I am not nostalgic. I like it better this way.
No, the regulations should not exist. We could have had Uber and more competitors sooner if not for taking calculated legal risk against archaic institutions of regulation surrounding everything today. Almost all progress is a constant battle not against innovation or creativity but against legal traps keeping you from thinking outside the box.
There's a labour market for that.
> lack of labour rights,
That's for the government to deal with.
> surge pricing,
Surge pricing is awesome: at least you can still get a cab if you are willing to pay. As opposed to no cab at any price.
> lack of disabled accommodations,
Yeah, that's annoying for those in need. I propose giving disabled people more money, so they can then vote with their newly enlarged wallets. (And perhaps there's something more efficient for them than enticing taxi drivers.)
> no guarantee of service in all areas,
Why should city dwellers subsidise those yokels?
> lack of fare caps,
As long as the fare structure is known before I get into the cab, no problem.
> no concessionary travel,
Just give poor people more money. No need for concessions. (I've never seen any regulated taxi with concession fares. Only in public transport.)
> having to use a smartphone to pay,
> unaccredited and unknowledgeable drivers,
Not less knowledgeable than most `normal' cabbies, as far as I can tell. But, depends on the area. Eg London has some pretty knowledgeable cabbies.
> generic unmarked vehicles, etc.?
Who cares? You can pay more for an UberBlack, if you want to have a non-generic car.
I asked one in BC, Canada recently, and found out they have to take monthly $100/day taxi lease, minimum 1 month and then make that money + more back with whatever hours they can get. I'm guessing the drivers are 'independent contractors' too.
>What is superior about purely paid drivers?
Low cost of transportation for consumers. No driver is entitled to a job. The efficient movement of goods and people are far more important than preserving jobs from being destroyed by technology that enhances the well-being of society.
That already happens today, in our "tightly regulated" market. Wonder drugs or miracle cures or instant diets or self help books claim to fix everything and do nothing. Drop regulation and it gets worse. Consumers are simply bad at organizing information about businesses, though I would concede that might be partially due to an expectation that "the government will take care of it".
Other things - environmental pollution / destruction (and other secondary costs of business), exploitative employment practices (particularly exploiting the poor and uneducated), using economies of scale to drive out competition, rent seeking, collusion, asset hoarding, and fraud all occur in a natural market and to varying degrees government involvement helps abate some - certainly not all, and certainly not perfectly - these anti-consumer effects of business.
You can look at almost any industry and point at gratuitous and stifling regulation, very often used as shut door tactics by wealthy market players who use force of law to stop competition, because playing in markets usually keeps you honest. Just because Uber is innovative does not exonerate them from how they are playing legal hardball just as bad as many of the companies that preceded them, and if given the opportunity would not erect the same walls to competition their fore-bearers put up. Besides the concerns about workers rights for their drivers, they are actively lobbying cities around the globe to both reduce regulation for themselves and increase it for Lyft or other possible competitors.
Underwriters' Laboratories, Consumer Reports, Amazon Reviews, and Yelp are all good examples of effective, though imperfect, market regulation. Producers have no interest in harming their consumers and consumers have no interest in dealing with producers who will harm them. Everyone has an incentive to find ways to ensure mutually beneficial trade. However, when regulatory regimes are monopolized, a new set of incentives emerge which often have nothing to do with consumer safety. Worst of all, consumers and producers have no means to express their dissatisfaction and exit the regime. This is inherently different from companies like Yelp who must fight on a daily basis to continue delivering value to their customers.
Go walk down the main street of any town in the US and realize how few people are actually educated, or rational, or functional. It is absolutely a product of both culture and the state as it exists that most normal people are raised to become these... zombies? But they are not going to use rational means to pursue products, which is why we have this nanny state consumer production giant looming over everything.
But like I said, we cannot just dissolve those overabundant regulations and growth stifling control with people as stupid as they are. That is just a recipe for pandemic exploitation to degrees even greater than what our current advertising industry pumps out. Just look at how often you hear a story of someone or their kid spending a months worth of wages on some shitty Android game because they were raised to be completely oblivious to obvious swindling.
If we could raise a generation and/or a nation of smart, rational, informed consumers, we could easily replace all the certification and licensing that slows innovation to a crawl with self regulation. Until then we are stuck in a world where people buy self-help books, booze, and Viagra instead of paying off their credit cards.
If you mean by 'interest' what I think you do, they have an interest only in making money. They have no more interest in NOT harming their consumers than they do in harming their consumers -- and producers of inherently harmful products (cigarettes being the obvious incontestable example) in fact do have an interest in harming their users. But there are PLENTY of producers who have demonstrated an enthusiasm to harming their users, if it sells product.
In fact, this very article had an early comment[1] comparing Uber's logo re-design to AirBnB's paperclip thingy[2]. That comment is now deleted. No way to tell if it was self-deleted or mod deleted, but either way it seems someone wasn't comfortable having that on here, for whatever reason.
A single comment sounds like poor evidence to me.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2820615
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813956
Ever since AirBnB became the most valuable company in YC's portfolio, there has been a remarkable groupthink on HN where everything they do is good and criticism basically vanishes. Yet criticism of a non-YC company like Uber gets upvoted and creates a big dogpile, even when it could be equally applied to both companies.
Still, from the top 10 of past year:
"Why Airbnb is dead to me" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10291070)
"The two faces of Airbnb" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10487447)
"AirBNB why did you terminate my account? – An Open Letter to AirBNB" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10090119)
"Living and Dying on Airbnb" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10531229)
And many of the others in the top are not really about AirBNB itself, just of related topics. I don't see much praise.
I didn't quite understand it at first. I looked at the NY Uber approved vechicles, and threw up my hands.
I now get it. Oh, and it's not about car safety.
People with private drivers get driven in expensive cars.