Comment by bbatsell | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bbatsell | Hacker News Reader

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Clearing up some serious misconceptions here:

1) Austin did not ban Uber or Lyft. The city council passed an ordinance that required a gradually increasing percentage of rideshare drivers pass an FBI-approved fingerprint background check. (These rules are in place in other locales in which Uber operates, such as NYC and Houston.) Uber and Lyft formed a PAC that got a proposition on the next local election ballot that would have overturned the ordinance, then spent $9 million on a massive advertising campaign supporting the proposition. The proposition failed overwhelmingly.

2) Uber and Lyft stopped providing services of their own volition within 48 hours. Considering they abide by the same regulations in other cities, it seems pretty obvious to me that it was done in retaliation in order to show other cities considering doing the same that they will actually pull out.

3) Several upstart ridesharing companies immediately jumped into the market and were fully operational in less than a month and are complying fully with the regulations. (Examples are Fasten, Fare, RideAustin, and GetMe.)

4) RideAustin is registered as a non-profit organization, formed by several local tech entrepreneurs affiliated with Capital Factory, an Austin accelerator/VC firm. It is not owned or operated by the city in any fashion.

#3 if anything should be proof to Uber's potential future investors that they need to be wary that Uber has anything but name recognition and first mover advantage.

They have no moat, no barrier to entry, and a whole lot of hubris just waiting to mature in the form of fierce competitors and negative PR.

To be fair, the new apps do suffer with reliability issues in periods of high loads. e.g. I would not, from experience, trust fasten to get me back home at 2.30am on a weekend night (even if I'm willing to pay their "boosted" fares).

Its not an unsolvable problem though. I bet if they could hire more/better engineers and invest in infra for reliability they could be a lot better. And it might actually happen if Uber suddenly raises its prices and people look around for alternatives.

I think Uber and Lyft have made a huge mistake by leaving Austin. First of all they showed drivers and passengers just how little they cared about them; a lot of people in Austin were really angry at them and continue to be. Second, their stunt did not work. There was, obviously, a lot of backlash against the Mayor and local politicians but that has died down and the city has moved on. But lastly, and most importantly, the Austin market became available exclusively to all the other ridesharing apps, giving them a leg up and a source of reliable income and feedback.

I get the feeling that next time this happens in another city, the other apps will similarly step in and take over the market. But this time they will be faster and better prepared.

> To be fair, the new apps do suffer with reliability issues in periods of high loads

This is where someone should come in and offer business software that is easily branded to handle the technical aspect of the business, and just sell it to the new entrants. This is a great market for shovels.

Plus, the software has easy existing customer bases in pre-existing cab companies looking to modernize ancient dispatch systems. Uber/Lyft argue that market disintermediation and union breaking are a feature, but in most metropolitans it certainly seems like a bug.

What happens when Google, Apple, Amazon or other company with a solid cloud app team steps in?

Austin's homegrown competitors may not be fearful, but one of the existing majors could single-handedly shatter Uber's image with a half-decent app, esp if it's integrated with something like Google Maps or Apple Wallet or equivalent feed.

> What happens when Google, Apple, Amazon or other company with a solid cloud app team steps in?

This is sort of a fundamental problem with our entire conception of a digital economy. Google, Microsoft and Amazon are fundamentally the only games in town that can compete. Our regulations, laws, and economics are not well set up to deal with the fact that there is a wholly new type of meta-entity that is so overwhelmingly important for modern business.

We can barely regulate (and often fail to regulate) the energy industry appropriately and that's a way more competitive market.

Why could this not be a public service? Sort of like the very public highways the cars drive on.

What are you, communist or something?!

I read a poignant comment on Twitter the other day, about how nowadays public libraries and fire services would never be funded - perhaps we'd give illiterate people tax credits for buying books, and insurance companies would have private fire engines.

The neo-liberal agenda of not allowing any public entity to provide services that could possibly compete with a private corporation has succeeded too well.

We already have that: https://usnews.newsvine.com/_news/2011/12/07/9272989-firefig...

Modern conservatism is a cancer.

No sympathy from me.

I pay for fire protection as part of my property taxes. In this case, it's a separate item that must be purchased separately. That's what makes it "a cancer"?

As the morons in the article said: Bell and her boyfriend said they were aware of the policy, but thought a fire would never happen to them.

Yeah, I agree. I also move to let sick people die if we can't verify that they have insurance coverage, and bar children from education if their parents can't pay (or if they are orphaned). I mean, screw poor people! Right?

> No sympathy from me.

No sympathy for people who lost their home and possessions over a $75 fee?

I had a friend who had no sympathy for another friend who was diagnosed with throat cancer, because he smoked cigarettes. Didn't matter that the person had cancer, what mattered is that they smoked cigarettes and knew the risks. It was forgivable on the first friend's part because he was also heavily medicated for a psychiatric illness.

No sympathy for people who lost their home and possessions over a $75 fee?

Well, yes, sympathy from me as in "sucks to be them". But they were adults and made a voluntary decision to forego paying for fire protection. They made a bet and they lost.

As for cancer, when I was in high school some 40 years ago, I knew a US Army Major (i.e. Gung-ho military) who smoked. Even then, smoking was starting to be frowned upon. So he used to say "any fool can quit smoking. It takes a man to face cancer."

At a personal level, if I ran into that person now and it turned out he indeed had cancer, I would of course have sympathy for him. But perhaps he and I would both agree that adults sometimes make bad decisions, and they then should accept the consequences of those bad decisions.

As Niven and Pournelle explained it back in 1981: "think of it as evolution in action".

I respect your different point of view on this matter. But if I may act as the devil's advocate: what if it was your brother (or father) that said that to you? Would you not volunteer help to them if they said those things and are now suffering from cancer?

Personally, I don't think we should reward people for making bad decisions; you are implicitly punishing the people who made the good ones, which are often hard. However, rewarding is one thing; saving from death/destitution is quite another.

Would you not volunteer help to them if they said those things and are now suffering from cancer?

Yes of course families help each other no matter the previous bad choices.

On a societal level we try to help people with cancer even if they don't have health insurance. That's what Medicaid is. Unfortunately that only helps save them from death; destitution probably feels almost as bad and we don't have an easy solution to that.

Can you, for certain, tell if someone who is diagnosed with cancer 100% directly caused that cancer?

At the point that someone is diagnosed with cancer, what is gained by saying "I told you so"?

Would you go as far as to say that to someone who got stomach cancer? That they should accept the consequences of eating cured meats while they and their family suffer?

What about prostate cancer? Did you know that the risk of prostate cancer is decreased by 20% - 30% for each of the following: 1) regular prostate massages 2) increased number of orgasms 3) drinking coffee 4) ingesting more lycopene 5) exercising (41% decrease in risk of developing prostate cancer!) 5) consuming more omega-3 fatty acids.

Would you hold the same "I told you so" attitude towards someone diagnosed with prostate cancer because they didn't have enough kinky sex, drink enough coffee, exercise and eat the right foods?

I'm having a hard time differentiating between "didn't pay $75" and "didn't exercise or rub their prostate hard / often enough".

what is gained by saying "I told you so"?

There's a big difference between having "no sympathy" (which is what I said) and "I told you so".

"No sympathy" means indifference. The problems of people who didn't pay for fire service should be a cautionary tale, a warning to society at large. As the article said: by now, everyone should know about the city's fire policy. "After the last situation, I would hope that everybody would be well aware of the rural fire fees, this time"

"I told you so" is much different. It's "rubbing it in" at a personal level. I would never say "I told you so" to friends or to random people. I would, however, say it to my children in the appropriate situation. Pointing out consequences of bad choices helps children learn to make better choices.

I'm having a hard time differentiating

In "didn't pay $75", the people who don't pay but still expect to be covered are making a deliberate choice to freeload off the goodwill of their neighbors who are paying. How does a fire department exist if paying for it is optional? There is no 'fire department tooth fairy' that periodically delivers money to pay for salaries and equipment.

Cancer is much different. As you note, there isn't 100% certainly what causes a cancer. Lung cancer is one that can be closely linked to smoking, but even there it's not absolute. A quick search turns up a CDC web page that links 80% to 90% of the cases to smoking.[1]

In the case of cancer, interestingly enough it's once again an issue of insurance. Even when I was 20 years old and working a shitty no-benefit low paying job I still paid for my own health insurance. I was only being paid $4 per hour but I prioritized insurance highly enough to pay $100 per month for it. (Granted, that was 40 years ago, it's much harder to afford individual insurance today without some sort of subsidy or group policy).

In your hypothetical situations, did the stomach cancer or prostate cancer patient have insurance? If not, how is it once again not a freeloader problem? There's certainly no reason to say "I told you so". That appears to be a strawman you invented to avoid discussing the real issue which IMO is freeloading.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/basic_info/risk_factors.htm

Hmmm... interesting idea. I wonder it autonomous vehicles would enable this even more? I wouldn't mind paying a little extra tax to my local government to enable them to maintain a fleet of self-driving vehicles that I could summon with an app.

Oh .. you mean buses, paratransit, and other mass transit vehicles :-)

Imagine the beauty of this tax if it were not mandatory. Kind of like a gov. service, but without any threat attached to it. Like a private startup out something..

Yeah, they're having some real troubles right now with SXSW crowds: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-12/upstart-r...

This is their first go at this especially crazy rodeo, though.

> To be fair, the new apps do suffer with reliability issues in periods of high loads

Doesn't this count as first-mover advantage?

Yep I wasn't clear. Austin banned some of the wild west behavior of Uber and Lyft, and they refused to follow along with reasonable restrictions and decided to protest by leaving Austin.

Interesting that Uber and Lyft work together on political influence campaigns like this, given Uber's strategy of bleeding out Lyft through their VC subsidized capital advantage. I would think that just letting them both get shut out of a given city would be a win for Uber.

They weren't "shut out" they were subjected to a popularly-enacted municipal ordinance requiring Austin-administered finger-printing of drivers and decided to stop providing service to Austin.

Are you sure it was to make an example or there was something unique / different about Austin that made both companies not want to provide business there?

It's my impression that they thought of Austin as an "innovation friendly" place and they were "offended" that Austin tried to regulate them.

Neither. It was to prevent establishing a legal precedent of being treated the same as taxi companies.

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