I was going to say hopefully EU regulators back off some of the insane Taxi regulations that require you to have 100,000€ or more to…drive people around
NYC’s medallions did have a primary purpose; to control traffic.
Manhattan is tiny and taxis represent an outsize amount of traffic since they don’t park most of the day like a commuter car. Uber’s proliferation was associated with a general decline in traffic speeds.
But increasing throughput. Given how shitty US public transport is in general, maybe that's the right tradeoff. New York is one of the best, but still shitty by EU standards.
> New York is one of the best, but still shitty by EU standards.
If we're talking about concrete things like throughput, the MTA is one of only a few systems with round-the-clock operation, and I don't think anywhere else matches its scale and reach.
The filth of the stations are a legitimate complaint...but given that my primary interest is my transit system moving me from place to place, I'd take it over the majority of EU systems in a heartbeat.
I just recently visited NYC for a week after a few years away. Got in mid-week and was taking the subway around during the day, and thought wow it's really made huge improvements in reliability recently. Trains were all coming quickly and all lines were running. Then the weekend came around and half the lines were being re-routed and waits were much longer with lots of announced delays.
The city does a good job, especially by US standards, of making public transit a reliable, affordable way for people to go to and from work. But as far as getting around in day to day life outside of rush hour it is much worse and there's still a big need for Taxis or Uber. And I think with the increase in remote work recently this is more of an issue now than ever.
I do have to say I'm impressed by the Apple pay/NFC payment rollout though. No more flimsy Metrocards to worry about swiping and refilling is a nice improvement.
In effect this is indentured servitude. Most people are not aware how common paying to be allowed to start a business is in Europe. For instance, I was told by a restaurant owner in Rome that you have to pay 500,000 euros to the landowning catholic church to open a tiny restaurant storefront there. This is structured as a loan.
This is like the least problematic thing Uber has done tho? The "law enforcement" they were fucking with was basically being thugs for enforcing a monopolist power. Not very pro-consumer for the EU to try to go back to shitty overpriced taxi monopolies.
I think the buttons in offices to nuke all records electronically if being raided by authorities is maybe extremely illegal?
End of the day, tech companies exist and can attract investment due to IP protections provided by the rule of law.
That rule of law involves actually having the laws being followed.
VCs backing companies like Uber don't get to have it both ways and violate the laws they deem worthy of disrupting while employing legal departments to ensure the laws that protect their IP are followed.
That's not what they did, just closed access which is legal and fine. Nobody is obliagted to leave stuff easily available for access. They can go subpoena it instead if they want. The whole "kick down the doors and take everything" is authoritarian, it should only be used where legal attempts at getting specific documents don't work because somebody won't comply with the legal order. And raiding people is fucked up bc they don't usually get a chance to even review the warrant. From an article on it:
> Uber told the court it never deleted its files. It cooperated with a second search warrant that explicitly covered the files and agreed to collect provincial taxes for each ride.
And there's nothing wrong with companies working around dumbass laws. Governments are too corrupt to fix them otherwise especially here with massive lobbying to keep them.
From the PoV of a cop with a warrant, that is effectively the same thing. The evidence they have a warrant to collect is deliberately made inaccessible to anyone at that location.
I've not seen it reported that it ever happened. The point is that they prepared for it and intended to take that action if the situation occurred. That they planned and implemented a method to obscure evidence is a strong indicator that they knew some of what they were doing was not legal (leaving aside discussion of where wrong & illegal do/don't overlap, in their opinion or ours or anyone else's).
> it would probably not be satisfied via the Uber app UI.
This part isn't about the app. It is about making data inaccessible at an office should the authorities enter that office - equivalent to quickly ramming documents through the shredder when you see an auditor approaching the building.
Greyball is a "fake version" of the Uber app. The Uber app displays a live map of driver locations. If the app thinks you're a cop, it will display fake locations.
> This part isn't about the app. It is about making data inaccessible at an office should the authorities enter that office - equivalent to quickly ramming documents through the shredder when you see an auditor approaching the building.
It would appear I got myself confused between the collection dirty tricks that Uber have been shown to have perpetrated.
“they just cut off access to remotely hosted resources” from the top of this thread covers cutting off fixed locations as well as mobile app instances.
making sure taxis are safe for operation should be equally applied; being uber (and hence "the good guys") should not exempt you.
and being the good guys should necessarily include being okay with playing by the rules. if you build an entire UX to avoid that -> fuck you, I don't care what you're replacing you're undermining any benefit you could claim to society
youre not really trying the safety justification, not seriously? everybody remembers being in shitty cabs in places with "safety" regulations. if they cared about safety they could have designed an easy and simple process but this was about regulatory cature.
I mean even if Uber paid for it the general consensus in economics is improving market efficiency is a net good. Like yeah obv it sucks for taxi drivers but the position of a lot of governments (EU more than most) is that consumer benefit at the expense of business is fine. So kinda inconsistent for the EU to say they'll go screw with other companies for consumer benefit but then "oh no not the poor cabbies, we can't let the cabbies make less money!" Also there's a lot of rent-seeking in traditional cab industry that comes from stuff like the high cost of entry and the lobbying to keep it in place so taking that out should make a better economic outcome.
The EU most certainly doesn't legislate taxi regulations.
If you think your local legislature is harming competition, speak to your local legislator. EU institutions can't help, by design, unless maybe if the unfair competition infringes your individual rights.
