1. Taxis are a dying industry, but taxi drivers are not adapting.

2. As a result, taxi drivers are suffering. Their livelihoods, which have brought food to their families' tables for decades, are being taken from them by forces they could not anticipate or control.

Of course,

3. We care about these taxi drivers. Suffering is bad no matter what industry you work in. Suffering is worth avoiding.

Ultimately our answer has to be to say "your job doesn't really exist anymore, you need to find a new one". But it matters how much time we give taxi drivers. Clearly, asking them to adapt overnight would be too demanding, so there's a balance to be made between market efficiency and the realities of our apish learning rates.

In the long run, a lot of jobs are going the way of the taxi, and perhaps basic income is the long-term solution. But we can't implement basic income today. It's a massive solution to what is currently a minor, contained problem.

Every country's policies are a gigantic legacy codebase. Basic income would be re-writing a huge chunk of the code, where this tax is adding yet another minor hack to keep the thing running smoothly.

How do you know? My impression is that most taxi drivers are very busy adapting. But I don't know either.

Let's be clear: The people hardest hit by Uber/Lyft is taxi company owners.

> Clearly, asking them to adapt overnight would be too demanding

Uber has been around for half a decade. How many decades does it take?

To be clear: I don't know either. I'm an outsider to this industry. I'm just offering arguments.

> Let's be clear: The people hardest hit by Uber/Lyft is taxi company owners.

I don't think this is true. They're losing the most money, but they have lots of money. Taxi drivers risk losing all their revenue, which is worse.

> Uber has been around for half a decade. How many decades does it take?

I think this is the hardest question. According to the people behind this bill, half a decade is not enough. I agree with that judgment.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/08/05/what-about-taxi...

So they potentially have a lot to lose...

Oh and all the regulation should be the same for taxi vs ridesharing like insurance requirements (commercial insurance is much higher which taxis are required to carry) and inspection requirements etc.

Some Independent owners, having paid upwards of $1 million, are “under water” by hundreds of thousands of dollars on the mortgages they owe on the medallions."

http://www.odwyerpr.com/story/public/6471/2016-03-08/uber-ly...

The taxi driver I was taking with was mostly adapting to special-purpose taxi services like delivering IKEA furniture. That already meant a big revenue cut for him in contrast to normal taxi service.

I asked him about Uber and he said last time it was completely impossible to make living for him based on the revenue you get from Uber routes.

Self-driving cars weren't even part of the long-term plan back then...

"Taxi drivers are suffering" actually means "they cannot fleece their customers like they used to". This is a zero sum game - taxi drivers take money from taxi riders, so any change will be met with opposition. The difference is, taxi drivers are better organized and have PR people to tell us about their "suffering", while millions of taxi riders quietly enjoy better service and reasonable prices.

But let's not forget that most taxi drivers are themselves far from well off. It is a working class gig, with a heavy representation from new immigrants. It's long hours, it's physically draining (software developers get to rebel against sitting in front of computers in favour of standing desks, yet what about drivers), and most people do NOT get rich doing it.

It's still an industry that's sick with corruption that has depended on anti-competitive practices and should be destroyed and rebuilt for the betterment of society. But most taxi DRIVERS have few if any options in the upcoming world.

I'm more ok with the taxi businesses themselves going out of business for failing to innovate and getting themselves disrupted. That's on them. However, it does leave another problem... Taxi companies are heavily regulated for a reason. For example, they are required to offer services for disabled people at no extra charge. As far as I know, Uber/Lyft are under no such obligation and do nothing to accommodate the disabled. When taxi companies go away, what happens to that entire group of people?

One solution might be to classify ride-hailing apps as taxi companies as well and apply the same regulations. This also allows taxi companies to compete on a level playing field.

Go back >200 years. In England, Spinning Jennies replaced weavers, and there were luddites who tried to resist, but the solution was not to start subsidizing weavers; and not even a specific tax to weaving machines to provide for the weavers specifically; the solution was to slowly build a social security system, and not just for master weavers (who had been relatively well off) but everyone.

Agreed, taxing one company to pay another does not make sense, but neither does subsidizing people of a certain profession just because they are no longer productive, by putting a burden on something productive just because it is better.

The Luddites were active around 1811 and welfare in the UK seems to have come in around 1906. The solutions at the time were closer to "suck it up". The government used "show trials intended to deter other Luddites from continuing their activities. By meting out harsh consequences, including, in many cases, execution and penal transportation, the trials quickly ended the movement."

That was the era of Charles Dickens and workhouses for the poor.

What aspect of Uber is better than a regular taxi? I can hail taxis from my phone just as well. They take me to the destination. I think Uber found a way to subsidize their fleet with drivers own cars and not pay some taxes to the state which the regular taxi drivers have to pay. Maybe I am missing something...

It's wildly cheaper (1/4-1/2 the price, depending on UberPool vs UberX), the app is more convenient (faster/easier to activate for a ride, better feedback while waiting), and if there's a problem with the ride of some sort, I'd rather deal with Uber than some random city's department of livery licensing. Not driving in a clapped-out Crown Vic with loose wheel bearings and 3-5 warning lights on the dash is a bonus.

For most people, more convenient and absurdly cheaper is enough to answer your question.

Their association is also corrupt as hell, so they can't even claim that over Uber.

The big difference between Uber and cabs, however, is that I left the driver a negative review on Uber, and their customer support got back to me. If he keeps pulling that crap he's not going to be able to drive for Uber anymore. There's essentially no recourse for cab drivers. Sure, they may have contact info posted for their company by law, but if you try to contact them you won't reach anyone who cares.

Diverging off-topic, and your account is light on specifics needed for this divergence...

http://pedalfortcollins.com/righthandturns/

So, sometimes it could be that the Uber (or taxi) driver knows more about the rules of the road that the passenger, and when the passenger complains based on wrong understanding of traffic law, it's not an easy customer-serving situation.

I'm pretty sure it's illegal to use a bike lane to cut off another car that's already stopped at an intersection. Keep in mind this is a road that has a single travel lane in each direction -- there isn't a separate right-turning lane.

> What aspect of Uber is better than a regular taxi?

Higher-quality, rated drivers. Single app that works consistently everywhere. Better reporting mechanism for problems, that also works consistently everywhere. Live mapping of the vehicle picking you up. Payment handled automatically and consistently everywhere. No payment step inside the vehicle.

> I can hail taxis from my phone just as well.

Using one app per city (if the city even has one), or a phone number (vastly worse, and you need to look it up), with the experience varying vastly in different locations. Uber and Lyft work identically everywhere.

For one thing, with Uber, those of us who don't live in a major metro area don't have to wait 30-60 minutes for a cab that might or might not even show up. There's always an available Uber driver nearby.

Think about it. How would Uber have gotten any traction in the marketplace if it weren't better than the incumbent taxi operators in some substantial ways?

I would argue that the reputation system for drivers (and passengers) is an improvement over the current taxi system. The online booking system (app) is massively better than any taxi booking system I've used. These are strong incentives.

Obviously taxi systems involve paying the state for a licence to operate, but the ~500k price (depending on location) is solely due to an articficial scarcity. There needs to be some external regulation, so Uber/etc should pay some per trip/km charge.

One of the biggest problems with Uber and Taxis is insurance. Basically this cost/risk is being directly transferred to the driver, who may have no assets. It isn't acceptable for a service like this to have un-covered liabilities.

The other big gap is that Uber and Taxi companies have terrible employment practices. Failure to pay payroll tax is only the tip of the iceberg.

taxi |ˈtaksi| noun ( pl. taxis ) a motor vehicle licensed to transport passengers in return for payment of a fare and typically fitted with a taximeter.

Uber is a taxi service. Uber _is_ licensed in the sense that they are allowed to operate.

Saying Uber isn't a taxi service is a load of dingos kidneys, in my arrogant opinion.

And that's not an arbitrary distinction: much of the danger and public interest in cans arises from grabbing randos off the street. As car/limo services track that info remotely, they merit correspondingly less regulation.

In many senses, being able to provide meaningful jobs to people with a criminal record is actually a service to the society. At least in my opinion, the idea of punishment is also rehabilitation, not that once you've been convicted of a crime, you could never be trusted with a job where you are in contact with other people or money or anything.

So if Uber can hire them, and even their customer feedback is positive, that is a good thing.

It is not fair to history to keep repeating that. The historical luddites were not against technological change.

You have it backwards.

Humans have always had to suck it up because this is the default, natural state. But one would think in XXI century we could do better. That we can show some civilization, some compassion, instead of telling the unfortunate among us that they should suck it up. They're not our slaves to be forced into productive jobs, or resources to be used up and discarded. They're human beings - with dreams, fears and hopes. The deserve some help, or at least, some consideration.

(Not to mention, the next day it may be us who will need the same.)

EDIT: changed to sound less personal - it wasn't my intention for it to sound like it was aimed at the OP.

I say this because it creates an incentive to move with the herd. Only economic shifts that effect a large class of people will ever see bailouts. This means that it's safer to to do something that a lot of people do, like drive a taxi, than to do something more exotic, like opening a pastry shop. If you drive a taxi and some large corporation deploys a fleet of self driving taxis in your city, then you have a chance of a bailout because there would be enough people affeced to make it worth legislators' time. If some starts delivering oven-hot 3d-printed pastries by drone, then there's not enough pastry shop owners for legislators to address it. That's not fair to the pastry shop owners, and it makes it less attractive to open a pastry shop.

If you want to avoid destroying lives and families when major innovation occurs (or in other circumstances) then it has to be via means that are available to everyone. Proposed systems like basic income or negative income tax make the loss of a job less damaging, but are not without their downfalls. Similar with traditional liberal welfare programs.

Slaves no but being forced in to productive jobs is the whole point of tying income to market demands. A force which effects us all not just taxi drivers.

>The deserve some help

Sure. Financial aid to reskill. Unemployment benefits while they job hunt. Hell, as I said, I'm for a basic income presuming I get to not work alongside the ex-taxi drivers. Help doesn't need to come in the form of specific regulations to allow a minority of people to perform unwanted work in exchange for income.

“There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.”

Don't equivocate on the word "force". If you get the government to make people do things, that's force. If people aren't giving you money they are not "forcing" you to work for your money.

Is my grocer forcing me to work for money when they demand payment for the food I want to eat?

The slave metaphor makes no sense: slaves have a master who cares for his investment. Free people have none and must care for and provide for themselves. To assume they cannot is degrading.

The world does not care if one is comfortable or not. We humans, on the other hand, do. Given our level of economic output the question is ethical and political, not ontological.

The reason people don't do this is that as wealth has increased, being a wage slave or welfare queen (the modern equivalent seems to be disability fraud king) has become vastly more attractive.

Sure. Participating in the economy gives you access to the things this economy produces, which in the last century started to be really pretty cool. Why people don't move? I suspect that by the time people get in a bad enough situation to consider a move, they can no longer afford it. Secondly, trapping rabbits and waving your own cloth are both specialist, learned skills, which in the past were taught to the children as they grew. Again, for a typical westerner desperate enough to go primal, a city is much better bet than a wilderness - in cities, high-quality safe food tends to be concentrated in well-marked areas, and it's easier to get access to it than to hunt down an animal.

They are slaves, but not ours. Look at taxi drivers - they belong to unions and license owners. Those, in turn, have local governments as their masters - government protects their monopoly in exchange for fee/favours. The whole arrangement looks like old good slavery - drivers do not starve, accept current order and have no incentive to change anything. Now, here comes Uber! You would imagine that taxi drivers would jump at the opportunity to become their own boss, but ironically they became the most vicious defenders of current corrupt system, where their place is strictly at the bottom.

I don't necessarily disagree with this sentiment, but this doesn't really address the question, which is about what happens to an industry when it's made redundant by technology. Cab drivers competing with self-driving cars can't "suck it up".

"what if they don't want to" in regard to people working?

Again, I feel you haven't read the spirit of this comment accurately. What happens to an entire class of working people (truck drivers, for instance), when their trade is replaced by tech which is 1/10 (conservatively) the cost to produce? I too want to say innovation is worth it, but it's definitely worth the thought cycles to consider what happens when we make an entire workforce obsolete.

We have over 200 years experience of countless industries being made redundant by technology. It's not a new scary thing that has never happened before.

i find that hard to believe - what was done in the last 200 years to lessen the pain of any transition?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_Acts

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state#Germany

Here in Australia the government will happily pay you $300 a week until you can find a job. It costs us something like $9.5B per year, which is pretty much nothing. Our government doesn't have to disincentivise innovation to help people adjust.

Sure, some people are going to find it hard to live on that amount, but they won't go hungry or homeless. I think it's well within the realms of "suck it up".

America is still divided even on the question whether healthcare should be universal, which other states introduced ~50 years before unemployment benefits were invented, so I think this will still take a while.

    but its not (enough to be comfortable)

    but its (not enough) to be comfortable

The comment specifically talked about those people not wanting to do another form of work. It wasn't a generic "lets talk about mass automation induced redundancy" which appears to be what you're trying to discuss with me.

As you'll note, I'm pro basic income. I just don't think it's fair to say I'm not properly addressing the spirit, when in this case that means ignoring the specific language the commenter chose to use and just having the same generic conversation that's continuously being had all over the internet. I'm interested in debating this guy if he does actually think work is something people only do if it's intrinsically motivating and thus we should consider taxi drivers desire to spend their day driving around rather than doing math, I'm not interested in just having a standard /r/futurology back and forth.

I mean hell, I even hedged against this with my last paragraph.

Telling people to get more school is something educated people often do, but it's sometimes a bit self-serving. It makes themselves feel like they're a winner and they deserve it when often their circumstances positioned them better to be able to get that education in the first place.

At some point, personal initiative and responsibility is going to come into the picture. Those who demonstrate it will have better outcomes in the aggregate than those who don't.

There's a genuine question of how much we should take from those who do and transfer to those who don't in order that they don't starve. It's far from obvious that the answer should be "none" but it's equally far to suggest the answer should naturally be "a lot".

And work is not something you do because you just get compensated for it. Some one pays you what they think a task is worth, and you take up that task, because you are not able or not wanting to move up or horizontally to another job.

It takes energy at the most primal level to accomplish work. The problem with politics is that people then think energy can be printed and everyone can be made happy with an endless supply of happy. We try our best to be compassionate, and hope for everyone's well being, but in the end, work needs to be done to gain something.

An AI capable of doing 90% of the job of a software developer would likely be an AGI, and thus capable of doing 100% of the job of every human far better than the human can. At which point we stop worrying about details like "money" and "scarcity".

And start worrying about Skynet and robots with lasers!

If we are in some impossible world where that isn't true then I would say they should maybe go into medicine, engineering or law I guess.

Your question is too open ended to answer really. I have like 10 follow up questions to understand the parameters of the original question.

(I'm not directly responding to you, just your points which are typical responses.)

The general response when faced with uncomfortable questions is to avoid facing it - a "it would never happen to me" sort of rationalization. Or it would be an "impossible world" where my field would be illuminated.

Take "go into law" for example: I think the recent unemployment rate for new law graduates is something like 25%. Medicine is another field ripe for disruption (except nursing maybe).

"Just get another job" is another popular "let's not really think about the unthinkable" response.

It seems like many "answers" to the disruption problem boils down to "let them eat cake" and I was hoping to break through that.

I don't have sympathy maybe because I own a bootstrapped software studio and we are constantly pivoting and growing. We did ios/web contract work, now we mostly do video games on Steam. Guess what though, video games on steam is getting tougher so we are also pivoting to something else right now.

Life is change. There was once a time when you could just ply your trade for your entire life, and for some people that is still true, but that is not some inalienable right that is owed to anyone.

Businesses constantly have to be on their grind and don't just get some guaranteed paycheck, and no one is entitled to such a thing. You have to provide a service to people that you can exchange for money. If you are not really doing that then you are not just entitled to money.

Unemployment rate for doctors is around 1%.

The acceptance rate for medical school in the usa is 40%.

developers and cabbies are welcome to retrain.

To me, cabbies are local government employees. Let the government that licenses them pay them, just like they pay teachers and cops. So I am fine with this subsidy.

There's already an AI lawyer:

http://www.rossintelligence.com/ http://www.techinsider.io/the-worlds-first-artificially-inte...

and Watson played doctor:

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ibms-watson-cracks-medical-mystery-...

Teach the AIs the other 10%, and get killed by Terminators ;-).

Its not that complicated actually.

Not all people can accomplish the same performance. Most HN users were just lucky. I am not sure where I would be today if I had not been born into a college educated family, had college educated friends and so on. Not all people have the same luck. Beyond that there are different levels of intelligence or just inability to concentrate etc. There are people on the job market who write and read on a level you had when you were 10 years old.

HN could really use some empathy. I would be ashamed if the cab driver, who actually lives next doors and gets up Friday and Saturday nights to drive drunk people home, because that's the only time you can make money here, would read this thread. When we talk about thousands of people we cannot just say "suck it up" and call it a day. HN should be the first to understand that the law of large numbers is at play here: People who do not want to work, will not matter for the whole group. If we do not want society to drift apart (which has enormous costs attached) we should solve the systemic issue.

10 years old? Really? Do we expect those people to be useful? Why not just give them a basic income and take them out of the workforce?

To your questions: An easy example would be immigrants, who I imagine could definitely be useful for society and still be bad at writing a foreign language.

Besides, many of the most important jobs there are do not require physics degrees but emotional intelligence and kindness. Everything that has to do with caring for living creatures. Many professions will disappear, but I expect these to be one of the last.

In a free market capitalist society, the most optimal case is that they spend a significant portion of their earnings buying capital (i.e. stocks and bonds), so as time goes on more of their earnings come from capital. Unfortunately, in the USA at least, we make capital accumulation ridiculously hard for working class people due to the cult of homeownership and a tax system where interest on mortgages (but not stock purchases) are deductible.

I'm not sure that a system where a large part of GDP is directed at stock purchase is sustainable; that's how private pensions are supposed to work but the system is creaking.

I like the idea of some kind of modern/virtual self-sustained living, where you own your house, produce your own energy and cover all costs by dividends from stocks of the same companies you buy products from.

A lot of these people are older.

Also, it's gotten to the point that the rate of 'disruption' is too fast for a human lifespan.

It's one thing if horses are replaced by tractors in half a human generation. People can adapt to that and even benefit.

It's another if entire industries are replaced every decade.

Once the rate of change becomes too fast, people simply can't 'suck it up' enough to keep up. There are human limits: physiological and psychological ones.

Recently, I've had the jarring realization that for Humans (and maybe nature, in general), the stable equilibrium point is inequality. And, like the cab drivers, a lot of us have to 'suck it up' and realize that the 20th century (and perhaps the whole post-enlightenment period) is not coming back. So, better to brace ourselves, tighten up our finances, and ready our families for the 'low-growth' future.

And you think that the relatively low growth rates we see today are attributable somehow to high levels of inequality, and the resulting decline of the middle class?

Well, that sound about right. But I wonder, who are the mainstream economists that are making that same argument? Because the only advocacy for reduced inequality I read seems to ground its arguments in the logic of humanitarianism and social justice.

Maybe I'm not reading the right things. The fact is, though, that while humanitarianism and social justice are nice, the reason that I myself am worried about inequality is that it seems to be making the pie smaller for everyone (at least relative to what it should be). I wonder why people advocating for reduced inequality aren't making the growth argument their first argument.

Why don't these dummies just forego income for months or years to get training for new careers that they may or may not even be able to enter?

Applies to everyone that enters a skilled trade/profession, not specifically drivers.

At the end of you comment, I noticed you brought up a basic income. I think you realized the work force is really shrinking, and becoming very exploitive. When was the last Labor Union formed in the U.S.?

Let's start with this whole, "Go back to school to earn more money." And major in what? Let's take a white 40-50 male. Exactly what degree/certification is he going to get in order to get that carrot on the stick, or move up? The economic world has changed so much--I don't know too many degrees that will further that guy in life. Right now, maybe registered nursing, but that's been hot since ObamaCare, and who know what that future holds. Hay, I got a great one; go back to even a middle tiered law school, and hang up your shingle at 50. Wait for that phone to ring. I know a black entomologist, with a degree, who literally works for Orkin. He was recently reprimanded by the company because he left the air conditioning on while in park. (He was in Alabama, during a heat wave.)

My point is I hear people say go back to school. I have seen people go into great debt(debt that isn't bankruptable), only to graduate with a degree, sometimes a degree in the hard sciences, that are working multiple minimum wage jobs. What exactly is a 50 year old going to do with a degree in mechanical engineering? I don't even want to think what they would do with a bachelor's in computer science. And please, don't tell me this industry isn't all about age. I think that might change one day when VC's calm down about finding the next Zukerburg, and realize this industry is about profit, and not reaching for the stars, or hitting a once in a decade home run with a ambiguous individual, usually a guy who wants to get that girl with financial success? A guy who was just in the right place in the right time, horny, and had the privilege of being a middle class white guy.

My point is I always hear education is the answer. I see so many people with multiple credentials on their basement wall, and no career. I won't even bring up the certificate programs advertised on t.v., and how many people spent thousands on worthless paper.

I don't have a solution to this mess. Yes--there's a part of me that would close down the borders, and become an semi-island until we figure out what to do. I would also like to see some taxes/regulation on tech. Yes--I said it--I'm the devil. I just know there's less real jobs out there than the government claims. Most people I know are barely getting by.

As to Uber paying a tax; I could care less. I have watched that company from it's sperm days. I have watched people go into debt/ruin their credit buying a Uber approved four door vechicle, and not making the money they were told was at the end of the stick.

I don't want to get into a long winded debate, but this economy has changed so much; I'm literally in shock. It might seem great when you are in this tech bubble, but wait until it explodes. Watch what the homeless population in San Francosco spikes up to. Sure the rich kids will move back home, and maybe pull out of the crash with help, and contacts for family, but the poor/middle class kids will be at Home Depot mixing paint.

Remember tech is one of the few industries you can get into with just talent. You don't need a degree. You do need some good skills, and the Internet is making learning those skill exponentially easier.

So we get back to what that older person is going to do in this sharing economy. I honestly don't have a clue. Try landscaping at 50, and competing with immigrants who see nothing unusual about putting four to a bedroom.

The Titans of business, or the wealthy are not getting anymore--what's the word; financially moral? In my world it's a Christian attitude. (Save the religious bashing for another time. Their are some good proverbs that some you should look at, but then again why; being a fair guy isn't even admired in certain circles. It's all about maximum accumulation of wealth. They are not offering jobs livable wage jobs with a future. Thay are praised for exploiting certain, usually older, or minority workers to further their wealth, and don't just don't give a dam about how their workers live, or their workers' future.

Oh they, do care about what trendy, like animals, or global warming, but it can't interfere with their money nut. I see a dearth of real morality lately. Why? I have my suspicions, but to tired to verbalize, and don't want to argue with the persons who are offended by this post.

I noticed at the end of you post you brought up a basic income. Maybe deep inside you can forsee the future?

Between 1896 and 1996 world population went form 1 billion to 9 billion.(Too tired to verify that statistic--yes, I'm fifty, but I belive its correct.).

What are people going to do to provide for food, and housing? I guess we will just service the wealthy? Great times!

(I said some very controversial statements. They might be from a warped mind? I just see a bleak future, and too many "Hay I'm doing fine--what's the problem?")

Juxtaposed without a giant wall of text in between to highlight the fundamental complaint: a white 40-50 American male somehow deserves a dramatically better life than a Mexican.