Company-owned marketplaces are wonderful for the 95% of people who never run into problems, and some people such as Blake Ross may wonder why we don’t just retire the publicly regulated markets. What he is missing is that there is no due process on company marketplaces. If you happen to have a streak of bad luck, or you are targeted or discriminated against and you get too many bad ratings, you are kicked off with no appeal process. Uber does not care whether the complaints are legitimate. Similar problems happen to a small fraction of users on Google Adwords, eBay, and other company-owned marketplaces who ultimately care about their own profit instead of justice. As public markets are replaced with private marketplaces, I think the loss of due process is not something that we should give up without some forethought.
I just had my first Las Vegas cab experience, it was at 11:30pm. The taxi driver picked us up from the airport and took us to our hotel 30 minutes away. He was pretty helpful and seemed to know the area quite well. Then we got to our destination and he demanded that I pay cash, even though the taxi had a touchscreen terminal behind the front passenger seat for paying with card.<p>He said that he needed the $55 fare in cash because he needs to take some money home and it is midnight. I told him that I didn't feel comfortable, he was apologetic, explained he needed the money and so, to save trouble, I went into the hotel and got out the cash for him because I just got off a few hours plane ride, I didn't want to deal with this nonsense at this time of night.<p>I told the man behind the desk at the hotel and he explained that it happens all of the time. He said a lot of the drivers pocket the cash for themselves which is why they demand cash. He then advised us not to hire taxis and to use a hotel recommended private driver service that is the same cost (no doubt a nice referral fee for them). An ulterior motive there, but I don't doubt that this happens all of the time.<p>This experience, other experiences from colleagues and friends as well as online paints a picture of a pretty broken and corrupt taxi system in Los Angeles especially. While I am not a big fan of Uber (ethically) I do like the idea of ridesharing and the rating system. If Lyft, Uber and other companies were operating here, perhaps things would be different.
As long as the laws prohibit Uber from operating, why is it strange that the government would take steps to ensure that?<p>Perhaps the laws should change - certainly Uber wants them to. But flouting the law isn't often the best way to make that happen. They're not protesting injustice, they're jamming a foot in the door of a multi-billion dollar industry with technology that is still very new to regulators. The "we're just an app that connects people who want a ride with willing drivers" dodge is disingenuous, and the alternation between wounded and scoffing attitudes is grating. I don't like Uber as a company, and personally I hope it fails and the next guy picks up the torch and does these things with a bit of tact. Neither driver nor user will care.
I think even Uber's star system pales in comparison to a better solution: calculate fares in advance (maybe based purely on distance and average travel time).<p>We have GPS, we can estimate costs before the trip. If we do so, the only incentive for the cabbie is to get your service completed as efficiently as possible.<p>And it's weird that it's one of the only services where we can estimate the cost in advance fairly accurately in 99% of cases, but there's no price transparency. Cabs and medical services, maybe. There's no reason cab drivers should need a "billable hours" system of payment (at least not since gps mapping technology was invented).<p>I'd settle for that much. But my more controversial rider is that costs shouldn't vary by the time of the trip.<p>The risk of traffic flows should be borne by the party that will experience all the variations enough to be able to average it out. In consumer goods, if you buy a the one out of ten thousand products that are broken off the shelf, (or explodes in your hand), the merchants accept the loss, because they can even out this loss across all of their sales. In cabs, if there's suddenly an accident a mile ahead of you, and you're just stopped in a parking lot doubling your cost, that's your fault.<p>On an individual level, maybe just underpay if you've been jerked around. If the cabbie complains, tell them to bring the cops so you can both talk about the route and they can decide what's fair. If that behavior became widespread, taxis would lose the incentive to cheat in this way. (Though you'd probably get a few people shot in the street. I strongly prefer the "pre-calculated fares.")
It's amusing to point out the failures of government bureaucracy, and while it's admirable that they're trying, I think we can all agree that the people responsible for these measures aren't exactly blessed with an overabundance of competence.<p>That said, this article completely ignored the very significant failures in Uber's rating system: <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/08/14/what-are-we-actually-rating-when-we-rate-other-people/" rel="nofollow">http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/08/14/what-ar...</a><p>Fundamentally, a five-star rating is far too simple. In my opinion, an example of this done well is Ebay's reputation system.
You know, I really wouldn't put it past Uber to game HackerNews. If they're willing to dig up dirt on journalists, can you imagine that they'd have a problem with 'employee advocacy' on HN?
It's funny, but people think there is something inherently inefficient about government, but inefficiency and unresponsiveness are usually more a function of incentives, as well as obvious stuff like organization size and structure.<p>Medicare is on average more efficient than private health care, for example. Health care might be a situation where profit incentives don't create the best outcome. In the case of the Nevada officials, there is no incentive whatsoever to actually fix the problem.
Something I recently learned in Vegas; if a taxi driver picks you up from a casino on the strip and offers to take you (or does it anyway) the "quicker way" to your destination [also on the strip] via taking some off-strip highway, reject him. A bit of traffic on the strip is nothing compared to how fast the meter flies upwards when a taxi is speeding along a highway via a long detour and it's going to result in you paying a lot more for the journey.
I'm surprised one of the smaller ride share companies hasn't pivoted into licensing/partnering with municipal governments. Share revenue and let them control the processes for accepting drivers and regulating them. Tada you're partnered with a entity that can legislate your competition out of business.
I'll naively give the government the benefit of the doubt and assume there are good arguments for being anti-Uber/Lyft. What are they? I'm curious to know if there are valid reasons besides dollars being shuffled into the right pockets. I'll assume preventing disruption is not a valid argument.
Why should Uber get to flaunt the law just because they're big enough to get away with it?<p>What about the little guy who can't afford the fines he'll have to pay if he operates a cab without a license?<p>Sure a lot of the regulation is overburdensome, but the solution is to change the law, not encourage companies to break it.
> Flying to Vegas? Look to your left. Now look to your right. Statistically speaking, one of you is about to get ripped off by a cabbie. And it’ll probably be you, the imbecile who chose the middle seat and paid $15 for plane wifi.<p>Just a side-note: I wouldn't open an article with brazenly insulting the reader.
> The signs are done now, and I doubt they’ll ever need to be updated: Vegas is a sleepy town, and the dollar is a stable currency<p>This is a sarcastic remark, but: the US dollar is, in fact, a stable currency, and inflation is currently very low. Cab fares are regulated. If getting from point A to point B takes $20 in 2014, it will not be difficult to determine how much the fare should be in 2020, and to send some people around with new signs or price stickers.<p>I'm surprised at how many of these points seem to treat the low-tech methods used by the Nevada state government as patently absurd. I guess it comes from a mindset that technology is the obvious solution to society's problems, which is something I do not find to be obvious. It took me a while to catch on to the sarcasm as a result of that mismatch.
Up until the last few months when Uber came in and put the heat on the local Dallas (TX) taxi market, government was driving at the behest of the largest taxi company via local council and board members pushing ordinances[1] that squeezed smaller cab companies. What a shit show that's been...<p><a href="http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2014/04/judge-dfw-airport-board-was-within-its-right-to-put-natural-gas-powered-cabs-at-the-front-of-line.html/" rel="nofollow">http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2014/04/judge-dfw-airport...</a>
Leaving aside the pro-Uber aspect of the piece, the criticism of the existing solutions was spot on.<p>If you add a huge amount of friction before you can offer feedback, the only people to do will either be normal people who had truly horrific experiences, or incredibly entitled and annoying assholes who complain about everything.<p>In practice, it's really difficult for the government to be as nimble as a private company, but even people who support strong government regulation (like me!) have absolutely no ground to stand on when defending that particular status quo.
I wonder if the next step in the evolution of public transport is something akin to Uber. It may be more entropic come the day self driving cars come along.<p>Given that each car heads to its destination without a transit route where passengers are buffered would be good.<p>Additionally, since the road is shared unlike the subway, it may be more efficient on resources.<p>Perhaps when the option becomes available, the government of some affording country may be able to pilot such a thing.
Let me rewrite the first paragraph:<p>"Flying to Vegas? Look to your left. Now look to your right. Statistically speaking, everyone of you is about to get ripped off."
From my experience, long-hauling complaints are handled quite effectively. You just go here: <a href="http://taxi.nv.gov/Complaints/Complaints/" rel="nofollow">http://taxi.nv.gov/Complaints/Complaints/</a> and spend ~5 minutes copying info that is present on your receipt.<p>Did this three years back. Within days, the offending cab company called me and issued me a complete refund.
I always wonder about micro-long-hauling anytime I go to new areas of Brooklyn or visit new cities. I pretty much know where I am, but if they went a little out of the way I would not notice.<p>If you drive a cab for 40 years, do 25 fares a day and "reroute" 4-8 extra blocks (~=$1.25) you'll see an extra ~$30/day or even if he/she does every other fair $15/day.
The advantage of a cab over Uber is that you don't pay until the end of the trip. If you know you've been ripped off, get out of the cab and walk away without paying. Tell them to call the cops and explain why you aren't paying. What are they going to do?<p>Of course, this requires that you know you're getting ripped off.
Living in Amsterdam makes me wonder... only $10 extra? Seems like a fair deal. On average it's more than 30 euro extra over here.<p>To be fair: we have signs displaying cost & travel time for bus, car, taxi and train. Train (for once) is the clear winner by being cheapest & fastest.