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Comment by verve_rat | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.'

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.

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.

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