I recently read an article about New York medallions and their concomitant financing. Basically, rich people buy a medallion in an auction with money borrowed from medallion financing banks (really, banks just to finance these medallions), and then lease out the medallion. For the few drivers that actually own their medallion, it's the most valuable thing they own. It's a strange perversion of capitalism. In the standard case the owner of capital resources pays people to add value to raw materials and so on. But in this case, the owner of the capital was the driver. Then the drivers got together and convinced the city to adopt a law which made it much more difficult to use capital which a lot of people own (a car) in order to make it more profitable for themselves. But now it's become so expensive to get into that club of 'allowed' operators that being a capital owner still forces you to borrow against years of earnings just to use that capital legally and the car owners are forced to borrow for years on something that they won't own. They've created an entirely new capital in order to serve themselves as drivers, but incidentally turned themselves into indentured servants to the medallion cost.
Its a weird thing when a vehicle appears that completely bypasses a large majority of existing bureaucracy. Suddenly, all the made up middle-manning that has caused prices to artificially inflate so someone can get their a cut is exposed for what it is: unnecessary bullshit.
Services begin to run more efficiently, participants flock to the new framework, abandoning the systemic issues that have developed over decades that; while perhaps was created with the best interest of the industry, merely inhibits the actual flow of goods and services to the public. Regulation that protects middle men and their peddling interests ultimately hurt consumers. They need to have the foundations of their business model ripped up beneath them because it isn't sturdy enough to support competition.
Because that market inefficiency is illegal. The entire livery ecosystem evolved from artificially scarcified resources. Ever been to Vegas? Seen the porn slappers? Every 5 feet on the strip there's someone whose job it is to try and touch you with prostitution pamphlets. Why? There's no regulation against them, really, and the investment cost to get into it is low. Let's make taxi services completely unregulated. You've got a '78 pinto with a Home Depot bucket for a back seat but you're only charging 10 cents per mile (since you siphon gas and are uninsured). You're going to be undercut by the dude on the stolen Vespa. And it won't even really matter because there's 900 other drivers doing the exact same thing. So the people who live there? Nowhere to park. And the people looking for a ride? No recourse when that '78 pinto careens off a telephone pole because you're only in it for the heroin anyway. Hollywood Blvd on a Friday night? Curb-to-curb Uber Black. Santa Monica Blvd on a Friday night? Curb-to-Curb Uber. It's literally a rolling traffic jam full of hopeful short-timers attempting to determine if they really want to do this a living (they don't) two weeks into their six-week tenure. That's what we call an "externality" and that's why taxi services are regulated. Taxi rates are expensive because the externalities are internalized. Uber is cheap because the externalities are fucking up the traffic, screwing up insurance rates and taking advantage of 20-somethings whose only asset is the Prius they got for graduating college.
I agree that uber isn't a perfect solution. But on the positive side, they've made getting a ride in non traditional taxi markets easy (like midsize cities and suburbs, where your choice used to be drunk drive or don't go out). I also think that in some cases taxi regulations have gone from protecting safety and traffic to down right rent seeking. I think the success of uber indicates that people are generally unhappy with the status quo. Local governments should work to fix the issues in the best case scenario.
Right - they've dropped the franchise cost to zero. Look - taxis suck. They suck a lot. And they're vampires. But Uber makes money by breaking the law, and for the stuff I need taxis for (getting to and from the airport) Uber doesn't show up because they know they'll be ticketed thousands of dollars. Taxi medallions are expensive. Taxi services also pay a lot in fees that I end up not paying in taxes. Which Uber doesn't pay. Which will, eventually, raise my taxes. It doesn't take a genius to notice that Uber succeeds because taxis suck. That doesn't mean they get to raise my taxes, ride around without insurance, hire criminals and generally be bad operators. Know who sucks less than Uber? Lyft. Know who's losing the illegal taxi battle? Lyft. Know why? Because when your business model is illegal, scruples are a liability.
From the scruples link: "I still can’t believe that an office of Uber — a company valued at $18 billion and held up as a bastion of modern entrepreneurship — posted an ad that encouraged, played on, and celebrated treating women who may choose to drive cars to make extra money like hookers." What ad is this? I can't find it.
Having done several hundred thousand dollars of design work for Hooters, I can assure you that they are a chauvinist, misogynist organization of the first order. And that "Hooters did it" is possibly the worst rhetorical ploy I have ever encountered.
I'm not saying it's something that I would pay for. I'm saying that if women want to make money from stupid men who want to ogle them while they provide another service that the business model for that has been well established and treating women like hookers is not the same as paying extra to look at their bodies.
Just to be clear: You think: 1) The women pictured are Uber drivers. 2) The women pictured came up with this promotion. 3) Uber is accommodating the initiative of these self-starting entrepreneurs. 'cuz I think it's more likely that Uber got some cheesecake stock photos in response to a sexist idea from a sexist company looking to advance a sexist agenda for profit.
No. And I never said anything of that nature. Assuming that women in an ad copy are the same women doing the driving is not reasonable. But assuming that the women who do drive in that program are paid more is reasonable. All I said was that it's a well established business model to charge more for a service simply because attractive women are performing said service. Clearly you don't like that model. That's fine. But you're just putting words in my mouth and it's silly.
Trucking would be a better space to build something like that in than taxis though. Truckers are already usually independent contractors who own their trucks, and only need a CDL. The logistics problems are well studied in the operations research literature.