That’s the sad truth in all this- everyone involved (except individual drivers) are sleezeballs. Uber shook up a shitty industry, but did it for shitty reasons and all the wrong people are getting hurt in the process. There are no good guys in this one, as much as I support the fact that the taxi industry is at least properly regulated.
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Lookin’ forward to the latest Rage Against The Machine song, “Hailing in the Name”.
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How Dare You!!! get in the way of a police officer trying to get his quota. #ACAB
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Precisely. Replacing one cartel with a different cartel that is not yet encumbered by law is… not progress.
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I doubt any SFPD or OPD police chief would be in office for less than a day if they pull this shit up here in SF/Bay.
Uber’s lawyers would be investigating the officers and their supervisors with a endoscope. I guess LAPD doesn’t worry about that since the Taxi Association is shielding them.
“OK officer. Let me help with your active investigation. I’ll just put on this exam glove, you can drop your pants and bend over for me.”
I hope there are pics or video of officers involved. Videoing cops isn’t illegal and cops can’t stop you.
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I’ve had drivers berate my wife for not taking corp. AmEx, even though I mentioned it the night before a trip to the airport when I reserved a reservation on the phone. Then they spend 1/2 hour drive telling us how much we sucked for using a card. Then they wouldn’t take a non-cash tip and wanted our phone # so we could dial in a proper tip.
Yeah, they didn’t get a tip, but with Uber/Lyft I just hit the %20 button
I have %0 sympathy for “individual drivers” who are (in most cases) “sleezeballs”.
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It’s a lot of major cities, not just NYC. Guess who was left holding the bag?
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Both sides are not completely in the right here. LAPD should not be commissioned by any private group to perform sting operations. that seems wrong.
But the other side of the coin is the uber drives should not be breaking the rules either. So I would say is to make it against the rules to use the LAPD as for hire enforcement. Stop that and then let the sting go on. Cause without the huge budget they would be really low priority
At first I though he had a food bowl full of salad.
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yes, you guessed correctly.
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hyper capitalist? by way of government artificially limiting the number of individuals that are allowed to compete in the market? I guess the bidding wars are, but otherwise this seems a bit like “intrusive government regulation”
For the most part I am a fan of “intrusive government regulation” but I will admit that the medallion system that had folks paying tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege of having people puke in their back seat seems… off.
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I also wonder if it is possible to hail rideshares for other people. E.g. when my mother who doesn’t have time to learn the apps wants me to request her a ride share. I have heard that parents do it for kids without cellphones, but presumably the parents are paying.
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The medallions in NYC ended up being in the millions. I don’t think it’s fair to say intrusive regulation in this case without talking about regulatory capture, which is, if not a de jure element of capitalism, it certainly is a de facto companion. Bidding wars is what I was referring to, and that’s putting it lightly. The medallions ended up such an artificially scarce, overinflated asset that fueled insane debt in the drivers. Somehow another job that was supposed to be independent workers being their own bosses ended up as capitalist-owned rent-seeking and feudal labor.
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Is it still a free market when the cops are bought?
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For a Libertarian, it’s almost definitive proof that it is.
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Fuck those people, man. Or rather, don’t.
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I am disgusted (but not surprised) that the watchdogs of the wealthy are busting Uber drivers rather than the corrupt wealthy bastards who own Uber. This is another tech company that needs to be terminated rather than merely broken up.
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There are exceptions on all sides, of course (plenty of rapes and assaults from Uber drivers, for example) but by and larger the drivers in both systems are just trying to make a living.
The card payment resistance is common with taxis, and is one of the things I was referring to that needed disrupting. The drivers are heavily incentivized to be assholes about that because of how they are paid. A bad system all around.
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