If any of those customs involved eating “mushy peas” I don’t want to hear about it.
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This. Times 10^100.
I use alternate taxis and rentals, but I don’t believe they should be entirely without regulation (depending on necessity and legitimate need), no.
This also assumes “better service”, which I’ve not yet had. Adequate, sure.
If you follow the comment chain (damn, threading would make this easier…) it was a response to this post:
Where it really comes across that the taxi drivers who were repeatedly called weren’t interested in taking the fare
How is that even useful to me, as a consumer?
Or they just had really bad communication systems and even though dispatch kept telling me someone was on that way, that someone found a more immediate fare. It was a very busy people day out there but it is ludicrous that I can try to take a cab, call over and over, and wait an hour but have Uber show up immediately (and the app shows me directly that a driver named “x” has taken my fare and where they are on a map on their way to me).
So? I regularly get Uber, Sidecar, Lyft drivers who refuse my fares (with no dings against my user profile). I’m not against opening the market up, but there’s absolutely no guarantee that it’ll come with better service. People still choose what they want, and deny fares that they don’t find profitable.
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This is a very common, but completely misguided thought from people who don’t live in large cities, about those who do.
I encounter it all the time, and I find it extremely odd.
Projection much? Or just not happy with your lot?
Questions for discussion:
- DID YOU EVEN READ THE POST EVEN
- MY HEAD A SPLODE
- SRSLY DID YOU READ THE WHOLE POST
- LIKE ALL WHOLE OF IT
- INCLUDING THE QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
- AT THE END
- PAST THE VIDEO
- AND THE OTHER VIDEO
- YEAH THERE ARE THE QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
- WHICH REFERENCE A WRITER
- OF WORDS
- IN THE ANGUISH LANG WITCH
- CAN YOU DO THE GOOGLES
- oh. the googles, they do nothing for you?
- YOU ARE UNLETTERED, UNCULTURED, AND SHOULD BE WITHOUT COUNTRY OR INTERNETS
- YOU HAVE NO CHANTS TO SURVIVE MAKE YOUR TIM
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Damnit! Now consequences will never be the same.
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I haven’t read much of Piketty, so I’m not sure what he meant by “Marxian Apocalypse”, though I’ve got a pretty good guess. Marx argued that the periodic economic crises experienced under the dominance of capital would escalate, and would inevitably lead to the total collapse of the system. There’ve been recurring debates about whether a) Marx was correct that the crises would escalate, and b) whether this collapse inevitably leads to socialism. (I’m of the school of thought that a) Marx was basically right, but it’s much more complicated, which is why someone like Piketty would dispute the point, and b) the total collapse of the system of capital through its internal contradictions would mean the total collapse of civilization, so we’d have to have a transition to socialism before that point, or we’re totally fscked.)
What I was trying to describe, about the accumulation of capital as a primary social goal, is a description of the prevailing state of affairs now. In fact, I’d say that this has been the prevailing state of affairs throughout the world since the early 20th century. What I found appealing about this formulation is that it focuses on the core of the problem, the concentration and accumulation of capital, rather than on the exact nature of the ruling class. The problem is, if you prioritize accumulating capital, then inevitably, you have to suppress the economic and political desires of the working class to do that. This is the fundamental reason why Capitalism and “Communism” appeared to be evil twins: while there were structural differences between the two, the fundamental basis of power in all cases was the extraction and concentration of wealth as capital, which requires oppression of labor, imperial competition, and all the rest, in which the similarities made them appear to be evil twins.
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Can I get that line of reasoning expressed as an excel pivot table? 
Uber, and the sharing economy have many issues. But the reason it works is drivers for uber who get less than 4.5 stars are booted, and airbnb locations that are terrible also get booted.
So instead of doing what many cabbies do, either turning off the meter; not showing up; taking the looong way around, there is a certain level of accountability.
Uber the corporation are full of asshats though.
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For now, what’s the best bad choice?
If you live in a medium to large sized city and need to get to Destination X (and can’t use public transit or walk) what should you do?
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SF. Uber. NYC. Yellow cab.
Again, these are all acts of labor acting in its own interests. There might be any number of reasons to do these things. This is what capitalism has done, pitting class against class, and person against person, in order for someone else to get rich at the end of the day…
But what’s “terrible” can be completely subjective, you know.
Seems like there is something weird going on here,but I can’t put my finger on it… the normalization of market relations as the primary interaction between human beings, maybe?
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Wouldn’t it depend of the city? ATL has zip car, a deeply impractical public transit system (MARTA, the MARTA buses, and now a street car that literally goes around one part of town), some taxis (which seems really big with our immigrant community on the West side, and so many people have cars. I see Lyft cars around, but have no idea how often they are used. YMMV, I guess?
Oh certainly. And these kinds of transactions mostly drive down wages for labor. And I have no good answer other than perhaps Basic Income. Cause me and my automation cronies are on a quick race to the bottom.
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Yup. 100% agree.
Now, as a slight foil, I think with appropriate controls on say the bottom 15% and top 15%, capitalism is a good system. But going all libertarian mad max on economics is… Err… Mad.
I want to get rich some day so when I need a liver transplant I can afford it. I want to fly economy plus so my knees don’t crack when I get off a plane. So I am not for overly draining the top 30-1%.
However, while I am in favor of unions, regulation, and safety, medallions have been so abused it absurdly funny.
(Too wordy of a comment? Likely 
)
“Next?” That’s already been happening, at least in SF. It may have sounded like a good idea on paper, but as with Uber there are several problematic issues with AirBnB’s model “when the rubber hits the road.”
Tha main thing I don’t like about Uber though is that they’ve ruined the word for everyone else. “Ubermensch” used to sound cool, now it sounds just sounds like a contradiction.
Wasn’t that The Undiscovered Country?
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