Lyft and Uber to Halt Operations in Austin After Voters Reject Proposal
buzzfeed.com
buzzfeed.com
> Unfortunately, the rules passed by the City Council don’t allow true ridesharing to operate.
Why? Like, I read the whole article twice, and I'm still confused. It's being presented as "Uber is literally unable to operate with this rule in place", but why? Do they need to fund the background checks? Are they too expensive? Would their drivers refuse to undergo them? Would their drivers fail them? Do taxi companies face the same rules? How is it they can maintain service?
I don't get it.
This section is especially egregious:
> What happens if Prop 1 passes?
> Austin sends a message to the world, “Innovation is welcome here. Things are stable now and the people have spoken.”
Austin spoke (and not Austin's government, Austin's voters!). Innovation is welcome, simply with additional (voter desired and approved) regulations.
If ridesharing is sufficiently lucrative with these additional required regulations, competitors will fill the gap. If not, Austin's voters may re-evaluate their decision at a future date.
It's totally reasonable for Austin to vote and ask for something that honestly is pretty reasonable. However, it isn't particularly "fair" but they voted againest their own interests (if they wanted ridesharing).
> However, it isn't particularly "fair" but they voted againest their own interests (if they wanted ridesharing).
I argue this is subjective (they voted "against their own interests"). They voted for more knowledge about their drivers (something they can control). One should not need to forfeit additional safety regulations to a tech company due to irresponsible intoxicated/influenced drivers being used as the proverbial boogyman.
After reading Josh Baer's article, I do agree with him that its a lot easier to point at a startup and say something is easy, without all the knowledge from the inside. I am sure there is a lot of data on why this is hard to do.
I do think that part of this boils down to liability. If a certain percentage of drivers are known offenders of some kind, Uber or Lyft could get sued for letting them remain on their platform.
Super sad to see Uber go. Its a great app. I use it almost daily. Reality hasn't set in yet.
I live in the area. Uber/Lyft have campaigned really aggressively. I've got stuff from them in the mail, they contacted me at my unlisted cell, they've been canvassing hard for months. I've never even seen an "anti" ad.
The "pro" Uber/Lyft PAC spent north of $8m, while the "anti" PAC spent 1/40th of that [0]. This is by far the most money ever spent on any election in this city's history, by a factor of about 5. And all of it is Silicon Valley money, which is just weird.
Quite frankly I have no idea whether the regulatory reforms Uber/Lyft wanted were sensible or not. I don't know whether they were really necessary for Uber/Lyft to continue operations or not. I just know a bunch of SV investors spent an absurd amount of money trying to convince everybody of that, and Austinites are a very skeptical bunch who decided not to take their terms.
[0] http://qz.com/677908/the-future-of-uber-and-lyft-is-at-stake...
Here's JDI's response to Mike Maples argument that mentions it. http://josh.jones-dilworth.com/post/138468651784/in-response...
Look up "regulatory capture," a Nobel was won because of it. It's exactly what's happening here.
Well if we want to match anecdotes, I live in the area and have only seen "anti" campaigning. FWIW, I'm in North Austin, where it turns out the opposition apparently did really well.
> Quite frankly I have no idea whether the regulatory reforms Uber/Lyft wanted were sensible or not. [...] SV investors spent an absurd amount of money trying to convince everybody of that, and Austinites are a very skeptical bunch who decided not to take their terms.
I think this is a weird characterization, to the point where your bias is showing. Both your comments and the article you link to make it seem as if the ridesharing startups launched an underhanded campaign in order to change the status quo to suit themselves. But that's not the case.
The reality is that regulatory changes to specifically target Uber and Lyft were adopted months ago, those companies reacted by saying, "WTF WTF let's not do this", managed to bring it to a special election to get the city to reconsider the new regulations, and that attempt failed.
I find your own comments as well as the articles that try to focus on storytelling to be the ones that rely the most on readers who aren't entirely sure of what's going on. Speak some reassuring words that suggest to the confused reader, "someone's trying to pull the wool over your eyes; voting <this way> would show them it can't be done!", spin some yarn about companies trying to buy their way into deregulation to benefit their bottom line, and that's how you win a campaign to use the law to get the ridesharing companies in question to go away and preserve cab companies' customer base.
How does campaign spending from one special interest to get rid of an ordinance prove the ordinance wasn't designed for an opposing special interest?
Lyft, which made the above qoute and Uber, obviously could continue operating if breifly pausing to fingerprint their drivers. However, the first answer to your question is that they won't. The premise of ridesharing is about scalable technology that allows people to work together on a platform. It would be an expensive precedent for these companies to have to pay for this cost. This is regardless of how you the consumer feel. There is also a very non-trivial impediment to get drivers to do this, especially if they are barred for something like a felony, even non-violent or not related to a vehicle. The difference is who controls the process, which wasn't stated in the article. I suspect a 3rd prty (e.g. Austin) would want drivers to come into a public place (police staton/town hall) and get fingerprinted. I do not believe that could simply thumbprint a phone.
The second answer is privacy & convenience. A driver is unlikely to want to get fingerprinted and it probably makes little difference. Why should some agency get potentially millions of fingerprints (if this become national) when it would serve no purpose. Maybe they can serve warrants, ect. Again, idk if this is good or bad from a public standpoint but in practice Uber/Lyft already have a car, registration, license, picture, social media and very quickly a review system. So to the extent someone wanted to cheat, it would just be another small ipediment.
One other thought is that why wouldn't Uber/Lyft want these regulations. It seems like the are already the dominant party and fingerprint regulation would create a moat for other competitors to enter.
I agree that cities should be able to enforce laws like this. I disagree with this one, but not their right to. However, to the degree Lyft & Uber provide leverage, they certainly have the right to leave and take their value with them in the hopes Austin reconsiders.
But there's a limit somewhere, right? You don't feel that a city has the right to enact an ordinance keeping black people out even if it made them feel safer (I assume), so there has to be some line around a city's democratic rights?
Your example is specifically barred by the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, as decided in Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60 (1917), and Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948), as well as Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, codified at 42 U.S.C. 3601-3619, aka "The Fair Housing Act"
Because it used to happen.
We are all aware that the law has various (mostly arbitrary) limits. The question being asked is what consistent limit should be applied in general?
You can describe them as erroneous or ineffective --- the way you could describe virtually any regulation --- but you can't make that argument about them.
Since this distinction seems pretty obvious, I have to wonder why you'd pretend not to see it.
You can add to it various pretexts as erroneous and ineffective justification, e.g. "black people are more likely to be dangerous criminals than non-blacks, we don't want passengers getting robbed", if that makes the question clearer.
I'm also confused by your last line. Why do you believe I'm "pretending" something? I'm simply pointing out what the core philosophical question is.
I know how I justify my moral positions - my opposition to protectionism (either pro-white or pro-medallion owner) is driven by my opposition to violence. But when you give up opposition to violence - which you must do if it's acceptable to protect medallion owners with violence - I don't know how to oppose pro-white protectionism. What makes non-whites deserving of protection from bad laws but non-medallion owners undeserving?
I get the impression you have a different moral conclusion, but I have no idea how you reach it in a logically consistent manner. I take it you refuse to state your principles?
There's not much of a reason to let this subthread get any deeper, is there?
In the United States, this question is answered by Federal Laws which define Protected Classes [0].
Non-medallion owners are not a protected class (yet) according to US Federal Law.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class
EDIT: provide link
To quote myself a couple of lines up: "We are all aware that the law has various (mostly arbitrary) limits. The question being asked is what consistent limit should be applied in general?"
I.e. the question is "aught", you are merely reiterating what "is" (which no one disagrees with).
A quick visit to the link I provided in my earlier comment shows a diverse range of peoples grouped together as protected classes
• Race
• Color
• Religion
• Nationality
• Age
• Sex
• Pregnancy
• Citizenship
• Familial status
• Veteran status
• Genetic information
These groups are not identified by any "consistent limit" but by a wide range of legislation and case law. Protected classes are defined by the judicious and careful application of expert legal opinion among practitioners of jurisprudence and writers of US Federal legislation, practitioners who include but are not limited to Senators, members of Congress, scholars, historians, judges, attorneys, and expert witnesses.
In other words, there is no way to apply a rigid set of parameters ("consistent limit") to find what group of people should constitute a protected class.
Additionally, there are many considerations in establishing a protected class, some of those being whether membership in such a class is voluntary as well as whether members of a proposed protected class have historically, culturally, and socioeconomically been subject to unjust discrimination.
Now, whether non-medallion owning contractors ought to be a protected class I cannot say, but I can say that such a designation will not come from facile calls for consistency in determining members of a protected class.
EDIT: grammar, formatting, augmentation of series
Now, whether non-medallion owning contractors ought to be a protected class I cannot say, but I can say that such a designation will not come from facile calls for consistency in determining members of a protected class.
You are quite right that moral philosophy and other rational processes are not a way to appeal to the mob. Cheap slogans ("make America great again"), tribalism, flattery, shared sense of danger an shared enemies are far more effective. That's one thing (actually the only thing) I like about Trump - he isn't even pretending that there is any substance to politics. Definitely shines a light on the fallacy of democracy.
I remember once enjoying your comments. This recent turn you've taken towards subtly or not-so-subtly relitigating discrimination seems like it must be new. Did something happen? It's an unfortunate change.
I said the only thing I like about Trump is that he's shining a light on the flawed decisionmaking process that is democracy. The specific flaw is not that various anti-discrimination laws exist, but that laws exist due to a sequence of emotional reactions of the mob and historical accident rather than due to reasoning from a core set of principles.
I don't know what you think changed - I've always favored reason over religion and moral philosophy over doing what feels good. Consider various comments of mine on moral philosophy over the years, on a wide variety of topics (free speech, public access to beaches, corporate forms, internet shaming):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7068509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4230649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8365554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7068509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9901225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9126192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6819575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6818871
I also truly don't understand why you are so offended by the idea that I consider anti-racism a consequence of my anti-violence position, rather than a core principle. Why is it so offensive that I oppose what you oppose, but I oppose it with different ideas?
Isn't it good that multiple chains of reasoning lead to the same conclusion? To me that suggests robustness in the conclusions. If you were willing to actually advance a logical argument in favor of these conclusions, I'd certainly be happy that something I believe is robust and not just a weird quirk of one set of axioms. Similarly, if a mathematical fact has multiple disparate proofs, I'm far more convinced that it's actually true.
Or is this simply religious hatred of an atheist who happens to live according to the principles of Christ cause they seem like a good idea?
So I've noticed that this isn't so much a consequence of some philosophical alignment of yours, which demands that any position or belief be defensible on the spot by the kind of first-order logic that an SAT solver could evaluate.
Rather: you seem to relish into coming as close as possible to the line of openly supporting racial and gender discrimination, and then retreating behind a smokescreen of "wrongthink" and "status hierarchy" when challenged.
You're better at this than Moldbug, but you seem to be playing the same game. And, like I said: my sense of it is that you've picked up this game pretty recently. Why?
You pretty explicitly refused to challenge me which is why I assumed you were seeking status rather than intellectual discussion. That's still the belief I hold. If you want to challenge my reasoning or axioms, please do! That's far more interesting.
I also have no idea why you think I'm somehow advocating discrimination or even coming close. Let me reiterate: "I know how I justify my moral positions - my opposition to protectionism (either pro-white or ..." "I'm pretty explicitly stating that I consider racism to be extrinsically bad..."
I suppose the fact that I've engaged in similar philosophical nerdery for years was just great planning - I've been secretly white supremacist for years and was just laying a deep internet cover? Of course if I had that kind of foresight and such strong pro-white feelings, don't you think I would have arranged my life slightly differently?
Consider the possibility that Lutherans don't secretly worship Satan, in spite of having slightly different pro-Jesus arguments than Catholics.
In any case, I also just realized why you've become so much more aggressively anti-intellectual. I doubt that your attempts to signal virtue to the enemies of meritocracy will work, but I do hope you guys survive their inevitable attacks when they figure out that stockfighter is basically a g-test. <- Notice the attempt to raise my own status, rather than engage in intellectual discourse?
For instance, your principle seems to allow discrimination against Jews/Muslims/people who engage in homosexual acts/promiscuous women/etc. And it seems to bar discrimination against, e.g., the short and ugly (at least if being ugly is not caused by being fat).
Do you endorse these conclusions? If not, then this clearly can't be your motivating principle.
Generally speaking, I reject discrimination against people based on any attributes, within or without their control, except those attributes which directly pertain to the subject in question. So, for example, in a job situation, ideally, the only attributes we should be using to discriminate between candidates are their experience, knowledge, and ability to fulfill the duties of the position. If the job requires lifting heavy weights, discriminating upon your ability to lift heavy weights is fine. Discriminating based on sex (maybe justified because statistically most women are not strong enough to perform the duties) is not fine, because it is an indirect attribute. If this women meets the requirements it is irrelevant what other women can or cannot do.
In this case with Uber and Lyft the city/state has the right (one could argue duty) to take steps to ensure the trustworthiness/safety of drivers operating commercial transportation services within its jurisdiction. Race does not say anything about the trustworthiness or criminal nature of a specific person. Even if, hypothetically, you assume that statistically one race is more prone to violence than another that does not speak directly about this candidate. It is an indirect measure like the example of sex above. An accurate background check, however, can shed light on facts in a person's past that are directly relevant to that question.
I made no such assumption. I merely pointed out that your principle doesn't prohibit such things.
In this case with Uber and Lyft the city/state has the right (one could argue duty) to take steps to ensure the trustworthiness/safety of drivers...Even if, hypothetically, you assume that statistically one race is more prone to violence than another that does not speak directly about this candidate.
Neither does past criminal history. Some criminals are reformed and will not commit crimes. Both past criminal history and race are statistical predictors of future criminal behavior. So are various things under one's control like the neighborhood they live in, their friends, etc.
It's a fact, and one I haven't fully come to grips with philosophically, that base rates matter. I.e., you'll do a better job predicting violence if you take race into account [1]. Actually using it makes me uncomfortable, but not using it is also burying our heads in the sand. From a moral philosophy perspective I'm simply confused.
I disagree that the limits in this domain in existing law are arbitrary; the Constitutional, statute, and case law rules have fairly clear motivation and rationale.
This becomes particularly broad when you're talking about actions in public. So while it would probably be considered an intrusion to send the Dental Police into everyone's home to be sure that they floss daily, it would probably be legal to have the Dental Police perform mandatory tooth-brushings on all taxi drivers. Nobody is forcing you to be a taxi driver and you could reasonably avoid the situation by practicing another profession instead.
That's how you get stuff like requiring hair nets for food safety. But again, it doesn't necessarily have to be sensical. Unless otherwise restricted, states and cities have an enormous amount of leeway to do whatever they think is in their citizens' best interests. It's a list of things you can't do, not a list of things you can.
If Austin wants to fingerprint taxi drivers, that's well within their powers. Not even controversial - that has been common practice for probably a half century now.
Because it's not about finger prints: that's trivial to do. (Hell, you could probably come up with a simple lens to put on a cell phone to extract enough info to get a print... Not to mention existing services. They're lying if they say this puts too much burden and couldn't continue to operate. No, they want to keep the fiction that there are no Uber driver employees, that they're all, to use the brain-dead term working in the "sharing economy".
> A spokesman for Transport Minister Stirling Hinchliffe, who received legal advice, on Thursday said the threat to all pre-booked passenger vehicles needed to be removed.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/breaking-news/business-as...
Search IRS 20 questions. Here a non PDF result: https://daf.csulb.edu/admin_guidelines/guidelines/independen...
I'm sure Uber is obviously more informed than me but seems like a tight line they're at. And the IRS can weigh in with their own decision, too.
Source? Financial services corporations fingerprint both their employees and contractors. I've never seen a distinction in the process for either.
The requirement of fingerprinting does not in and of itself make some an 'employee' or vice versa, but there are precedents in Texas, like this example, that could inch Uber even closer to this line.
http://www.newcaneyisd.org/cms/lib5/TX01918142/Centricity/Do...
> but it doesn't seem entirely outrageous that the drivers of buses, taxis, and similar transportation services should have them.
It is outrageous. I mean, it's a vehicle. Not a spaceship, for gods sake. This person has licence and good rating in the app? Good enough for me. If it's not good enough for you, don't use Uber. What right do you (or government, for that matter) have to tell other people what to use or not, I really don't know.
If I believed in democracy, I'd say people should be voting better next time, but I don't.
Nobody is claiming otherwise, just that they're stupid for leaving the profits to the taxi companies, who do comply with the background check laws. Either one of them could have become the dominant transportation player in Austin, but they were both too incompetent to make contingency plans.
None. A just law is no more than a collective extension to our individual right to self defense. And we have a moral duty to ignore unjust laws.
The idea that the state should have anything to say about driving a car in exchange for money is absurd on its face and nothing more than the worst, silliest kind of security theater in my view.
On the broader point about what the government should be regulating: One of the worst things about living outside the developed world is how careful you have to be. You have to be careful what you eat, who you get in a car with, where you go. The consequences of not being careful are significant. In the developed world, the government ensures a minimum level for pretty much everything, and it's amazing. It's civilization.
And not only is it effective at protecting the public, it actually incentivizes the driver to be better than the bare minimum (which is what is encouraged by simple background checks).
You're basically asking, how does X prevent a person from being a rapist?
Answer: nothing can "prevent" rapists and murderers. they exist regardless of precautions, and the word "prevention" is overused. background checks, and fingerprints do nothing to prevent creeps.
Even a week after the famous Delhi Uber rape case, every woman I know would still prefer to take an Uber/Ola rather than a (government regulated) auto or taxi. After all, Uber/Ola actually care about their reputation and immediately took steps to make rides safer (e.g. privately provided background checks) when they realized the government provided certificate of good character (cost: an 8k bribe) were insufficient.
All the government did in response was tell women to spend more money on less safe modes of transportation. (Recall that in the 2012 Delhi gang rape incident, the woman was only on the bus because the government regulated auto rickshaw was overcharging her and she couldn't afford to ride it.)
Let me turn this around: what in particular about driving passengers for profit means they should be exempt from regulation? Or do you simply reject regulation on some sort of absolutist libertarian principle?
I was arguing that the regulation itself is inadvisable, and I don't think the position is particularly absolutist. The government should step in to regulate areas that pose a significant risk to the public, but that the market does a poor job of regulating on its own. Things like food safety and environmental protections are prime examples of this. Taxi driving is not.
The damage causable by a single rogue taxi driver is, at its worst, minimal and not much different from the damage that can be caused by any random malicious citizen. If a rapist or murderer wants to rape and murder, being a taxi driver helps them in so doing marginally at best.
Do you know what does do a pretty good job at regulating taxi drivers? An instant, non-optional review system.
This would never happen. The first time they assault a passenger, they'd immediately get kicked off the platform and likely referred to police.
You can commit a crime as an Uber driver, but there's no way you're getting away with it. There's a precise log of who you drove and where.
If you are a nefarious individual, the last thing you want to do is drive an Uber. If you try to commit criminal activity, there is a complete log of who you picked up and everywhere you went.
Of course, there will still occasionally be incidents. But there are incidents with taxi drivers. There are incidents with people who have to undergo even more intensive background checks. Past behavior is no guarantee of future legality.
Refuse is probably a strong word here but I imagine significantly less people are willing to drive in somewhere to give their fingerprints for a background check than just entering a social security number in a web form. So there's more inherent friction. But then Uber needs to maintain an office (or a set of offices) in every city that provides convenient parking and some kind of fingerprinting system. So it puts uber in a business that they're not in and makes it harder for drivers to become drivers.
Aren't there companies that that Uber could contract with to do the background checks?
I doubt that the city would accept Uber doing its own fingerprinting. In Houston, the city's argument was that Uber's background check failed to catch felons, persons convicted of sexual assault, and homicide [2].
[0] https://www.ibtfingerprint.com/locations/?st=tx [1] http://www.driveuberhouston.com/fingerprint-background-check... [2] http://houston.culturemap.com/news/city-life/04-27-16-uber-s...
I've been getting a $1 safe ride fee when using Uber in the US. So they do pass on the background check cost to the customer.
There is some other reason for this. Maybe like the poster said in a later comment - about their classification the drivers. Or just them throwing a fit because it did not got their way.
Here in India, couple of states have been telling Uber (and their competitor Ola), that they can have surge pricing recently.
Because proposition 1 contained other parts. Not just the background check stuff: http://kut.org/post/explaining-exactly-what-yes-and-no-vote-...
It's not going to cripple Uber/Lyft's business model. They disagree, of course, which is their prerogative. There are still taxi services available in Austin who find those regulations perfectly workable.
If you dislike your health department making you wear hair nets or meet food-holding temperatures, you are perfectly free to discontinue providing a service that goes against the public interest.
Basically, that allowing cities to specify the implementation and rules around fingerprinting makes the onboarding process too slow. Slow enough that that they can't hire drivers fast enough to meet demand.
I can see their point on this, since each city is free to make their own rules for the process.
On the other hand, if they volunteered their own process...one that incorporated fingerprints and most of what cities are asking for, then perhaps there's a place to meet in the middle. Basically, a single process that works for all cities.
As it stands, it looks like neither side is willing to compromise.
Austin's mayor, Steve Adler, has specifically said that he would like to negotiate a mutually satisfactory solution with Uber and Lyft.
http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/local-govt-politics/ele...
Unless I misread http://kut.org/post/explaining-exactly-what-yes-and-no-vote-... a 'yes' vote would've meant the fee must be 1% of annual revenue, whereas the 'no' vote means they can still pay that amount, or have two alternative options if they prefer.
So at that point I'm not sure why that would upset them, except perhaps the fear that the 1% option would then be separately phased out later? (which is possibly a very real risk; I'm seeking synthesis, not antithesis, here)
Just yesterday it was in the news that Uber drivers will now accept tips.
How is this anything else than a glorified app based taxi service? Maybe call it freelancing taxi, but definitely not ride sharing.
On a positive note, I am glad to see Uber respecting the law for once!
I imagine they will have better luck corrupting the State of Texas legislature to override the cities, but have fun doing this 49 more times.
Maybe 10 or 20 years ago, New Zealand decided to ban anyone with a record of sexual offending from being a taxi driver. That sounds good and safe to the average Joe but one poor man, in his 50's I think, lost his job because he'd been convicted as a teenager of having sex with his then-underage girlfriend. They'd since been happily married and still were. Somehow that meant he was considered unsafe to drive people around in a taxi.
Background checks are a blunt and harsh tool to re-punish people for unrelated crimes.
Is the tragedy here that there are taxi laws, or that there are bad sex laws?
Examples of the Prop. 1 campaign: http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/32038/truthiness-abou...
I got 7 flyers in the mail, 3 unsolicited phone calls, multiple push notifications and texts, and a visitor at my door all over a 4 day time period. It can sure make you indifferent to them not getting their way.
Their aggressive marketing campaign turned attention away from the issues on the ballot and they came off as an enormous bully who was clearly buying the vote.
Looks like I'm not alone:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/4id9vf/why_prop_one...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/4iacif/uber_and_lyf...
They spent a reported $8 million in very confusing ads. They sent text messages and push notifications to customers. All of this felt very disingenuous and deceptive. I will be sad to see them go but they are their own worst enemy right now.
But it could just be incompetence.
I'm really hopeful some competitor can show up and eat their lunch, before they come slinking back. The way they behaved turned me from a fan into someone who actively distrusts them.
Yet others, I believe, were furious that those two generously funded companies were attempting to insert themselves into local politics and override a regulatory scheme enacted by the local elected government. And if Uber and Lyft could buy this election, what next? It's been said that Uber and Lyft needed to make an example out of Austin, but the reverse is true, too: Austin needed to make an example out of Uber and Lyft.
[1] - $500,000. Source: https://www.texastribune.org/2016/05/07/early-voting-austin-...
At first, I thought Prop 1 would pass by a good margin, but I wasn't sure once we started hitting the outer parts of the city, where public transportation was clearly not an option. In contrast, the closer one lived to downtown, the more likely it seemed to me that they were for Prop 1. In fact, many residents in downtown don't even own a car. I felt the balance would shift on what region was more likely to go vote. Living in Austin without a car is very difficult, as the wait for a taxi can be over 30 minutes and a bus can be basically non existent. Some taxi companies only serve certain regions. Uber and Lyft usually takes five minutes.
Yes, it appeared to me that the constant barrage of flyers, canvassers, and phone calls did upset some people, and that may well have turned people away or even activated people who wouldn't have cared either way. I think that many people thought the leaving threat was a bluff and they were more than willing to call it.
In any case, I got a lot of exercise these past few weeks and got the opportunity to see many parts of this amazing city.
I'm not sure about any argument about who can or cannot write petitions. The entire point of petitions is to act as a way for the public to make a direct vote without using the proxy of representatives. Every petition is backed by money.
I hope Austin does something to improve the public transport and taxi service without sacrificing the charm of the city. Try taking a cross town bus after 10pm on a Sunday night. You won't get very far and may end up sleeping on a bench until 5:30 am. For me, this is the prevailing cost of this whole situation.
Anyways, I'm not here to debate the merits of Prop 1. Just wanted to put in my 2 cents.
Maybe "every petition is backed by money", but never this much, or so blatantly from a single source. That's what bothered me about it. That, and the dishonest way some ads spun it so that it looked like Prop 1 was actually something you should vote for if you WANT more regulation for Uber and Lyft. Yuck.
This seems very unreasonable to me. Perhaps some very narrow/limited discrimination would make sense. Like if someone gets caught several times for drunk driving, then perhaps that person should not be allowed to have a drivers license for a long time afterwards. But if someone gets caught for smuggling drugs, then that person should never be allowed to drive a taxi for the rest of their life? That seems unreasonable.
Some groups, such as people with criminal records, sex workers, the mentally ill, people who enjoy other drugs than alcohol and until recently homosexuals, are treated very badly in some democracies. However, it's interesting that the mainstream press never makes much fuss about such human rights violations in democracies. In a democracy the majority has the power. Also, it's the goal of the mainstream press to sell as many newspapers as possible, get as many page views as possible etc. in order to make as much money as possible. Thus, they need to appeal to the majority. Pointing out that the majority is behaving in an unreasonable way will not endear them to said majority so they don't do that much.
for those wondering what the actual differences were. Frankly it was a good move on the cities part. As a citizen I'm not sure. I relied on uber to get me around when I was feeling lazy. That being said I don't think running background checks through FBI and in-person face to face interviews for drivers are too much to ask. When the companies posed this false dichotomy it turned me off completely. Quite literally threatening the population with disastrous consequences and questionable statistics didn't sit well with me. Neither did the constant barrage of flyers hawking aforementioned stats.
But isn't that just a cost of doing business? On the surface this seems reasonable. Uber/Lyft are welcome to raise fares if the background checks result in less drivers on the road. Subsequently the consumer is welcome to not use Uber/Lyft if it gets too expensive.
Maybe I am missing something?
> This wasn't about the fingerprint background checks. This bill would've also required drivers to pay a yearly fee of $450/year to the city. It would've required a % fee of each ride to go the city. It would've mandated cars have logos for each service printed onto the side of the car. All these things make it harder to get drivers and increase the cost of ride sharing. This was a play by the Taxi companies to make ride sharing services as expensive and shitty (because of less drivers) as a cab service. Taxis have lost 30% of their business in Austin last 2 years and so they padded the current council's pockets during the 2014 elections to try and save their business. You can see how much they paid the council members by viewing public records. It's disgusting.
Interesting if true, I'm Googling around to see if I can find more information on this.
I followed the #Prop1 trend closely last night and there wasn't anything beyond fingerprinting mentioned by locals, news anchors, or even Uber / Lyft.
Uber sent a text to it's drivers the Friday before the vote that was a thinly veiled threat that they should vote or lose their pay check when Uber pulled out of Austin.
That sort of strong arming in our electoral process, yeah, never gonna go over well.
The proposition, if passed, would override regulations put in place by elected representatives. The proposition failed by popular vote in an election. Uber et al out spent their conpition several times over. The commercials they ran were so plainly attempting to confuse the issue that it was insulting. Also, the commercials were ran more frequently during the window for early voting. There were almost zero local voices speaking on behalf of both community and in favor of prop 1.
All arguments in favor of prop 1 where, imo, specious. If it causes on-boarding to become too slow, well then that is only a deal breaker if they were not yet at the critical mass to be profitable; not so. Fingerprinting is not prohibitively expensive. Uber and Lyft operate in other markets where this is a requirement. And at the end of the day, twice now, the electorate has expressed its position on the issue.
Living in Austin during this campaign, it felt like being in the middle of a proxy war.
Imho, Uber can't stand having terms dictated to them. Any terms beyond their terms are too restrictive. The citizens of Austin were simply pawns in their larger game of market domination.
With all due respect, from the city of Austin, from deep in the heart of Texas, Uber, if you don't want to work with us, you know where the door is.
[1] http://www.chron.com/news/politics/houston/article/Uber-thre...
[2] http://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/E...
I would have voted "yes" because of that language. Fingerprint based background checks are great to see if you have a previous criminal record, but many many people have no criminal records up to the moment where they get arrested for the crime they committed.
Also, how much would the background checks have cost? How often? I'm a Paramedic in the state of Texas, and my employer requires me to have a "City of Dallas Ambulance Operator" permit, even though I do not work within the City of Dallas at all. The city has found this whole "background check" process to be a cash cow. I went through a background check for school. i went through another one for my state certification. I went through yet another one for my employer, and now I need to do an annual one for just the City of Dallas. It used to be $17 for a 3 year card, but now it's something like $40/year. Oh, and you're required to show proof of a defensive driving course. Last time I went, they were refusing to accept EVOC (Emergency Vehicle Operators Course, designed for, well, operators of emergency vehicles) and instead requiring the same defensive driving course that people use to get out of a traffic violation. Oh, and we're in the same boat as taxi drivers, limo drivers, tow truck drivers, etc.... what happens when the next city over decides they want a piece of that pie too? Would I have to get a permit for Dallas, Mesquite, Plano, Garland, Frisco, etc? Why would something like this need to be a city by city issue and not something that the state could handle? It's not like Dallas and Houston running the same fingerprints are going to get different information. (Well, they shouldn't..)
The regulations seem like they're just opening too many doors that they shouldn't.
Now I'm a big fan of uber and lyft, and generally feel safe taking it but an experience like that will make you reconsider.
No need to feel like there is competition when you have billions behind you (and hence a small pool of people who regularly go to lunch together?)
Edit: Ah yes, https://checkr.com/
Checkr is just a standard background check, of which Uber/Lyft already do similar checks.
The logistics and costs are both high. Honestly I'm all for background checks but fingerprinting is completely unrealistic. There are a lot of on-demand services nowadays some of which drive you places, others go into your home. I can't imagine Uber and Lyft will be the only ones required to do fingerprinting eventually.
Someone has to come up with a better way of doing this, remotely, otherwise it's simply not realistic in my opinion.
> Isn't there a YC company that is in the background check business? Edit: Ah yes, https://checkr.com/
Yeah but checkr doesn't do fingerprinting either.
Granted, the privacy aspect is the ever-present issue.
I think you just described a good part of the hassle. Not everyone driving for Uber / Lyft have $50 to use for fingerprinting services and a similar cost, even heavily discounted, represents a significant cost to the companies if they're covering it. Then you have the whole part where, currently, anyone can pick up people and provide lots of supply for the customer demand but if they all have to wait that introduces a huge amount of friction (so less drivers).
Granted this is just in the city of Austin so it's possible to handle it without great difficulty. But if this were to apply across the nation? That would be devastating for the businesses.
I assume the same is true in lots of other cities.
In the rest of the country, things work just fine with zero days, $0.
Yes. The FBI one in fact (fyi you don't have to do those at a police station; depends on why and where you're getting one).
> Takes 15 minutes and I think $10. Georgia State background check accepts an electronic livescan which i had done at a UPS store. This is easier than getting your car emission tested.
Depends on the type of emissions testing you need to do but at least when I lived in MD I would be in and out of the emissions place is about 10 minutes.
Regardless emissions is a requirement to simply drive. To drive other people via Uber or Lyft you simply need to open the app and have a legal vehicle. Adding this requirement now prevents those drivers who only drive temporarily or when they think of it and need some extra cash. If you're a college student who wants to get some extra bucks you might try Uber or Lyft, realize you need to get fingerprinted (which could take weeks depending on where you are) and either you're paying for it (requiring more time to make up the difference) or Uber or Lyft are paying for it (which likely means more fees for customers as that will be very expensive).
Doesn't seem realistic at all to me.
In California, criminal records are stored at the state level in a biometric database, based on fingerprints. If you wanted to get your state-level criminal record, you'd have to get your fingers scanned at by a "LiveScan" operator. LiveScan devices are electronic fingerprint scanners (and associated software) that go through a certification process before they can be used to submit valid fingerprints to the state DOJ. The devices and software must meet standards set by the FBI and the DOJ. LiveScan software must be go to the DOJ through regulated data exchanges--a very limited number of privately run services that electronically relay the fingerprint data to the DOJ (not sure, but I think it's either SFTP or an XML-based API over a VPN). Anyone who wants to hook up LiveScan devices must get registered as an approved vendor, and anyone who wants take fingerprints with those devices must go through a fingerprint certification process.
In short, fingerprint background check requests in CA go through a set of regulated private service vendors. If you pull your own state criminal record in CA, you're going to pay $15-50 to the LiveScan vendor + $25 to the DOJ for the lookup fee, and then you'll wait ~1 week to get a paper copy of your record in the mail.
Maybe some entrepreneur could create an umbrella company, become an approved vendor and data exchange, and then sell small affordable FBI-approved fingerprint scanners that can plug into mobile phones, and sign up people to be certified fingerprint rollers, and then let contractors collect fingerprints anywhere and get paid for it, as well as sell better devices to law enforcement agencies.
I'm not sure how big the market is, but right now there are ~1 million+ people in CA eligible to reduce their old low-level felonies to misdemeanors under Prop 47 until November 2017, and getting these fingerprint background checks is often necessary to that process (and is one of the biggest barriers).
1 out of 4 adults in the US has a criminal record. And pulling these state-level records is routine for getting professional licenses, certain government jobs, and jobs involving vulnerable populations.
How are these fingerprint records different from private background checks?
Most private background check companies pull data from a variety of sources, such as county-level court records, DMV records, and FBI. By law, these companies are not allowed to share certain types of information (like certain types of convictions over 7 years old, etc.) Keep in mind that false names and aliases are common, and county clerks can't pull records based on fingerprints.
The state biometric record is built from county-level records submitted by law enforcement and courts. It includes every arrest, prosecution, hearing, sentencing, and all the registries (for sex offenses or controlled substances). It includes both "strong links" (biometric matches, regardless of given name) and "weak links" (non-biometric matches based on multiple identity matches, such as given name, DOB, ssn). Fingerprints for biometric matching are typically taken by law enforcement and corrections departments during booking. Non-biometric records are often submitted by courts, for tracking convictions and sentencing.
The state record is only allowed to be accessed by particular types of "authorized agencies" and only for particular purposes, and they are only allowed to see certain kinds of records. Telling Uber & Lyft to put their drivers through fingerprint background checks might be analogous to saying that the drivers will be responsible for serving people who may be easily victimized and therefore (like other professional licensing requirements) Uber/Lyft's contractors should go through an authorized licensing agency and do a biometric lookup of any contact they may have had with law enforcement.
I imagine that forcing all the drivers to go through the LiveScan service + wait time would add a huge cost and time burden for signing up new drivers that is currently difficult or impossible to automate (unlike checkr, which has an API).
FWIW here are some links for more info: - Checkr's county court fees listing: https://checkr.com/pricing/additional-pricing-information/ - CA DOJ Request for LiveScan service: http://ag.ca.gov/fingerprints/forms/BCII_8016.pdf - NIST Fingerprint testing standards http://biometrics.nist.gov/cs_links/fingerprint/NIST%20Finge... - FBI Electronic Fingerprint Transmission Specification https://www2.fbi.gov/hq/cjisd/iafis/efts_70.pdf - DCJS NY RFP for LiveScan services (yay procurement! /s) http://www.criminaljustice.ny.gov/rfp/livescan/livescanrfp_f... - CA DOJ Become a LiveScan Operator http://oag.ca.gov/fingerprints/operators
I had an Uber from the southside to Midway, and I felt like just getting into his car I was being set up in a sting operation. I (white guy) shrunk down in the back seat the entire time. The dude was nice, but holy shit what does CPD think when white guys get in the backs of gangbanger's cars (yes, my driver was nice but sketchy, and his car was exactly the mid-90s low-riding Pontiac you see around here getting busted all the time). I felt like I was his "ride" while he circled the southside between drug pickups. It gave him an "out."
On the flip side, had an awesome middle aged white woman take us from A to B on the northside of Chicago. She was doing it as a part-timer and super nice.
I guess my point is that maybe with taxi companies you at least could/should have a hiring/interview process? I'll plead ignorance to the Uber/Lyft process, but is there even an interview? It's just hit or miss in Chicago.
I'm going to assume your objection is to #1. If so, do you have any fucking idea how institutionalized racism is in Chicago, especially with CPD? Even sane white folks know this. There are mostly good apples, but some bad ones, and we don't need to be a part of any dragnet.
The personal attacks were bad but you already know that. The racial comments are a problem because whether you mean them that way or not, people are certain to read them as slurs. It's hard to conceive of a comment like yours not throwing an HN thread off the rails.