Data leak reveals how European politicians helped Uber
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Uber and his ministry were looking at creating a regulatory framework for ride-sharing. The BBC frames this as Macron ignoring illegal activity. I think from Macron's perspective Uber's activity was "unregulated" not "illegal". That's a healthy approach towards change. Otherwise we can't renew our laws.
The BBC's view of how politicians and innovators should interact seems to be too narrow. I think Macron can be a role model actually.
also yes Travis was a controversial figure, that seems beside the point. Stuff he did elsewhere don't seem to matter here.
Unblocking that situation required some discretion otherwise it would have never happened.
The truth of the matter is, Europe is still in the hands of few aristocratic ruling class and those people are just as vulnerable and susceptible to corruption as revealed by these leaks frequently. In fact the endless bureaucracy are set up by the Eurocrats in a manner to satisfy this heirarcy and this small group of people who almost always are fed through chains of connections that are reachable through dark money and lobbying efforts.
The sense of equality there is just as abysmal. Just look at their housing market for example. It’s much worse than ours.
The point, certainly in France since Macron is prominently mentioned, is that traditional taxis are a heavily restrictive corporation. Number of licenses is very limited and they fetch 100k+ euros because drivers can sell their on when they leave the business. Traditionally they obviously only accept cash, fares are expensive, they charge extra by weight for luggage in the boot, phone booking only, etc.
None of this is in the interests of consumers and Macron wanted to open up the industry.
Like it or not, I think Uber provided the long overdue "kick in the butt" that the taxi industry needed in many countries.
There's a difference between the regular insurance you have to have for driving a car in most countries and the insurance for transporting people for profit.
> passenger safety is resolved with the right checks. Both of which a trivial licensing issues.
As it turns out this was not as "trival" as all the startups in this space thought when they bypassed regulation at the beginning.
Likewise for safety.
If a company/driver operates without a license then it is an issue for the enforcement authority, Uber or no Uber.
Again, ultimately the industry needed a kick in the butt and Uber provided it.
Coming up with a reasonable matching algorithm would be innovation too in a sense. I doubt current matching algorithms are optimised for anything but operator's profit.
Alternatively they could just regulate the field and set a cap on how much the rideshare app provider can take, ensuring that drivers get most of it and the provider just gets enough to keep the service running. Lots of fields are regulated this way, the important part here is that automation profits shouldn't all end up at a few huge corporations but instead get distributed to the workers.