Uber No Longer Banned in Germany
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Not necessarily. According to Wikipedia ( http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mietwagen_mit_Fahrer_(Deutschla... ) the livery car driver must not wait outside of the office for customers, but has to return to the office and wait there for new jobs. If he happens to get a job while driving, that's fair.
The original decision was an immediate decision based on the idea an immediate reaction is required before final judgement takes place. This final judgement has not taken place.
The immediate decision was opposed and for formal reasons the judge agreed that immediate action is not required.
Final judgement in the case itself will take place some time later this year. The jury has indicated, that in the case itself it may eventually violates the law. But this is only in indication until final judgement takes place.
Hopefully their fines are still enforceable.
Personally, I think there needs to be a balance, and you can find examples on both sides of its implementation being heavy-handed (GMOs in Europe), or its absence devastating (some Superfund sites or adverse long-term health impacts in the USA). Of course, I'm speaking in general terms here, as you can find counterexamples in both cultural spheres, but that general policy distinction does exist.
And it's hard to see on which side the PP comes down for many issues: Should we institute a carbon tax because we should show precaution at the effects of a continuing accumulation of greenhouse gasses? Or should we avoid it because we can't properly gauge its long term cost/benefit ratio?
I tried to couch my comment in fairly broad terms (with plenty of caveats) because I know it's not universally applicable. However, I do truly believe that it is an important idea to understand when parsing differences in policy reactions between the USA and Europe. Specific implementations may come down to pre-existing biases, but I think it's still crucial to know what the PP is and how it could be applied in a more black and white situation. To me, it's all about having some knowledge of the frameworks in play in a given situation.
Cities have uniform tariffs, calibrated meters and forced availability (i.e. a taxi driver is obliged to take everyone everywhere, unless the guest is a danger to the safety of the taxi like drunk or agressive) to avoid the horror stories of other cities like wildly varying prices for the same route (hello Uber surge pricing!), cabs not responding to a hail (multiple accounts of this on HN e.g. for New York)... and the drivers have to undergo a rigorous testing of location knowledge, which usually takes into account not just the streets, but also basic history and points of interest.
Also, in most cities the number of available medaillions usually represents the amount of taxis needed, so there is no unhealthy competition and enough taxis on the road to serve the demand.
Edit: Yep, the cars also are mandatory checked once every year and the cars are commercially insured. Rigorous checks also make sure every driver is appropriately registered and no "illegal" workers drive. The downside of the system, though, is that the fares are seen to high from customers' POV and too low from the company POV (because the prices are often adjusted only once every couple of years and in the meantime, gas and insurance costs only go up).
Another thing which will be massively disrupting the German taxi space will be the mandatory minimum wage of €8.70/h - while now a huge lot of the taxi drivers are paid a percentage of their income, everyone will have to shift to hour-based payments, which will definitely affect the companies.
I'm not suggesting that this applies to Uber or not, as clearly people find value in it and also find value in regulation for taxis in general, only that I don't believe it's axiomatic that regulation and innovation are necessarily mutually opposed.