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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: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Monday June 29 2015, @12:59AM
Uber and the future of flood of companies like it, are able to offer low prices by gutting worker protections -- unemployment, worker's comp., health benefits, vacation time, 40 hr work week, etc. etc. They shift the burdens of car accidents, maintenance, safety, insurance, and so forth, to those _least_ able to absorb those losses -- the drivers.
Which if you think about it, is a fine place for those responsibilities to be.
but to cheer Uber while it quietly hacks away at the progress we made at improving working conditions during the 20th century
Rent seeking != improving working conditions. We need to keep in mind that every protected industry imposes costs on society, including, the degrading of those working conditions you're so fond of. If my employer has to spend more on taxis, then it spends less on my working conditions.