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oleganza

Some quotes from the article:

"The market is unregulated, meaning that you can set any price for your services."

"You can safely say that there’s healthy competition on the market."

"You do need a permit to have a taxi service."

"The fact is that Uber are asking for an exemption to be able to compete on unfair grounds"

Notice some contradictions here?

Author claims that market is unregulated and competition is fair, but then admits there is regulation and legal requirements (that cost real money). If you want to make a nice private taxi service with 2x lower prices, you cannot because you have to pay local government for all licenses and whatever taximeter they provide you, not the one you design for your own company and your customers' safety.

When talking about "unfair advantage", author makes presupposition that existing regulations and licensing are "fair". Well, that needs to be proven. Saying "somebody voted for it in a democracy" is not a proof, sorry. Try that with a scientific study: "scientists voted that P != NP with 58% majority".

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"Unregulated" in the terms of a taxi market means that there are no price regulations and no limitations on the number of cars.

The licenses needed are minimal compared to any other taxi market:

* Driver's need a more stringent driver's license ($150)

* Business owners need to prove they're running a serious business by passing a test and showing proof of enough capital to run the business. This application required an administrative fee of under $500. This is absolutely nothing compared to the 10's or 100's of thousands of dollars needed in other countries (where it's often impossible since their numbers are limited).

These requirements stem from the dangers of unprofessional drivers - unregulated taxi drivers in Sweden have been linked to robberies and rape of passengers. It doesn't in any way create a taxi monopoly. My mom could start a taxi business in Sweden.

The regulation is mainly pure consumer protection. The same kind of regulation that covers supermarkets: approved measurement devices (approved taximeter, same requirement as approved weights), upfront about prices (sticker on the window, same as having proper pricing on your shelves).

>whatever taximeter they provide you

The author mentions that Uber could have tried to get their App approved as a taximeter, but they did not even try.

> Author claims that market is unregulated and competition is fair, but then admits there is regulation

Getting a license is not a "regulation". What the author means is, that the prices are not regulated and the taxis are free to charge whatever they want. So Uber can offer their service at any price, without being forced to a minimum or a maximum.

> you cannot because you have to pay local government for all licenses and whatever taximeter they provide you, not the one you design for your own company and your customers' safety.

The reason you can't provide a service with 2x lower prices is that you would make a huge loss doing that, and it has nothing to do with regulations.

You are allowed to design your own taximeters btw.

And the regulation is "fair" in the sense that it applies equally to all companies (note that Uber is trying to get exepmtion from a rule that their competitors comply with).

The market is unregulated in that each driver is free to set their price, as compared to other places where there is a fixed, state-mandated price per kilometer.

The fact that you need a permit does not constitute regulation in any sensible sense (unless you call everything regulation), since you need a permit for basically everything.

The fact that you need a certified taximeter is customer protection – given that Uber charges per kilometer and time unit, I don’t see why they oppose a certified taximeter.

Similarly, you cannot make a nice private business selling X, because you have to pay income tax and VAT.

If the country is sweden and the company is american. Default value would be "laws are fair and company has some issues"

I don't know about Stockholm, but in US and France taxi drivers must buy a taxi license for many thousands of dollars/euros that effectively allows them be a part of a monopoly. The price for the license is market-defined because there is a limited number of licenses and few restrictions on trading them. But the interesting point is that licenses were initially created many years ago by some taxi mafia and lobbied to be enforced by police.

Now, put aside "fairness" issues, just imagine if someone comes up with Uber or similar service to work around these licensing requirements. And at the same time provides superior service. They will be able to ask lower prices, which will endanger every taxi driver who's invested already to be a part of a monopoly.

Now imagine that something like Uber moves to bitcoins and become almost anonymous. You won't be able to shutdown the central organisation - it's outside the country and has no bank account. You'll have to fight with individual "illegal" taxi drivers that use the system. But how would you prove that they get paid? There are no credit cards or cash. The person who gets in the car only tells the driver a short pin code to authenticate himself. Or says nothing at all. The driver just gives a friendly lift.

Suddenly no one needs taxis and every taxi driver has lost tens of thousands of dollars invested in his license and can do nothing about it. Customers win, other drivers win, mafia loses. Is it fair? Is in unfair? If you cannot avoid this outcome, does it really matter?

Completely unregulated and unregistered cab services have a history of very bad things happening in them in the UK.

Customers do not win, customers get assaulted and raped.

I've heard from my San Francisco friends that Uber is superior in every way to yellow taxis. And main reason is that it's very easy to rate drivers and you don't pay them directly.

That's fine, I'm just pointing out that dropping any/all regulation doesn't immediately make everything sunshine and roses, there are very real problems that regulation and registration seek to address.

It's not always (or not only) down to cartels and corruption.

The thing here is that you are comparing US taxis to taxis everywhere. Not everywhere taxis are crap and prices are huge.

You developed a Mac App, so you paid the required fees to Apple (Developer license, 30% cut, passing through the sandbox hoops, etc.) What would you think if another developer could do exactly the same as you, without need for sandboxing, developer license and getting 100% of the money? Don't you think this would be, let's say, odd? Wouldn't you feel it was unfair?

I just looked it up to make sure (I'm from Spain,) and taxi licenses are unregulated in Sweden. So if I spoke Swedish and knew Stockholm well enough, I could go and get a license, by passing an exam and probably paying some kind of minimal fee. It's not like the government is asking for the Moon and Uber is offering a geostationary satellite. The government asks for the bare standard, and police comply with illegal taxi laws. Illegal taxis are illegal since they don't have a permit, just like an illegal driver is one without a driving permit.

> if I spoke Swedish and knew Stockholm well enough

With some of the drivers I've had, you don't even need those two. Not that it's actually a problem, everyone speaks english and they all have GPS devices.

I was just guessing they are the bare minimum requirements that then are overlooked. I'd rather learn Swedish :)

This is a complete fallacy. Any black market, by definition, will have a higher incidence of other criminal activity, because people who are willing to violate one law are often willing to violate others.

This is no different than arguing that we should continue drug prohibition because there are a lot of violent incidents that occur during transactions. That violence exists precisely because the activity was forced underground.

Moreover, even if those services weren't illegal, it nevertheless is true that lower cost services will always bear a higher degree of risk. The same thing applies to practically any business. Being poor sucks, but pricing such people out of entire industries won't help them.

"This is a complete fallacy."

What's a fallacy? That the unregulated market resulted in a lot of rapes and assaults, and now it's more regulated (and parts of previous practice are illegal) there are less?

Because that's what actually happened, whether you think it's a fallacy or not.

As you pointed out, the rapes and assaults are ongoing. By making the bottom of the market illegal (by making it uneconomical), you haven't stopped these crimes from happening, you've simply forced them to occur in the black market where there is even less of a chance to prevent them.

Again, the analogy with drug prohibition is clear. There is an incredible amount of violence occurring, but that isn't a justification for continuing its illegality. To the contrary, its illegal nature is the primary reason the violence occurs, because there is no way to settle disputes in the court system.

Similarly, someone operating a black market taxi cannot call the police when someone refuses to pay. Instead, they must resort to threatening (and engaging in) violence to get payment. The customers may engage in violence against these underground drivers for the same reason. Making it illegal serves nobody, and only increases danger for all parties.

Except the numbers are now smaller, less people are put at risk and less people see that risk realised. It demonstrably has made the situation better, not worse.

Except that turns out not to be anything like what happened with cabs when the violence was worse when the illegality was not present. So no, it's not a good analogy and it doesn't work.

Similarly, someone operating a black market taxi cannot call the police when someone refuses to pay. Instead, they must resort to threatening (and engaging in) violence to get payment.

This is their lookout for running an illegal service.

The customers may engage in violence against these underground drivers for the same reason. Making it illegal serves nobody, and only increases danger for all parties.

Except it has actually reduced the danger.

Look, you can argue the prohibition line all you like but it doesn't match what has actually happened out in the real world.

Since the article doesn't get into your purported statistics, I can only speculate as to what you are referring to. People in the U.S. often try to retroactively justify tougher drug laws by pointing to lower crime rates, when in fact often times people are simply less likely to report being victimized because they were engaging in an illegal transaction.

Moreover, reality has a way of resisting controlled experiments. It is essentially impossible to control every variable that might influence reported crime rates, so the mere fact that there may be fewer reported taxi-related crimes after regulation increased than before would be an unconvincing argument.

This is really an epistemological argument. Due to the inherent uncontrollability of every variable, the only way to accurately understand the effects of a government policy are to look at the economic incentives it creates. Simply asserting that economic incentives that underly the drug market don't also apply to other black markets is arbitrary.

And you simply asserting that the economic incentives that do underly the drug market apply everywhere is every bit as arbitrary!

Drugs are not like cabs. You can't get a licensed drug after five minutes wait. Nobody actually wants or needs a specifically illegal cab, they just want a cab. The analogy simply does not work.

What's unconvincing is you calling my argument a fallacy and then falling back to "oh but it's hard to measure!"

--edit-- also FFS you think anyone's put off reporting assault because they were in an illegal cab? What the hell are you on? It's not illegal to be a customer, it's illegal to run the service.

It isn't arbitrary to assert the universality of economic laws -- no school of economics holds otherwise. In fact the entire point of this science is to discover principles that exist in all circumstances.

Moreover asserting the difficulty of empirical measurement isn't a cop-out; it's one of the most fundamental debates, not just in economics, but in philosophy. This is Plato vs Aristotle, or Kant vs Hegel. It's an incredibly important issue and not one to dismiss so nonchalantly.

Regarding the likelihood of reporting assault, I was specifically talking about drugs. You are probably right about the unlicensed taxi customers, but nevertheless the statistics for taxi assaults don't tell then whole story because there is no way to account for assaults that occurred elsewhere that would have occurred in taxis has they been more readily available. Even if that data were available, the uncontrollability of other factors would continue to burden your attempts at empirical proof.

It isn't arbitrary to assert the universality of economic laws

But it is arbitrary to assert that it works identically for all commodities and services. Demand for some things (a ride home) is easily sublimed from one solution (unlicensed cab) to another (licensed cab). Demand for other things (heroin, weed, whatever) does not work the same way because the demand is 100% aligned with the illegal item and therefore far more likely to set up a much larger black market.

I think you would have a very hard time proving that the crime levels stayed the same and the crime had just moved. Allowing unlicensed, unregistered cabs that pick (mainly drunk) people up from the side of the road, was putting vulnerable young people at risk. At least some of this demand has been shifted to traceable, regulated businesses.

Of course a fully-illegal thing will create a larger black market than a partially-illegal thing, but that's only a quantitative difference; the economics of the resulting black market remains then same. As long as they are outside the legal system, they will experience more violence, and unscrupulous people will continue to falsely claim that this justifies further marginalizing and regulating such activity.

Except when you talk about something like drugs it's easy to show the total violence increases, and when talking about something like unregulated taxi firms you can't make any such claim because it's easy to see how that market is killed dead with little to no black market, because nobody particularly wanted the product in the first place, it was just there.

Here in London, unlicensed cabs are often as or more expensive than the regulated ones. So, please explain how this helped your "poor people" to get taxis?

If the price is the same, then that indicates that there is a shortage of supply and the unlicensed cabs are filling that demand. In that case, the choice for many people isn't between licensed and unlicensed cabs, but rather between unlicensed cabs and no cabs at all.

Cracking down on these unlicensed cabs won't hurt the wealthy as much, who naturally have more choices for transportation, but it could absolutely hurt poorer people who have don't have as many alternatives.

There are many alternatives in London, getting a cab is a luxury. Tubes run frequently during most of the day, busses run all night.

Whether or not it is a luxury, the existence of unlicensed cabs is proof of unmet demand. They indicate either that licensed cabs are too expensive, or that they aren't in high enough supply.

It only indicates that drunk people would rather not wait five minutes for a cab they call (for the same price), but instead jump into whatever car is there. That choice has been taken away because people were getting hurt.

I'm not really sure what your problem is here.

Painting all users of unlicensed cabs as "drunk people" may be a helpful way of coloring your argument, but nonetheless if the only advantage unlicensed cabs is speed of arrival, then that is still providing for unmet demand.

If the risk of these services outweighed the time advantage, people wouldn't be using them. Moreover, eliminating the choice doesn't necessarily stop them from being victimized. Whatever form of of transportation they may use instead, such as walking, could involve similar violent crimes, which wouldn't make it into your official statistics for taxi-related crimes.

"Painting all users of unlicensed cabs as "drunk people" may be a helpful way of coloring your argument, but nonetheless if the only advantage unlicensed cabs is speed of arrival, then that is still providing for unmet demand."

They were drunk people, that's largely who used them. I have been one.

If the risk of these services outweighed the time advantage, people wouldn't be using them.

False, this assumes perfect information is available and that people always make good choices. These things are not true.

Moreover, eliminating the choice doesn't necessarily stop them from being victimized.

It makes it less likely, as the guys aren't hanging out looking for business outside pubs and clubs any more, and these drunk people (amongst whom I have been counted many times) call a registered and regulated company.

Whatever form of of transportation they may use instead, such as walking, could involve similar violent crimes, which wouldn't make it into your official statistics for taxi-related crimes.

Entirely possible, but public transport in London is pretty safe and as has been mentioned, licensed cabs are not generally more expensive, they just take a few minutes to arrive.

I don't assume perfect information; all economic activity bears risk and your choices are guided by your risk tolerance. Sometimes, you make a bad choice and suffer the consequences. Eliminating choices doesn't eliminate those consequences, it simply forces you to either adjust your risk tolerance against your will or engage in even riskier activity.

You agree, then, that awful crimes could still be occurring elsewhere but are impossible to determine whether they would have occurred in taxis prior to regulation. It is thus impossible to determine if those alternatives are actually safer, and even if they are, safety may not be the only priority people have. It is entirely based on your own subjective risk tolerance.

I don't assume perfect information; all economic activity bears risk and your choices are guided by your risk tolerance.

Not when you're drunk they aren't. It's arguable that a choice was being made. Secondly, if there isn't perfect information, it's not possible to accurately gauge the risk.

Sometimes, you make a bad choice and suffer the consequences.

And we don't, as a society, think it's reasonable to have people on edge about making the right choices all the time, so we seek to mitigate those consequences as a group.

"Eliminating choices doesn't eliminate those consequences, it simply forces you to either adjust your risk tolerance against your will or engage in even riskier activity."

OK, cool, now how terribly awful a transgression is it to force (OMG!) people to call a cab instead of stumbling into one? It's not. And that's what people do now.

And no, I don't agree with your estimation. It is not impossible to tell if crime rate has dropped, it is not likely that crimes are going unreported due to the taxi 'black market' and it's relatively easy to determine if the alternatives are safer, and they have been.

"safety may not be the only priority people have. It is entirely based on your own subjective risk tolerance."

Sure, we can agree on that, and democratically we as a society have agreed that some risks are intolerable even if (gasp!) some people have to get the bus or pay an extra 50p for a cab. So we make laws.

Come on, stop messing around, you know this is the bit you really object to, society deciding amongst itself that your unregulated business is not wanted and cannot be run here. Yes, it is the government (or the people) inflicting their will on others in the interests of safety and progress. You'll never persuade me this is wrong.

Perfect information is impossible, and the information held by an elected body is infinitely less perfect. There is no way they can take into account the subjective values of each person better than the people themselves, so it will always tend to be a majority forcing its preferences on a minority.

I make it no secret that I object to this. I think it is unethical and I certainly agree that I won't persuade you on that point. However to some degree I think you do see a problem with it, which is why you try to downplay the costs by pointing out that it is "only" 50p or "only" 5 minutes. If forcing your risk tolerance on others is indeed ethical, this psychological hedging wouldn't be necessary.

No I have no problem with it, the costs are miniscule compared to the results. There is no hedging here unless you mean a rational weighing up of costs and benefits.

It is entirely ethical to rule out the worse risks in society, because fundamentally it makes it better for all of us. Particularly the vulnerable in whatever form they take. Not everyone is even capable of rational risk assessment, and many of the rest of us don't want to have to be constantly on guard. I'm sorry if this offends you.

I'm glad you admit the outcome doesn't matter to you, only your ideals.

Well you seemed fairly clear that poor people were being priced out of the market, but surely , if there's demand, there would be supply at a lower price with increased risk? Why isn't this happening?

Given that you seem to have plenty of real world experience about this, it would be interesting to hear your explanation. Also, still waiting for you to explain how poor people have been priced out of the industry.

I was referring to lower cost (but legal) services. For example, living in a cheaper apartment complex generally is riskier, because there tends to be more crime in the area than there would be in more expensive apartments. This point (which I made in my third paragraph) is separate from the point I was making about black markets.

In the case of unlicensed cabs, they are clearly in the "black market" category. As with all black markets, they aren't necessarily cheaper than their legal equivalents, but nonetheless they are there due to unmet demand in the market.

> I don't know about Stockholm, but in US and France taxi drivers must buy a taxi license for many thousands of dollars/euros that effectively allows them be a part of a monopoly

In Sweden there is no such thing, that's why the post says it's deregulated. All you need as a driver is a special driver's license (~$150) and what you need as a taxi business owner is proof of financial stability ($15K in the bank).

The Swedish taxi market is already extremely liberal in comparison to most places.

I wouldn't use it over a normal taxi even if it were much cheaper. Other than the safety issues that sibling poster points out, there is a small but non-zero chance that my driver gets pulled over by a cop, that then discovers he's doing something illegal and I miss my plane.

  Notice some contradictions here?

Only ones that are only visible to hardcore libertarians.

So you admit there are logical contradictions, just some people don't see them?

Of course, because instead of trying to understand libertarian arguments it's easier to say "oh, but they're just bananas".

There is not an objective reason in the world to regulate taxi-services. None.

Unregistered and unregulated minicabs in London resulted in a lot of raped girls. This seems like a good reason for regulation to me.

So if government was really concerned with its citizens well-being, maybe they should have simply launched a campaign informing people that it might be dangerous to take private cabs. Then private cabs industry would respond by introducing new business practices that would ensure more safety. Your reply suggests that young women have no brains of their own and should rely on government patronage solely to avoid potentially dangerous situations.

The "free market" doesn't work in the idealized way you think it does, and does not react in a way that solves such problems. The Scandinavian social-democratic model, by contrast, does work. Very few Scandinavians want to trade it in for the US model, and certainly not some kind of Tea-Party-sounding paranoia about Big Government like this press release oozes.

People always say the chant "free market doesn't work" without giving any explanation or examples. Moreover, any example should be carefully dissected and analyzed, which rarely happens. Even if people come up with examples, it's usually followed by "and this is why free market doesn't work".

The free market did not solve the problem of rapes, robberies and assaults in London's unregulated private late-night taxi business.

No, it didn't.

Now, you can argue that the people getting into those cabs should have known better, and that morally you ought to have the right to run one of these services. Law is the rest of us telling you where you can stick your absolutist morality while we find a nice balance that allows people to live the best they can with minimal restrictions.

"People always say the chant 'free market doesn't work' without giving any explanation or examples"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure

You're welcome.

1. That campaign was launched

2. Regulation was also brought into place that made it illegal for private cab drivers to hang around touting for business, they must be called up and dispatched to you. This way you get a cab from a registered business, not some shady guy hanging around saying "I take you home seven pounds".

3. We consider it, in communist europe, part of the government's duty to protect its citizens and to enable them to live lives free of constant worry about assault, rape, robbery etc etc. I know you brave libertarians consider us childlike for not constantly considering personal defence, but it makes life a heck of a lot more pleasant.

4. The libertarian model disgusts me. If you get food poisoning you won't eat there again? If you get sexually assaulted or the car falls apart then by gum, you just won't use that firm again and you'll give them a jolly poor review! The rest of us like safety standards and rules to prevent these situations in the first place.

if a cabbie raped me, I'd totally trash him on yelp.

"it makes life a heck of a lot more pleasant"

"the libertarian model disgusts me"

Do you agree that people have different standards of what is good and what is not? If you don't like something and I'm forcing you to swallow it, you won't feel any good (even if it's good for someone else).

Now, one way to resolve it is to come up with some boundaries that we cannot cross (e.g. "do not kill") and then everyone does what they please.

Another way is to say "stronger/bigger majority can press others to comply with what those in majority feel is good".

Do you realise that any law is a threat of murder? Even if it does not say so. If I make some customers happy, but you get jealous and angry and use a law against me to make pay a fine or shut down business, you are basically threatening me with a violent police force. If I don't comply, police will take me. If I try to protect myself, they may kill me.

What's my argument for you: if you want some protection, go make it, no problem. I'm not the one who will threaten you with violence. If you find a great business model to offer protection, monitoring, insurance etc. and my company goes out of business, well, that was my risk and my opportunity. And if you go out of business, it's the same: no one gets threatened, robbed or killed. We both just try to solve the problem in a peaceful manner. But when you start talking about regulation, then it is real threat of violence, guns, prisons, rape and confiscation.

> Do you realise that any law is a threat of murder? Even if it does not say so. If I make some customers happy, but you get jealous and angry and use a law against me to make pay a fine or shut down business, you are basically threatening me with a violent police force. If I don't comply, police will take me. If I try to protect myself, they may kill me.

dude, what's wrong with you.

Is there something incorrect about his comment? What is it?

Oh there's nothing in the world like libertarian absolutism is there? Everything can be reduced to 'violence', therefore everything you disagree with is demonstrably, objectively wrong.

Here's one major flaw in your thinking "We both just try to solve the problem in a peaceful manner."

You ascribe honourable motives and noble behaviours to all actors. You are demonstrably wrong where human behaviour is concerned.

Anyway, we're no longer talking about taxis at this point, and I'm not up for a full discussion on the libertarian model. Needless to say, we don't all see the world in as black and white a way as you.

You ascribe honourable motives and noble behaviours to all actors. You are demonstrably wrong where human behaviour is concerned.

Then by this definition, you should be more concerned with giving the power to a monopoly which is a state. People would surely be very likely to abuse this kind of power. When you a have a private company, it goes out of business the moment its customers stop paying money. Government doesn't have to worry about that happening, because it can force you to pay. And you can only vote once in a number of years.

History shows us that merchants and service providers are constantly, constantly out to deceive and screw us. It's just a fact and it's why we have so many consumer protections.

The government is also not to be trusted, it's true, but at least we can vote them out.

Once in n years. And you don't really vote them out. You get the same parties and interests screwing you all over again.

You just don't see consumer protection as a service while it is - and it's monopolized by the government. If you had private consumer protection agencies financed directly, then the moment this agency starts screwing its customers, it's out of business, because people stop paying. Compare this to consumer protection via a government: you can't simply stop paying, you can't effectively influence how an agency works and you don't have a choice between various protection agencies that best suit your interests as a consumer.

Now tell me why should I ever choose government over a private market given this situation? In other words, can you convince me (and not force me to comply) that a government can protect my interests better?

What power does a private agency have? None. That's why you choose a government agency, so that when someone starts selling cheap crap to kids that's covered in toxic paint, it can be shut down.

> But when you start talking about regulation, then it is real threat of violence, guns, prisons, rape and confiscation.

You don't know much about the justice system in Scandinavia, do you?

Extra reply to "libertarian model disgusts me": you probably live 95% of your life in total peaceful anarchy. All your personal relationships are voluntary. You don't threaten your friends with moral obligations when you plan to go to a pub. You just negotiate. You try to be nice and keep others happy. And everyone in your circle values that because if you break the trust, people will stop talking to you and your life will be less happy. And you use simple tools like doors, locks, privacy, avoiding bad districts to protect yourself against random assaults. You try to prevent problems and voluntarily establish good relationships, you are not going to a church or a court any time something does not satisfy you.

It's just remaining 5% of our lives are affected by some forces that we don't understand and/or don't really like.

So I don't believe that "libertarian model" disgusts you really. You just confuse lack of imposed regulations with a lack of security. Look around you: how much security is nicely and cheaply provided for you by the fellow citizens without laws, courts and guns.

No, the libertarian model, of allowing anything and working by reputation, disgusts me.

It results in (for instance) a world where idiots drive unsafe cars with impunity. Where private drivers rape young women (somehow the market is supposed to solve this? It demonstrably did not), and a million and one other things that we, as a society, have decided constitute an unacceptable risk to the rest of us.

The problem is not that I can't form good relationships, the problem is that assholes exist, and always will. The rest of us came up with government and rules to protect ourselves from them.

Well, food poisoning happens all the time in the regulated market. People get assaulted all the time by government employees on duty.

The libertarian way, however, is not that there should be no regulations. The idea is to 1) make regulations voluntary 2) not give the right to regulate to a monopoly with the exclusive power to use force.

You see, if there is a demand for certain things on the market - like safety, for example - market finds a way to provide those things. You don't need a government to protect you, it's an illusion and the longer you believe in it, the harder it is for you to see an alternative.

Except it doesn't. The market finds a way to screw the consumer, it has been like that since the dawn of recorded history ("Caveat Emptor!") and we no longer stand for it, sorry.

If anything, it is governments that have, throughout history, a track record of screwing their citizens.

I'm not trying to say that all government and all regulation is necessarily good either. Over-regulation is a problem in a lot of places and there absolutely should be debate on what rules are sensible, which rules are unjust and intolerable, or make life worse.

I just don't accept that government, laws, taxes etc as morally wrong from the outset, or that it doesn't matter what the outcome would be without them because OMG violence!

You not accepting it doesn't mean it's not true. When you say "we should regulate taxi industry because we want higher standards of safety" you have to remember that those standards are by no means universal. Every person has his own set of standards. If 60% of people accept your standards and 40% do not, that means that those 40% would be forced to follow them. If they don't - meaning if they decide to start a business that doesn't comply with those standards to serve customers who don't agree with these same standards - they will pay fines or go to jail. It's a fact, not a perspective.

Thus you saying you don't accept that government and taxes are immoral is actually the same as saying you don't accept to call it theft and force when governments do something to the rest of the people who disagree with you.

You believe in violence and force just as much as anyone else, becauser you believe in property rights and the use of force to protect them.

If 40% of people don't accept your interpretation of land ownership rights then you would have no problem forcing them to follow your interprewtation of those, so stop getting all high and mighty as if you have an unassailably correct and violence free philosphy. You don't.

You're right of course, quality, safety and professionalism are all subjective...

Actually, they are. But, more importantly, you are trying to decide for other people what's good for them. Some people might prefer a less safe ride with a less professional driver for less money. Now, I don't see anything wrong with informing people that private cabs might not be as safe, however the decision to use one should lie with the customer, not with the government.

How does the average person know if the cab they're getting into is in good mechanical order?

What you propose results in a race to the bottom, where cars and drivers are dangerous but deceptive about it. You create incentives to lie.

How does an average person knows which restaurant to go, which shoes to buy, which ISP to connect to internet through, which car to buy, which computer to use and which city to live in?

Well, here in the UK, if they want to know about food safety then the star rating from the government mandated hygiene check is posted on the door to the premises, letting the consumer know the cleanliness of the kitchen and the safety of food preparation practices.

This, like car safety ratings, is something rather hard to judge by a cursory look around the place. We also consider these two things important enough for regulation as they can result in illness, injury or death.

Shoes, well, if your shoes fall apart very quickly then you have a statutory right to a refund, rather than a libertarian 'right' to bitch about it and hope to damage the business. Other things are regulated similarly.

It's not a question of someone choosing for you, it's a question of society coming up with standards and regulations to take the danger of unscrupulous or negligent merchants out of the picture.

I love libertarian logic sometimes. Taxi regulation must have come about because mustache-twirling government goons said "This taxi thing is working too well; let's ruin it with some regulation!"

Government is just an abstraction. There were early taxi companies that lobbied for a monopoly for themselves. They asked for laws to establish a hard limit on number of licenses available. Then, they cashed out nicely because supply of taxis was limited with police force, but demand was growing. Later taxi drivers just had to buy the permit and now they are also interested in keeping the existing laws (or they lose a lot of money). There is no magic at all, pure economics + violent intervention via police.

Except none of this is true in this case - Sweden. The only regulation in place is consumer protection (driver's licenses, reputable businesses, regulated taximeter, comparison prices posted on the cars). There's nothing protecting driver's interests.

So variable pricing is regulated out of market is what you're saying.

What do you mean by variable pricing. Haggling? Having the costs vary by time is fine as long as it's detailed on the pricing sticker.

Edit: here are the details http://www.transportstyrelsen.se/Vag/Yrkestrafik/Taxi/Prisin...

Uber could use this standard exclusion: "Tariffs by written agreement exclusively for a particular customer or passenger category do not have to be reported in the price data."

edit2: I'm reading the law now. There are massive loopholes all over this thing. Uber could easily implement their standard business model within this framework if they'd just comply with a few things http://www.transportstyrelsen.se/Global/Regler/TSFS_svenska/...

Fair says nothing about reasonable just applying the same rules to everyone. Forcing a school bake sale to collect sales taxes is "Fair" because it's the same rules a bakery operates under.

It's good you mentioned "same rules to everyone". Do you know that anyone on government payroll does not pay any income taxes? (Even if they do nominally, their salary is paid from everyone else's tax anyway, so it's just an accounting trick.) So the income tax is not an example of "same rules to everyone".

Same goes for certification. There are people who get the right to define certification rules and use armed police force to make you comply, and there are people who cannot do that.

Whenever you have a democratic vote and 60 persons outvote 40, a new "fair" rule is applicable to everyone, however 60 people are okay with it and 40 were against. In other words, 60 people think it is fair to force 40 persons just because the numbers look good. Is it an example of the rule that applies fairly to everyone?

It's not an accounting trick it keeps budgets honest. Otherwise outsourcing would be at a huge disadvantage even if they also get that money back.

Also the 60:40 vote issue this is why we use a representative democracy backed up with a constitution. It's harder to stay in office when you regularly piss off large voting blocks. A politician will often consider more than just what percentage of the population would vote for something but how much people on both sides of a issue care about it.

Wait, what? There is a group of people outside government that produce something that did not exist yesterday. Through taxation people called "government" are taking part of that product. (I'm not saying if it's good or bad, it's just what it is.)

Then they use a lot of accounting here and there, but it does not change the fact that in the net some people had some property transferred from others to them in a non-market fashion (not in direct exchange for some other product, but because it's a "rule"). In my view it means that "taxation" is not applied equally to everyone. So it cannot be an example of a "fair" rule that you defined earlier.

Of course, we may talk whether redistribution of wealth is "good for society" or not, but that's outside the question of "universality of the fair rule".

Am I wrong about that?

Hmmm, well, yes, and I don't know why you don't see it yourself. The people on government payroll are doing something for their income (and they are taxed like anyone else, but to avoid routing money around it may be deducted before they get paid... Here in Spain it's not the case, they pay income tax like anyone else). Not everything is a product that is sold: education would be the simplest and more down-to-Earth example.

This is just a smoke screen, it has nothing to do whatsoever with Uber and taxi regulations in Sweden.

"Regulation and legal requirements" are for running the taxi service. "Market is unregulated" is for the fares that can be charged by a taxi service.

If "existing regulations and licensing" are unfair, better rope in every one and ask for changing those regulations; asking for exemption from the rules that everyone else has to comply with is not fair either.

A lot of markets are "regulated", e.g. the food market, there is a lot of thing you can't mix into food (even in the US). Though no one would call this market "regulated".

You also need a certificate to open a restaurant in most places. You would call the restaurant market "regulated"?

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