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But driverless taxis aren't a commons: they're the opposite, a private resource managed by a for-profit company. I don't see how you're predicting a tragedy of the commons here. If you're a difficult client, then you get fined heavily and kicked off the service.

(And your fears are precisely why you'd expect corporations to run things like this: they'd respond to other customers' fears of "dirty, vandalized" taxis, and do what they can to avoid that image! You don't get that responsiveness from a commons).

The commons example as it relates to vehicles themselves is not optimal because you bring up a good point - in an optimal market situation, competitive forces will drive poor performers to do better or fail.

I’m not actually totally sure what point I was trying to make, or if this will ever become a problem, just food for thought/discussion.

You are absolutely right. I think these companies have only gotten away with the business model because the scooters seem to have less maintenance costs or are cheaper to replace. Many bikeshare companies pulled out of Paris because people were so hard on them and some have been pulled out of the Seine. Newer companies have entered with e-bike rentals and there’s still the public bike share program, but they’re expensive, which must be a discouraging factor for their abuse and helps the company recoup maintenance costs.

All the elegance of a bicycle is removed to make room for the indestructible design so as to be viable for public rental. And still they have flat tires, grimy chains, and shoddy brakes. They’re also so heavy, which makes commuting further than a few kilometers a slog unless they’re electric, and those are expensive.

I suspect that people are dissuaded from alternative transport for this reason of disrespect for common space and property. The metro is disgusting and sometimes dangerous, and the rental bikes aren’t a great alternative.

> Many people miss the larger point that the scooter troubles have brought to light: this is a preview to what a post-ownership society would look like. It quickly becomes a tragedy of the commons when everyone uses public resources (rentable scooters and the space to park them) with little regard to the larger impact of their collective actions due to the absence of consequences for antisocial behavior.

There is more going on here. Compare the condition of subways or buses in American cities, to those in Japan. In some cultures, collective property is rapidly vandalized and destroyed by the same people who rely on it. In other cultures, collective property is treated respectfully.

If I had to pick a society as an example of a place where the subways and buses get vandalized, I'm choosing Italy. American buses and trains are virtually spotless compared to theirs.

meh. Purchase prices are dropping fast, you can already buy scooters for the price of a cellphone.

You're comparing the cheap end of scooters to the expensive end of smartphones. The cheapest smartphones cost about 10x than the cheapest scooters. Tens of dollars (if not free) vs a few hundred dollars.

Yeah, this is something that the anti-scooter people in my town (Berkeley) do not seem to grasp. The public scooter companies are getting murdered by cheap scooters. Overwhelming majority of scooters on the streets are dirt-cheap Gotrax models. They are so cheap they are cutting into the mode share of bicycling.

Where do you buy the serious kind of scooters used for transportation?

All I could find were cheap toy scooters.

Decathlon’s entry level escooter retails for about 450eur

My girlfriend rides a Mi Scooter Pro 2 to work, 11 miles each day. Cost us around $550 I think, and they’re very popular around here (hilly European capital). So I’d say that’s pretty cheap and also seriously usable.