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Comment by TheAnimus | Hacker News Reader

A classic problem with the free market. As it makes something more efficient, it creates pain as this change happens. Government rules designed to be protectionist exacerbate the matter.

I feel sorry for the London Cabbie, he has passed The Knowledge, which I believe takes more than 2 years to study for, he pays a high fee for his license.

But ultimately, driving around waiting to find someone needing your service is not efficient, environmentally friendly or the most convenient solution. Their days are numbered, it's just a matter of when.

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Well, you can call a cab in London too. What the drivers are understandably pissed off about is that they spent 2 years developing the navigational knowledge to get people from A to B quickly, so they could get their cab license, and now these other people are competing with them without havign had to had to meet any particular standard to start doing so.

The London cabs aren't just a monopoly as in a lot of other places, they have a very strong meritocratic basis. I was extremely surprised when I came to the US and cab drivers expected me to know how to get to my destination. I said to one 'isn't that what I'm paying you for?' and his response was 'I ain't no computer buddy, find it on a map.'

Of course the problem for London cabbies is that cheap GPS makes 80-90% of their knowledge redundant, so their hard-earned skills have literally been automated away. However, there needs to be a better response to this from the tech community than simply dismissing those skills as worthless. After all, it would be foolish to dismiss the effort required to get a medical degree just because of the existence of WebMD. This is more complex than a simple monopoly/disruptive competitor situation.

> What the drivers are understandably pissed off about is that they spent 2 years developing the navigational knowledge to get people from A to B quickly, so they could get their cab license, and now these other people are competing with them without havign had to had to meet any particular standard to start doing so.

No, it's not understandable at all. It's no different from Luddites destroying machinery that allowed unskilled workers to replace skilled ones. Progress might be a bitch (for the cabbies), but that doesn't give them the right to obstruct it.

It is very different, because there were no laws requiring weavers to meet exacting standards of manual skill before atetemtping to make a living as a weaver. Of course, a a pracical matter a weaver without those skills would get no employment, but that was the market at work.

London cab drivers, by contrast, had to make a significant economic investment (as well as meeting character requirements like having a clean criminal record) in order to get a cab license, a requirement imposed by the government body responsible for transit oversight (Transport for London). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Knowledge#The_Knowledge

I find it quite reasonable that cab drivers question why standards should suddenly vary for other people such that they can offer similar service without having to meet any special requirements. This is not the same as an arbitrary monopoly grant like cab franchises in the US.

> London cab drivers, by contrast, had to make a significant economic investment in order to get a cab license

you think your average Londoner cares? all they want is a service that gets them where they want to go; a random guy off the street with a £150 satnav will do this 95% of the time without issue, for a lot less than the same ride in a black cab.

They will quickly start to care when the number of hailed rides increase 10 fold. Which will gridlock the streets and bring the city to a halt.

There is probably a market for some of The Knowledge folks. Someone gets into a cab, announces their destination, and the cell phone in the back seat transmits his voice to The Knowledge person sitting in an air-conditioned office at a PC. That person then uses his knowledge and skills, combined with a live street map of actual traffic conditions right now, to put a path into the driver's GPS.

I'm hand-waving that this market would support maybe a quarter of the old positions for a while. It's probably time to restrict new entrants and let the current workers attrition out.

"Their days are numbered, it's just a matter of when."

Eventually robots will be driving. At least they live in a socialistic country, so there is some security.

No, it's a classic problem with protectionist measures. Black cabs have been protected from the reality of their market for far too long, and so when the whole thing collapses all at once, rather than being gradually eroded by competition, it hurts all the more.

Of course it's a shame that a lot of people trusted the government to keep up their end of their bargain. It's a costly mistake that people seem to insist on making.

I'm not sure that's a correct analysis. As far as I know, anyone who can pass the knowledge test can get a cab license, so it';s not like there's a quota on the number of cab drivers or something, as you find with many US taxi monopolies (and which I have no time for).

Having service standards isn't exactly the same as protectionism. For example, it's easy to see the problems that would arise if someone just bought a bus, painted it in the same livery as public transit buses, and started picking up passengers on a popular route. I find the Black Cab situation interesting for similar reasons - they're not regular cars with a taxi sign on the side, but special-purpose vehicles, capable of accommodating a wheelchair, with the ability to use transit lanes, and so on. I think their beef with the regulator seemingly dumping licensing requirements on a whim is quite understandable from an economic point of view.

It's worth remembering that regulations governing cabs in London are not the result of regulatory capture by market incumbents, but were drafted centuries ago to deal with a tragedy of the commons problem, ie too many horse-drawn carriages causing traffic problems. The distinctive design of the modern cab (which are made by two firms, a British one that just does taxis, and also by Mercedes-Benz) meets standards set many years ago for ground clearance, disability access, and turning radius. Taxi firms have often asked for conditions to be relaxed over the years (especially the turning circle requirement, which allows cabs to do u-turns in places that would be impossible for other vehicles) but they remain pretty stringent.

It is mostly a traffic control measure rather than protectionism. Someone should run a simulation about what happens when the number of vehicles which stops randomly for 60 secs increases by a certain percentage.

You're confusing "more efficient" with "deciding to not abide by licensing regulation".

Regulation exists to protect consumers. It's like that shady hotel chain that sidestep any regulation - airbnb.

Only in the startup bubble is "Ignoring consumer protection laws" spun as "distruptive".

Good on the black cabs I say.

Well. If you're going to make a moral appeal to The Law, my question would be whether the laws are actually there to protect the consumer, or whether they're actually there to protect the entrenched interests under the guise of protecting the consumer.

So here's my challenge for you: If these Uber cars are, in fact, injuring the consumer, you should probably be able to find a bunch of reports of disgruntled consumers who were injured in some way (bad service, ripped off, etc).

All I've heard about is very-happy consumers, and disgruntled taxi drivers (who have a conflict of interest here). So please forgive me if I think this matter is about the cabbies who think of the passengers as some form or another of chattel. :P

I very much doubt Uber does enough business to draw any conclusions.

Look at another example though - airbnb negative reviews and experiences - you'll find millions of them.

> Regulation exists to protect consumers.

Some regulation, sure. But quite often it exists to protect producers and consumer protection is merely an excuse, and even regulation passed with the genuine intention of protecting consumers often has the effect of protecting producers.

Regulation exists to protect consumers, or at least that is what voters are told.

So regulation never protects consumers?

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