News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010) by uncomputation on Wednesday March 09, 2022 @03:56PM (#30619828)
Another way to think about it is the taxi companies enjoy slightly/moderately less profits than they could maximally get in exchange for a safer and better society (eg 24/7 taxi coverage). The same can be said for drivers licenses, car insurance, employee benefits, etc.

Instead of the government acting as either entirely public or entirely private, why shouldn’t it act instead as a mediator between the public and the private? This seems to be the most logical decision for me compared to either full socialism or full libertarianism.

Re:The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010) by lotsofpulp on Wednesday March 09, 2022 @04:13PM (#30620039)
> enjoy slightly/moderately less profits than they could maximally get in exchange for a safer and better society

This is an enormous assumption (frequently wrong), and precisely why the costs of a government mandate should not be implicitly laid on a select population.

It actually results in attempts to cheat and incentivize corruption. For example, NYC had or has a problem with cabs not taking people to poorer neighborhoods. The government can mandate it all day long, but they did not stop cab drivers from discriminating. The correct solution in this case, would be to pay the cab drivers the market price for going to the poorer neighborhoods.

The payment obviously would have to come from the government, either given directly to the poorer person or can be given directly to the cab driver. But either way the incentivizes would be properly aligned, increasing supply of cab drivers willing to drive to the poorer neighborhoods.

Where this falls apart is that it requires increase in government spending, meaning increase in taxes for rich people. And obviously, they are going to oppose this wealth transfer. It is much easier and cheaper to simply require cab drivers to go to poorer neighborhoods under threat of fines or whatnot, and sit back and let the status quo continue.

Re:The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010) by uncomputation on Wednesday March 09, 2022 @04:54PM (#30620503)
Interesting. I suppose if the mandates cannot or will not be enforced then it presents a problem, although I don’t know how well the incentive system works with say, clean air/water acts, which seem to be both mandated and incentivized.
Re:The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010) by lotsofpulp on Wednesday March 09, 2022 @05:20PM (#30620738)
Yes, there are additional measures needed when goods/service is not fungible and/or easily measurable.
Re:The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010) by Dracophoenix on Wednesday March 09, 2022 @05:35PM (#30620884)
>Instead of the government acting as either entirely public or entirely private, why shouldn’t it act instead as a mediator between the public and the private? This seems to be the most logical decision for me compared to either full socialism or full libertarianism.

It depends on the context of mediation. In one sense, government-as-mediator is completely compatible with a libertarian nightwatchman state so long as such mediation is impartial and does not infringe on public and private rights of either party.

But I don't think such a distinction helps here, as the functional differences between taxis and Uber amount to little more than legal fiction.