It’s fascinating to watch an entire generation which has been taught that regulation is a dirty word collide with reality. By reality, of course, I mean the online car service, Über. Here, from the Twitterz, is the thing that could sink the business model:
If you take enough cabs, you’ve probably had an asshole driver. But licensed hacks are required to know their way around–if they don’t they can’t get (or lease) a medallion. In Boston, I’ve heard similar horror stories (one involved a ride from the North End to Beacon Hill that somehow involved crossing both bridges to Cambridge). If ten minute trips–especially for business–wind up taking thirty mintues (or longer) because the Über drivers get lost, people won’t use it very often.
Might be something to be said for some regulation after all.
mikethemadbiologist
Ahh. The human cost doesn’t matter as long as bad ideas die eventually. In the mean time, your missed job interview or flight or doctors appointment doesn’t matter as much as not requiring companies to make sure their employees are competent enough to do something as basic as “drive that way.” The principle of fewer regulations is more important than anything else. Ideology above everything else is why the tea party is such a coherent reasonable and united group.
Do they do background checks still at least? Hard to leave a bad review if I’m dead in a ditch if predator…. Or killed in an auto accident from gross incompetence / lack of license of any kind.
Uber is a review aggregator? Hoocuddanode?
It’s the same, tired old story: PPCC, as Garrett Hardin so felicitously put it. Privatization of profits, commonization of costs.
Mike,
John Hodgman is a comedian. He was joking. Context clues: “your Manhattan driver” and “does not know how to get to Brooklyn”
Cheers