Why does your negative experience with taxis outweigh my positive ones?
In Toronto taxis were plentiful and easy to call or hail. I remember showing a friend from out of town around and we were out late, like 4AM, and had to get home and she kind of panic’d and I said “don’t worry we’ll just get a cab on the street” she doubted me, and then I flagged a cab down and we got in and went on our merry way.
I’m sorry you had a bad experience with taxis, that sucks, I’ve had mostly good experiences and I feel bad for the drivers that played by the rules and did things legally and now are having their livlihoods stolen from them with an illegal and uninsured business model, that sucks. I agree that the taxi industry needed an overhaul, but thats what it needed, an overhaul, not to be razed to the ground.
(Canada doesn’t have Lyft, and Hailio left, so all we have now is Uber and taxis.)
I stand by my statement that AirBnB is just hotels, just illegal ones.
No, but the way Uber is achieving that is totally retrograde.
Except for using a mobile app instead of a servant, the entire model is out of the first half of the 19th century, both for the workers and for the customers. Being able to give a worker a crappy rating on the app means nothing if they’ve just raped you, or stalked you home, or verbally abused you because your chemo appointment went late – and those are all real-world examples.
I’m not even interested in comparing them to taxis. It’s a crappy, scary, unregulated service which relies far too much on trust.
Does it outweigh it or simply have equal weight (and more subjective weight for me)? My anecdote is at least as equal as yours in all fairness.
Are you a minority?
Maybe Toronto is a taxi paradise, like New York City, in contrast to the Bay Area, Seattle, and Salt Lake City, where I’ve experienced taxis.
Oh, Uber and Lyft are illegal? Someone should call the cops? (They aren’t illegal where I’ve taken them…)
And they had zero interest in doing so (and actively refused attempts to do so) as long as they have had a monopoly. Why reform if you’re the only game in town with no competition? Taxis didn’t even get apps to call for cabs until Uber and Lyft started stealing their business and, even now, they often don’t work in my experience.
Again…not illegal where I live. You keep using that word but I don’t know if you’re using it accurately.
I get it, you want AirBnB to go away because it is “just cheap hotels” and Uber and Lyft are just unfair, exploitve competitors to the completely legit and efficient taxi system. Consumers, on the other hand, seem to disagree, and certainly the people making the volunteer choice to rent out their homes or drive their cars for these companies disagree. No one is forcing anyone to do either as well. What is your solution? Ban these companies’ business models and go back to shitty medallion cabs with a monopoly and big hotels or shitty motels only? Why would I want that, as a a consumer? Why would I, if I was renting my place out or driving for these companies, want that?
I’m all for sane controls on things but I’ve yet to see a monopoly that benefited anyone but the owner of the monopoly or its gatekeepers. My wife and I certainly aren’t going to go back to staying in, frankly, crappy cheap motels after using AirBnB for years now (in multiple countries even).
The whole “gig” thing is a prime example of why capitalism is a joke. The taxis had a monopoly on things for the most part (unless you lived somewhere that had bus or subway service). Someone came along with a new idea and it took off. Instead of adapting to this new idea, the taxi companies tried to buy laws to stop the competition (much like Scumcast sues cities that want to setup their own broadband systems). Now people have no sympathy for the taxi companies and that’s just too bad.
What’s going to happen when self driving vehicles start to take off? Will the taxi companies fight that as well?
Both of those companies are exploiting loopholes in regulations. They are illegal by the spirit of the law in many places.
Air BnB isn’t even a hotel – it’s a boarding or rooming house model. Again, things we haven’t seen a lot of since the first half of the 19th century.
You say customers are choosing these companies, but if that’s so, why at last report are they still requiring massive infusions of VC money to keep afloat? Even not calculating in worker costs, the cab rides are heavily subsidised. Get rid of the VC money, or get to the point where Uber has to pay the VCs back, and Uber rides will cost the same or more than regular taxis.
The whole thing is a house of cards, Web 1.0 stuff.
I left “which horribly exploit the drivers and in which the renters twirl their mustaches while raking in cash” out. Was there a meta point I missed other than “This is unfair to drivers of taxis and maybe the people who voluntarily sign up for Uber and Lyft to drive”?
I’ve seen that to Uber (and consumers fleeing them). I haven’t seen that for AirBnB. Also, you don’t start a company in hundreds of cities without bleeding money from what I’ve seen…
Consumers are choosing these companies. Anecdotal, sure, but I don’t know a single person out of a very large group that calls a cab instead of pulling out their phone and summoning a Lyft or Uber vehicle. Hotels are more complicated but I’m sure a lot less people are going to low end motels and hotels these days.
or will they? We’ll never know if the Taxis companies get their way to having a monopoly back.
Then all you need to do is sit back and wait. Our work here is done.
You got me! I’ve never read an article at all about a company based in my area and in the industry in which I work. You’re very clever and foiled my plan! How dare I use personal experience like others here?!
Do you get this butthurt with everyone that disagrees with you? Just curious.
I’m done here. You two win. The evil companies are illegal and evil. Taxis will reign supreme after these exploitive bastards go down. How could I have let personal experience contradict the right think?
Carry on with the backslapping on how dumb anyone is for driving with them and complicit in their own exploitation. Also, how destructive any of their customers are of the right order. You know best! There is no rational reason anyone would participate in these companies!
What bothers me is that the “gig economy” seems to be a raw form of capitalism where the competition is absolutely cutthroat. We have lost a feeling of society where people actually care about the general well-being of the community as a whole. Instead it’s everyone for himself, and it drives salaries down to the point where not only are people not being paid enough, but other people don’t have the money to pay them. The 0.1% is sucking more and more out of every transaction. Little pay, no pensions, no security, no healthcare, part time hours that aren’t predictable, etc., etc. Basically, social good is going down the drain.
So back to gig economy, I need some input. I have my own budding gig economy/sharing economy platform called Goodnik. It’s been on the backburner for about a year after some getting tepid market response. It was designed to be a time-bank skill exchange but I’m thinking of making cash an option; it would allow for people to have more flexibility in the kinds of things they do and how they pay for them, and may make it more attractive for some to participate. AFAIK know there are no hybrid cash/timebanks operating (I understand the legal issues may make that harder) but I think it could work. So does anyone have some thoughts on this? My system is really community-based but I still want to make sure that I avoid being evil like Uber or others.
AirBnB has been a real problem in Vancouver. The issue is that it’s more profitable to rent out short term on AirBnB than it is to provide long term rental suites. So, guess what? 10% of all condos in Vancouver are vacant, with a substantial number of them being used as AirBnBs… entire floors of some condos are dedicated to short term rental. In the mean time, the rental vacancy rate is a fraction of a percent and dedicated rental housing is being torn down to make room for more condos…
Now, of course, short term rental of any sort is nominally illegal in Vancouver unless you have a hotel or BnB license (and shit, no AirBnBer has that, they’d be subject to inspections and commercial utility rates). But due to the massive disruption to the tourist industry and the real estate market that would result from an AirBnB crackdown, well, let’s just say that finding a home in Vancouver is a real pain unless you’re willing to put up big bucks.
