Uber concedes deception, prepares for $26M ACCC spanking
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To reinforce social heirarchy, protect elites, and subjugate the proles.
It’s a (wilfully and very successfully engineered) absence of class consciousness.
the deportation cliff;
the prison cliff;
the insurance doesn't pay the doctor the half million they extort cliff;
the no financial aid cliff;
the debt cliffs (more like a mountain range unto themselves);
the you're fired or unemployment on your resume or bad resume cliff;
the addiction cliff;
the fertility (especially for women) cliff;
the sickly child cliff;
the disability cliff;
the homelessness or lose your house or get evicted[1] cliff;
And my personal favorite: the lobotomy cliff. It's the beautiflest as seen from below!
There's others I'm sure. Lots of cliffs to go around! Everybody gets lots of cliffs! No parachutes though, but if you're looking for a good time you can ride a motorcycle off them!
[1] So this one is...it's weird. I talked to a homeless kid (over 18 yeah but still a kid) and asked him, "so what do I do if I end up on the street? What strategies..."
"Just don't end up on the street."
"But if I DO end up on the street then what I do is I..."
"No. The street is cruel. You wake up with people spitting on you, or pissing on you, depends on the night. You for one, you specifically would get gutted and murdered by the guy you pissed off the other time who threatened to do just that. Just do whatever the FUCK you have to do WHATEVER ANYBODY ASKS to not end up homeless."
That's what I call a cliff.
[citation needed]
the problem:
2022: https://www.bakerinstitute.org/media/files/files/3fb2c64b/bi...
1. U.S. population growth has been slowing for years, and in 2021, the population grew only by 392,665—or 0.1%, which is the lowest rate since the nation’s founding. 2. The U.S. will be older and more diverse but also unable to meet the workforce demands of a dynamic and competitive economy.
one of a few sources:
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/12/no-kids-no-ca...
3. Of the 92.2 million adults ages 55 and older in 2018, 15.2 million (16.5%) are childless, defined here as having no biological children...childlessness is more common among the younger cohort of older adults. This suggests that childless adults will make up an even greater share of the older adult population in the future.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/us/declining-birthrate-mo...
4. In more than two dozen interviews with young women in Phoenix and Denver, some said they felt they could not afford a baby.
It feels like breaking traffic regulations should maybe be considered crimes with dagsböter (income based penalty).
Elon's fine could easily be 10x that but maybe not 100x. I don't know his finances and I'm not sure how capital gains are included.
> it's always summer,
is false. I went in winter and it was dark by 3pm. I love the cold and dark, so it was awesome for me
> the people are beautiful
is true. I was constantly stupefied by how attractive people are there. Also, I'm a 184cm male, and every single day I saw multiple women taller than me, just going about town. Not like I was at a basketball training center or something.
I guess you were walking around a city and had to see thousands of people to see multiple women taller than you? The average female adult height in Sweden is still only 165cm, with > 95% of women being less than 178cm. I'd imagine 99+% of Swedish women are < 184cm.
I live elsewhere in Scandinavia and although I sometimes have a feeling the people are more attractive here than in the states as a general rule, I think it's actually that I have a preference for the local fashion. I tend to like Pacific Northwest fashion as well, and there are some similarities.
However, people in Scandinavia also generally walk a lot more than their US counterparts (since European cities are built for walking and American cities are generally not) so I find it plausible that they're more fit on average. I don't know if NYC is unusually walkable for an American city.
Additionally, the more left-aligned European states also have a few other factors going for them. With stronger welfare states comes less homeless, and obviously impoverished people (on average) that you will see in public than say, on the streets of New York City. On the opposite side of the spectrum, people on average, simply appear to be healthier in such cities than one finds in the USA, and this is reflected in statistics like average national height.
Going further, most European cities (not all) tend to take some form of civic pride in the design and caretaking of their cities, while equivalent US cities stress some form of architectural individualism, which has its advantages, but means you are more likely to see random pieces of squalor or ugliness even in nice areas.
You put all of these things together, and one of the things people visiting Europe from the US find, is a feeling that wow: "These people are dressed more nicely than I'm used to, look healthier/taller than I'm used to, are living in nicer settings than I'm used to."
You hear it more about Sweeden (which I cannot attest to, having never been), but yeah, it lines up with the above.
This isn't to say there aren't advantages to the US system, but that's a different topic : )
Obesity: Sweden 20.60% United States 36.20%
Life expectancy: Sweden 83.33 United States 79.11
for developed countries, that's a huge difference!
It's my subjective opinion. I've been to NYC multiple times and found the people totally average, same as Munich, LA, Miami, Seoul, etc.
> I guess you were walking around a city and had to see thousands of people to see multiple women taller than you?
Yes I was in a city. But again, not in LA, nor NYC, nor Seoul, nor Munich did I see that many women taller than me in as short a time
edit: another commenter made a good example, which is weight. I barely saw overweight people in Sweden. I find being overweight extremely unattractive, so that plays into my subjective view of the Swedes I saw as more attractive in general
You can only have repertory (recuperative) damages.
There are no "monetary payments to deter future crime" in Australian civil law.
Digest that one for a second.
I might be missing something but it seems like a good idea that a civil court is unable to punish people after deciding it is necessary to encourage them not to break a criminal law in future.
Australia does presumably have punitive fines and other punishments that are for deterrence in criminal punishments?
If I can steal $5 from you, and the worst thing that happens if I get caught is that I have to give the $5 back, what sort of incentive do you think that creates?
Theft is a criminal matter, and there are punitive remedies for crimes.
It's the same concept. If a corporation commits a civil crime, the maximum in damages it can repay is the amount of damage it caused, give or take interest.
> It's the same concept. If a corporation commits a civil crime, the maximum in damages it can repay is the amount of damage it caused, give or take interest.
It sounds like you're just making that up. I found the agency and the page on the regulation being breached:
https://www.accc.gov.au/business/business-rights-protections...
The maximum penalties per breach of the ACL including unconscionable conduct, making false or misleading representations, and supplying consumer goods or certain services that do not comply with safety standards or which are banned:
For corporations, will be the greater of:
* $10,000,000*
* 3 times the value of the benefit received, or
* 10% of annual turnover in preceding 12 months, if court cannot determine benefit obtained from the offence.
So what's the basis for what your seemingly contradictory claims?
But the corporation didn't break a criminal law like the person in this example.
> But maybe you're on to something, here - perhaps they should.
Directors and executives can absolutely get convicted of crimes relating to their operation and oversight of the company. Whether the laws and investigating agencies have as much power as they should is very debatable but the legal framework is there.
They'll simply do the cost/benefit equation on breaking the law.
Only criminal charges against corporate officers and punitive damages promotes change.
Absolutely. The discussion is centered on fines to companies but the other side is personal punishment of the actual physical people who made the decision to break the law.
That's a factual statement without any evidence supporting it. There's plenty of punitive damages against drug abuse and do you see any signs of it working ?
Compared to individuals addicted to illegal substances.
In Australia, criminal behaviour can incur fines[1]:
> Fines are monetary fines (criminal penalty) imposed by courts in criminal proceedings. Criminal standard of proof is required.
The ACCC has pretty significant ability to impose penalties:
> The maximum penalties per breach of the ACL [..] maximum penalties for breaches [..] will be the greater of: $10,000,000; or If Court can determine "reasonably attributable" benefit obtained, 3 times that value, or if Court cannot determine benefit, 10% of annual turnover in preceding 12 months.
[1] https://www.accc.gov.au/business/business-rights-protections...
Not all fines are punitive damages.
The nature of the business though is that they're almost never awarded, except maybe for contempt of court?
Certainly not in a significant quantity against a corporation.
They are awarded in a certain sets of circumstances. Contempt of court is far from the only example
substantial sums exemplary damages are certainly capable of being awarded against a corporation on the right set of facts
Deterrence is regularly a factor in civil infringement cases brought by regulators.
In other civil lawsuits, ordinarily damages are strictly ‘compensatory’. However, ‘exemplary’ damages also exist in some circumstances; and functionally identical to punitive damages.
There have been a few posts in the last couple of days of people posting inaccurate information with complete confidence
I have some bad news for you
> For corporations, will be the greater of:
$10,000,000
3 times the value of the benefit received, or
10% of annual turnover in preceding 12 months, if court cannot determine benefit obtained from the offence.[1]
[1] https://www.accc.gov.au/business/business-rights-protections...
In politics, and maybe corporates, there has to be a line that at some point also personal charges can be made, or persons can be held responsible in some way or another.
These huge organizational structures have all been created to defer personal responsibility, which is good to an extent, but it got a little bit out of hand.
From the racist criteria, used for years to identify and bankrupt innocent Dutch nationals. The destruction of documents by government officials, or the taking of children from families of innocent victims of said Tax office. To finally the reelection of the same prime minister that oversaw all for 6 years and lied to parliament about it...
"Scandals tarnish Dutch reputation for clean government": https://www.ft.com/content/9996a65e-0996-4a08-aa65-041be685d...
"Over 1,100 children taken from homes of benefits scandal victims": https://nltimes.nl/2021/10/19/1100-children-taken-homes-bene...
"The Dutch government has been rocked by scandal. Why does its leader remain untainted?": https://theloop.ecpr.eu/the-dutch-government-has-been-rocked...
Otherwise, why would a company ever respect the law?
You hire any fresh grad accountant, have them figure out that:
Profit from breaking law > cost of fine
and the company will rationally decide to just keep breaking the law.
That's not a deterrent, it's just another line item in an accounting spreadsheet.
It is not possible to arrange the world so that the financial incentives are always aligned with what is the right thing to do. So if we want to "have nice things" and live in the sort of world that most people will want to live in then we need to have some kind of ethical system which guides our action independently of the profit motive.
This seems to be one of the bigger cultural differences between the US and Europe. In the US the attitude seems to be "if there's some situation you can exploit and it's not illegal then why would you not do so". In Europe there is much more emphasis on societal-level reciprocity: not just "will there be negative consequences to me if I do this", but "will this lead to the sort of society I want to live in if everybody does this". Of course there are still bad actors. There will always be bad actors. But the assumption is that most people won't be, rather than that most people will be.
It only really works when people die.
That's Finland, which is not Scandinavia.
citation needed!
german here, business ppl routinely joke about the fine for illegal parking on public gounds is mostly far less than a few hours at a commercial parkinghouse.
They do it for other stuff:
[1] "Day-fine"
"...A day-fine, day fine, unit fine or structured fine is a unit of fine payment that, above a minimum fine, is based on the offender's daily personal income... "
"...Jurisdictions employing the day-fine include Denmark (Danish: dagbøde), Estonia (Estonian: päevamäär), Finland (Finnish: päiväsakko), France (French: Jour-amende), Germany (German: Tagessatz), Sweden (Swedish: dagsbot), Switzerland, and Macao...."
"The Limits of Fairer Fines: Lessons from Germany" https://www.fairtrials.org/app/uploads/2022/01/Day_Fines_Rep...
But criminal law (Strafgesetzbuch, StGB) makes extensive use of it. Every time you see the StGB talk about a fine, unless explicitly stated otherwise, it will be a scaled fine based on the daily income of the convicted party (Tagessatz). Courts can estimate the income if need be.
A court may e.g. find that somebody committed minor battery, and issue a fine of 12 Tagessätze. If you make 3000 EUR a month (net), that's 3000EUR/30 = 100 EUR for a Tagessatz, and then 10 Tagessätze is 1200 EUR.
However, it's not fully scaled, as it is capped at 30,000 EUR per Tagessatz. E.g. a football (soccer) player was recently convicted[1] of battery against his former partner, and fined 60 Tagessätze. He makes (or used to make) significantly more than the 30K cap, so "only" would have to pay 1.8M EUR instead of the probably 3-5M EUR he'd have to pay if there was no such cap.
Personally I'd welcome if traffic and many other fines were scaled fines, too. The reason it isn't is probably because fine issuance would not scale itself: too many violations and each violation would then involve a court deciding what the net income of somebody is and therefore what the scaled fine will be. With a flat fine you can avoid involving the courts most of the time (most parking tickets will be uncontested).
[0] The parking violation joke was common, indeed, but not so much anymore, as the fines for parking violations have been drastically increased this year, from 15 EUR to 55 EUR per violation or even 110 EUR if you obstruct traffic, including pedestrian and bicycle traffic. Obstructing traffic also earns you one point in the traffic register now, so even people who still think a ticket is cheaper than paying for a proper parking space will not like it when their license is suspended eventually due to too many parking violations.
[1] The sentence is not final yet. The defendant, the prosecution (state) and the accessory prosecution (victim) each appealed the decision.
Had to look that one up. Doesn’t seem clear cut given that Wikipedia lists Finland as part of the “wider” definition of Scandinavia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavia
EDIT: Reading further it looks like the English usage of the word Scandinavia is often used in a broader sense (to include Finland) whereas local usage of the term tends to refer to a more narrow definition.
Interesting. I never knew this difference in definition existed.
The fines will be scaled based on the income of the chauffeur, not the highly paid executive in the back. Even if it’s actually the executive who’s paying them.
The overton window in america is so far to the right that the prospect of charging rich people for breaking the law is unheard of.
"Entre le fort et le faible, entre le riche et le pauvre, entre le maître et le serviteur, c’est la liberté qui opprime et la loi qui affranchit."
("Between the strong and the weak, between the rich and the poor, between the lord and the slave, it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free.")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Henri_Lacordaire
Also begs the question, do wealthy people speed more than non-wealthy people? Do they need a deterrence?
> The overall TA mortality rate was 26.6(95% CI 13.4, 39.8) per 100,000 person-years, which was almost three times higher in men than that for women (40.4 vs. 12.1 per 100,000person-years). Lower economic level was associated with increased incidence and mortality of TA.
Optimizing for deterrence maybe means charging poor men a larger ticket. You see how this way of thinking is wrong?
Also imagine having to disclose your entire financial status to some court because you got a speeding ticket? It's a gross violation of privacy.
> Wealthy people often park illegally and just eat the fine because it's more convenient than the alternative.
Where do you come up with this stuff? Your vision of how "wealthy people" behave is so off from what I've observed.
> Using parking ticket data in 2016 from the City of Los Angeles, this study shows that the number of parking tickets is higher in neighborhoods with a larger presence of renters, young adults, and Black residents.
https://nbrazil.faculty.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites...
Cheers.
That's exactly my point. That's why some people have this fantasy of Scrooge McDucks throwing around money and disobeying all laws just because they have money, when its just not true.
In any case, here's an example of a high profile wealthy person paying parking tickets like they're just a normal cost: https://dailytargum.com/article/2020/02/jeff-bezos-parking-t...
This isn't something I made up, it happens.
What is the law, and what is equal? There's a law saying you have to pay taxes, so do you object to the fact that this law is applied unequally to rich people who have to pay more? And the crime of not paying taxes is also punished with a fine that is proportional to the amount unpaid.
Your viewpoint makes absolutely no sense, so yes. I don't get it. Arguing against proportional measures for deterrance is equivalent to saying you're okay with rich people committing crimes and paying a minuscule fine for it (unless you have a totally different framework of punishment in mind).
As LeBron James once said, 'two points is not two points'. If 'fairness and equal treatment' are context-blind, then they are just another empty platitude.
What does this have to do with tax rates? Are tax rates punitive or a means for raising money for collective spending?
the risk to everyone else around you is the same regardless of how much you make
This is worse than any financial penalty, even to me, and I ain't rich.
Avoiding the time wasted while pulled over does sound like a reason not to speed but even there it's a tradeoff. How much time do I save off my commute vs how long a stop would take weighted by the probability of being pulled over.
To put it another way, it is more painful to lose $250 when you're making $25,000, versus losing $3,000 when you're making $300,000.
There are a few reasons not to make fines scale overly aggressively, from the perspective of a western government. They feel capricious and encourage expatriation, they punish (potentially hundreds or thousands of) innocent employees who want financial security, and they incentivize worse behavior. This last principle is counterintuitive but has been repeatedly discovered over the last thousands of years. An immoral person is incentivized to behave by a reasonable grade of punishments and will risk the worst behavior of all punishments are equally deadly or above a certain threshold.
Hopefully that answers your question; this is just an explanation.
We have fully scaling fine. The concept is päiväsakko (literally day fine) that’s determined linearly by your net monthly income. Cops give you X dayfines.
In code terms the formula is max(6, (net_monthly_income - 255)/60));
That means there is regularly some person in newspapers whining about their 30000€ speeding ticket (iirc the highest was 100k€ in 2004). In reality that’s just an acceptable way to brag how much you’re making.
The US equivalent to the ACCC is the FTC is absolutely toothless and ineffective. The ACCC has teeth and has had real impact on many industries. For example, ISPs were essentially forbidden from saying their plans were "unlimited" unless they actually were unlimited (which they never were so there were no "unlimited" plans, which is fine because they were all fake anyway).
This particular complaint is about something relatively minor: misleading messaging about cancellation fees. Like do you think that didn't happen in the US? Where's the FTC action and settlement on that?
As for the fare estimation part, it's hard to say what the impact of that was.
The only US equivalent to this is a class action lawsuit where the lawyers get paid (a lot), several lead plaintiffs will get paid something and everyone else will get a check for $2.35 in 8 years after printing out a form and mailing it in.
Even in the really egregious cases like the Equifax hack, the cash settlement part was capped at $31 million [1].
[1]: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/equifax-data-brea...
”The FTC is even more useless” isn’t really a good argument, and I don’t disagree - the whole Uber/AirBnB business model is built on the realization that you can just blatantly ignore regulators, and pay the miniscule fines out of petty cash
You can't do credible enforcement, if your primary goal is ensuring the company continues to grace you with their presence
Punishments need to be proportionate. Executing people for stealing hub caps may well reduce the incidence of that but that doesn't make it OK.
Misleading cancellation messaging just isn't that big of a deal. I really wish people would focus on the severity of what happened rather than just saying "it's not enough" just because they seemingly hate Uber.
People's personal dislike of a company or person is not a basis for determining a punishment.
The US also believes in punitive damages, i.e. "We fine you $1000 for what you did, and then add $1000,000,00 because you don't really care about $1000"
The goal of fines isn't to bankrupt companies, but to change behavior. If you can make a specific behavior unprofitable, the fine is successful.
Huh? It's easy to find advertised unlimited plans in Australia.
This page lists 75 of them: https://www.comparebroadband.com.au/internet-plans/unlimited...
10+ years ago, actual "unlimited" plans were really uncommon because ISPs included some or all of these on all their plans.
Compare this to any of the cable Internet "unlimited" plans and you'll find a world of diffference.
I still get these messages on the cancellation confirmation screen in the UK.
The real problem is what it will leave behind will be worse than what taxi's were like before uber.
why?
However it’s clear by now that Uber won’t be anywhere near the first to bring self-driving tech to market.
Ridesharing itself has only weak network effects because drivers are interchangeable and can easily switch apps. All Uber have in this case is their brand, which is more toxic than a Machineel tree.
If self-driving does eventually pan out then they are also in a bad way because whoever develops that tech will likely directly compete with Uber, at lower margins.
Uber doesn't have any geographic or other advantages. "Self driving" is a nonsense claim that doesn't stack up because it's not going to be available for at least another 5+ years. Even when it does happen, Uber doesn't have the capital to establish the necessary fleets of vehicles and is currently "outsourcing" that to the owner/drivers.
There have been any number of articles about Uber's lack of a sustainable business model.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2020/09/09/th...
https://marker.medium.com/end-of-the-line-for-uber-901e3077b...
And the original guy that showed that the emperor has no clothes:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/08/hubert-horan-can-ube...
The issue with Uber is that they spend too much money when they enter new markets and that they are too inefficient in general. They need to slim down.
You must take into account that uber is global, you are not aware of markets that were very much improved by Uber and subsequently the competitors that were created in its wake. In Romania for example it was popular culture that Taxi drivers were universally shady and if that you were not careful there was a higher chance than not to get scammed. Uber, and now its competitor Bolt which I believe has become more popular than Uber have introduced a massive amount of competition in the market that it is now universally a good experience to order a ride.
Even taxi drivers have gotten nice because of the market pressure
Before Uber, taxis were ok. I don’t think I ever got scammed.
Now, several taxi companies have gone out of business and it’s harder to find both a regular taxi and an Uber.
I don't think that's what the parent said.
There are a lot of reasons why they devolved to the level of service that we associated with them:
1) lack of competition
2) internally there is no reward for excellent service
3) as a regulated industry, the internal players will try to stretch the margins to make it more profitable to address either a) greed, b) actual operational needs--cash only, "my terminal is offline", fake terminals, tourist routes
Most of this points to failings with how the models are implemented:
- diffuse reward system that doesn't account for fare-taker's feedback
- slow, high-effort negotiation modification to a) fares, b) license / medallion holder needs, c) driver's needs, d) fare-taker's needs and feedback
Consider the differences between Uber and Taxi:
1) feedback is tied directly to driver and passengers
2) feedback is instant
3) Uber dictates pricing and can do so based on a regional, time, legal games, and overall load basis on a low latency regional authority's direction (one person could make that decision based on their local knowledge of upcoming concerts and NFL games, or the status of their application for licensing with the city)
4) individual drivers are now the liability / cost holding party
One thing that I think should be in your mind is "who is losing in either model and why?"
> "Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said in a statement that the company is partnering with Saudi Arabia to support its economic and social reforms. Uber first began operating in the kingdom in 2014.(businessinsider 2016)."
Their drivers are the absolute worst in my region - see someone driving erratically and staring at their phone and doing Crazy Ivan manuevers in traffic, it's an Uber driver 90% of the time. They're poorly trained and dangerous to everyone else - pedestrians, other drivers and bicyclists.
If there was ever a boycott movement I'd get behind, it's a boycott Uber movement. Might be able to leverage the Ukraine war for this as well, as the Saudi princeling MBS is so in bed with Putin at present (MBS won't take Biden phone calls, but will take Putin phone calls, according to press reports).
Important lesson that technically-correct-but-potentially-confusing user interfaces can cost you legally!
The money they made with this message grossly outweighs any fine they got from 1 country they operate in.
They'll toss this on the "unexpected expenses" line of the multiple billions they lose every year, right below the "cocaine and hookers for c-suite" budget.
Does it find its way back to the consumers impacted?
https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/25/surface_laptop_studio...
Though sadly they seem to have dialled back their headlines.