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posted by janrinok on Monday August 22 2016, @04:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the taking-a-cut dept.

Republican Governor Charlie Baker signed the nickel fee into law this month as part of a sweeping package of regulations for the industry.

Ride services are not enthusiastic about the fee. "I don't think we should be in the business of subsidizing potential competitors," said Kirill Evdakov, the chief executive of Fasten, a ride service that launched in Boston last year and also operates in Austin, Texas.

Some taxi owners wanted the law to go further, perhaps banning the start-up competitors unless they meet the requirements taxis do, such as regular vehicle inspection by the police.

"They've been breaking the laws that are on the books, that we've been following for many years," said Larry Meister, manager of the Boston area's Independent Taxi Operator's Association.

The law levies a 20-cent fee in all, with 5 cents for taxis, 10 cents going to cities and towns and the final 5 cents designated for a state transportation fund.

The fee may raise millions of dollars a year because Lyft and Uber alone have a combined 2.5 million rides per month in Massachusetts.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Monday August 22 2016, @05:19PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 22 2016, @05:19PM (#391732) Journal
    I thought Republicans were about government not interfering* with business?

    Should we have taxed the telegraph to subsidize the pony express?
    Should we have taxed the telephone to subsidize the telegraph?
    Should we have taxed the automobile to subsidize the horse and buggy industry?

    Especially that last one. Please consider. The new fangled automobiles are expensive, noisy, smelly, unreliable, difficult to start, they can break your arm if you don't crank them correctly, and worst of all, automobiles frighten the horses! So why should we allow them in our towns nice clean towns**?

    Should we have taxed the internet to subsidize the ${post office | newspaper | magazine | music | long distance phone | television | retail store} industries?

    * unless it affects their rich 1% friends
    ** except for the horse poop on the street
    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
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  • (Score: 2, Disagree) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Monday August 22 2016, @05:21PM

    by Jeremiah Cornelius (2785) on Monday August 22 2016, @05:21PM (#391734) Journal

    Uber is in the business of interfering with your ability to travel, without first delivering them a rent.

    Make no mistake about it. "Convenience" is first the bait on that hook.

    --
    You're betting on the pantomime horse...
    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday August 22 2016, @05:26PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 22 2016, @05:26PM (#391738) Journal

      Convenience? Like a Windows 10 upgrade?

      Would you like to upgrade to Windows 10?
      To install simply click Yes, No, Cancel, or the X symbol in the title bar.
      Or for your CONVENIENCE, simply press Ctrl-Alt-Del right now to have Windows 10 conveniently installed on the next reboot.

      New business model . . .

      Windows 10 has been installed on this computer !
      To have this computer restored to a usable state,
      please send 3 Bitcoin to Microsoft.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @06:12PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @06:12PM (#391766)

        Convenience? Like a Windows 10 upgrade?

        He said convenience not curse.

        • (Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday August 23 2016, @03:37AM

          by anubi (2828) on Tuesday August 23 2016, @03:37AM (#391987) Journal

          Thought your parent was speaking English?

          He was speaking a dialect of English known as "Businesstalk".

          Warning... remember the phrase "Caveat Emptor" when you hear businesstalk being spoken.

          --
          "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday August 22 2016, @05:40PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 22 2016, @05:40PM (#391746) Journal

      I'm not quite sure what you mean about the 'rent'.

      Nobody forces you to use Uber. You can still take a Taxi if you prefer.

      Uber doesn't have a monopoly.

      Taxis want to have a monopoly.

      Prediction: Taxis will be strongly opposed to self driving cars. See my arguments above for why we should have stopped the rise of automobiles before it was too late. And now here we are. An unbroken strip of concrete from your doorstep to my doorstep -- no matter where you live. Being forced to travel in comfort at high speed. And no horse poop on the streets to enjoy.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Francis on Monday August 22 2016, @07:58PM

        by Francis (5544) on Monday August 22 2016, @07:58PM (#391848)

        Whether or not taxis ought to have a monopoly, there are licensing requirements that Uber and the other ride sharing platforms have been ignoring in order to undercut the taxi companies.

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @09:19PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @09:19PM (#391883)

          We should also have a medallion system for restaurants. If we have too many, it would be a rush to the bottom!

          • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday August 23 2016, @03:27PM

            by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 23 2016, @03:27PM (#392171) Journal

            Forget Restaurants. How about a medallion system for Software Developers. After all, they should have certifications and insurance. What if their code were to have a bug in it?

            --
            People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
          • (Score: 2) by cykros on Tuesday August 23 2016, @08:33PM

            by cykros (989) on Tuesday August 23 2016, @08:33PM (#392283)

            They're called liquor licenses. If there were too many, places would have to stop just selling PBR and America because there'd be too much competition from those selling drinkable beer to try to edge into the market.

        • (Score: 2, Disagree) by cykros on Tuesday August 23 2016, @08:31PM

          by cykros (989) on Tuesday August 23 2016, @08:31PM (#392281)

          Those licensing requirements are archaic and in need of being revamped drastically.

          The taxi drivers aren't wrong, but Uber is right to be acting first and asking for forgiveness later. They've got the funds and in many cases public support now to really play a big role in fix the broken system. They should take their blows for breaking the rules, but I haven't seen them as being unprepared to do so, and in the end, I think the rules will end up breaking before they do.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @07:59PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @07:59PM (#391851)

        An unbroken strip of concrete from your doorstep to my doorstep -- no matter where you live. Being forced to travel in comfort at high speed.

        It's Volkswagens and autobahns all round.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Monday August 22 2016, @09:14PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday August 22 2016, @09:14PM (#391881)

        Taxis want to have a monopoly.

        Pedantic correction: taxis had a cartel, and want to maintain their cartel. Taxis never had a monopoly; a monopoly is a single company which has little to no competition. When a group of companies conspire to work together to shut out competitors (using "regulation", in the case of taxis), it's called a cartel. It's not quite as bad as a true monopoly because the cartel members do compete with each other to some extent, but it's not much better since they can all conspire to keep prices quite high.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @02:37AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @02:37AM (#391973)

          Or you could consider the medallion system to be a monopoly, with the taxi companies as contractors.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 22 2016, @07:53PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 22 2016, @07:53PM (#391845) Journal

      Make no mistake about it. "Convenience" is first the bait on that hook.

      Of course it is. They wouldn't have business without that. As to your "interfering", every transportation option currently interferes with your ability to travel. For the most part, it's in an enormously positive way, but protecting taxi cartels is not positive interference.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Capt. Obvious on Monday August 22 2016, @07:43PM

    by Capt. Obvious (6089) on Monday August 22 2016, @07:43PM (#391839)

    Taxis have to do a lot of high cost things, like have a certain number of handicap accessible cabs. They have to provide various unprofitable community services. If Uber is going to cherry-pick the profitable parts of the taxi service, they should have to subsidize the unprofitable parts... just like the taxi companies do.

    • (Score: 2) by tftp on Tuesday August 23 2016, @04:05AM

      by tftp (806) on Tuesday August 23 2016, @04:05AM (#391989) Homepage

      This amounts to off the books, hidden, uncontrollable tax on all taxicab passengers, so that the society can provide transportation to those who are less fortunate.

      It would be far more honest to (a) tax everyone to raise that money, (b) subsidize transportation needs of disabled people, and (c) report to the taxpayers all of the above, so that they can decide if they want this subsidy, and if yes - how much.

      It makes no sense to let the taxicab company or a clerk in the city hall to be a tax collector and an issuer of benefits to some people, with no oversight.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Capt. Obvious on Tuesday August 23 2016, @04:52AM

        by Capt. Obvious (6089) on Tuesday August 23 2016, @04:52AM (#391999)

        It's not off the books. There's a taxi commission everywhere that sets the rates. They do that knowing the various costs. And it makes sense because it localizes the costs/revenues of the taxi service in a few line items. The USPS's profitable routes subsidize delivering the mail to farms. That's just how public enterprises are set up.

        If someone really has a bee in their bonnet, they can petition their government to change the fares/requirements on the taxi service. I don't see why a complex issue should be phrased solely as a cost. Yes, it's not all spelled out in the way that you care about, and the way you may want to sell changing it. But the info is there, you could rewrite it. And I would prefer to hear two facts like "1 in 10 taxis can handle a disabled person" and "taxi's have a 5% profit on capital" than to combine them in a way that holds all other things constant, even if they aren't, just so you can say "every time you take a cab, 5% is subsidizing a disabled person, 2% subsidizing X...."

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @08:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @08:30PM (#391870)

    Massachusetts is nearly pure democrat in every way except for one oddity: they often choose a token republican to supposedly run the state.

    It's always a RINO, a Republican In Name Only. Maybe it's like affirmative action for political parties. Maybe the idea is that the difference of party puts at least a tiny limit on the crazy. In any case, the governor is barely a republican, and he's alone. When bills show up for him to sign, it's take-it-or-leave-it plus the obvious fact that a veto is trivial to override.

  • (Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Monday August 22 2016, @10:13PM

    by GungnirSniper (1671) on Monday August 22 2016, @10:13PM (#391897) Journal

    In Massachusetts our Republicans are the equivalent of Kansas Democrats. Sure they talk to the national talking points, but in practice they are the "light" version of the majority party.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @08:38PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @08:38PM (#392287)

      How terrible, to actually pay attention to the needs and wishes of your constituents rather than toe a national party line while ignoring the people you're elected to serve.

      Though fwiw, Baker's stance on gun control is pretty heinous for a supposed republican. He makes Bernie Sanders seem like a right wing gun nut.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @10:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @10:27PM (#391901)

    Where's that '-1, false equivalence' mod when you need it?

  • (Score: 2) by cykros on Tuesday August 23 2016, @08:28PM

    by cykros (989) on Tuesday August 23 2016, @08:28PM (#392279)

    For what it's worth, the whole taxi system is already interfered with by government, in the form of the artificially scarce taxi medallions, which, like liquor licenses in some areas, are routinely treated as a commodity, to be auctioned off to the highest bidder, and generally serve mostly to make it hard to enter the taxi business.

    This is entirely the wrong direction though. The taxi drivers to some extent have a right to be annoyed, having been unfairly made to jump through hoops to get where they are now, but rather than tax the ride share services, the whole medallion model should be scrapped in favor of a system of regulation (let's face it; the masses want at least some modicum of safety checks for people assigned to driving drunk college students around at 2 am) that is fair all around. The idea that a cab driver should have to pay a couple hundred grand to do what an uber driver does by downloading an app is a problem, but this isn't the solution. At the very least, there should be no cap on the number of medallions available, so that the cost for entering the business remains flat, rather than favoring those long entrenched at the severe expense to any new players and innovation in general. We've been seeing this shift in Massachusetts with liquor licenses in various municipalities (Cambridge, for instance, requested that the state remove the population-based limit on number of licenses as set by early 20th century anti-Irish/Italian immigrant legislation), with the overall effect being good. The only real thing holding this back is the amount of pushback by those clinging to their medallions and liquor licenses as commodities, and the lack of public awareness or care over how the whole system is set up. A lot more than we're often used to seeing happen in our modern democracy could actually be accomplished here with a relatively small scale media campaign due to how much this system is really only serving the interests of a few while the vast majority would benefit from it being overhauled.