London's black cabs have promised to bring "chaos, congestion and confusion" to London as a protest against the growing presence of smartphone taxi service Uber. They are planning for 10,000 drivers to meet at a London landmark (which hasn't been named yet) in early June.
Steve McNamara, LTDA's [Licensed Taxi Drivers Association] general secretary, told the BBC: "I anticipate that the demonstration against TfL's [Transport for London's] handling of Uber will attract many many thousands of cabs and cause severe chaos, congestion and confusion across the metropolis."
This amid lawsuits in some places and drivers being fined in others.
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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!
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Angry Jesus on Friday May 09 2014, @11:29PM
I expect this will go badly for the taxi drivers -- they are going to inconvenience everybody on the road because they don't like competition. Protests almost always involve inconvenience for unrelated parties, that's just how it goes. But the expectation is that your personal inconvenience is second to the unfairness being protested. "I don't want to compete with someone providing a better service" is not the kind of thing that generates much sympathy.
If Uber were some megacorp with a plan to operate at a loss until the taxi drivers were all wiped out, then it would be unfair. But this just comes across as holding the streets hostage simply because they can, not because they are morally right.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Friday May 09 2014, @11:43PM
I can't blame them for trying. After all, they are learning this anti-competitive and entitlement laden behavior from the MegaCorps.
Have a problem with your business model? Don't adapt. Sue others into oblivion and hijack the legislative and governing bodies to either pay you directly like a welfare check, or make those other disruptive influences just go away.
I wonder if they remembered to bribe the appropriate officials?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday May 09 2014, @11:49PM
Similar things (smaller protests) happened in Seattle.
Since the city makes money selling hack license, they pretty much lined up behind the cabbies.
However an arbitrarily reduced number of drivers from each of three companies [washingtonpost.com] were permitted, which the companies say is not sufficient and they have no real way to enforce it, since the drivers are all pretty much self managed. There is no real way to tell how many are on the street in a city.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Saturday May 10 2014, @01:08AM
Are you sure that's the reason?
An anachronism nowadays (with all the GPS navigators and smartphones), the test was introduced as condition for license in 1865 [wikipedia.org] and was expanded to include 25,000 streets, with all their order and all the points of interest, including streets, squares, clubs, hospitals, hotels, theatres, embassies, government and public buildings, railway stations, police stations, courts, diplomatic buildings, important places of worship, cemeteries, crematoria, parks and open spaces, sports and leisure centres, places of learning, restaurants and historic buildings
Wouldn't you be upset when other don't have the same barrier of entry in your business?
If it's about competition, then how about laying a fair competition ground first?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Angry Jesus on Saturday May 10 2014, @02:14AM
> Be required to use a taxi meter while other are not?
The app on the driver's phone acts like a meter using GPS to compute distance and time. They aren't looking to be able to do the same themselves, they are looking to prevent anyone from catching up to the 21st century.
> An anachronism nowadays (with all the GPS navigators and smartphones),
They don't seem to be protesting that. In fact, they seem to want to keep that barrier in place despite it not serving a purpose anymore.
I don't see their position on either issue to be one that moves the situation towards more fairness.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 10 2014, @09:22AM
" because they don't like competition.
Are you sure that's the reason?"
Absolutely positive.
"Be required to use a taxi meter while other are not?"
As a consumer I don't care about the taxi meters. I just want to get from point A to point B as safely and cheaply and efficiently as possible. If a competitor can get me there approximately as cheaply and safely (they do have drivers licenses so are approved as safe drivers) for a better price that's all that matters to me. For all I care, this requirement can be removed and is just a mere formality. Markets should be intended to serve consumers.
"let others operate with the a smartphone the only investment but you must spend years in learning to pass world-famous Knowledge (of London) test?
An anachronism nowadays (with all the GPS navigators and smartphones), the test was introduced as condition for license in 1865 and was expanded to include 25,000 streets, with all their order and all the points of interest, including streets, squares, clubs, hospitals, hotels, theatres, embassies, government and public buildings, railway stations, police stations, courts, diplomatic buildings, important places of worship, cemeteries, crematoria, parks and open spaces, sports and leisure centres, places of learning, restaurants and historic buildings"
Again, as a consumer I don't care about all that. If GPS can get me there just as well that's fine for me.
"Wouldn't you be upset when other don't have the same barrier of entry in your business?
If it's about competition, then how about laying a fair competition ground first?"
It absolutely is about competition and I agree that these stupid formalities designed to limit competition should go. Again, as a consumer these stupid formalities do me no good and only served (are designed to) limit competition. It's these formalities that are designed to limit competition that bother me. It is every bit about competition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 10 2014, @09:35AM
err ... that part should read
if a competitor can get me there approximately as efficiently and safely (and cheaper)*
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 12 2014, @10:05AM
"Are you sure that's the reason?
Be required to use a taxi meter while other are not?
let others operate with the a smartphone the only investment but you must spend years in learning to pass world-famous Knowledge [www.gov.uk] (of London) test?"
Except the government isn't setting laws that say that anyone who meets these requirements can become a taxicab driver. The government is creating laws that artificially limit the number of taxicab drivers. It has nothing to do with safety or consumer protection and everything to do with scamming the public.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 10 2014, @09:31AM
It's amazing how those that benefit from anti-competitive laws are always quick to proclaim the virtues of everyone following the laws (the laws that they pretty much wrote through undemocratic backdoor dealings) but then when they don't get their way they have no problems breaking any law they please. This is unacceptable and I hope they all get arrested.
(Score: 1) by Theophrastus on Friday May 09 2014, @11:44PM
At least in the major cities in the states, uber (uber with a random suffix, lyft, etc) are a somewhat viral effort (by some *very* rich folks. often with 'amazon' on their business cards) to take over the admittedly ossified and byzantine arrangement between taxi, limo, towncar and their resident municipal governments. It is not without a lot of significant history that taxis are licensed within a city with a lot of brutal strictures placed upon them (e.g. "medallions"), they have already explored just about every means possible of shafting the customer and their cities have reacted to that.
So there we were, looking at a detente of sorts. Then along comes: "Hey, these guys are in the stone-age! no smart-phone connectivity at all! and we have unemployed young males (mostly) who have cars. let's eat their breakfast and dinner too!" Once again the reasons for the old detente are slowly re-discovered... gimmick-ed fare rates, questionable safety, no insurance, dangerous competitive behavior, nigh kidnapping... and that's where we sit. So if Amazon really wants to use this as a means to ramp into a (pre-drone) quick delivery service, i think they'll actually have to start talking nice to the cities they inhabit (but currently they don't think so)
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday May 09 2014, @11:54PM
On what basis did you link Amazon and Uber?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by Theophrastus on Saturday May 10 2014, @12:09AM
For lack of a more terse reference try searching on: bezos uber
(or search down the page on the Uber wikipedia page)
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Saturday May 10 2014, @01:14AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 10 2014, @02:49AM
They loved that word...
"Deutschland uber Alles" = Germany above everything (the national anthem of the 3rd reich)
"Ãœbermensch" = aryan
It is a normal German word that means over or above, but when it means "better than" or "master", the author sounds like he is emulating Nazis. It is not a word that one should be enamored with. At least that's my interpretation as a native German speaker.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 10 2014, @02:52AM
And f*ck your encoding.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 10 2014, @05:12AM
Sounds like a usual case in the meaning of words changing based on the recipient. As someone who likes strategy games, when the word Uber is used I think of 'Uber Entertainment'. A video game production company responsible for a small number of games, most important of which is Planetary Annihilation. It is akin to Total Annihilation or Supreme Commander. It is a large scale game with many units under control of the player. It is a continual disappointment that Uber, the transport company, does not give me the option to sit at home and direct the movements of thousands of people silly enough to be controlled via smartphone app.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 10 2014, @05:36AM
"Sounds like a usual case in the meaning of words changing based on the recipient."
Indeed, but when folks use a word from another language to name their company, they would be wise understand its major connotations.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday May 10 2014, @08:51AM
As a German you should know that "Deutschland über alles" was part of the German anthem already long before the Nazis (indeed, the text was written before Germany was a single country), and wasn't meant as saying that Germany is superior to other countries; that is just a reinterpretation of the Nazis.
Also "Übermensch" does not mean "aryan" (the German term for that is "Arier"), and also was not an invention of the Nazis, although they, again, misused the term. Although in that case the previous use, by Nietzsche, wasn't exactly a positive one either: The "Übermensch" (which just means "superhuman") was considered by Nietzsche to be a "better" human who is above good or evil ("jenseits von gut und böse"), that is, a human who is "better" because he's completely amoral and therefore makes only rational decisions.
And yes, it is true that those terms today are generally associated to the Nazis. But anyway, I think it is important to get the facts straight.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 10 2014, @01:28PM
"Über" simply is "over" - both in terms of status, concept and position. For instance a "superhuman" would be an "übermensch", an "overview" would be "überblick" and a plane "flying over the city" would be "fliegen über der Stadt"..
Or put another way "Über" is about as much nazi as the eagle on emblems is US-american ;)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by jelizondo on Saturday May 10 2014, @05:18AM
Recently the resort city of Cancun experienced some protests from taxi drivers as well but Uber had nothing to do with it.
Unfortunately the state government pressured the media outlets to keep quiet, so there were very few reports [noticaribe.com.mx] (link in Spanish) about their closing the airport, blocking tourist transportation vans and other hanky panky.
Their beef? They want to be the only ones driving tourists to/from the airport; they think there are too many alternatives, like bus service, chartered vans, hotel vans, etc. and that is not fair to them. They don't want to compete against so many players, so they take to the streets.
Luckily the state government (the authority which issues taxi plates in and around Cancun) took steps to stop the protests and had several meetings with Travel Agency Association and the taxi drivers' union, which came to nought, but at least the taxi drivers found they would not get a free ride! :-)
Last year, the taxi drivers of Cozumel (in the same State as Cancun) tried the same thing: they wanted to be the only service for tours and driving tourists around. (They failed too.)
Social protest is good, but sometimes certain groups are organized and think they can get away with anything; it is up to other groups (like the Travel Agencies Association, the Hotel Association or the bus drivers' union) to get in and show that no matter how much chaos you create, society will be not be held hostage to your lazy ways: kill the competition so I can make more money.