It's ridiculous - you provide bad quality service with high fees and scammy operators, another competitor enters the market and takes your market share, then you sue them and win for beating you? Imagine that in any other scenario.
Not to mention, every trip in NSW has a $1.32 fee to help compensate taxi drivers.
Taxi operators should have tried competing on merits like price and cracking down on dodgy drivers instead of suing. The last time I got a taxi it was $80 for a 10km trip that's $32 on Uber. If they weren't so terrible then Uber would have never had an in on the market in the first place.
I don't know, I used to catch gypsy cabs in London twenty odd years ago and you were taking your life into your own hands. There were some pretty shady operators. I can see why a government might want to license taxi drivers.
> Why shouldn't you be able to start what you call a 'gypsy taxi business.' what's the need for arresting you? Is it that authoritarian of a nation?
Why do we bother licensing drivers then too? Are we that much of an authoritarian nation that we need to control who drives a car? Should Uber drivers be allowed to drive without a driver's license too?
Except in this case you can't start that business without getting arrested. You can still get a license without getting arrested.
It's strange that you'd bring this false equivalence.
>I can see why a government might want to license taxi drivers.
Applying for a taxi-driver license is a whole another different thing than just having taxi mafia run your entire taxi industry. Can the said uber drivers even apply for a taxi license?
The taxi laws didn't end up protecting the wages of the drivers. They ended up protecting the rights of the 'plate owners', who, having too much cash, used taxi plates as an investment and rented out the taxis to drivers on a nightly basis often for half cash. Which makes taxi drivers do anything for cash over recorded transactions.
Giving certain monopolies complete control over the industry and not letting competition in which drives down the prices for consumers is anything but "protecting workers' wages."
You don't work if you are getting 0 rides because they're too expensive for end-user. What wages?
if ride sharing didn't exist wages would be lower. companies like uber increase wages, see Seattle's law reducing the pay of drivers by enforcing minimums.
those laws do not protect wages, uber was right to protest them.
I'm not wondering why it's illegal for me to start a fly-by-night taxi business because I understand that the regulation was developed over a long time to avoid dodgy drivers who'd scam passengers or worse.
I can accept an argument where it was not fit-for-purpose for a tech-era reinterpretation of how vetted drivers deliver this service. Despite that, I think you're probably reaching if you were to try to tell me that you don't understand why the prevailing legislation existed in order to ensure passengers were picked up by vetted, known drivers whose identities were known and who could face recourse if they scammed passengers (e.g. by driving them around in circles to inflate fares), held passengers hostage or worse.
Sure but the responsibility is always to break unjust laws. And in this instance they were able to demonstrate why the laws were unjust and succeeded in getting them changed. There shouldn't be consideration for unjust laws. Its like suing a german car company for not using enough slave labor. "Its the Law" is just a rhetorical was to shut down debate. It should never have been the law, and when it was contested it no longer was.
>If I had started an illegal gypsy taxi business I would have been fined or arrested.
You shouldnt have been. Thats the point.
>Why are there different rules for large corporations?
The large corporation defeated cabcharge dominance for all of us. They get minor consideration for that.
Uber took us from a situation where a single large corporation had a complete monopoly, to a place where multiple large corporations compete, a place where you technically have the right to compete against them. They flattened the rules, they didn't create a new rule where only they get special consideration.
Uber settled, they didn't lose the suit. An Uber spokesperson even went as far as admitting there were "legacy issues" that they wanted to put behind them.
> "Since 2018, Uber has made significant contributions into various state-level taxi compensation schemes, and with today's proposed settlement, we put these legacy issues firmly in our past," an Uber spokesperson said in an emailed response.
Just that regardless, the whole reason for the suit in the first place is just because a new company beat Taxi's at their game and the Taxi companies decided to complain rather than innovate.
They broke the law, if they didn't want to potentially pay fines or a settlement, they shouldn't have broken the law. They could have spent all this money lobbying in advance to get laws repealed or get an exception instead.
In the grand scheme of things it seems like it worked out for them.
So the valid response to an unjust situation is to throw money at it and pray for change?
That our laws should be decided on who has the most money? Cabcharge V Uber?
Or that, the law being stupid and unjust, was ignored by Uber, to the benefit of millions of australians, who experienced cheaper fares, resulting in a massive push to get the law changed from the bottom up?
Not everyone agrees with you that the situation was "unjust". And Uber is not the plucky underdog you're portraying them as. They built an empire on capital from the likes of Blackrock, JPMorgan, Softbank and other heavy hitters.
They arent a plucky underdog, they are a very large monied dog whose interests align better with the consumer than cabcharges near legislative monopoly.
> Not everyone agrees with you that the situation was "unjust".
More do, than don’t. You won’t find many shedding tears for the bullshit grift that was most of the Australian taxi industry. Good riddance to it and the completely terrible laws that allowed their nonsense to continue unabated for as long as it did.
Even if Uber had "Uber" funding, using Uber is a far better experience than using our Taxi services. Paying for and knowing how much your ride is going to cost before hand, using an app to be able to hail an Uber and see in real time as they're coming.
The prices of cartel approved taxi plates crashed from ~200-150k to ~20k overnight once the market saw that the gov was letting Uber continue operating. Uber didnt compete on the same field, they created a new game, that was completely illegal in Australia, on another field. If a regular joe did that he would gaol.
This payment compentsates those taxi licence holders who held the dip.
Irrelevant. Uber flattened the market, removed cabcharge dominance. And removed the barrier to entry for other players.
Just because the barrier to entry was a tradable government stamp is irrelevant. There shouldnt have been a barrier in the first place.
Uber, in a weird, stupid, modernity sucks way, brought justice to an industry that had been unjust for a very long time. Love them or hate them, cabcharge is worse.
>If a regular joe did that he would gaol.
Also bad. The government and taxi lobby should not have set up a situation where giving a ride for money could lead to incarceration. This doesnt support your point, it just further illustrates that the situation was unjust until uber acted.
Its a thought terminating cliche. A law being a law doesnt end an argument. If the law shouldn't be, we are permitted to continue thinking towards its removal.
They broke the law. Furthermore Uber's competitive advantages are fueled by incredibly dangerous financial practices. In the kind of "any other scenario" you're alluding to, the new kid on the block typically isn't infused with tens of billions of VC.
Law was unjust, they had a moral imperative to break it.
>Furthermore Uber's competitive advantages are fueled by incredibly dangerous financial practices.
And if Uber was seeking a monopoly this might be relevant, but they opened the market up for anyone, including those not doing scary financial practices.
>the new kid on the block typically isn't infused with tens of billions of VC.
Yes, so it should have been the case that the taxi monopolies were broken up decades ago. Not waiting around for VC capital to do it.
>Law was unjust, they had a moral imperative to break it.
I disagree that they had a moral imperative to break it. But our laws must be quite bad because foreign companies seem to love breaking them while claiming the moral highground.
>And if Uber was seeking a monopoly this might be relevant, but they opened the market up for anyone, including those not doing scary financial practices.
Is there any successful rideshare company without similar financial practices? I admit I don't know much about any of them other than Uber. Maybe I will be pleasantly surprised. I'm glad to hear that uber isn't seeking a monopoly.
>Yes, so it should have been the case that the taxi monopolies were broken up decades ago. Not waiting around for VC capital to do it.
The biggest issue with Ubers financial practices (other than, not having much money) is that in the US they can also provide car finance, and can take the car payments directly from the trip payment. Its got a whiff of the company store about it. As far as I am aware none of their competitors do this anywhere.
Considering the low value proposition of the Uber app, I am relatively surprised that theres no strong open source competitor with a very modest sum going to maintain the app. Such a hypothetical competitor would now also be allowed after ubers entrance.
>But our laws must be quite bad because foreign companies seem to love breaking them
There was a great interview I watched recently on ABC. A gentleman was politely explaining why theres a shortage of produce in Australia at the moment. He explained how the government increased requirements on local farmers, but haven't set the same requirements on imports. So large aggregators set up shop in countries with cheaper wages, and less onerous laws, can the produce there and ship it into Australia while pocketing the difference.
The reporter conducting the interview was shocked, and immediately asked the standard question. "Should the government be seeking to impose penalties, or tariffs or some other kind of support"
The farmer shook his head. He said he didn't think it was an issue of penalties, or tariffs. He just wanted the government to put the industry back the way they found it. But the reporter literally didn't understand his line of thinking. And kept asking. 2 more times he answered. No. No new laws please, just let us compete on the same basis as NZ. The NZ produce is being eaten by aussies anyway. so there's no net difference. Just let his business continue.
So yeah I believe our laws are quite bad. For a variety of reasons. Mainly that the country is addicted to the idea of a great national project, and despite terrible results in these areas (National Energy Market (Debatable but I think it does a lot more harm than good), National Broadband Network, National Disability Insurance Scheme) governments of all stripes continue to smash anything that's right fit at a small scale to fit it into these dumb nasho boxes. I am just glad that the government of the day has forgotten about its pre election promise to disband all private fibre network providers and roll them into the NBN.
Not to mention, every trip in NSW has a $1.32 fee to help compensate taxi drivers.
Taxi operators should have tried competing on merits like price and cracking down on dodgy drivers instead of suing. The last time I got a taxi it was $80 for a 10km trip that's $32 on Uber. If they weren't so terrible then Uber would have never had an in on the market in the first place.