<div dir="ltr"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">I think Dean Baker has a sensible response: </font><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><p style="margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;direction:ltr;line-height:21px;border:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(51,51,51)">
<font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">"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."</font></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;direction:ltr;border:0px;vertical-align:baseline"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><font color="#333333"><span style="line-height:21px"><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/the-sharing-economy-and-t_b_5523909.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/the-sharing-economy-and-t_b_5523909.html</a></span></font><br>
</font></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;border:0px;vertical-align:baseline"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">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.)</font></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;border:0px;vertical-align:baseline"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">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 <a href="http://collectivate.net/journalisms/2014/3/9/crowdmilking.html">crowdbilking</a> by billionaires, until they're all dumped in favor of driverless Google cars).</font></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;border:0px;vertical-align:baseline"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">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 <a href="http://madisonian.net/2006/07/18/anti-commodification-principles-as-egalitarian-leverage/">organ markets</a> ever become legitimate, some of the money generated by them ought to be set aside to help anyone with complications post-"donation". Even </font><span style="color:rgb(66,66,67);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:11.818181991577148px;line-height:15.432000160217285px">Arun Sundararajan appeared to accept the legitimacy of such a transfer in <a href="http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2014-07-02/sharing-economy">this show</a>, to help individual cab proprietors who bought medallions.</span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;border:0px;vertical-align:baseline">--Frank</p><p style="margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;border:0px;vertical-align:baseline"><br></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;border:0px;vertical-align:baseline">
<br></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;direction:ltr;font-family:Georgia,Century,Times,serif;font-size:15px;line-height:21px;border:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><br></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;direction:ltr;font-family:Georgia,Century,Times,serif;font-size:15px;line-height:21px;border:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(51,51,51)">
<br></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;direction:ltr;font-family:Georgia,Century,Times,serif;font-size:15px;line-height:21px;border:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><br></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;direction:ltr;font-family:Georgia,Century,Times,serif;font-size:15px;line-height:21px;border:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(51,51,51)">
<br></p></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 3:43 PM, Trebor Scholz <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:scholzt@newschool.edu" target="_blank">scholzt@newschool.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Here is another article by Veena Dubal on the phenomenon of "ride sharing" and its relationship to casual employment. <br>
</div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">

<br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><a href="http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Bandit-cabs-are-bad-for-drivers-and-passengers-4747566.php" target="_blank">http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Bandit-cabs-are-bad-for-drivers-and-passengers-4747566.php</a></div>


</div>
<br>_______________________________________________<br>
iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (<a href="http://distributedcreativity.org" target="_blank">distributedcreativity.org</a>)<br>
<a href="mailto:iDC@mailman.thing.net">iDC@mailman.thing.net</a><br>
<a href="https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc" target="_blank">https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc</a><br>
<br>
List Archive:<br>
<a href="http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/" target="_blank">http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/</a><br>
<br>
iDC Photo Stream:<br>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/" target="_blank">http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/</a><br>
<br>
RSS feed:<br>
<a href="http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc" target="_blank">http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc</a><br>
<br>
iDC Chat on Facebook:<br>
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647</a><br>
<br>
Share relevant URLs on <a href="http://Del.icio.us" target="_blank">Del.icio.us</a> by adding the tag iDCref<br></blockquote></div><br></div>