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Wow, so the crown of the "fintech" movement is just as bad as the banks, and the two biggest Silicon Valley successes of the last decade, Uber and AirBnB, are r
by rando18423 10y ago
Wow, so the crown of the "fintech" movement is just as bad as the banks, and the two biggest Silicon Valley successes of the last decade, Uber and AirBnB, are really just cases of massively successful regulatory arbitrage. Nice innovation!
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoIt seems a common way to "disrupt" a market is to find a loophole to call yourself something else so you can avoid all the laws everyone else is beholden to that were put in place for people's protection.
- rando18423 10y agoExactly
- Zarel 10y agoThat sounds pretty legitimate if the laws don't actually protect people, and have been corrupted by wealthy interests, such as taxi medallion owners. Or if the laws are outdated. Ubers are consistently safer than taxis, provide better customer service, don't intentionally take long routes to scam you, actually take credit card instead of pretending their credit card reader is broken, don't refuse to drive you because you have luggage or are going a short distance or are living in a bad part of town, etc etc. It turns out that Uber's rating system is much better for people's protection than whatever laws and background checks taxis are subject to.
- ycombobreaker 10y ago> actually take credit card instead of pretending their credit card reader is broken After you've arrived at your destination, have you really found any taxi driver who would rather take _no payment_ than a credit card? If all you have is plastic--and if the driver is required to accept that form of payment--then I guess I don't see the problem (for riders). I've had drivers take my credit card # on a carbon copy physical swipe. I've had drivers admit that the card reader actually _did_ work. Unfortunately for them, I've even had drivers accept underpayment in cash because they were legitimately unprepared.
- traviscj 10y agoSo, when it is unclear whether they are scamming you, your response is: here, have a physical copy of my credit card information? Sure, the liability is with your bank, but still seems like bad decision making.
- ycombobreaker 10y agoI don't see the problem: - You are using "scamming" as a binary yes/no behavior, when in fact there is a huge difference between lying about a faulty machine and committing credit card fraud. The most likely reason for the lie (not "scam", that's too strong of a word here) is to avoid the credit processing fee. And that's _if_ they are lying in the first place. There simply isn't much (risk-adjusted) benefit for the driver to escalate that situation into credit fraud. - The information on a hard-copy swipe is identical to a magnetic swipe and also the information provided to any online merchant (i.e. CC#, name, expiration; not CVV). Why should I be any more worried about this information on a piece of paper vs. the risk of a card skimmer at a gas station? Or a security breach of any one of the multitude of online retails who I have _ever_ shopped with? - As you stated, the risk goes to the bank, as I am not liable for fraudulent transactions on my card. In fact, there's actually risk going to the driver as well: without an immediate approval, they don't know if I'm handing them a worthless card! - The implication from your statement seems to be that... you wouldn't pay the driver, who has already rendered services and is capable of accepting valid payment from you. Is that what you mean? If so, that is not OK.
- rando18423 10y agoProtect people! Ha! The laws covering cabs require them to go into undesirable areas so those that can't afford a full car can still get around, accept cash payments for those unable to get credit, vehicle inspections, and so on. When you say protect people, do you just mean the people in your bubble where everyone has a card?
- rahimnathwani 10y agoTaxis in many cities will refuse to go somewhere (e.g. JFK, South London, outer Beijing, ...) even though they are legally obligated to take you anywhere. There is little recourse. The driver's medallion won't be taken away for breaking the conditions of the monopoly.
- morgante 10y agoIf that were true, I would expect the experience of using Uber to be identical to using a taxi, or for AirBnBs to be identical to hotels. They're different experiences and certainly innovating. Just because they had to overcome legislation to grow does not mean that regulatory subversion is their only benefit.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoUber lacks the safety precautions taxis do, and they're leaving cities who mandate the level of accountability taxi companies have. AirBnB customers have reported heavy amounts of racism and bigotry, things that wouldn't fly very far very fast in the hotel industry. Regulatory subversion is what gives them the margins to operate, and if a few people get hurt or discriminated against, I'm pretty sure Uber and AirBnB are okay with that trade-off.
- morgante 10y ago> Uber lacks the safety precautions taxis do, Name those precautions and how exactly they relate to safety. > AirBnB customers have reported heavy amounts of racism and bigotry Millions of people stay in AirBnBs and the vast majority of them have positive experiences. There's no evidence of rampant racism or bigotry and any host who acted that way would be kicked off the platform. This continued insistence that Uber and AirBnB are categorically inferior to legacy companies and only profit by skirting (useful) regulations is ridiculous. If taxis were better than Uber, why would anyone ever use Uber?
- acchow 10y agoPeople have dreamt about on-demand car hailing for a long time, but it's always been a pipe dream - building the two-sided network is such too hard and too expensive, and a small network is just not worth using as a consumer. How is this not innovation?
- jsemrau 10y agoI have been able to pick up a phone and call the cab company for decades.
- thehashrocket 10y agoyeah, but unless you're in a city like New York (possibly a handful of others) the wait is FOREVER. In Phoenix it was routine to have to wait half an hour or more. Same in SLC. It's awful. Uber and Lyft reduced the wait to a fraction of the time with better, quicker and cheaper service.
- rando18423 10y agoI don't disagree with you, but your statement is incomplete without acknowledging these were also illegal services.
- Moshe_Silnorin 10y agoSure, but these are stupid laws.
- rando18423 10y agoWow, I forgot we set up our society so tech developers got to decide what kind of society we wanted. Laws requiring cabs to serve disadvantaged areas? Accept cash so people without credit could get around? Provide safe living spaces, up to code, for visitors from out of town? How disconnected from reality are you? Furthermore, what kind of precedent does flaunting legitimate laws set? Thankfully Austin was able to have some balls and not allow that shit to fly.
- zaidf 10y agoYou can apply your logic to basically any entity in history to belittle them. Everything can be positioned as a "massive case of blah" if that is your goal.
- hkmurakami 10y ago"Tesla is just growing off of government subsidies!" etc.
- rando18423 10y agoNo, making cars was never outright illegal. Operating a cap company, (or rather an illegal one), without proper licensing was. Operating a hotel out of your house was. Nice strawman.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- maccam94 10y agoUhhh it was basically illegal to make cars in the US from ~1903 to 1911 due to restrictive licensing policies aimed at excluding competitors from the market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Licensed_Automobile_Manufacturers#Control_of_the_industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Licensed_Automo... Ford Motor Co produced cars without such a license and eventually a case went to court. Ford initially lost but then the ruling was overturned.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pbreit 10y agoBut hasn't professional licensing and regulation gone a bit too far when driving someone in your car for money is supposedly illegal? What's the crime in that?
- rando18423 10y ago
- pmorici 10y agoPlease, the handful of irregularities they found at LC doesn't begin to amount to the shady stuff large banks have been caught doing. More importantly if you are a regular investor in LC loans none of the things found have caused investors in LC notes to lose money.
- ben_jones 10y agoAgreed as much as I love ragging on unicorns LC did not complicity launder money for Mexican drug cartels [1]. [1]:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/avinash-tharoor/banks-cartel-money-laundering_b_4619464.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/avinash-tharoor/banks-cartel-m...
- rando18423 10y agoWhy not just group the fraudsters and the gangsters together like we normally do? These banks have had about 15x as much time to make that mistake, to me it looks like LC was headed that route.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rando18423 10y agoreally? I think if the justice department could prove personal fraud by one of the bank CEOs they'd be alllll over that.
- pbreit 10y agoDismissing Uber & AirBnB as primarily/solely successful from exploiting legal loopholes is insulting and uninformed.
- rando18423 10y ago...ok, how? I understand it's "all about execution" but were there not explicit laws governing taxis and related services, as well as running a hotel out of your home? Did we as a society not choose to put those in place?
- pbreit 10y agoVacation rentals have been around as long as, well, homes. We as a society absolutely did not choose to forbid Uber. In fact we love it.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]