[iDC] "'Bandit' cabs are bad for drivers and passengers"

[Denise Cheng]

That's a pretty good point, Frank. Hopefully, the taxes would actually help
the taxi drivers as opposed to just the medallion owners. The Boston Globe
actually did a pretty good series on how medallions work
<http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/specials/taxi>; specific to Boston, but
generally true of most medallions. Often, it's not the medallion owners we
have to worry about, and all sides tend to equivocate the taxi lobby with
the interests of the actual taxi drivers. For the medallion owners whom we
should be concerned for, they've been caught up in a system that generates
wealth by perpetuating exploitation, which is why those owners are being
"disrupted."

>From having talked to both cab drivers and TNC drivers (transportation
network company <http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/Enforcement/TNC/>; California
Public Utilities Commission term that has come to refer to platforms like
Uber and Lyft in particular. It's also more specific than ridesharing,
which can include things like monetized carpooling), it tends to come down
to an issue of control. Taxi drivers are in the hole before they ever begin
driving (cost of company name, car rental, etc.), and they can barely make
enough back to cover other costs. Those whom I've spoken to who are against
TNCs have expressed that they tend to feel more security than driving for
Uber and Lyft because, despite the flexibility (or efficiency gains for
individual drivers, as Baker would probably put it) and lowered costs, the
companies can kick these drivers off too easily, and they would have no
recourse. They only have the companies' word as the reason that they were
booted, and that's not enough (in my research, TNC drivers worry about
getting anything less than a 5/5 rating; they view anything below a 5 as a
fail).

Also, some extra food for thought:

http://uberpeople-net.tumblr.com/post/87418945563/uberpeople-net-an-independent-forum-for-uber


Denise Cheng
Twitter: @hiDenise <http://twitter.com/hiDenise>

hiDenise.com <http://hidenise.com/>


On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 2:06 PM, Frank Pasquale <frank.pasquale at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I think Dean Baker has a sensible response:
>
> "In the case of the taxi industry, it may well be the case that the
> existing regulatory structure is excessive. The industry pushed city
> governments to restrict the number of cabs so that they could have more
> pricing power. . . If Uber and Lyft force a re-examination and
> modernization of taxi regulation in San Francisco and elsewhere, they will
> have provided a valuable public service. However it can't possibly make
> sense to have a stringent set of regulations for traditional cabs, while
> allowing Uber and Lyft to ignore them just because customers order these
> services on the Internet."
>
>
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/the-sharing-economy-and-t_b_5523909.html
>
> It's just like Amazon getting huge by lobbying for a tax holiday, and thus
> getting the upper hand on retailers (whose customers had to pay the tax.)
>
> The only problem with a "sensible" response like Baker's nowadays is that
> political structures are so influenced by the wealthy and powerful that
> it's hard to imagine a future set of rules being much better than the
> present.  So we're caught between a rock (current cab service, which in
> cities like Baltimore and Boston strikes me as unreliable) and a hard place
> (brave new world of labor herdsourced via 2-way crowdbilking
> <http://collectivate.net/journalisms/2014/3/9/crowdmilking.html> by
> billionaires, until they're all dumped in favor of driverless Google cars).
>
> That's one reason why I tend to think that, before some new market
> emerges, there ought to be taxes in place to help those badly hurt by it
> (and to prevent further concentration of wealth). For example, if organ
> markets
> <http://madisonian.net/2006/07/18/anti-commodification-principles-as-egalitarian-leverage/> ever
> become legitimate, some of the money generated by them ought to be set
> aside to help anyone with complications post-"donation". Even Arun
> Sundararajan appeared to accept the legitimacy of such a transfer in this
> show <http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2014-07-02/sharing-economy>, to
> help individual cab proprietors who bought medallions.
>
> --Frank
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 3:43 PM, Trebor Scholz <scholzt at newschool.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Here is another article by Veena Dubal on the phenomenon of "ride
>> sharing" and its relationship to casual employment.
>>
>>
>> http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Bandit-cabs-are-bad-for-drivers-and-passengers-4747566.php
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (
>> distributedcreativity.org)
>> iDC at mailman.thing.net
>> https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc
>>
>> List Archive:
>> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
>>
>> iDC Photo Stream:
>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/
>>
>> RSS feed:
>> http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc
>>
>> iDC Chat on Facebook:
>> http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647
>>
>> Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (
> distributedcreativity.org)
> iDC at mailman.thing.net
> https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc
>
> List Archive:
> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
>
> iDC Photo Stream:
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/
>
> RSS feed:
> http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc
>
> iDC Chat on Facebook:
> http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647
>
> Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/attachments/20140707/af01725c/attachment.html>