This is what pg tweeted earlier today:
Banning Tesla is an index of the corruptness of state governments as banning Uber is of city governments. (https://twitter.com/paulg/status/443469758369767425)
A very astute observation, as usual.
Banning Tesla is an index of the corruptness of state governments as banning Uber is of city governments. (https://twitter.com/paulg/status/443469758369767425)
A very astute observation, as usual.
Taxi laws in many cities exist to both protect consumers (with criminal background checks and additional vehicle requirements), ensure parts of the city get served equally (requiring taxis to accept fares), and establish clear chains of liability. I don't believe there are anywhere near comparable safety arguments you can make for only allowing third-party dealerships.
Here's my two cents (you don't have to buy into it) - taxicab laws and regulations are frequently imperfect, and there is certainly an element of protectionism and cronyism. On the other hand, I don't want to live in a place without them. There is a reason that when I previous lived in London you'd often see "Don't take unlicensed cabs at night" adverts up at bus shelters. These laws are imperfect, but also necessary.
Edit: As someone has pointed out, dealerships make a similar safety argument. That said, I would imagine most rational people are able to see the difference between the two. It is still possible to regulate the sale of cars and allow manufacturers to sell directly. Similarly, I think it's possibly to have taxi laws that allow Uber to operate freely but also ensure the safety of those using the service.
Regulated taxi systems are worthwhile - if you don't think they are, try living somewhere with significant crime. Last year I ended up getting posted to Medellin, Colombia for a month - a city with one of the highest murder and violent crime rates in the world. However, it is also a city with a highly regulated taxi system, with criminal background checks and vehicle restrictions. I would happily get into a cab there at 1AM. I would not have considered it if there were zero regulations and restrictions on who could drive a cab, and what cars they could use.
Not so much with unlicensed taxis.
Please excuse the tangent here.
I respect your ability to have an opinion on the positions you personally feel are worth backing by violence (i.e. the nature of law). However, in turn, please respect the fact that nothing is literally "necessary," especially with such conflicted notions, beyond the word's use in hyperbole. Your respect of this point will allow for more respect and tolerance of opinions that differ from your own.
Even 99.9% of the planet agreeing on one issue does not necessarily make that issue necessary. It depends on the actual threat. This is especially the case when that one issue begins to directly impose violence on the 0.1% who disagree and who want to live nonviolently but differently from your own lifestyle.
It's very healthy to focus on solutions that improve awareness in matters where safety is significant. By all means, warn people. By all means, give people more access to the feedback of transparent information: e.g. transmitting knowledge to people about whether or not an entity is regulated by whichever particular system/regulator. But if you advocate the prohibition of a person trying to have a consensual relationship -- such as a person to Uber's service, a person willing to take that "risk" -- then you quickly tread into unethical territory. However small of a law it is in your perspective, it may be a large form of tyranny to the perspective of the people and entities you're directly willing to undermine or criminalize.
Graham is exactly on the mark. The distinction between a law [previously existing for a long time, just recently existing, or about to exist] is laughably trivial. It is a worthless distinction to a person's opinion of a law or system's corruption.
A) Starting a business explicitly profiting from "efficiencies" created by breaking existing laws (Uber)
B) Starting a business that takes advantages of loopholes in the law and failing to take steps to ensure that customers follow the law (Amazon and Use Taxes)
C) Starting a business profiting from certain efficiencies without violating the laws on the books at the time (Tesla)
C) Some states have laws to ban auto-makers from making direct sales to consumers, while others do not.
You have attempted to make a distinction, but not a principled distinction. There is no reason (that I have seen) which explains why unlicensed car dealers are less harmful to the public than unlicensed taxi drivers.
There is no profound difference. No one is stating that the laws are perfectly paralleled. Nothing of this nature is perfectly paralleled. You're failing to appreciate that law is entirely arbitrary and worthless compared to an individual's opinion of the level of corruption surrounding that law. Your points A, B, C are meaningless to a person's opinion of the underlying validity and righteousness of those points.
> "PG is off the mark here. Companies like Uber explicitly ignore the existing laws and regulations. In the case of Tesla, the ruling just passed."
This indicates to me that the "profound" differences to him/her regarding "validity" is whether a law previously exists. (...Seemingly completely oblivious to the notion that much of what is made into law is insidious, vile, and of a precedence worth objecting.) If the point was only about systemic inconsistencies, that wan't clear.
There is only "profound difference" to the circular reasoning of law itself. There was no reason for me to address that. Legal frameworks are inherently rigid and without much individual conscience.
If services like Uber and Lyft simply decided to be a cab company with excellent technological underpinnings, people would have been quite happy with them and they would have been quite profitable. And they could have blown most cab companies out of the water. Buying up inefficient operators, consolidating them, and bringing them into the modern world of technology is a really good business plan.
Uber and Lyft are in trouble because they wanted to be exit strategy profitable rather than simply profitable. And they decided to do this by ignoring all of that icky stuff like liability insurance, commercial licensing, and following the law. In addition, Uber and Lyft tend to want to ply their trade in areas which are already profitable to cab companies rather than taking over areas that are underserved. If they were brokering rides in areas that can't get cabs easily, they would have lots of defenders.
There is a big difference between laws that actually protect consumers vs. laws that protect middlemen. The fact that pg can't see the difference is a pretty big issue.
I'm sure PG had something reasonable in mind when he wrote the line, but your shoddy irrationalisms passed as reasoning are basically trojan-horseing his position.
Not that I expect city taxi commissions to apply the same standards.
[1] - http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732465940...
Are those two beliefs internally inconsistent in some way? Are you basically arguing that you can either believe in no government involvement, or accept government's involvement on the condition that one must abrogate the moral right to complain about its anti-consumer behavior; that there is no other consistent position to take?
Maybe I'm not understanding what exactly you are saying.
The second portion of your argument appears to be an ad hominem claim that we should disclaim PG's statements because of the possibility that he may own Tesla equity. Do you have an actual claim beyond that?
The pg quote that OP provides is very brief -- State/city govt ruling against Tesla/Uber == corruption -- and more an opinion than a true argument because no evidence/elaboration is provided. That Tesla's (very different) situation is equated with Uber's further points to a hastily voiced opinion rather than a reasoned argument. Hence, I would argue that an ad hominem approach is appropriate because there is not much else to go on. Pg voiced an opinion and I made a statement that mentioned some biases that he was likely to have that informed said opinion.
Some regulation serves a purpose. All regulation can be justified with some sort of logic. That doesn't mean it is either necessary or a net benefit to society.
Proponents claim that cities need to regulate Uber to ensure passenger safety. Meanwhile an NYPost investigation found of the 16 fatalities caused by cab drivers since 2009, all but 2 kept driving cabs. ( http://nypost.com/2014/02/09/cabbies-who-kill-or-maim-in-nyc... ) May be its different in other cities. I haven't been kidnapped by a cab driver in NYC, yet at least.
The Tesla dealership issue is more erroneous and transparent to me than Uber. Car dealerships are a public nuisance. No one would argue we need more middle men for electronics, clothes, or food. Why for cars? The current structure makes it easy for dealers to get away with dishonest business practices. Mechanics are paid to do repairs as fast as possible, increasing the chance of future failures. Car companies are vulnerable to large class action lawsuits while a single dealership is hardly worth an expert lawyer's time.
Heavily regulated environments repel innovation. Regulations, both in Uber's case and Tesla's are written by the incumbents for the incumbents. Follow the letter of the law and instead of a sleek new structure you produce a disfigured chimera, which probably will piss money.
Perhaps one of the best things the internet provided us was a regulation minimal environment. You could put up a website and try new things with out having to worry about getting shaken down. I hope the future web won't be full of rampant EU-mandated privacy notices and DMCA federal government web site registries.
Uber and Tesla don't have a choice. If they want to provide high quality services, laws have to be broken. It is unfortunate that you need to be a large and well funded company to force much needed changes on state and local regulators.
I predict that cities and states which are friendly toward innovation will do better by leaps and bounds in the long run. Betting against change and efficiency tends to be hazardous.
You are not considering the implications of congress interfering in a relatively minor state matter when it refuses to legislate on more pressing state/federal issues (gay marriage, legalising cannabis, etc).
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause
Be careful with the word 'always'. If a federal law were unconstitutional, and an equivalent state law were not, then clearly it would not trump the state law.
Similarly, despite the modern interpretations of the Commerce Clause, there are Constitutionally imposed limits on federal authority, and they're prescribed a very narrow set of privileges by the Constitution. Depending on the law and its execution, we could very well see a state exercising its rights trump the Commerce Clause. Gary Marbut has fairly carefully crafted such a challenge with his "Montana Buckeroo" rifle which is expressly designed, built and sold only within the confines of Montana, specifically to challenge the Commerce Clause's authority of its manufacture.
That said, he's got some 80-odd years of precedent to overcome, but there may be a quorum that much of that precedent is bad precedent, though it's still a gamble as to whether or not that matters.
While I personally agree with Mr. Marbut's interpretation of the commerce clause's limited scope, I think that the deck is stacked squarely against him, especially since Raich.[1]
I'm not sure if you're being serious or just completely ignorant about how bills are passed into law. Clearly, a Republican controlled House will not vote in favor of gay marriage or legalizing cannabis. Heck, almost every Democratic state hasn't even legalized cannabis and there are still a good number of Democratic states that haven't recognized gay marriage. Those won't pass the federal level any time soon.
"Minor" issues, by the way, are passed into law all the time because both houses can agree on the bill. Take the JOBS Act or the Pay Our Military Act for instance.