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Comment by owenjones | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't the fact the Uber drivers come to the passenger alleviate that fact? Also, anecdotally, from experience living in bad neighborhoods in my city taxi cabs are generally less likely to visit.

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Have you looked into whether your local cab companies are required to service every area of the city? It's illegal for an NYC cab to refuse service within NYC's regulated area; it's also illegal for them to, for instance, drop you off short of your destination --- my wife found this out when her cab to LGA dropped her off halfway there because he had to make an appointment, and an NYC cop immediately stopped and ticketed him.

I know that here in Toronto there are additional restrictions on what cabbies can and cannot do (they must take the most direct route to your destination, are restricted from offering unsolicited hotel and restaurant recommendations, &c) [1]. Not that these sorts of protections are universally enforced (nor is this an excuse for many of the absurdities of licensing), but to pretend that licensing is entirely without benefit is being disingenuous.

[1] http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2013/ls/bgrd/backgroundfi...

> an NYC cop immediately stopped and ticketed him.

Did she have to alert the cop to what happened, or is there a system in place that notifies police when this happens?

Neither. The cop just noticed her getting out and immediately trying to flag another cab.

If you have a personal story on how a law was violated and given the fact it was on books for decades, it clearly is ineffectively enforced (taxi drivers apparently prefer to violate the law regularly with a small chance of being ticketed and I can't blame them if that's more profitable for them).

If only there was a system where you could call a cab exactly to where you are, monitor its position while it arrives in real time, and one that would drop you off exactly where you wanted to go. A system where you could comment on the quality of the driver after each ride so that the bad ones are permanently kicked off.

Wait, there is. It's called Uber.

In this case self-regulation and competition work better than government regulations. Uber has self-interest in making sure they work well or else people will move to a better system.

Having government erect and then enforce the laws is a costly externality of the taxi system - police officers are paid with your money too.

I don't follow. I have a personal story involving witnessing a law being enforced, therefore its ineffectively enforced?

The rules for NYC taxis are known to everyone that has lived in their for a non trivial amount of time. Tourists might not be familiar with them but any red blooded New Yorker would definitely remind the cabbie they have to go to the final destination.

A more commonly abused rule is that cabbies cannot refuse a destination but many will do so if it's in the outer boroughs (imagine Manhattan to Queens or Brooklyn) as they're not guaranteed a fare on the return. At night many will ask you where you're going before you get in to weed this out specifically (illegal). Again, anybody who's lived in the city long enough knows to just ignore the driver and get inside before instructing him where you're going.

I've heard stories that there are undercover folks working for the city that test out the cabbies and fine them if they refuse a legit fare.

Also, it says it in the cab. This is how I, as a New Yorker, first learned of these rules.

City taxis are legally required to go where you tell them to. They may not, but you have legal recourse. Uber could quite conceivably say "nah, not interested" and you wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

And that is the risk you run with a free market.

If people don't like it, then they can just keep using Taxis, and if it's not profitable for Uber, they will go under.

I imagine a lot of these arguments cropped up when UPS and Fedex came about, to compete with the USPS.

Well, no, because then people in bad neighbourhoods get screwed over. There is, I'm sure, more than enough business going to good neighbourhoods to keep Uber afloat. So then taxis would only ever be going to bad neighbourhoods.

There is a reason for things like taxi regulation- it's to ensure that everyone is treated fairly.

But everyone isn't getting treated fairly. Is it fair to the cab company to have to service areas they normally wouldn't? Perhaps some of the cab drivers don't feel safe traveling to certain areas.

I couldn't get cable where I lived in upstate NY because I was in a remote area. Should the cable company have been forced to provide service to my house to make things fair? What you call "fair" only seems to apply to one side of the equation.

I'm also not convinced that poorer people would lose out on service. Can you cite anything for that? It seems like there would still be options, even if the quality weren't as good.

> I couldn't get cable where I lived in upstate NY because I was in a remote area. Should the cable company have been forced to provide service to my house to make things fair?

In fact many municipalities grant cable monopolies for precisely that purpose. Do I think this is a good idea? No, I don't think it's that valuable to service people outside dense urban areas. If they want services, they should move closer to the city. However, I don't think its fair to decry a cable monopoly for invoking the protection it receives as part of such a bargain against a competitor.

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