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Comment by junon | Hacker News Reader

I worked at Uber corporate for a year and this is how I kind of see things too. The medallion system is ridiculous when you dig into it, the taxi lobbies are toxic and anti-capitalist and wrong really no matter how you look at it (aside from the union aspect I suppose, but they definitely use it as a weapon, not as a tool). I'm happy to see Uber and Lyft and whatnot upend them. Not so happy it had to be done through shady practices.

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That may be the case. But my country doesn't have a medallion system or (effective) taxi lobbyists. It does have a licence system where a taxi company that covers an area needs to supply coverage 24/7 so people can get home when they are drunk, or otherwise unsafe, at 3 am on a Tuesday.

Uber ignored all that and just took the profitable peek times. Plus they ignored employment law and paid drivers less than minimum wage.

They "disrupted" our taxi industry by illegally taking the easy profit and ignoring the costs of being a business.

I hate that it seems like every government in the world treats companies that blatantly break the law with kid gloves instead of coming down on them like a ton of bricks.

The government likes giving people benefits via mandates for businesses in order to obfuscate costs. Transparent and accurate pricing for a driver at 2AM results in a better allocation of resources. If the government wants to give people access to drivers at 2AM, then the government should either give people enough cash to pay the price of a driver willing to be available at 2AM, or run the service themselves.

These things have all kinds of social implications.

In the capital of Turkey, Ankara, the islamist mayor cut all the public transport after 00:00, making late evening events(concerts or simply socializing in bars and clubs) inaccessible to younger people from poorer backgrounds because the taxis were expensive and abusive(the taxi lobby was protected by the same government).

This caused divides between the youth and hindered the arts and entertainment scene for many many years.

Some stuff is essential services. Like the airlines, they must be available and accessible even when it’s not profitable. It often needs to be subsidized, the subsidy can come from the central government or the users of the service can share the cost of the unprofitable operations.

When you fail in that, the whole society and economy crumbles.

And those services (societal infrastructure) should be operated (or paid for) by the government.

To what degree to you believe that should be the case? There are multiple political interpretations of that sentiment throughout history with widely varying implementations and downstream consequences.

Is it just public transportation? Are airlines and trains public transportation? Is it other critical infrastructure? Utilities? Energy? Healthcare? Communication? Other societal necessities like food/housing/shelter?

Whatever the population feels like should not be subject to market pricing.

Also, whatever is prohibitively expensive to duplicate, such as water/sewage/gas pipes, electrical/fiber wires, etc. Or public transport like underground train systems.

"not subject to market pricing" is quite a spectrum of practices, and depending on how you define it, it could be almost nothing, or almost everything in the US.

Taxes, tariffs, subsidies, affect market pricing quite a bit and are extremely common. Some consumer protection laws place very loose pricing rules on businesses that are literally price controls, but in practice allow pricing to fluctuate with market rates. Some other industries have segments which are price controlled, and other segments that are not, i.e. healthcare, insurance.

I mean that the market price should not be obfuscated. I have no qualms about society choosing to subsidize certain things, but the costs should be explicitly recognized.

For example, give people access to higher education. Okay, have the government operate the higher education institutions. Or give the students cash to pay for the higher education institutions.

But do not obfuscate costs by guaranteeing all student loans with zero underwriting. (The more politically popular method since it keeps taxes low now and lets politicians say they helped people). Of course, this price obfuscation rears its ugly head in 20 to 30 years once tuition is now $50k+ per year.

3/4 of post-secondary students in the US do go to schools operated by the government, that doesn't preclude those institutions from charging tuition.

Do you mean 'obfuscated' or 'inflated'?

I'm not sure how prices are obfuscated in US higher education... prices are published and you sign several pieces of paper with the price on it before you walk into class for the first time. Guaranteed loans don't obfuscate prices (in fact, DoE loans have more paperwork than private loans), they enable schools to inflate prices because it gives more buying power to their students. This isn't something that would be fixed by handing out cash instead, in fact, grants/scholarships are another factor that have enabled schools to inflate costs. If you shift the demand curve up and to the right, the equilibrium price goes up -- it doesn't really matter what shifted it.

The lack of underwriting is what obfuscated the prices (along with non dischargability of loans in bankruptcy).

A prudent lender would not lend a teenager tens of thousands of dollars to study something the society does not want (indicated by high probability of low paying careers as a result of that education).

Grants/scholarships/subsidized tuition might push demand and hence prices higher, but because grants impact taxpayers’ wallets today, there would be a built in check on spending. Not so with lending the money to teenagers.

> because grants impact taxpayers’ wallets today

The government can defect spend, and raise taxes later. That's even more of an obfuscated price than an ill-advised loan. Either mechanism of surprise costs is a bad thing.

The root of the higher-ed problem is social. We're forcing kids to make career decisions before they're ready, and we're forcing them into paths based upon 1970s stereotypes about the workplace. 50% of counselors and secondary-teachers are clueless about the broader workplace, and the other 50% would be politically chastised by parents if they told the truth.

We'd solve 80% of our student loan crisis if it was politically okay to tell kids:

1. If you don't have an interest in higher learning, don't want to go to college, or "just want a job" you shouldn't go to college. Don't go to college because your mother is pressuring you to do it, because she finds it 'unfashionable' or 'embarrassing' if you don't.

2. Just because you can do something doesn't mean someone will pay you to do it. How many job openings are in that career path, how many people are competing for that job, and how do you rank against them?

3. Academic talent is 50% of what employers care about. Nobody is going to care about your GPA if you don't have social, professional, and self-marketing skills.

It sounds like a line of reasoning that programmers fall into. "This code is so stupid! Shouldn't it be like blah!?" And then a more senior person tells you a story and yeah, you couldn't have found a better solution given the circumstances.

Not really. The solution is just not politically palatable because it requires increased wealth transfers from the haves to the have nots.

That's one way to do it, as I said. The other way is to share the burden of the service by all of its users.

In the case of Taxi service, I find to be more appropriate users of the local service sharing the cost of the low hours. Central government paying for local services tends to be very inefficient.

The question is does society benefit from taxis being available all night long? If that is the correct question, and the answer is yes, then society should be paying for it.

By restricting the distribution of costs over only people who use taxis, then people who use taxis are unfairly shouldering a burden that society benefits from as a whole.

People who use taxis also get an unfair benefit by making a disproportionate use of publicly-funded roads which they don't pay for. Very few things are 100% private or 100% public. Most large organisations necessarily exist in a space of negotiation and compromise with the rest of society - you can use this public resource, but you have this public obligation. We'll reduce your taxes by this if you agree to provide that. We'll build this for you if you pay that. And why should the world work any differently?

I definitely sympathise with your main point - there's a tendency to see a problem and go looking for a nearby business to soak rather than funding it through general taxation. But assuming we accept that there should be a fleet of taxis that operate overnight to provide this socially-mandated service (and whether that fleet is directly owned and operated by the government or is something that private operators provide as part of a mutually agreed bundle of rights and obligations is immaterial IMO), for private industry to undercut the profitable segment of that service would be a both direct social loss (money out of the government's account) and a waste of real value (those expensive taxis sitting in the daytime).

The government is not some magic money source. Saying the government should pay for something is saying the everyone should share the cost.

By mandating that taxis are available we are saying that the cost of off peek taxis should be paid by people that use taxis. If I never go to a town big enough to have a taxi service, or if I drive my own car everywhere, then I never share the cost for subsidising off peek taxis.

Which is more fair, everyone pays or only taxi uses pay?

I contend that is unfair to levy a societal benefit solely on customers of taxis during the hours at which taxis would be available anyway without government mandates.

I would even go so far as to say if the government is mandating something, then the costs should be distributed amongst that government’s tax base (can be progressively distributed, but across the whole tax base nonetheless).

There are many cases in which we might want the government to mandate something and direct the cost towards a particular group. For example, when a societal cost is caused by the choices of a particular group. Distributing this cost equally or progressively may be a less fair way to do it. And in some cases, distributing this cost to society as a whole may remove an important financial disincentive for bad behavior.

e.g.:

* making polluters responsible for cleanup costs

* making investors responsible for the costs of overseeing the markets they profit from

* making bad drivers responsible for paying for the consequences of their actions

I'd say it's more fair to say that we could distribute costs to society when it's a public service that generally benefits everyone, or the disadvantaged. But I don't think we would want to distribute societal costs incurred by the rich or reckless.

Your first and third examples are punishments for violating the law (or harming society), not societal benefits. Hence not applicable to what we are talking about here, in my opinion.

The second example I see no problem distributing amongst society, if functioning markets are providing a benefit to society.

There are corruption risks with making government functions dependent upon the thing they are policing.

Another way to think about it is the taxi companies enjoy slightly/moderately less profits than they could maximally get in exchange for a safer and better society (eg 24/7 taxi coverage). The same can be said for drivers licenses, car insurance, employee benefits, etc.

Instead of the government acting as either entirely public or entirely private, why shouldn’t it act instead as a mediator between the public and the private? This seems to be the most logical decision for me compared to either full socialism or full libertarianism.

> enjoy slightly/moderately less profits than they could maximally get in exchange for a safer and better society

This is an enormous assumption (frequently wrong), and precisely why the costs of a government mandate should not be implicitly laid on a select population.

It actually results in attempts to cheat and incentivize corruption. For example, NYC had or has a problem with cabs not taking people to poorer neighborhoods. The government can mandate it all day long, but they did not stop cab drivers from discriminating. The correct solution in this case, would be to pay the cab drivers the market price for going to the poorer neighborhoods.

The payment obviously would have to come from the government, either given directly to the poorer person or can be given directly to the cab driver. But either way the incentivizes would be properly aligned, increasing supply of cab drivers willing to drive to the poorer neighborhoods.

Where this falls apart is that it requires increase in government spending, meaning increase in taxes for rich people. And obviously, they are going to oppose this wealth transfer. It is much easier and cheaper to simply require cab drivers to go to poorer neighborhoods under threat of fines or whatnot, and sit back and let the status quo continue.

Interesting. I suppose if the mandates cannot or will not be enforced then it presents a problem, although I don’t know how well the incentive system works with say, clean air/water acts, which seem to be both mandated and incentivized.

Yes, there are additional measures needed when goods/service is not fungible and/or easily measurable.

>Instead of the government acting as either entirely public or entirely private, why shouldn’t it act instead as a mediator between the public and the private? This seems to be the most logical decision for me compared to either full socialism or full libertarianism.

It depends on the context of mediation. In one sense, government-as-mediator is completely compatible with a libertarian nightwatchman state so long as such mediation is impartial and does not infringe on public and private rights of either party.

But I don't think such a distinction helps here, as the functional differences between taxis and Uber amount to little more than legal fiction.

But why should any company be forced to provide services to drunk people? The government intervention here is the unfair bit.

Why should they have any licensing at all? Is that unfair too?

My guess is that governments have interest in making sure services are safe and reliable. Hence licenses. And rules for those licenses.

Why should their licensing be different than for pilots?

With a private pilots license you can't fly for money, but you can take your friends and family with you.

With a commercial pilots license you can fly for money.

Neither of these are capped, a commercial pilots license just requires slightly more education and experience. Why should licensing for taxis be any different?

Flying isn't capped, but airport runway slots certainly are. As I see it, taxis are not different in this case.

For commercial airliners carrying hundreds of passengers, yeah.

For small private planes? Slots are hardly ever the limiting factor.

Taxis are more like private jets than Airbuses carrying hundreds of pax.

While taxis aren't as good for society as buses, they still reduce the total amount of car infrastructure required. The slot comparison doesn't seem apt.

> While taxis aren't as good for society as buses, they still reduce the total amount of car infrastructure required.

No they don't. They choke up the most costly piece of car infrastructure - road space in the very centre of cities.

Less so than people actually driving themselves around the centres of cities.

If I drive myself to somewhere in the centre, my car will sit there using up space while I'm doing my thing. If I use a taxi, the same car that delivered me will serve other people while I'm doing my thing.

Of course it would be even better if I used public transport, but I'm not going to do that because public transport is uncomfortable at best.

> If I drive myself to somewhere in the centre, my car will sit there using up space while I'm doing my thing.

In the absence of terrible laws, it'll be stored somewhere that's more space-efficient (e.g. in a multistory car-park) compared to a taxi cruising around the main streets looking for fares.

Works in America, but not so well in the old cities of Europe.

On the contrary, America tends to waste a lot of city space with surface parking and wide roads, so taxis don't make it appreciably worse, whereas the old cities of Europe are where we really don't have space for them.

FYI in my country, at the top of this thread, that is how it works. Drivers need a "P" licence and the taxi companies need to register and follow some rules. But apart from that there are no limits or artificial restrictions.

But uber ignored all that anyway.

Clearly your law enforcement just sucks if these people aren't getting in trouble for driving without a license, no?

Just like you'd get in trouble for driving a car with a motorcycle license.

That is one of the things that passes me off about all this. The enforcement agency did go after a bunch of drivers that were driving passengers for money without a "P" licence. Now, IIRC, Uber does require drivers to have a "P" licence.

But that same agency didn't do shit to Uber for operation of a taxi service without meeting the requirements.

Going after the little people is easy, but give up when the target has a bunch of VC money and lawyers.

We have a similar problem with our courier drivers. Everyone is "totally not an employee, they run their own independent business".

There should be no need to go after Uber, they probably shouldn't have to be the ones enforcing this. Uber can't verify if the driving license you've provided them is fake or not, at least the cops can do that.

Why should this enforcement be outsourced to Uber?

Why should hospitals be forced to provide care to sick people? I mean this 100% seriously, what would you do if hospitals just straight up refused patients that were expensive or annoying to treat focusing entirely on “profitable medicine?”

“Oooo sorry Jim, there’s no money to be made in cancer patients.

The government has an interest in people having access taxi services 24/7 because it prevents DUIs and licensure/regulations is the means to ensure that.

“Well the government should provide that transportation then.” — They are via this regulation.

>Why should hospitals be forced to provide care to sick people? I mean this 100% seriously, what would you do if hospitals just straight up refused patients that were expensive or annoying to treat focusing entirely on “profitable medicine?”

They should not, unless hospitals have the power to tax. Or the hospital is getting reimbursed by the government.

>“Well the government should provide that transportation then.” — They are via this regulation.

Politicians like to do it via mandates for businesses because they can avoid being responsible for problems and have a convenient third party to blame. It also avoids them having to increase taxes.

That is exactly why most hospitals are required to take sick patients. The Emergency Medical Treatment And Labor Act requires hospitals that accept Medicare (most of them) to provide (minimal) treatment to any patient that shows up.

That works, since the hospital is getting paid for it by society (although via health insurance companies via the now neutered individual mandate to purchase health insurance).

The important thing is the price for a hospital being able to provide highly qualified team of workers and equipment 24/7 to treat patients should not be obfuscated. It is valuable information for how many more hospitals/doctors/research/ whatever is needed and which kind of work society should incentivize people to do.

I guess to encourage drunk people not to drive, which makes the roads safer for everyone.

Why shouldn't they provide services? It's just easier for them to drunk drive and kill others.

'But why should healthcare coverage providers be forced to provide coverage to people with pre-existing conditions? That's unfair.'

Would you mind sharing which country you’re in?

I’m doing some academic work on Uber’s effect on existing laws, and your example would be very helpful.

New Zealand.

So Uber unbundled expensive edge cases from typical usage. Seems like a win for most people. They can always pay the real price in those edge cases, not socializing it on everyone else.

Not to mention that the smartphone online model plus flexible work is inherently more efficient.

I love to be able to fly into SFO and just walk to the cab curb and be off.

No crazy Uber pickup location and trying to find “your” driver.

I also don’t have problems getting cabs at the hotels that I am staying at.

If I have to go down 101 and am in a remote spot I often have to use Uberlyft since nobody is willing/capable to get a cab.

Early on Uber cars were nice - now they are rundown just as much as cabs.

Pricing is horrible by Uberlyft. It’s just a disgusting feeling to have discriminative pricing algorithms.

Most cabbies I talk to own their Medaillon and are proud and knowledgeable about their job.

Airports and pricy hotels are literally the only places in SF that cab service is dependable.

Prior to Uber, cab dispatch outside of airports and the hotel were nearly impossible. Getting somebody to come pick you up was a disaster of unreliability, particularly at times when transit had stopped, and cabs were the only option.

Uber/Lyft have huge problems, but the medallion system is even worse, IMHO. Ideally we'd have functioning transit and enough housing served by that transit that the housing becomes affordable. But without that, I'm glad that Uber/Lyft are there as an alternative to the horribleness of cabs.

Yup, pricey hotels to be clear. I stayed at a motel and the cabbies kept cancelling on me until I gave up and booked a Uber black. This was before UberX launched. The experience was so much better I took the car to the airport instead of the Bart station I had planned. Back in the day getting a cab in SF was next to impossible.

To add, I’ve also had to walk 3 miles in frigid SF fog and sleep in the office because I couldn’t find transportation back home.

Like their housing, this artificial scarcity ruined SF for me. On the flip side most Uber/Lyft drivers drive like maniacs now. So I guess there’s a line to be drawn somewhere in between the two craziness.

The first time I used Uber was about 6 or 7 years ago. I was living in the DC Suburbs and I had a plane to catch. The night before my flight I called and booked a cab for 6 am. At 6 am there was no cab so I called the dispatcher and asked when they'd be there, they said the cab was on its way and would be there in ten minutes. At 6:15 I called again and they admitted there had never been a cab on the way, there were none available, and they cancelled on me.

I downloaded Uber, signed up for an account, and had a ride by 6:25.

I had almost the exact experience, including the timing, with one alteration: exchange Uber with taxi.

And hence the root problem is exposed: people are generally not able or willing to pay enough to incentivize someone to reliably drive them at odd hours. The problem is people expecting something they cannot afford.

So if only some company had an algorithm to incentivize drivers based on supply and demand…

And then the company gets excoriated by media for price gouging.

I scheduled a pickup with Uber for my family to get to the airport for a holiday trip. It never showed, there was no feedback on the app and no way to know/resolve the issue. I only use Lyft now.

I remember coming to San Francisco on business trips 11-12 years ago. Cabs were impossible to find - one of the selling points of our office building was that it had a cab stand, so it was a bit easier. We'd walk blocks to find hotels so we could get a cab. We'd call and they'd show up 30+ minutes later, if we were lucky. It was really really frustrating. It made experiencing the city without a car really challenging.

Uber was an incredible breath of fresh air. It just worked. It's more expensive now, but it still just works. And it's probably still cheaper than taxis were.

I wouldn't want to go back.

Best and worst taxi rides I've had were out of SFO about 15 years ago.

Best was in the evening. Went to the cab queue and the guy that pulled up for me had the windows down and was blasting techno from that university station that was around back then. He practically catapulted my gear in the back and off we went. Traffic was light enough he could weave through it doing about 30 over the limit, windows down and techno blaring the whole way. Got to my hotel quite fast.

The worst was mid day, and was a guy that was starting to nod off to sleep at red lights. I nearly got out of the cab but was already late to a big deal meeting, so just stuck it out despite how sketch it was.

> I love to be able to fly into SFO and just walk to the cab curb and be off.

The only reason Uber can't offer this service and has crazy pickup locations is because of regulations imposed on Uber

I was in Milwaukee once, and needed to get to the airport. I don't use Uber or Lyft, but I asked the hotel what they recommended. They said Lyft. So I signed up, and put out a request for a ride.

Nobody responded. The app helpfully showed me all the Lyft drivers nearby that were ignoring me, which was really awesome.

At some point, it became clear that I was not going to get to the airport in time unless I left really soon. So I called Yellow Cab (or whatever the taxi service is called in Milwaukee). Five minutes later, the guy showed up and I was on my way.

I get that, as a brand new user, the drivers may have been cautious or wary of a gumper with no ratings, but WTF. I'm at a hotel going to the airport. I deleted the app from my phone, and would now rather take a pogo stick than Uber or Lyft.

I used to travel to the Bay Area for work all the time, and the taxis were a nightmare EVERY TIME. Before I got in a cab at SJC I'd look the driver in the eyes and ask if his credit card reader "is working". He'd say "Yes, no problem! Hop in!"

Then we get to the hotel 15 minutes away, he wants $40 cash. Turns out his credit card reader is broken. I argue with him for a while, and he decides he can write my fucking card number down on a piece of paper. Asks me what the tip will be. It's zero, asshole.

Nowadays I have to walk farther to the rideshare pickup area, but the ride is cheap, the service is good, and I don't have to have an argument at the end of it. I tip in cash so that Uber/Lyft can't steal it.

I wish there were a version of this where the driver would get 90% of the fare, nobody gets discriminatory pricing, and nobody has to deal with gamified BS, but oh well. I will NEVER ride in another taxi or take any action to help taxi drivers. They had their chance and they blew it.

I have never been in this circumstance, but at that point paying at all seems like a bad idea. They can choose to kidnap you I guess...

haha, I should've done that

"Fuck you then, send me a bill" and throw my business card on the seat

> I will NEVER ride in another taxi or take any action to help taxi drivers. They had their chance and they blew it.

Do as you like but keep in mind there are some decent taxi companies. Up here there's a driver owned co-op cab that is reliable and reasonable. No nice app but if you schedule a trip to the airport they show up on time.

Yep the card trick seem to be universal. It happened to me so often here in Montréal that at the end I would just say "I only have 20$ cash does that get me there? Otherwise I have my credit card" so that if they were to have a "broken" machine they'd know how much I would be able to pay in cash from the get go. Sometimes the machine magically worked when the meter got way beyond whatever I had in cash. I get the hustle of not paying taxes or credit card fees but damn if it didn't make for a weird and pushy experience

A lot of them are worse than cabs in London.

Nyc yellow cabs are far cheaper than uber/lyft. They also tend to know the city better. Rideshares wiped out yellow cabs then drove up the price.

If this is true, it simply means that Uber/Lyft outcompeted the yellow cabs in some other set of attributes, rather than price.

I'm guessing availability and ease of use.

I don’t think the situation has stabilized, either for NYC or for Uber. Too many variables. It’s also possible a stable equilibrium doesn’t emerge and it’s just a pendulum that swings between upstarts and incumbents, regulated and deregulated, apps, cabs and dollar vans…

Being able to get into a car and get whisked off to your destination without having to talk to someone about directions is pretty nice

That, plus willingness to take you to a destination outside of Manhattan. Yellow cabs would often refuse to go to an outer borough. Refusing a destination within NYC was actually against the law, but the law basically wasn't enforced.

That's a good point. Getting to EWR in Jersey used to be hard.

Or that they used VC money to outcompete companies using artificially low prices, and then raised the prices to make some profit once they got a hold on the market

It's time to disrupt the disrupters.

Knowing the price in advance vs hoping for the best is worth a lot, even if on average the latter was cheaper.

Taxi lobbies wouldnt exist w/o the transferability and leasing of medallions. The idea that a "permit" can be transferrable is ridiculous. This is the structure that caused one of the the problems. Taking a non-cab on Manhattan proper is usually a waste of time. To take a cab in NYC, you walk out to street that has a place to pull over. Form the "I need a ride pose", or raise your hand and look the cabbie in the eye and boom, you are off to your destination in seconds. I don't think I have ever waited over a minute for a cab in NYC. If you need to get to the airport, call for a black car.

It broke my heart listening to my cab driver talk about how much he paid for his medallion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_medallion

This just isn't true. There's still tons of yellow cabs in NYC. And you know what had the most terrible taxi experience, yellow cabs. I've never been unable to pay via card in an uber/lyft. I've never had my driver pull the emergency brake and tell me his car is broken because I said I lived in Brooklyn and they didn't want to drive there in a uber/lyft. I never had the AC be not working or refused to be used in an uber/lyft.

And yet all of those things happened in yellow cabs and much more. Yellow cabs are truly terrible experience. And they were never far cheaper.

They are far cheaper right now. I promise you. It's also been this way for a while. And yes, yellow cabs still exist, but you will not see a sea of yellow down Broadway like has historically been the case. Even before covid.

My recent survey of Uber/Lyft cars is they're absolutely every bit as shitty as some of the Yellows out there.

No cabby objects to going to Brooklyn and hasn't for almost 10 years.

Uber/Lyfts at JFK constantly call and try to ask where I'm going before they pick me up.

The Curb app is fine.

The problem is not the medallions but the centralization of medallions. Owner/operators are usually much better than the dude renting the cab and medallion from some shady ass company.

The TLC should do more to fix the cabs - and we should support them fixing cabs and owner/operators at the expense of Uber/Lyft. The competition is good, but Uber/Lyft are no better than the medallion squatters.

> And they were never far cheaper.

When Uber started, this was true. Uber has gotten, pardon the pun, uber expensive in most places I go.

I now take a cab from the airport because a) it's easier, and b) it's cheaper. I'm not sure I'd say 'far cheaper', but that probably depends on locales.

> wiped out

Really? Yellow taxis are alive and well in NYC.

The drivers who were 'wiped out' are the ones that bought a medallion at the peak of a bubble. They were victims of predatory lenders as much or more than Uber or Lyft.

Most drivers rent cabs and medallions for a fixed price and then keep whatever fares they earn. Even drivers who own medallions would typically let them out to other drivers so the cab could be on the streets for as close to 24 hours as possible.

Rideshare services have made the medallions less valuable because drivers for them don't need to rent a cab and medallion, and so the owners can demand less for renting them out. In other words, it has given labor _more_ power, and the typical cab driver is doing better.

If you've been noticing less cabs lately, it's probably Covid related, as the pandemic has diminished the demand for all types of travel, particularly in Manhattan.

Biggest hurdle to tradition cabs is simply

> Credit card reader broke

London largely solved this by making it a violation of rules to have the car on the road with a broken card reader. Suddenly card readers got a whole lot more reliable. I haven't had an issue with a driver refusing to take a card since that started (but I have run into several with non-regulation card readers; clearly still trying to avoid paying taxes...)

Even having a credit card reader isn't as convenient as knowing the price in advance before you get in and then having that price automatically charged, without having to do anything when you arrive except get out of the car.

Knowing the city is no longer relevant in the age of Navigation apps with live traffic data.

Microscopic knowledge of every corner of the city won't help you predict a traffic accident blocking your most efficient route, or a crazy homeless guy pushing a dumpster onto the road.

Not to mention but even if the p50 or p99 driver has amazing knowledge, as a customer, it frustrates me to no end to have to explain to a taxi driver where I'm trying to go because they happen to not know MY location, and are too proud to just punch it into Google Maps.

This doesn't happen with Uber/Lyft.

And we haven't even gotten to the "My credit card machine isn't broken" scenario. Being able to walk out of the car at your destination and just take off is worth it for that alone.

Other parts of the world have cheap reliable taxis with no medallion crap, and Uber is just as eager to put them out of business.

Once they were established in a different country, yeah. But would they have been able to start and secure their business in those countries? That’s less certain, imo. Part of the real value prop of Uber was that taxis were expensive and clunky, and they made it faster and cheaper.

They made them cheaper by ignoring minimum wage laws the world over. No wonder taxi companies couldn't compete.

People keep saying this but everywhere I go I still see city taxis operating with radio/telephone systems that plus the usual black car airport/limo services. They still have their piece of the market where they still provide value. The death of the incumbents seems to be a bit oversold but regardless competition is not the problem here.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30615191. I realize you were responding to the parent's point, but the subthread unfortunately became a generic behemoth about Uber. Almost like it was 2016 again, or something!

> the taxi lobbies are toxic and anti-capitalist and wrong really no matter how you look at it

Wait is a monopoly protected by regulatory capture anti-capitalist or just capitalist.

Not GP, but IMHO it's neither. This is the wrong category. But if we're going to try and cram "capitalism in there, "crony capitalism" (abusing government structures to change the rules of the game in favor of one party) is probably most appropriate.

I'm not a fan of Uber's more toxic leadership personalities and behavior, but I do think it's fair to give them credit: they completely changed what it's like to get around places like Mexico City as a tourist. The licensed cabs are a crap shoot, and particularly late at night you'll get price gouged. Unlicensed cabs can be quite sketch. The existing private car services were all insanely flakey. Now it's low stress and reliable.

> taxi lobbies are ... anti-capitalist

So what if they are?

Well, considering that capitalism has been the biggest source of good in the world, lifting untold numbers out of poverty and raising the standard of living across the globe… I’d say anything that gets in the way of that for protectionist reasons needs to go.

> Well, considering that capitalism has been the biggest source of good in the world

Really? Capitalism == Peak of goodness?

No, but possibly one of the greatest forces of good we have conjured as humans.

Capitalism has only done all the good things it's credited with if you ignore the externalities starting to come due in the last decade. There's a cost, and capitalism only works by socializing it. Even the good stuff is built on publicly funded research and projects.

The externalities are definitely an issue, and some will need to be addressed, however I’d argue those would exist regardless of the economic system in place. Humans tend to be a bit rapacious in the context of any economic frameworks.

I am not against forms of socializing aspects of society. Fire service works wonderfully, universities are fantastic, etc.

OK, but what if applying ”capitalism” to a service industry pushes workers towards poverty and lowers their standards of living?

That’s what has happened in Finland. Established, trained and taxpaying cab drivers had to compete against untrained drivers who haven’t got a business license or pay taxes.

This triggered a race to the bottom and drove many into unemployment, poverty and bankruptcy.

Literally no one gained anything from this other than foreign-based ride-hailing apps: remaining drivers (many of them immigrants) barely get paid due to the price race to the bottom, customers get worse service and worse ride comfort and slower drives due to independent drivers not even going through a basic city knowledge test. Government loses tax money and much of the revenue is siphoned to foreign countries.

You can definitely find instances where it has failed some workers, overall though the tide has lifted everyone’s boats. This is where a limited social safety net is warranted.

In contrast, the presence of Uber in London gave Black Cab drivers a well-deserved kick. Before they were expensive, refused to accept card payments and often would refuse to drive you somewhere that wasn't convenient for them.

The mayor actually tried to ban Uber but the public backlash was so great that they panned that move.

Capitalism is a word, at best a euphemism for moral relativism, and clinging to it is succumbing to sunk cost fallacy.

It prescribes billions must kowtow to a minority who are average people granted political and education advantage.

Read the well curated history; capitalism came about when some rich educated guys in the 1800s realized religion was dying, and needed a new social control scheme and decided a few slogans about honest work being worth a buck would be easily understood by the lesser educated laborers.

Human ingenuity and engineering existed for hundreds of thousands of years before capitalism.

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