Taxi protest in Paris turns to guerrilla warfare as Uber car attacked on freeway
rudebaguette.com
rudebaguette.com
This sort of law feels really backwards. It degrades the service of companies like Uber and imposes negative externalities on society--more cars pointlessly idling and waiting around, more traffic congestion and so on. The idea behind a market is to improve quality; trying to "improve" the market by arbitrarily degrading the quality of some competitors is exactly counter-productive.
Given that the taxis have gotten this absurdly protectionist restriction in place, it's even harder to empathize with their protest. Actually getting violent is even worse.
Of course, it's also important to remember that this is likely an extreme action by a single individual and does not represent taxi drivers as a group. In fact, there is no immediate link between the attack and taxis, although it seems extremely likely. That said, even ignoring the violence, I do not really sympathize with the taxi protests here.
[1]: http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/28/uber-lecab-and-others-now-h...
What are you complaining about? This is just the french way.
These generalisations don't help.
Most American taxi markets aren't restricted like NYC (or a few other big cities), and even those that are are not anywhere near as expensive. NYC and SF seem like the big outliers for restrictive permits in the US.
It's much easier to be a taxi driver if you only accept telephone booking rides.
This law is disadvantageous both for the customer and the driver, so just how difficult would it be to even enforce?
While violence is unacceptable (and hopefully the perpetrators will be found and tried), one also needs to realize that taxi drivers had to pay a high price to become taxi drivers. The current price for a license is 250000 euros in Paris (according to http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxis_parisiens). Anybody in that situation would be pissed, and a fairer solution would most likely involve a plan to rebuy licenses.
Trivially easy. Just spend a few days every month booking rides, if they show up too early then they get fined or shut-down.
The Rude Baguette did a nice article on how the Paris taxi market works, which explains a lot: http://www.rudebaguette.com/2013/08/07/anatomy-of-the-paris-...
Obviously it's not an excuse for violence, but it's important to remember there are always multiple sides to any argument.
Needless to say existing taxi drivers weren't very happy as a lot of them had paid around €100,000 for their license. They were effectively worthless after deregulation.
All this was great news for consumers of course. Before deregulation it was practically impossible to get a taxi in Dublin on weekend nights. I can recall queuing for hours in the cold and wet for the privilege of being dropped home.
The taxi drivers mightn't like deregulation but you can't hold the general public to ransom by operating a closed market. Of course the government should have handled the whole thing better by doing some sort of deal with the drivers who'd paid so much for licences thinking it was a long term investment.
What? What's the logical conclusion to that sentence in your mind?
Should we keep on running the war on drugs because there are so many people who make a living off of it? Should we maintain copyright law the way it is today because companies have invested so heavily in it? Should we maintain software patent law the way it is because some folks have spent billions acquiring patent portfolios?
The market got corrupted by artificial scarcity, it has to go back to a normal level, those who speculated will have to pay for it, as they are part of the problem. They know it and that's why they are so violent, they have no hope.
Has all rule of law broken down in France? I sounds like some Mad Max free-for-all there.
This is how it seems to work in this country. Nobody will ever pay attention to some quiet, peaceful and respectful protesters, but as soon as things are getting dirty, then medias are all in and people/politics are actually talking/thinking about it.
This is indeed unfortunate, but as a matter of fact it works
In Russia it works this way: you go out on the street, raise your hand and you get your car in like 1 minute (even at 4am in the morning it doesn't take very long time, provided you are downtown, did that many times) - basically some guy who wants an extra buck will stop and get you anywhere. Some make a living that way. You negotiate the price, it's usually rather cheap even in large cities compared to what you'd be charged for the same ride in Europe or the US. You don't have to tip the driver, since the price is negotiated beforehand. Now we also have a lot of competing official taxi companies. They all are relatively cheap and they mostly get their clients through internet or phone and the use case for those is when you need to go to the airport or have a pre-arranged trip.
We also have jitney transportation which is only slightly more expensive, but much faster than public transportation. Drivers are mostly from central asian republics or southern republics - demographics russians are rather hostile to - yet I haven't met more friendly drivers in the whole world. And, in my personal view, people are rather receptive to that and are quite polite with them too. It's pure competition and free market and it works to the benefit of all.
You can criticize Russia all you want, but in some areas the free market here exists relatively untouched (probably thanks to bribes, but still, it's better than regulation).
The problem with taxi regulation is when "safety" is used as a pretext to reduce supply. I pay a premium in general to get a taxi which is somewhat less likely to be driven by a criminal, and I imagine female/small/weak/foreign/etc. people would pay more of a premium for this. If the regulation is just for the purposes of identification and safety, it wouldn't have a huge cost for the taxi driver ($50 or so and a few hours), and would probably justify an increase in rates to make up for that.
I could easily imagine a private licensing system coexisting with an unlicensed market.
Update: I misread you. "licensing system coexisting with an unlicensed market" is definitely the state of things in Russia currently. I think that's a good way to go. Except maybe that since licensing is not required, then safety may be guaranteed by non-governmental agencies or maybe even technologies (as mentioned in another comment below).
Violence is wrong and this is not ok.
However, Uber should be more aware of what they're 'disrupting'. Strong unions see this as a foreign company threatening their livelihoods and there will be push back.
Yeah, this isn't USA. There are actual employment rights and strong trade unions here.
But you always must keep diligence, because unions can devolve into a mafia. The taxis here in France are an example of that. I have never had a single ride that was the correct price, and after many attempts I gave up. I'm certainly not alone. People have been trying to disrupt and get around them for ages but they fight as mafia do: fiercely.
It seems that taxi companies are more mafia than union in the US also, but at least they will pick you up. This is because the government won't give them money if they don't work. I appreciate that France has a strong social safety net, but this is one of the downsides of that; it's easy to abuse.
Maybe the cabs you were trying to get already had customers on board. Hint : if a taxi is free, the light on top of it is green. If it's red, there's already a customer on board.
When travelling around Europe, I put big Irish stickers on my motorbike. You can get Scottish flag stickers for your car that say "Scotland" in French[1], so the French drivers don't think you're English.
[1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scotland-Ecosse-Sticker-Number-Salti...
You know that the idea for Uber came from the founder's experience trying to get a taxi in Paris, right? That suggests I'm not alone in my experience with Parisian taxis.
Actually that link says the complete opposite. It says that while in Paris, the founder were talking about their (bad) experience of getting a taxi in San Francisco.
> Garrett Camp and I were hanging out in Paris for a week at Loic and Geraldine LeMeur’s LeWeb conference. Amongst the amazing food, the copious amounts of wine and inevitable nightlife crawls there were all kinds of discussions about what’s next. Garrett had sold StumbleUpon to Ebay and had been doing “hard time” at a big company. I had just completed my tour with Akamai after selling Red Swoosh to them in 2007. > > Jamming on ideas, rapping on what’s next is what entrepreneurs do. Garrett and I would get some good music, good drinks and jam until 5am. Garrett’s big idea was cracking the horrible taxi problem in San Francisco — getting stranded on the streets of San Francisco is familiar territory for any San Franciscan.
However, the founding story I heard first was the Paris taxi story, and it's backed up by these old tweets from LeWeb: http://eventifier.co/event/leweb/tweets?page=21&q=uber#
So maybe it was SF taxis after all, or maybe not. If I'm ever face to face with an Uber founder I'll ask.
Threats, violence and vandalism of someone else's property are not okay.
One could argue that , because of collective bargaining, there might not be that many advantages to joining a union in France (the biggest union ends up representing you anyways).
They would also extend "protection" to favored businesses, and use violence against businesses which did not accept "protection".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Mafia
We've had great success using laws such as RICO against them. Perhaps France can ask our law enforcement agencies for some tips.
It's amazing how some cities have essentially criminal mafias running taxis (Paris, Pattaya, to some extent Bangkok), some have crazy feudalism (New York, where you have rich people sitting on $1mm medallions and Somali immigrants making $30/day to drive), some have what seem to be overpriced but reasonably well run services (London, Singapore), and some just have ~no taxis at all (most of the US outside major cities, and most poor parts of US cities).
I will shed zero tears for the end of the taxi industry. First by Uber and ride sharing, finally by robots.
Absolutely not, doing so might kill one of them and it's a crime(Article 221-1 in the french law).
Truck drivers starved the country of petrol a few years ago.
This ain't America.
Unless the entire taxicab industry is nationalized by law in France, it makes no sense to me that a taxicab union is protesting against another company disrupting their business. That's just being a thug.
You should have the right to organize for bargaining of salary. Imposing an artificial handicap on another business model is really backwards.
For one, a "its employer" doesn't work. The employer does not employ the union, and employees of multiple companies may be part of the same union. ".. who bargain with their employers" is a better fit.
For another, a union can do more than just bargin with the employer. It can provide skills training, mentorship, insurance, petition government on behalf of the employees, and more, even outside of any employment relationship.
For a third, union abilities in the US are "artifically handicapped". Jurisdictional strikes, secondary boycotts, common situs picketing, closed shops, and other actions are prohibited by law. By your argument, you want unions in the US to have much more power than they already do.
Not sure I agree with your last statement. It depends... I don't think unions should be able to forcefully close down a shop if the owner can actually resume operations by firing all of the union members. On the other hand I'm completely alright with unions organizing and deciding to go on strike, in order to push for a bargain. I suppose I'm more comfortable with these boundaries because it "naturally" follows from ownership (the union can't shut down a factory because they don't own it) and respect for volition (the employer can't prevent people from willfully organizing).
I also understand that sometimes large corporations prefer to shut down a factory rather than sell the factory to the workers, in order to prevent competition. In this case I'm willing to concede that the workers should be able to purchase the factory from the corporation, as a judgement call that the livelihood of the factory workers are more important than whatever benefit the corporation sees.
But I am not willing to extend the liberties of a labor union to stifle the growth of another company that is winning in the free market. I believe there is more at stake in lost opportunity that way, and so I call such practice "backwards".
I'm probably missing a lot of subtlety here; like if the factory owner can fire all of the union workers during a strike, isn't that akin to the factory worker banning unions outright? I really don't know the answer.
That's the key point. Unions are constrained on what they can do. I can threaten to stop working unless my employer stops purchasing from a company with a horrible safety record, where the employees of the other company are on strike as protest. We're both agreed on that, right?
But do it collectively - say, 90% of my fellow 4,000 employees threaten to stop working in support of the workers of the other company - and suddenly it's labeled a union and our actions considered an illegal sympathy strike.
I can't help but conclude that the legal constraints on what a union can do mean that it can't fully participate in a free market. Instead, the 'free market' you're talking about is actually 'the market where collective action freedoms have been deliberately handicapped.'
(Personally I think there must be constraints on a free market, but that's a different conversation.)
"if the factory owner can fire all of the union workers during a strike"
Why can the factory owner do that? Surely the union contract would prohibit mass firing during a strike. Otherwise, as you say, what's the point of having a union?
In the context of US law, there are certain things that an employer is prohibited from doing. Mass firing of legally striking employees is one of them. Even non-union ones. (See http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2012/10/15/walmart-striking-wor... for a nice summary.
Yes it is. And that's why (in many countries) you can't fire people when they go on strike. The employer doesn't have to pay them, but the can't fire them. When/If the strike is over, they still have a job.[1]
Is it legal to fire striking employees in USA?! That sounds bizare!
[1] Here's the UK Government advice on it. The UK had Thatcher, so that employment law would not be as strong as in France https://www.gov.uk/industrial-action-strikes/your-employment...
"Microsoft Managers And Employees Protest, Bash Computer of Linux User"
Dude, leave them alone. If that is what they want to do, let them be. Never mind what your opinion of "improvement" is.
If they're using violence to get what they want, you can't really leave them alone (morally or practically).
All they need to make sure is that Uber pay their proper taxes in France. ;-)
I am sure it's possible to modernise cabs of Paris (and other cities)(hmm maybe time to think about a new project! ;))
I condemn violence and most strikes when they're used as an easy form of politics, but we can also note that protesters don't feel supported by their government and that's their way to make a threat.
This push of yours to shield the unions with culture is reprehensible. There are definitely elements that are part of culture/society (conferring it uniqueness), but those should be carefully kept apart from other things such as unions what are not. Don't let the economic players to corrupt your perceptions towards non-economical realm, especially when what is targeted is a part of your identity (and therefore affects your ability to judge things objectively).
Hotel owners are typically a bit above minimum wage.
It's pretty obvious to everyone that dropping the medallion system is the way forwards, but is there any example anywhere of dropping the medallion system in a fair manner for those that actually bought their medallion recently?
Also, another thing I'm pretty concerned about is the qualification of non taxi drivers. The taxi license is actually very hard to get, I'm not so sure of what Uber requires of its drivers...
Why not just return their money?
Hotels are a different matter entirely: firstly, hotels are usually already pretty correctly priced, and services are usually good (in my experience at least). Secondly, the reasons for hotel regulation are still pretty relevant:
- I don't want my neighbor to sublet constantly, and have people run around. The commons (hallways and stuff) will probably get degraded, and my life will be generally shittier (see various stories about subletters).
- On a more maco-level, with things like rent control, subletting makes the supply even more constrained. Between getting rid of subletting and getting rid of rent control, I'd rather get rid of rent control, but in the meantime subletting is also kind of awful.
airbnb's disruption is not uncontroversial
Farmers use their machines to fling cow shit at government buildings. They set fire to lorries full of live sheep.
See this example of officials vigorously enforcing labour laws. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/french-pub-f...
Wow. I'd love to see that happen in the US, where Obama was criticized for swatting a fly in public.
> There’s no confirmation that this attack came from the protesting taxi drivers; however, that certainly seems to line up with the sentiment felt by taxi drivers these days – unwarranted hate.
I'm all for innovation,and finding ways to make things, environments and habits, better, more efficient, safer and more intelligent. This, however, raises an interesting moral dilemma. In these ecosystems, prior to the disruptor, agents live and thrive. After the disruptor, these agents must adapt or otherwise, be gone.
When you think these agents are actually human beings, with issues, dreams and families, a new variable is added to the discussion. Is it OK to disrupt an ecosystem if you find a way to make everything better? Is it moral? You found a better way, so surely it must be implemented, and there are few arguments against that. The agents in the ecosystem had almost all what was needed to find the new way, to enhance their ecosystem: time, experience, imagination. And for one motive or another, they failed to do it. What is their argument when someone else comes along and provides a better solution?
I'm not trying to sound Randian or anything, but I truly believe that 'we have families to feed' or 'will lose job' is not a very good argument. Is the ecosystem supposed to be kept in the previous state just for the agenda of a subset of the agents? Under that argument, we shouldn't have cars in the first place. Nor bronze age (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EGAtLGDU7M)
Is this a testament of the inherent cruelty (cruelty in a poetic way, just as natural selection can be thought of cruel) of the free market, or just a testament of the importance of innovation as a way of survival? Maybe both? I can't help but notice heavy analogies with Natural Selection.
Think about it. The way we prod it forward, always stumbling away from our past.
Overall may be the biggest baddest religion man has ever seen.
Godliness is our final destination. That's significant, and possibly our own undoing.
So why are we talking as if it came form the protesting taxi drivers then? Maybe they were just ordinary thugs. I know people who got robed in their rental car in Paris. I love Paris but there are certainly saver places in France.
While Uber doesn't seem faithful to me on this story, I would also love if taxis in Paris were affordable and good quality, like in Madrid and Syndey. It would develop the job and reduce car pollution.
Unlike smashing the windows and tires of the car they're driving? The guy driving the Uber car is just an employee, too.
I can see on taxis-de-france.com that the price is 120-195k€ (Notice the k) depending on the zone. It's not comparable to 240.000$ in Chicago, because the average salary is 1500€/month in France. Guess why taxi drivers are irritated.
If I was Uber, I would pay cash to all the homeless people to take slow long rides in the normal cabs to block them up.
Every other day there is content on the front page suggesting that a shorter work week and 4 weeks of holiday are actually good for you and still here you are.
You're probably just a troll, I shouldn't even have replied.