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The Vancouver Sun reports that a Kamloops BC Yellow Cab company is threatening to outsource their dispatch operation to Pakistan. They blame the ruling Liberal government who, in a flurry of pre-election giveaways, decided to let Uber open shop in the province.
In a telephone interview with KTW from Pakistan, from where he emigrated decades ago, [Abdul] Rasheed placed blame at the foot of Kamloops-South Thompson MLA Todd Stone, the province's transportation minister for the past four years.
The B.C. Liberals have pledged to bring in legislation and measures so ride-sharing companies such as Uber and Lyft can operate legally before Christmas.
"Looking at that, I knew a small company like us can't survive a multi-billion company," Rasheed said, noting he is forced to look at his costs. "We're looking at all infrastructure," he said. "Overhead is high."
The Liberals have promised measures to help taxi companies compete with ride-sharing firms, including putting in $1 million to develop a competing smartphone app and attempting to level the playing field for insurance and driver qualification.
Some night dispatch for Kamloops Yellow Cabs is now being done out of Pakistan, what Rasheed, who is in the South Asian country working on the program, called it an experiment to determine if it is practical.
There are about four dispatchers who work for Yellow Cabs.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday May 01 2017, @03:23PM
Credit cannot coexist with free market capitalism, it supplies money that does not drive the market prices down,
Technically our problem is the government participation in the "free" credit markets such that we pick the central bank interest rate to match the interest we'd like to budget for base on our government loans being bigger than many segments of the economy.
Then taxi driver credit ends up in direct competition with US treasury for credit and things get all Fed up. Many goods like real estate and taxi medallions are priced at what the market can afford to borrow, which is solely controlled by what the treasury would like the fed to decide how much they'll pay for the treasury loan, and then somehow real estate magically for no apparent reason 10x hyperinflates in value or ditto taxi medallions or whatever.
Also all credit markets are connected and numerous credit markets are completely and totally socialized right now, or so socialized that private market doesn't matter, look at government backed student loans, government backed (aka all) residential house mortgages...
Much as letting banks speculate in the financial markets ends poorly every time, letting the government take over the credit markets ends poorly every time.