Saturday, May 21, 2016
Taxicab-industry folks who defend licensing are killing their own livelihood
A classic John Stossel piece on the medallion system and how it prohibits new entries into the taxi-driving field. Some great footage of his conversation with the towering economic intellect Walter Williams, but, as least as importantly, conversations with a number of taxi drivers who do not like medallions at all. Oh, and an interview with a taxi-drivers'-union bigwig who makes a lame attempt at defending the current arrangement, going so far as to acknowledge straight up that new entrants are squeezed out.
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And this proves what about holding Uber drivers to the same driver background checks and other standards as any other driver for hire? And I suppose you like being a 1099 with no bennies and even paying the employer's percentage of social security. This brave new world of 1099ers is an erosion of prosperity, not a super highway to it. And to your ilk, it's vile to want bennies and social security in your senior years. You'd rather see the takers sit in their easy chairs and rake in their stock dividends while the peanut gallery slaves away. Heaven forbid that the Joneses next door got it made down at the widget plant that still provides for them and has no room for more American workers, but maybe Chinese and Indian ones.
ReplyDeleteNo, it's not an erosion of prosperity. It's a blossoming of freedom.
ReplyDeleteAnd the idea that people who start companies based on ideas that prove to be successful are "takers" is the kind of hard-left, infantile horse shit one expects from Occupy Wall Street.
You're correct that I'm not looking for "bennies" from any of my independent-contractor arrangements.
ReplyDeleteAnd everybody in America knows or should know that most metropolitan areas are quite fubarred these days. I never met a courteous government worker there. You tout the freedom of the owners, but the workers be damned; a number of corps are now requiring a clean nicotine panel as a pre-requisite for employment which means you can't even smoke a good cigar in your leisure hours. Your hero Ronald Reagan took us down that slippery slope with his executive orders regarding Federal workers. The people will decide whether taxi drivers must have special licenses and even be drug tested and subject to random tests of same. Uber drivers are taxi drivers.
ReplyDeleteThen don't work for those corporations. Or, if you really want to work for them, quit smoking.
ReplyDeleteNo, Uber drivers are Uber drivers.
ReplyDeleteWhere are you looking for your bennies that have been known to be part of most jobs for our entire lifetime then, you sexy revolutionary?
ReplyDeleteSo far, "the people" have decided they want less expensive, more prompt, friendlier transportation service than they were getting from the taxis
ReplyDeleteJust saving for various life needs out of what I make
ReplyDeleteBack to your question in the first comment, what it proves is that if government made ride-sharing companies submit to licensing, it would kill off the business model and no one could get anything other than a crappy ride across town.
ReplyDeleteOh, Uber drivers are Uber drivers. They transport passengers for a fee. I guess that makes them different from cab drivers exactly how? Oh, they don't suck off the public and get any paid holidays and vacations, employer contributions to OASI, health insurance, not even covered by work comp if injured in an accident. And of course they're gaming the system if they expect due process to be involved in keeping their jobs. Man, that's real progress.
ReplyDeleteSomeday some plaintiff attorney might be ripping into your freedom-loving posterior, hope not though. You will not find any protection there from the good folks at Uber either.
ReplyDeleteI have no quarrel at all with the great rides many Uber drivers provide to the public. I am not talking about requiring a license and a sticker like is required in the Big City. Just a chauffer's license and background checks commensurate with what taxi cab drivers are required to undergo and/or obtain.
ReplyDeleteAs for the top end, those you revere and apparently aspire to become, I present this food for thought, talk about keeping the little guy out:
Prospective investors need to meet the SEC definition for “accredited,” meaning they make at least $200,000 in two consecutive years or have a net worth of $1 million or more (excluding their home). While potential buyers would have needed to hold the stake until Uber goes public or gets acquired, they could ask the fund manager for permission to sell.
Companies selling shares on public markets are encouraged to disclose every possible risk, said Charles Kane, a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Private investors are typically afforded fewer protections. “It’s like you’re going down a double diamond,” Kane said, “and they put a sign out: ‘Ski at your own risk here.’ You have to be an expert.”
The above from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-20/selling-uber-shares-may-be-tougher-than-you-think
ReplyDeleteWhy the hell would I want paid holidays and vacations if I set my own hours?
ReplyDeleteUber drivers aka transporters of humans for hire are on the short list of being replaced by a descendent of Hal, anyhow. And I know you wouldn't have it any other way. It's the free market, bippy, and I do indeed understand that. Ask not for whose job the robots come for, it's right between your hands formerly on the wheel, keep your eyes on the road for now. And don't turn to government for any relief now. Come up with some inventive way to subsist. Your maker you say insists.
ReplyDeleteRide-sharing service Uber has announced that it is to follow the lead of carmakers and begin testing its own autonomous vehicle. The hybrid Ford Fusion has been kitted out with self-driving tech by Uber's Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh and will be tested on the city's streets.
http://www.gizmag.com/uber-autonomous-car-testing/43448/
but so nice that you could participate in being filler along the way to prosperity for all.
ReplyDeleteYou are free to set your own hours. Cool beans. But you do have to clock in, so to speak, and every second of your time on it is of course ceaselessly monitored.
ReplyDeleteWhen all the teeny tiny Hals hit the road and you're out in the cold, don't go looking for any unemployment benefits which are less than subsistence anyway. Write the Great American screenplay or something and try to pitch it without an agent maybe.
ReplyDeleteExactly. If I'm automated out of the Uber gig, I look for another opportunity. Schumpeter called it creative destruction
ReplyDeleteYou know, you lead off with taxi drivers killing off their own livelihood by defending licensing. What would you expect a bull to do, graze with the cattle, except to breed them? You're all out of a job. Uber drivers cannot even keep up with the diminishing Joneses in their hoods with even a bare bone of unemployment compensation. Ya think Wendy's just 3D printed them kiosks? They were coming anyway and planning for a robotic take-over of the workplace began long before even slavery was outlawed. We're all gonna feel like native Americans betrayed someday, much sooner than you think. As for Schumpeter, did he not often proclaim himself as an admirer of Karl Marx and write extensively and perceptively about him?
ReplyDelete