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A comment on San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber and Lyft. Parent comment

Re:San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber... by seehafer on Thursday August 30, 2018 @10:32PM (#17882452)
>A monopoly with Uber and/or Lyft dominating local transportation is not good for consumers or cities in the long-term.

As opposed to a city ineffectively delivering transportation to such an extent that people have to drive their personally-owned cars everywhere?

Anyone in SF who was here before Uber will tell you that Uber and Lyft were and remain a godsend. Cabs were few and far between (there's an Eddie Izzard bit about this actually) and Muni is slow and unreliable.

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Re:San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber... by WisNorCan on Thursday August 30, 2018 @10:35PM (#17882468)
You are attacking a position that I am not advocating. I am not suggesting government run transportation. I am suggesting that government ensure that the private market remains competitive with multiple players by allocating capacity.

In any case, the only thing worse than government running services is a company with a monopoly running services. The first tends to be inefficient. The second tends to be inefficient with a profit motive (see Comcast).

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Re:San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber... by ams6110 on Thursday August 30, 2018 @10:42PM (#17882498)
No, government services are worse. I can opt out of Comcast.
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Re:San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber... by NegativeLatency on Thursday August 30, 2018 @10:49PM (#17882531)
Sure if you want DSL.

Choices in my market are: dialup, dsl, and Comcast.

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Re:San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber... by mavhc on Friday August 31, 2018 @04:01AM (#17883772)
Why is DSL so bad in USA? Everywhere else people seem fine with it
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Re:San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber... by baddox on Thursday August 30, 2018 @11:28PM (#17882708)
Does your state or local government have a deal with Comcast effectively awarding it a monopoly? There’s a fairly good chance the answer is yes.
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Re:San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber... by NegativeLatency on Friday August 31, 2018 @03:16PM (#17888072)
I live in Portland, OR. I don't think there's a granted monopoly to Comcast here.

There is actually a small independent WISP here I would love to use, but they don't serve my particular location currently.

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Re:San Francisco Denies Scooter Permits for Bird, Lime, Uber... by emodendroket on Thursday August 30, 2018 @11:05PM (#17882602)
Yeah you can opt out of the water utility too, if you don't mind going without.
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