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Ride-sharing service Uber has exited the French market following taxi driver protests, a ban by the French interior minister, and the arrest of two managers:
Following a week of increasingly violent clashes with traditional taxi drivers, the San Francisco-based company announced that its popular Uberpop service would be suspended from 8pm tonight and would no longer appear on users' app lists.
'In recent weeks intimidation and violent aggression by an out-of-control minority, where drivers and users of Uberpop were ambushed, has increased in France. Uber does not want to put drivers or passengers at risk, so for the sake of peace has decided to suspend Uberpop,' said the company in a statement. However, the service is in fact illegal in France. Last week, Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, general manager for Western Europe, and Thibaud Simphal, general manager of Uber France, were arrested. They will have their day in court in September.
Uber said it hoped to be back up and running as soon as possible. It thanked the "thousands of men and women from Lille to Marseille, via Paris, Bordeaux or Lyon who participated with enthusiasm in the urban transport revolution".
(Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday July 04 2015, @10:01PM
if the taxicab were free, the citizen would not just keep the remaining $700. He'd go and spend some or all of it on other stuff
Yes; that would convert the argument into the classical "broken glass." The case of not spending the money is more interesting because, first, the money is removed from the economy. Then the quantity of the transactions is reduced, and the tax revenue follows. The money also may be invested with much lower - or zero - taxes. In the latter case the society benefits, but the government is not only not getting the taxes; it also has to pay the coupon.
We are moving toward such a society already; Uber is just one of first, crude attempts to replace cab companies, their radios and their hired drivers with a loose, ever-changing network of minimally affiliated people who work whenever they can. If you extrapolate, all this can be reduced to every human having a universal robot who can do anything, for free. The society of today cannot function in such a world, as every citizen would not need other people or the government. Consider Farmer's the World of Tiers [wikipedia.org]. The governments understand that and fight the change tooth and nail. This is why only socialist countries, where manufacturing already belongs to the society, can painlessly transition to the next phase. Capitalist economies will evolve into a few Companies who own everything, including robots. Unfortunately, Socialism is impossible without some major pruning of the human tree - say, by building an Ark Fleet [geoffwilkins.net] and starting anew.
So, in short, it has nothing to do with the power of the state vs. the individual, as you suggest, it's all about good old-fashioned corruption.
It just depends on what words you choose to describe the same process. Corruption appeals to people who love money; power appeals to people who love power. One hand washes the other; power brings money, and money brings power.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday July 04 2015, @10:26PM
The case of not spending the money may be interesting to you, but it has no bearing on reality whatsoever. If the governments of the US and France got smart and built inexpensive SkyTran systems in all populated areas, rendering not only taxis and most buses obsolete, but also most private cars (particularly those used for commuting) and dealing a severe blow to the carmakers and all the companies that support them (suppliers, dealerships, mechanics, car washes, etc.), people wouldn't suddenly sock all that money away into their bank accounts. They'd spend it on other stuff: they'd buy more luxury goods, take more vacations, both overseas and at home (which means money being spent outside the country, but with all the French and German tourists having this same new savings from transportation, they'd be coming over here and spending their money here to balance it out anyway), eat out more often, hire personal maids or chefs, etc. Even if they increase their savings rate (which is good for economic stability), that money doesn't sit around and do nothing, it gets invested somewhere where it again circulates in the economy, investing into corporations to fund their expansions, etc.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2015, @11:21PM
money that isn't spent is money saved. savings are rarely squandered in a free market (where interest rates aren't artificially fixed at zero) because it is more profitable to invest in capital. if i save money (in a bank account), the bank can use that saving as reserve and lend some of it to a businessman to grow his business by providing him a loan for him to capitalize (by building another factory, buying more computers, etc). the problem with the major economies lately is that there is no savings, so it is hard for businesses to get loans, and to therefore grow. some businesses may not need loans to grow, but for small businesses that would be the rare exception rather than the general rule. lately there is a lot of money printing going on, which might help prop up reserves for business loans, but lately the additional liquidity offered by money printing not only destroys the value of the currency by increasing its quanitity but is merely used to prop up governments (which are notoriously inefficient at spending other people's money), mortgage instruments (many of which have already defaulted) and stocks (many of which are in companies that would be otherwise insolvent, such that the contribution is effectively a bailout). this money, which is mostly going to a very small number of corporate and government oligarchs that are keeeping their savings in offshore accounts on remote islands such that it is generally not being made available to the broader economy is the only thing propping up these failing currencies with little if any commodity reserves (such as gold or silver) to back them up. some of it is in circulation though; saudi arabia, china and russia are spending their foreign reserves on property and other assets. the value of the US dollar in particular is a very small fraction of what it was in 1774 (3% in 2012). greece might look bad, but in hindsight it will have gotten off easy by being forced to get its fiscal house in order. the US will face a much darker day of reckoning down the track (likely triggered from a stock market crash, leading to mass layoffs), which will likely result in widespread violence and poverty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2015, @11:10PM
I knew socialism would be to blame somehow. It's always socialism or communism.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Sunday July 05 2015, @12:24AM
I knew socialism would be to blame somehow. It's always socialism or communism.
If you prefer, you can blame human nature that always poisons the commons.