<i>Portland had just become the first city to explicitly allow short-term rentals through Airbnb and other sites, and welcoming Uber could help build the city’s sharing-economy brand, a logical extension of its communitarian roots.</i><p>"Sharing economy" is by no means "an extension of communitarian roots". Communitarian is where the utility you derive is in part a function of the utility derived by others in your community. The "sharing" economy is where companies provide a service so you can buy or sell things (your house, car, time etc.) to others in your community. See the difference?
Their 'investment' in political influence is amazing:<p><i>It has 250 lobbyists and 29 lobbying firms registered in capitols around the nation, at least a third more than Wal-Mart Stores. That doesn’t count municipal lobbyists. In Portland, the 28th-largest city in the U.S., 10 people would ultimately register to lobby on Uber’s behalf. They’d become a constant force in City Hall. City officials say they’d never seen anything on this scale.</i><p>I suspected politicians were responding to something besides the appeal of easy-to-get rides. What I've seen from local politicians was hard to explain otherwise.
Nothing new here. Lobbying is just legalized corruption. Lobbying works if you put enough money in lobbying politicians and since Uber is mostly popular... There is no way around it, the taxi industry as we know it will vanished. But I don't really want Uber to be the 'new boss'...
It's interesting that Lyft seems to be able to hypermile behind Uber and benefit from the lobbying without having to spend any money. Google and others who eventually deploy self driving car fleets will benefit as well.
It drives me nuts to see the manic crowds come to the defense of Goliath. Sure, taxi's suck ass in many cities and I really like the accountable based system of Uber and their high standards, but that is no justification for essentially handing over a whole market segment to a single monopolist.<p>What an age we are living through, where all the valued and ideals of competition aren't even given lip service anymore and all of society goes all in on monopolies. Because what can go wrong when monopolies reach the phase where they turn all those lobbyists from market capture goals to regulatory capture goals to lock out any competition in an inherently low barrier to entry industry? Nothing can go wrong, right?
"City-level battles can be costly, too. Last year, Uber put more than $600,000 into a voter referendum in Seattle and spent $314,000 lobbying in Washington, D.C."<p>That is not costly. Uber has raised $6 billion in capital, and is presently working on a $2 billion line of credit. Half a million dollars per major metro, would be trivial - but it won't be necessary, for every Portland, there are a dozen smaller cities that will just fall in line.
> But as Portland would learn, a city of 600,000 can play tough with a $40 billion company, particularly one that is used to getting its way, for only so long.<p>Terrifying ...
We will not have to wait long until Uber lobbies for "Uber medaillons", the equivalent of the (once) powerful taxi lobby shutting down other competitors.
The reason why Uber and Airbnb are able to succeed, at least in NYC (and perhaps SF, ....) is the use of politics to create artificial scarcity ("rent seeking"). In NYC there is an artificial limit on Taxi Medallions so that a medallion until recently could cost $1 million. Housing and hotel costs are so high because of zoning laws that have unrealistic and artificial housing density restrictions, thus increasing the cost of land, thus increasing the cost of housing and office space.<p>Harvard Economist Edward Glaeser (cited by Nobelist Paul Krugman and others) wrote this: (Build Big Bill)<p><a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/build-big-bill-article-1.1913739" rel="nofollow">http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/build-big-bill-article-1....</a><p>Thus, Uber and Airbnb owe much of their success to addressing market inefficiencies, "rent seeking" introduced by bad laws which serve special interests at the cost to people who take taxis, rent and buy apartments, and rent office space.
Lol, I like the sharing economy as much as the next person, but it's a pretty ludicrous name for itself. There's not really any sharing to be found here, just buying and selling.<p>Once the companies involved start being more reasonable with paying taxes and employees instead of trying to essentially skirt the law and be irresponsible corporate citizens, they'll be a great addition to our economy. As of right now, they just make a lot of money for a few people at the expense of the rest just like any other Mega-Corp would.<p>I like to think the tech community tries to make the world better rather than just scrounge for cash, but maybe I'm too much of an idealist.
Why does every article about Portland make it into some magical incredibly different place. Does water not run downhill in Portland, OR?<p>I spend a fair amount of time in Portland and it's incredibly similar to most American cities. All this exceptionalist serves only to stroke egos and generate clicks.
Uber is a great example of why lobbying can be a good thing. Taxi regulations date back to the days of horse-drawn carriages. That does not by itself make them obsolete, but at the time taxi regulations took their modern form, cities (especially on the east coast) were more densely populated, cars were much more polluting, and there was little that would allow disseminating information about the quality of taxi service among consumers. In short: the externalities and information asymmetries that justified taxi regulation in the first place have declined substantially.<p>Lobbyists are well-positioned to inform legislators about how the market is different today, and why the animating purposes of taxi regulations may no longer be applicable, or at least may not have the same force they used to.