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posted by martyb on Sunday June 28 2015, @10:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the UberPop-goes-the-weasel dept.

French taxi drivers are the latest to protest the entry of Uber into their protected market. Their protests feature vandalism and blocking roads. From the AP story:

French taxi drivers pulled out the throttle in an all-out confrontation with the ultra-cheap Uber car service Thursday, smashing livery cars, setting tires ablaze and blocking traffic during a nationwide strike that caught tourists and celebrities alike in the mayhem.

[...] Taxi drivers justified their rage, saying Uber's lowest-cost service UberPop was ruining their livihoods.[sic]

[...] Anger seethed across France, with riot police chasing strikers from Paris' ring road, where protesters torched tires and swarmed onto exit ramps during rush hour on the busy artery that leads to Charles de Gaulle airport. In Toulouse in the southwest, angry taxi drivers dumped flour onto UberPop cars, tires were burned in Nantes in the west, and in Lyon, in the southeast, roads were blocked.

Compare this to Uber protests in London.

Vive le monopole!


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Sunday June 28 2015, @10:10PM

    by GungnirSniper (1671) on Sunday June 28 2015, @10:10PM (#202513) Journal

    Taxis are a legacy service, and they should adapt or die. You don't have a right to profit from regulations for all eternity.

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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2015, @11:38PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2015, @11:38PM (#202537)

    Spoken like a stupid drunken twat who only ever rides with friends. There's a whole wide world outside, fucko. When you pay a stranger to drive you to your destination in their vehicle, that's called a taxi service. Those regulations you hate so fucking much? Well they just reduce the risk that the stranger will murder you and eat you. But if you want to be murdered and eaten, sure, go right ahead. You don't need regulations when you're a suicidal moron.

    • (Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Monday June 29 2015, @12:52AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 29 2015, @12:52AM (#202562) Journal

      Those regulations you hate so fucking much? Well they just reduce the risk that the stranger will murder you and eat you.

      Because the risk of losing one's taxi license is the decisive factor in preventing vehicular cannibalism.

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by mojo chan on Monday June 29 2015, @09:56AM

        by mojo chan (266) on Monday June 29 2015, @09:56AM (#202717)

        Because the drivers are vetted, their vehicles must carry CCTV, and must be up to reasonable safety standards for carrying passengers. If crime were a major problem the government could, for example, mandate not being able to lock the rear doors.

        I guess you have not looked at the situation before regulation. It was pretty bad. Anyone could set up as a taxi, and there were a lot of accidents, a lot of crime, a lot of problems. The shear number of taxis created a race to the bottom, where costs like vehicle maintenance and limits like maximum 8 hours driving a day went out the window pretty quickly.

        --
        const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 29 2015, @01:52PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 29 2015, @01:52PM (#202796) Journal

          Because the drivers are vetted, their vehicles must carry CCTV, and must be up to reasonable safety standards for carrying passengers. If crime were a major problem the government could, for example, mandate not being able to lock the rear doors.

          So how does that discourage vehicular cannibalism? Pray continue.

          I guess you have not looked at the situation before regulation. It was pretty bad. Anyone could set up as a taxi, and there were a lot of accidents, a lot of crime, a lot of problems. The shear number of taxis created a race to the bottom, where costs like vehicle maintenance and limits like maximum 8 hours driving a day went out the window pretty quickly.

          It's a different situation now. And frankly, maybe a little racing to the bottom needs to happen. After all, I imagine France has other people than taxi drivers. Maybe we should consider their needs too.

  • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday June 28 2015, @11:39PM

    by isostatic (365) on Sunday June 28 2015, @11:39PM (#202538) Journal

    They should, but this is France.

    And you can see their point (even though you don't agree with it), taxi drives in france have to pay €200,000 for a license to operate. That's a lot of cash that Uber don't pay. With 50,000 taxis in france, that's €10 billion the government has taken.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by dusty monkey on Monday June 29 2015, @12:54AM

      by dusty monkey (5492) on Monday June 29 2015, @12:54AM (#202564)

      taxi drives in france have to pay €200,000 for a license to operate. That's a lot of cash that Uber don't pay. With 50,000 taxis in france, that's €10 billion the government has taken.

      I see the reason that your opinion on this matter is so bizarre and irrational. You think that the government collected the €200,000 per license.
      No, it didn't. The €200,000 was transfered from the new license holder to the previous license holder. When the State issues a new license, its essentially for free.
      You dont realize that you are arguing for the State fixing buyers remorse, but thats in fact what you are doing. The taxi operators that paid €200,000 for their medallion could have waited for a free one. They didn't want to wait for the State to issue new medallions (possibly because its unlikely to happen any time soon), so they went to the private market and purchased an existing one that at one point in time was issued for free by the State.

      The State created the medallion scarcity, but it did not collect anyones €200,000. Those that own medallions want them to continue to be scarce for sure, but that is not the responsibility of the State. This is why the big taxi services lobby the State to prevent new medallions from being issued. They dont want the medallions they own to depreciate in value and they dont want competition depreciating their value further. They want the opposite of that. They want their medallions to appreciate in value and they want less competition appreciating the value further.

      It is not the States job to protect your business model, but with enough money you can lobby the State to do it anyways. That is what is happening here.

      --
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