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Comment by crankylinuxuser | Hacker News Reader

Indeed it is. I've posted and talked about this along with posting Richard D Wolff's video "Uber is an old scam"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGwZcR0q6VE&t=10s

We've seen this before, at the beginning of a new industry. And once capitalism sets in, everyone is dragged down to a race to the bottom... Along with safety and human treatment.

And then once the abuses are rampant, people demand change in the way of regulation. And it works. Until prices then rise, and people are angry about the high prices of thing (Taxis).

And then, an upstart doing "app hailing" starts this all over again, with no quality, no assurances, no regulation, and sub-minimum wage payments, with no work protections.

Soon enough, the laws will finally roll in again as they did when Taxis were first made.

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> Until prices then rise

Which they didn't do entirely through the invisible hand. In many areas, taxi regulation was also used limit competition (e.g. medallion systems, unnecessarily difficult licensing exams). In addition to higher prices it permitted lower quality service. If you want to prevent destructive wildfires, you need to do forest management to reduce the fuel that builds up. The taxi industry was a forest full of dry, dead wood ready to burn.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/02/nyregion/taxi-drivers-sui...

It's easy to be cavalier if you ignore the effect on Taxi workers. Ride sharing replaced a stable, unionized, middle class career with low-paying, low-benefit gig jobs. It ruined people's lives and destroyed a stable field of work. This wasn't a technological innovation -- it was a legal one, where they figured out a way to evade regulations to undercut the current system and drive down wages.

It ruined people's lives and destroyed a stable field of work.

Telephone operators and travel agents used to have stable careers.

This wasn't a technological innovation

If the technology is so insignificant, why didn't taxi companies develop ride-hailing apps? Either it's actually complex, or they decided they had no need to improve service because of their oligopoly.

  Telephone operators and travel agents used to have stable careers.

So you are for the indiscriminate ruining of lives because of technological innovation? Why can't any of these innovators work with encumbents to ensure happiness for all and not just enriching themselves?

Why can't any of these incumbents work with innovators to ensure happiness for all and not just enriching themselves?

I don't know if you've ever been to a medallion auction but they went for over a million dollars each in Manhattan before Uber came along. Most of the medallions were bought up by holding companies that then leased them out to drivers who paid up front and had to hope they made enough money that day to cover the fee. In San Francisco, I remember a driver told me that his up front fee was $100-200 per 8 hour shift depending on the season - that's over $100-200k per year ROI and SF's medallions were a fraction of the price of NYC.

I seriously doubt many lives were ruined by the fall in value of taxi medallions. Very few are owned by actual drivers and that's where all the money is.

Its not comparable as Uber is running at a loss underwritten by certain Arab interests so the traditional Taxi service system cannot compete

https://www.investors.com/news/uber-loss-q3-revenue-slows-ub...

> If you want to prevent destructive wildfires, you need to do forest management to reduce the fuel that builds up. The taxi industry was a forest full of dry, dead wood ready to burn.

Wrong. If you want to prevent destructive wildfires, you have to let the forest burn regularly, preferably in a controlled manner. If you just do forest management to reduce the amount of fuel that builds up, all you accomplish is setting up the stage for a massive, all consuming fire that, once started, burns up everything. Example: California.

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