What should be done about Uber? Is Uber a legitimate competitor

Ukraine.

Over here in sfl, a lot of the taxi's are driven by Haitians who barely speak English, overcharge and are rude as hell. Fuck em. The taxi industry killed itself.

survival of the fittest

>>1041005

You know what doesnt happen with taxi's? The driver doesnt rape you, assault you, or extort you.

Uber is just slightly creepy. Ever since I heard the idea of it, I swore it was basically asking to be robbed/murdered by some whackadoodle with a cellphone app.

That said, cities killed taxis with regulation. The only reason Uber is competitive is because they have almost none of the regulation and they do things that taxis have been banned from for decades. In fact many of the
innovative ideas" uber and lyft have are purposly outlawed for cab companies

>>1041010

Survival of the fittest doesnt apply when you can run around killing anything you want, and your competition is not only tied to a tree but wearing a muzzle too

>>1041046
>Committing crimes as an uber driver
>While both you and the vic have a gps enabled app actively tracking you

You'd have to not care about getting busted because you have NO alibi. I would be more worried as a driver with false rape claims because trying anything with evidence like that being generated is fucking retarded.

>>1041046
>You know what doesnt happen with taxi's? The driver doesnt rape you, assault you, or extort you.

....you don't use taxis often, do you?

>>1041052

Apparently Uber likes to hire complete idiots then. Not only do they still rob, assault, and rape you, a lot of them do it while being caught on video as well

>>1041053
2-3 times a month on a weekend mostly.

The government backed monopoly on taxi service is no longer justifiable

It was necessary in the past when unlicensed taxis were basically untraceable and so too dangerous to use

But now technology allows for a reasonable level of safety and convenience, so government policy protecting the industry is now an unjustifiable tax on commuters

>>1041071

So is that a case to deregulate taxis? Or an argument that government kills private industry and as such, cabs will be gone in a decade?

>>1040996
what's next
>What should be done about Google Fiber?
a better company comes along and offers decent service in an industry long plagued by "you don't want to overpay for our shitty service? haha fuck you you can suffer then"
taxis can adapt or die

>>1041076

I don't think you can deregulate the kind of taxi that can pick up a fare hailing them in the street

Those cars have to be marked and traceable for safety reasons

But regulation can and should allow for prebooked ridesharing

The solution would be to lower the cost of a taxi plate enough that it is essentially an open market, but you still need a taxi plate to pickup a fare hailing you from a curb

>>1041080
Once again, taxis and Uber are not regulated the same way. It is not a fair comparison. An Uber driver does not need to carry a 1 million dollar bond, the drivers do not have 8k monthly insurance bills, They dont have to buy 100k+ licenses in cities like Chicago. They can pick and choose rides they take. They can refuse service... it goes on and on.

If Uber and Taxis were regulated the same Uber and Lyft would be out of business tomorrow. The second the regulations were passed Uber and Lyft simply could not exist

>>1040996

Apps are the future of chaffeured driving. Taxis are soon to be dead if they don't get in on the app usage as well.

That being said, UBER's system is shit and they are gonna tank if they don't fix things. Lyft or someone else could easily replace them.

Basically they totally fucked their drivers. In the beginning it was decent, but they just cut the wages, and their ratings and feedback are ridiculous and harsh. They are banking on an endless stream of broke people who need money that will come work for them. The average turnover for the company is like 6 months.

Just go on Google and type "whats it like to drive for uber in ________" with your city in the blank. Its tons and tons of people saying how shit the company is to work for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E1ElCQUy5Q

Taxi drivers are shit. There's a taxi company in my area that's trying to innovate by using "green" hybrid cars, but electricity here is 97% coal. So they are coal burning cars. They can't even appeal to environmentalists. They are trying to appeal to retarded environmentalists or people who like the color green

My experience with Taxis has been mostly negative.

>need to go to airport
>park at work which is <1mi away
>take taxi
>driver takes the most absolute asinine way to the airport
>i protest telling him to take the fucking highway for the 1500 ft needed to reach the terminal
>am told if he takes the freeway, even if its for 1500 feet, an additional $20 gets added to the fare because freeway driving automatically adds the airport dropoff/pick up fee
>IM GOING TO THE FUCKING AIRPORT WTF!?
>total fare was $46 for a 10 minute ride. and thats with no addl. $20 fee


in many states the fee structure is so fucked up on purpose so that no one can understand why or how they got fleeced.

I might be an idiot here. But why don't Taxi companies adapt? It's not really efficient in this day and age to drive your car all around the city waiting for people to call for you and then pick them up. Why not develop an app, or have a number to call where you can connect with a taxi driver who's in the area, and then it calculates your current position, with your destination via the fastest route and shows you how much it'll cost?

Seems Taxi companies just need to adapt to compete with Uber.

>>1041186

>They can't even appeal to environmentalists. They are trying to appeal to retarded environmentalists

Is there any other kind?

>but electricity here is 97% coal.

Because coal is the best and most economical way to generate electricity

>>1041667
probably something to do with convenience and regulation i imagine.

>>1041167

Taxis in many states and cities can not be app dispatched by law

>>1041059
>Not only do they still rob, assault, and rape you, a lot of them do it while being caught on video as well

Source. I feel like if there was even a shred of truth to that this shit would have been banned a while ago from hysteria alone. Not to mention they have a dedicated and connected enemy in the form of taxi cartels.

>>1041843

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3304130/Uber-driver-sexually-assaulted-woman-taxi.html

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/01/13/california-woman-says-uber-driver-broke-her-jaw.html

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Uber-Driver-Accused-of-Attacking-Two-Women-With-Snow-Brush-362613701.html

There are hundreds and hundreds of these articles. You arent "hiring a professional driver", you are basically broadcasting your location to a bunch of random people with an app and car.

Didnt your mother teach you not to get into strangers cars?

>>1041092
This is going to be a problem for a lot of services as we become more and more digitally connected.

There used to not be a problem with people just giving their friends rides and compensating for gas or the trouble. Because that required you to personally know someone. But now that we all have computers connected to the internet, it allows for spontaneous trust to be established. You can have this network of drivers with ratings and a central authority to arbitrate discrepancies but essentially get to pay 'friend prices' for the service. That's all regulation is initiated for, to establish public trust for a service. But then regulatory capture sets in and regulation becomes about protectionism as much as public trust. App economics can't become protectionist, because the participants are free lancers, and competition is few lines of code and a social media campaign away.

Uber is the begining, but how long before a similar app exists for free lance auto mechanics? free lance electricians or plumbers? We now have a mechanism that solves public trust problems without licensing or regulations, and the institutions that pay those regulatory costs will now be severely disadvantaged. App economy is on the rise.

File: 1417626839372.png (33KB, 218x210px) Image search: [Google]

33KB, 218x210px

>>1041046

OY VEYY OUR TAX MONEY

File: image.gif (1MB, 500x376px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 500x376px

>>1041049
To quote the niggers, "don't hate the player, hate the game"

>>1041846
>3 stories
Google 'taxi driver assaults' and you'll get hundreds of stories of so called professionals doing the same shit. You need a comprehensive comparison not anecdotes.

There's this article from the Atlantic that basically comes to the conclusion that there is no good data on the relative safety of either. There hasn't been a good reason to track how many taxi drivers assault people, and it's not easy to parse that out of available data.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/are-taxis-safer-than-uber/386207/

The conclusion is essentially that Uber is trouncing traditional taxi's in the market, so the safety risks are likely comparable; if they were dramatically different it's unlikely that so many people would take that risk for a cheaper more convenient fare. There's no reason to expect Uber drivers to assault people at rates any different than the general population.

>>1041667
Because having a monopoly in the industry for the longest time made them lazy. The profit to effort ratio for innovativing anything was too high to make them care. This is why competitionn is good, because it forces these lazy fucks to get off their asses and improve their shit.

Now theyre butthurt because they got blindsided by technology. Too bad so sad, should've seen this coming. Imagine the shitstorm when self driving cars are finally released. It's not exactly hard to predict these trends. You literally get years of insight while the tech is still in developement. You wait until after its release to try and get your shit together? Fuck off with that crap.

>>1041858

Do you honestly expect someone to post 200+ articles on an imageboard? Not a week goes by where there are not at minimum 2 stories about an Uber driver doing something stupid in Chicago. Last week an Uber driver stopped with their fare in the car to buy drugs from an undercover police officer.

> if they were dramatically different it's unlikely that so many people would take that risk for a cheaper more convenient fare.

This is easy. We have become a country of phone apps and online ordering. Why go through the effort of calling a taxi company, talking to a human, waiting for a ride, etc. You can just broadcast "come get me" with the click of a phone button. Much the same like these people

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-chipotle-fans-20160113-story.html

Ill save you the time of reading the article. Basically its people saying "we dont care if we get sick. Chipotle is totally worth throwing up over"

TL:DR People are lazy anti social introverted retards and anything that helps them remain in their shell is worth any risk or danger it includes

>>1041864
>Not a week goes by where there are not at minimum 2 stories about an Uber driver doing something stupid in Chicago.

The question is what is the rate at which taxi drivers do similarly stupid shit? You still haven't proven that one is less safe than the other, it's just anecdotes. I don't really expect you too either, because the only honest answer is that the data isn't available.

Hell I even found a compiled list of Uber statistics, only to find out that the website was owned by a New Jersey Taxi & Limo Company, it was mentioned in the Atlantic article. So not exactly an impartial account.

And there are direct comparisons. I have some friends that work for Wells Fargo and they have to go out to the head office in San Francisco every few months. The taxi company has an app, but they just don't show up. They fail to show up even if you give them a half hour advance on the time and place to pick you up. After about five really shitty encounters with cabs, they switched to Uber and never waited longer than 10 minutes for a ride and paid less than half what the taxis charged. It was a better experience in every capacity and the rate of assault in both situations was 0.

>>1040996
>Do regular taxi companies have themselves to blame for not innovating?
Definitely.

>>1041864
Dude it's ok, your dad will find another job. Cab drivers we're an immigrant meme profession anyways.
Now your parents can finaly enter the real job market so you should be happy :)

>>1041864
>TL:DR People are lazy anti social introverted retards and anything that helps them remain in their shell is worth any risk or danger it includes
No no no, taxi drivers/owners are lazy fucks who charge too much and rely on a government backed monopoly to stay in business.

I like uber, but I feel the government will surely kill it because they hate small business and people not paying in the rules.

>>1041936
Governments don't like you going around their pet monopolies*

If Uber is indeed significantly less safe than Taxis, people can decide if the higher price is worth the security.

>>1040996
>nothing
>yes
>yes
>yes

My worst uber driver is still better than the best cab driver I have had ( locally at least).

The last time I took a cab
>cab driver was straight off the boat African
>spoke like a child solider
>couldn't understand my directions ( pretty fucking important if your job is to drop people off places huh?)
>when we reached my house he made up some bullshit about his cc machine not working and demanded cash
>"car no workie car no workie cash now"

Would have happily gone though an atm on the way home if he told me at the beginning of the ride, but it was 3am and he was trying to play tricks. Refused to pay sent him packing.
Never again

Uber is a lot cheaper and better implemented than regular taxis. They have the genious business structure where they don't really create anything physical but just connect people, so they have low overhead (or I would assume so).

They also have a lot of really simple ideas like fare splitting and different car types that are genious

Supposedly what Uber does is lose money for a while when they come into a new area then make the service shittier so they can start making money there to expand. Eventually most of the drivers get screwed and make way less than when Uber came into their town

That being said, the taxi system can fuck off, it's shit as well

>Surge pricing can go up to 9x price
should be capped at 2x MAX

>>1042088
I've heard from drivers that have tried both that Lyft is better.

But the first iteration of a thing isn't usually the best, Uber has has laid the ground work.

>>1042098
why? It's not deceptive, you see the price before agreeing to the ride.

It's live supply and demand. Its not like capping it will magically make more cars available. Why should the drivers and service insert a feature to make less money during the busiest periods?

It was funny watching the Aussies complain about the 7x surge on New Years Eve. But it only got that way because so many still paid for it. It probably won't get that high next year, because surging will be more widely known and anticipated.