio. I do not share his alarm on that particular topic.
By and large, I prefer to live in a world with taxi and hotel regulation, even if it impairs the ability of some bay area millionaires to add to their fortunes. Not all regulation is a sign of regulatory capture. Not all lobbying is intrinsically bad. Not every improvement in efficiency improves outcomes for society.