What Side Are You on in the Uber Wars?
Uber is a car service that connects drivers and riders via a great smart-phone app. It's upended the way that livery service works in 20 countries and a couple of dozen U.S. cities. It's particularly useful for off-the-beaten-path parts of towns that often get shorted by conventional methods of transit.
Which means that taxi commissions, cab companies, and grandstanding politicians have tried to shut it down or regulate it unto to death all over the place.
Check out the vid above about how the powers that be tried to squelch Uber - and ultimately failed.
And read Brian Doherty's story about Uber, Lift, and other new ride-sharing services that are taking more heat than they should.
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I won't use a ridesharing service, but I also won't use cabs.
Not sure what side that puts me on.
If only there were a smart phone app that connected libertarians with jackets
"Regulation has been done in the interest of the general public at the expense of businesses, large and small."
Apparently not so much. It's been done in the interest of favored market participants at the expense of other market participants. And the former group does not include riders.
Was that "Shantytown" at the beginning?
Also, the woman at the end who invoked the threat of terrorism as a reason to regulate Uber out of business is insane.
SPOILER ALERT.
She's not just insane. That is a straight up crazy cat lady who's been given a microphone. God willing she's not actually on their city council.
OMG. If you haven't watched minute of this video, you simply must. It's awesome.
I'm on the side of Freedom of Association. The State already regulates the dickens out of car ownership and operation. Either that's sufficient for giving a lift to old friends, and new ones, or it is not.
If it is not, then I'm on the side of Equal Protection. Let every Minivan warrior carry the same insurance, go through the same background tests, or make it illegal for them to be on the streets.
And until the States can figure out what this obscure 'budget' thing is and figure out how to spend money? They can piss right off about telling everyone else how to do it.
I love the idea that taxicabs are a public utility.
Just because the public uses it, doesn't mean the state should own it. Jesus Tap Dancing Christ.