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Comment by rmc | Hacker News Reader

The ignorance and arrogance of Uber about the French union situtation is mindbogglying:

> This is also why Uber believes it can’t compromise once it begins to offer its services in a new city, or a new country, like France. It strives to work with regulators to accommodate its existing service rather than changing how it works.

It's not the regulators/government that are a problem, it's the taxi unions. You're talking about a place with a very strong, and very long history of active union activity.

"We can't compromise on service". "Fine, we'll drag your drivers out of their cars and set the cars on fire. Your move."

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Could it be that, given the existing setup of the market, Uber is a good guy in the US, but a bad guy in France? This is probably not a popular opinion here, and I'm neither USian nor French, but hear me out:

In the US, there is a system of taxi medaillons whose result is that rentiers get rich [0]. The tl;dr: the right to operate a taxi is bound to license of which there is an artificially limited supply. These licenses typically do not belong to drivers but to rentiers, who rent them out to drivers. The drivers lose, the passengers lose, the rentiers win.

France has unions, which makes it unlikely that there are third party rentiers who profit off the system in the same way as it happens in the US. Perhaps the passengers still lose, but the drivers probably don't.

That makes the framework in which Uber is trying to enter very different, and it means that Uber just may not be the good guy there. After all, pretty much everybody can agree that "rentiers = bad". On the other hand, "workers = bad" has far less support.

[0] http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/47636506327/the-tyranny-of...

Even ignoring the medallion situation, I'm sure things differ just based on how different cultures view unionized labor.

Here in the US we used to be quite pro-union but this sentiment has changed drastically in the past 3-4 decades. I'm just old enough to have seen some of the change first-hand.

Some argue that this occurred at great cost to our ability to sustain a middle class:

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/30/the_middle_class_myth_heres_...

Being from the US it is hard for me to know how well a non-US citizen understands how much our view of unionized labor has changed here in the relatively recent past.

Steinbeck suggested (paraphrased) “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”, this is now more true than ever and it goes beyond socialism to ideas like unions and progressive taxes on the rich (and/or corporations) where the majority of citizens here (at least the ones who vote) are now against these despite the fact that in many cases these things would actually be in their own personal better interest today (as opposed to tomorrow when they win the lottery or get their own redneck reality tv show and are suddenly one of the elites).

I have no idea what the law is in France with taxis (being from Ireland), but we used to have a limited supply of taxi licences (as we called them), which had the similar effect of "owners of the licennce don't have to drive and get rich".

And yet there still was taxi unions that would throw their weight around.

In France we do have a limited supply of taxi licences. But they are usually owned by the driver.

Since they worth a lot (~250k€) and that taxi driver is a liberal profession, they acts as a retirement plan / life insurance.

This is why taxi unions gets really upset when there is a governmental plan to raise the amount of licences, or when any unregulated competition shows up (motorbike taxis, "private drivers", and now Uber).

> they are usually owned by the driver

Yup. Especially in SF, the medallion owner just won the lottery and rents it out. No one is going to risk going to jail to protect their boss' monopoly.

So what happened when the bosses protest and go to jail?

Agreed.

Kind of hard to get a business off the ground when Unions control everything and free enterprise is essentially suffocated out of the country.

The ironic part of the Uber story was the Taxi Union complaining about "unfair practices".

Wait a minute...

Last time I checked, France was still a quite functional first world economy, independent of recent attempt by certain press outlets to place it near every ideological precipice you can think of (I'm looking at you, The Economist).

Taxi drivers have higher costs than Uber drivers because of two reasons: Firstly, they must comply with lots of regulations that are specific to taxis and the driving thereof. Secondly, they are unionized, thus keeping the taxi rates from dropping too low.

Both points deserve to be debated and none of them is a no-brainer in favor of Uber. Especially regarding the regulation issue, I personally am not inclined to sympathize with Uber. Most of that regulation is there for a reason.

Avoid regulations that exist for a reason (Uber), tout profits as why those who comply are failing, cry about free market when the language of the law catches up reducing profit margins.

Startups of any kind have a big problem in france. Most people are employed by these huge companies.

I think you could apply that maxim to anywhere that isn't SV.

No, unions prevent their employees being exploited and working for a bowl of rice a day. I'm not saying unions are without their problems and corrupt practices, but as far as I'm concerned they are generally a force for good.

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