Uber is facing severe opposition in several corrupt countries where the taxi cartel has bribed their way to monopoly. Today it was announced that in Finland people should call the police if they see uber cars because an interpretation of the law has changed.
Such terrorism is only possible because uber is a company. We need a decentralized application/service and SAFE network would be the perfect platform to build it with the payment processing built-in. If only the devs could get the product out
Ahh, good old Finland, the country that’s constantly praised as being on the forefront of technology but with the oldest cars of any developed nation, with some of the slowest internet speeds of any developed nation and with legislation that seems like it’s been written by an almost equal mix of corporate billionaire sociopaths and aunties in flower hats who have never done anything more extreme or out of the norm than knitted a sweater with a type of thread you don’t normally knit sweaters with.
Not sure what you’re talking about bro. I lived in Finland for 1.5 years and internet speed was very good. And the cars are just like anywhere in the western world.
According to this article Finland has one of the fastest internet speeds. Faster than the US.
While a decentralized Uber is a good idea, I don’t think it will fix the bribed government thug problem where it interfaces to the real world. Passengers still have to climb into cars and go someplace, so there is still plenty of interface in the tangible world for hired thugs to interfere.
Decentralization helps a lot more in applications that do not need to interface with the tangible world very much and are mostly internet driven.
A Lyft model would be more appropriate, and it would be ultimately unstoppable.
Basically ridesharing is virtually undistinguishable from giving a ride to a friend and splitting the costs.
Socialist tell us not to use their service if we don’t wish to pay taxes. Then turns around, destroy the service that producers create for themselves. All while being angry at the capitalist who is exploit their fruits of labor. It also calls for godvernment invention to protect their lazy unproductive members which is being eroded away from the capitalist who desire to work. Godvernment steps in and stop the capitalist from working so that the capitalist would be at same level of the social workers class.
You seem to be very misinformed on the subject, and you are drawing erratic conclusions.
Yes there’s a big Taxi lobby in a lot of these countries, but to say that they “bribed their way to monopoly”, that’s far fetched! Do you that as a fact? And comparing that to terrorism is ridiculous.
Do you know how much a Taxi license costs in some of these countries? Ie, in France it’s the price of a house. So here comes a concurrent which follows no rules, I can understand that taxi drivers are angry, although it doesn’t justify violence.
Overall, I’m all in favour of an App/Service you can call from your computer/mobile, this is called progress. But what Uber is doing, they just wants to put their app online, recoup a few $/mile and that’s it!
There needs to be a balanced approach, I say If you operate such a service, you need to take some responsability and ownership: Not everyone can just register themselves and improvise themselves Taxi. The site should at least verify the paperwork, verify that every operator has the correct Car Insurance, Driving License, ect…
Generally all industries that are regulated have “regulatory capture”.
The regulators are usually former industry insiders, and they write regulations that support the incumbents and create barriers to entry for entrepreneurial competitors.
Why should a Taxi license cost be high? The only reason is to reduce the number of taxis, guaranteeing profit for the incumbents. Do you have any other explanation?
Astonishing that you care to cling on to my word choice of terrorism and ignore the actual problem at hand. Yes i actually believe that any entity that uses threat of violence to have it’s way is a terrorist, even if it is a the state.
Taxi license, medical license, barbers license. The commonality is that a lobbyist has been in bed with government eliminating competition in the branch and made it ridiculously expensive while having shit customer service. This is what socialist style “we promise you work” mentality does.
I once took a Taxi ride in Fiji that cost ÂŁ50, which was a state and monopoly enforced fee apparently, for which the driver received the princely sum of a couple of pounds for the entire day (if memory serves me correctly). A SAFEtaxi/SAFErideshare type thing, where the central entity cannot be sued, would for sure be a power for social good in places where government regulation favours such enforced inbalances.
I agree. There’s no reason why a taxi license should cost an arm. Or any type of license for that matter.
Overall, the Uber vs Taxi debate is a difficult one. On one hand, governments need to reform, these costly license are a thing of the past and the system needs reform. On the other hand, it’s not because you released “a cool app” that suddenly you should not be subjected to local regulations.
Who’s to say a “capitalist” works harder than anyone else lower on the food chain? You should consider inheritance, circumstance, and the environments that some people are born into that are supressive and unfair. I don’t have too much of a problem with capitalism, I have a problem with capitalists because they tend to be greedy and take what they think they deserve and their idea of fair is highly skewed by their position of authority (power). I’m not making any judgements about you, I don’t know you’re story so don’t be offended. But me personally have had it easy but chose to live the hard life and I see the difference in people who live in disparity and scarcity. On the other hand I see the disconnect from suffering in the world that comes with luxury. I wish every person who has less than me had the same opportunities. Socialism could be good or it could take an ugly form like capitalism has done. Anarchy with a bunch of educated, humanitarian, and environmental tendencies would be my utopia
