A solution to the Uber and Airbnb problems that no one will like
nickgrossman.is
nickgrossman.is
Opposition to Uber is a clear case of regulatory capture. Every negative outcome that regulation is meant to mitigate (accountability, safety, reliability, discrimination, non-predatory pricing) is better served by Uber (and two-factor location tracking) than traditional cabs. I have not heard anybody raise compelling objections to Uber's model based on objective harm to consumers or market non-participants (negative externalities).
Airbnb's model, on the other hand, is rife with negative externalities. The most significant of these are the degradation of communities that were never meant to accommodate de facto hotels (noise, parking, transient traffic), and the drying up of affordable housing stock for people who actually intend to live in the homes they purchase.
So you ended up with a bunch of drivers that were driving around with non-commercial policies that the insurance company could easily disclaim in the event of a serious accident, as commercial use would invalidate the entire policy.
Surge pricing is so intransparent that Im 100% sure that has been gamed against the consumer and the drivers in favor of Uber. Not only that, Uber doesnt tell you how much it costs while its going which is also a huge disadvantage for the consumer. Who knows what happens between what you paid to Uber and what the driver received?
Its specially confusing to try to guess if 25%+ Uber, 50%+ Lyft, Taxi prices are. At least if they all had the "N per ride, M per time or distance" you would be able to compare.
>surge pricing is so intransparent that Im 100% sure that has been gamed against the consumer and drivers in favor of Uber
I guess this isn't "false" since you're just stating your belief, but if it's totally opaque to you, then how can you be so sure? I mean, OK, I guess, but... [citation needed].
>Uber doesn't tell you how much it costs
What? Yes it does - it tells you up front the multiple you'll pay, and even makes you manually type it in to confirm before your ride is started.
>Who knows what happens between what you paid to Uber and what the driver received?
The driver gets the same 80% that they get during non-surge times. That's why surge pricing works: it summons more drivers to the street by paying them more.
This is all very publicly known stuff; I don't understand your complaints here. By all means, don't ride it if you don't like it, and criticism is fair game, but try to get the basic facts straight.
You really think a for-profit company that doesn't have to or doesn't disclose the process to do surge pricing, having the knowledge and capacity to use surge pricing to maximize profit, will sacrifice profits in favour of the consumer?
Its opaque on Uber/Lyft, it's not opaque on taxis, so thats definitely a reason to dislike Uber(Sidecar does disclose prices before you get on the car)
> What? Yes it does - it tells you up front the multiple you'll pay, and even makes you manually type it in to confirm before your ride is started.
A multiple is not the same as the number you are going to pay. A multiple of what? I don't see a ticker like I do in a cab that tells me they are not gaming the numbers.
You say the driver gets the same 80%, but I dont know how much it cost me until I'm out of the car. If Uber tells me it cost me 10 dollars, and tells the driver that trip was billed 8 dollars for him, I would never know, and neither would the driver.
You are aware Uber skimps on background checks that result in real harm to real people [among other problems] right? They also actively fight taxi-equivalent background check requirements?
I think the problem is people really do not understand why the vast majority of these regulations exist in the first place. The vast majority are not instances of "regulatory capture" but basic safety like "Hey, don't hire ex-cons in a line of work where they can trap you in a car" and those are what Uber focuses on repealing/fighting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/technology/ubers-system-fo...
> And in California, Uber and other companies like it helped kill a law that would have required drivers to undergo a background check by the state’s Justice Department, as is required of taxi drivers.
> Uber champions its “industry-leading standards” for vetting its drivers. On its website, it describes its background checks as “often more rigorous” than those in the traditional taxi industry.
> But in statehouses across the country, Uber has fought against legislation requiring background checks as strong as those demanded of traditional taxis. Other ride-sharing companies like Lyft and Sidecar, Uber’s chief rivals, have also pushed against the laws, but supporters of stronger background checks say Uber has been by far the most aggressive.
http://www.cnet.com/news/ubers-background-checks-dont-catch-...
> The driver, Duncan Eric Burton, 57, is an ex-con. He'd spent 14 years in federal prison on drug charges and was released in 2012, according to the Houston Chronicle. And he had cleared Uber's background check.
> How does that happen? The city of Houston believes Uber's background checks aren't thorough enough. That's why Houston is among the few cities to require every Uber driver to be licensed by the city and undergo FBI fingerprint checks. But while the city requires it, Uber doesn't -- allowing people to still drive for the ride-hailing service as long as the authorities don't catch them.
> Case in point: one applicant who cleared Uber's background checks had 24 alias names, five listed birth dates, 10 listed Social Security numbers and an active warrant for arrest, according to a report released last week by Houston's Administration and Regulatory Affairs Department.
https://pando.com/2014/01/06/exclusive-uber-driver-accused-o...
> However, Pando has since learned that the driver -- 28-year-old San Francisco resident Daveea Whitmire -- has a criminal record, including felony and misdemeanor charges, and at least one felony conviction involving prison time. How, or why, Uber missed -- or ignored -- this criminal history is unclear.
No they're not. Try getting an Uber as a handicapped person.
"I have not heard anybody raise compelling objections to Uber's model based on objective harm to consumers or market non-participants (negative externalities)."
Then you have not been listening.
> Nearly two-thirds of the city apartments recently listed on Airbnb were being offered in violation of the law, an analysis by state authorities has found.
> The study of data from the subletting service’s own Web site showed 64 percent of its 19,500-plus offerings for Jan. 31 covered an “entire apartment,” says an affidavit from the state Attorney General’s Office.
There is no way to really know without being AirBnb + knowing which apartment complexes sublet illegally.
But...at least in NYC, 64%.
However, analyzing that aspect misses the point.
The heated issues around Uber is economics and how the pieces of the pie are cut up. Explaining how new technologies allow a different trust model to emerge is irrelevant to the French taxi driver throwing bricks at Uber cars or DiBlasio's proposed cap to curb congestion.
In other words, this essay is more relevant to a potential passenger of Uber who wonders how he/she can trust a car that doesn't have a government medallion.
One needs to write a totally different type of essay to appeal to angry taxi drivers and angry politicians.
What is the recurring theme in all those angry posts?
It is not about people wondering about trust. The nastiness is all about economic unfairness.
"Trust" is orthogonal to "Economics".
The authors essay is not a "solution" to the issues people are actually debating. Also, the specific issue with DiBlasio was congestion and vehicle caps and not "trust".
The mismatch is that his article's content (which is ok) underdelivers on the title which it oversold as "a solution to Uber's problems".
In other words, I'm not asking for his article to solve all of Uber's issues and solve world hunger. I also have no desire to discuss Uber labor. My point is that the article doesn't match the title. A more accurate title could have been, "A solution to let NYC monitor freelance driving services". (Admittedly, that type of title wouldn't attract as many clicks.)
There are issues on a number of levels. One is "public safety" which is essentially the licensing issue. Another is externalities like traffic, which aren't about licensing for safety but more about regulating for other impacts. Then, there are the economic / labor issues, which deserve their own consideration.
My point is that your content (though intersting) does not live up to your ambitious (and generic) title, "A Solution to the Uber Problems".
Talking about "real time data sharing" with mayor of NYC is interesting but the "congestion" problem, which could be perceived or real, is not what comes to mind when people discuss "Uber problems." Traffic congestion caused by Uber is a relatively minor debate so far in relation to other problems it has.
The following google search for "Uber congestion" is 504,000 hits:
https://www.google.com/search?q=uber+congestion
The following searc for "Uber labor" is 11,100,000 hits:
I think governments still have a lot to do as far as taking decisions based on collected data. However, we're slowly getting there. But the politics surrounding the data will still be around forever.
For example, relaxing the traditional regulation in exchange for data.
Or, releasing the platforms for some types of intermediary liability in exchange for the data
Agree that absent of a proper incentive there's no way this could come about
Real time data can certainly help with policing compliance, but the data is not the basis for the regulation. We don't need real time data to discover that disabled folks have a right to get around too.
Airbnb and Uber are correct when they say they need to keep some information confidential. Cities have terrible records when it comes to this. Indeed, if you look across the pond to the UK, where the HMRC is building the next Big Brother all in the name of tax collection, one can only shudder when looking at their track record of securing large quantities of data.
The problem with this is it imagines a world where the regulators don't need to perform any kind of audit/inspection.
The reality is, companies cut corners which will cause bugs and "bugs" in the data transfer process. The only way for a regulator to discover these issues is....to do what they do now.
It also ignores the fact that companies like Amazon explicitly tell people who interact with the reporting portion of their MWS business that they cannot report information in real time. And I'm pretty sure that is due to costs. This regulatory model would likely increase compliance costs for businesses with delayed reporting mechanisms because they don't need to guarantee processing in real time. The same is true of numerous companies I deal with at #DayJob. There are numerous remote sites with low bandwidth connections including in other countries that regularly have replication delays for reporting purposes.
There are soooooo many holes that are going to require the "expensive" part of regulation (boots on the ground to inspect/examine) to continue to operate the "old" way anyway.
Sure, that's true
But what's also true is that we will continue to see things -- things that are perfectly acceptable to society, or at least will come to be that way -- that are out of sync with current laws and regulations. So the question is how do we get there. Clearly every innovation is not positive, but many are, and we want to give ourselves the opportunity to try things and learn from them.
We have plenty of data about how destructive copper sulfide mining is yet it looks like it will get rammed through. So the idea that "asking permission" is a thing, well, I'm not sure it really is anymore.
Oh I'm sure it still is. You just have to ask very, very, very nicely (with campaign contributions).
Usually the regulations are in place for a reason. Someone has already tried those things. Maybe not "on the internet" or "with an app", but they've been done. Trying to skirt lodging and rental regulation by using your apartments as hotel rooms, bypassing both hotel taxes and rent control is not new.
Businesses have used real-time data for decades to optimize their processes, and that's all we're seeing referenced in this post. Setting aside the question of whether Uber drivers are "employees," they are certainly inside the business model, and so is the data about their performance.
But the reasons we have regulations is that business optimizations can be counter to social goals. And knowing about a bad thing doesn't allow one to go back in time and fix it.
Regulators tend to be held highly accountable to the community they regulate.