Nobody will maintain the scooters just because cool and cyberpunk and viral.

[Edit: do I misinterpret your post?]

That is an interesting distinction, because historically, the hacker ethos has been about the pursuit of the latter at the expense of the former.

For example, phone phreaking. Or the Morris Worm.

Stealing scooters and reselling them is just theft. Hacking a scooter for the pleasure of finding out how they tick, or for fun, is still stealing, but it’s also hacking in the original sense.

That doesn’t justify it, but given that we are arguing this point on a forum named after hackers and which celebrated the hacker ethos in its early days...

I suggest we at least understand and appreciate the second definition of “cool,” even if we aren’t going to let go of recognizing that it doesn’t meet the first definition.

Giving people a device they can use to pick locks without having any understanding as to why it works, on the other hand, is not considered part of hacker ethos.

The original hackers typically shared hacks freely. It just happened that, in their circles, people were way more interested in satisfying their curiosity than in money.

I don't recall my town voting on a bill allowing companies to park their fleet on public land free of charge.

If you are making a living by stealing(and yes I equate using public land without a license as the same thing as stealing), then it's pretty hypocritical to complain that others steal from you

I don't personally use these things, but I can understand for some people that try to get by in the city it makes most efficient way to get from A to B. These things take space, but much less of it that cars would take and especially if you had to park the car somewhere. If taking a scooter is the fastest way to get from A to B you might be inclined to leave your car at home or outside city center and use public transport + scooters in the most congested parts of cities.

Now, I think it is beneficial for companies to be allowed to try different things and then regulate once we learn a little bit. Just straight banning companies from using sidewalks would result in us never knowing if this is or is not a viable idea.

Once we learn a little bit we can always regulate it. Companies might for example be forced to chip in to keep sidewalks in order or there could be regulation fining people for leaving stuff outside designated areas.

I mean sure, scooters being dropped left and right is a problem - something Bird and co need to address, e.g. by fining anyone not leaving their items in designated areas - but transportation needs somewhere to stand. Whether said transportation is owned by a company or an individual is a moot point.

You mean like towing cars that are parked illegally? One can not just put a car wherever one likes, renting a spot can cost quite a lot depending on where you live. When I was living in Oslo I didn't have a car but i rented my spot that came with the apartment to the neighbour for $200/month.

I don't agree with Bird's practices, but that doesn't give anyone some moral right to steal their scooters.

However I've seen reckless towing destroy cars and they will hold your car until you pay up and not pay for the damages. It's a fine line.

Say: One buck per day, per scooter.

Everybody wins: Scooter companies have an incentive to control the number of scooters they dump on a city and the city makes some modest money.

If these scooter and bike companies aren't stealing by just taking land to use, I don't see how using your driveway to let my friends all park for a party could be construed as stealing.

>I wouldn't call it like that for example and law doesn't look at it that way either

That's a very general claim without merit. My municipality views it as such and has confiscated all the bird scooters and like bikes last I saw

Edit: to be fair, youre correct that a wrong doesn't justify another wrong. That doesn't mean I'm not gonna roll my eyes when one thief cries about the injustice of someone else stealing from them _as they continue to steal from me and my community without hesitation_. I do not pay property taxes and parking permit fees to maintain the roads so that some VC funded startup can use them free of charge and funnel the profits into their pocket.

Stroller? If you tried, somebody would probably call a bomb squad. It's not something you do with strollers.

Actually it depends.

Park your bike on the sidewalk in just about any Japanese city and see what happens.

So I guess you should also yell at any other people renting public spaces which the town didn't vote for.

I don't know where you live. But I can guarantee you that businesses pay for the use of public lands herearound.

No matter if a restaurant puts tables on a sidewalk or a company hangs a up a sign that hangs into the air above public lands.

They pay for the privilege.

You take the worst thing people can do, like assassinating people and you find always a rationalization that the criminals construct.

Hitler took absolute power because of the Reichstag fire and the communist menace and did kill people on the way to absolute power, always pointing to the bigger communist threat.

The rationalization of communist for assassinating people on the way to absolute power? They were fighting the fascist, they said.

Obviously if you could rationalize the worst it is easier to rationalize less damaging things like stealing, raping, kidnapping or hitting people.

Stealing is bad.

Scooters take way less space than cars. More than 30% of the street is taken by them. They weight 1500 kilos, several meters long and move just one person most of the time.

A scooter moves one person, weighting 20, 30 kilos at most and occupies noting compared to cars.

The issue with scooters is twofold - one, tragedy of commons. A morally bankrupt company decides to abuse public space to avoid having to pay costs of arranging parking space for their scooters.

Secondary issue is that the whole business is based on having people dropping these scooters wherever, with no regard to other users of the sidewalk. And people do just that, as incentivized, and then accidents happen - for instance, people with visual impairments trip over them.

(Tertiary issue is that these scooters reach dangerous speeds. Within six months of the deployment there were already scooter-caused fatalities in Poland. Fortunately, my country is about to regulate them as motor vehicles, forcing them to use the roads. As they should.)

Even if you don't take into account the gigantic safety hazard that these vehicles represent, this is absolutely insane. Sidewalks are small. In this situation, each scooter that you can take off the street is a step in the right direction for the public interest.

Also these scooters are a serious public nuisance where I live. I cant skateboard, ride a bike, or rollerblade on the sidewalks downtown because of pedestrian traffic. it's literally against the law.

yet these scooters are zipping past/through people and sometimes hitting them, and are littered all over the streets and sidewalks, how is that ok?

We have a metro, that would allow you to cross the capital from west to east in 40 minutes. A network of overused suburban trains that electric scooters can't and won't try to fix.

It's just a fad. An opportunity that was made available when the city council decided to switch the public bike provider. It required to change all existing bike stations, and severely crippled the existing service. So, they tried to seize that opportunity. First, free floating bikes [0], and now electric scooters. The overall disrespect for non-users is so present that it will make worse any problem they're trying to fix.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-paris-bicycles/bik...

Maybe I wasn't clear enough, but I feel complaining about scooters taking up space on pavements is a distraction from solving the ACTUAL problems.

Now, I’m totally fine with the secondary market and repurposing used scooters the companies dispose of after 100 hours or whatever it is. But encouraging theft is that same old saw of why we can’t have nice things. These companies should have programmed to sell their used scooters to the public.

A virus which eliminates a known parasite and then goes extinct is actually a pretty good thing.

additionally re: scooters. They supposed offer public advantages ("Less carbon!"), but is this claim substantiated? Carbon costs to manufacture, service (the batteries don't recharge themselves), etc-- and "less carbon" would require them to replace carbon vehicles, not foot traffic.

Those Scooters being piled up on the sidewalks are indeed annoying, but we've also become blind about the fact that cars in general steal much more public space.

OK, so who gets to decide which SUVs are "too large" to be used in cities? You and your friends, just because you're capable of hacking them?

I have no love for SUVs, but even less love for the vision of a society where arbitrary decisions by self-appointed judges replace a democratic lawmaking process.

I suppose youd say the virus has killed the host when white blood cells end up attacking the flu?

If you want to live by the sword then you'll die by the sword. Don't complain about actions you take part in and don't defend a group from actions they take part in

At this point, this is your opinion, and you'll see lots of people with different opinions on the same matter, deriving those from different ethical principles.

And while you're fully entitled to it, your opinion does not have the same power as the law - especially the law made by democratically elected representatives. As it stands, scooter companies are not breaking the law where I live, while hacking them en masse would be a serious crime.

I've seen other comments here make a comparison to public parking for cars. They are correct in their analogy in that both sccoters/bikes/cars take up public space to park. The difference is that cars are regulated in where they can park, charged for the use in terms of parking fees or parking passes, and towed when they violate these rules set by the governmental body that was voted in. On the other hand you have companies who want to charge for the use of their scooters and bikes who don't pay a fine to municipalities for the use, thereby offloading the private costs to the public.

Any place these companies operate where they got a permit from the governing municipality, I do not have an ethical issue with. When it comes to municipalities like mine however, where the companies dropped their fleet in overnight, and then ignored the local government when they were given a chance to comply, I view as nothing but thieves.

I paid in tax money to support this infrastructure. I took part in a voting process for this current government to administer the infrastructure. When a private entity bypasses this system to put money in their pocket, they are stealing from me and every other resident of my municipality.

If you think calling stealing something from the public to benefit yourself unethical is an opinion, then I also hold the opinion that you personally have no morals.

About time to mention Hitler, no?