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Author Topic: Politics  (Read 511210 times)

jdc

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6990 on: April 09, 2021, 08:58:05 PM »
True, licensing across the board will usually restrict the available pool and drive up wages or costs.  You can see how taxi medallions created an artificially high valuation for taxis until Uber disrupted the market. That is something that won’t often happen outside a free market as the barrier to the market is controlled by the gov’t.  There is still a strong resistance in many places, opposed by taxi unions and city councils this is not to the benefit of the people.  But it can’t be turned back at this time, at best, they put additional restrictions and licensing requirements on them 

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“The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations” - David Friedman

Dave the Necrobumper

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6991 on: April 09, 2021, 09:21:02 PM »
True, licensing across the board will usually restrict the available pool and drive up wages or costs.  You can see how taxi medallions created an artificially high valuation for taxis until Uber disrupted the market. That is something that won’t often happen outside a free market as the barrier to the market is controlled by the gov’t.  There is still a strong resistance in many places, opposed by taxi unions and city councils this is not to the benefit of the people.  But it can’t be turned back at this time, at best, they put additional restrictions and licensing requirements on them 

How is it not to the benefit of the people? Higher wages for Taxi drivers, means a higher standards of living for the drivers families, safer roads as drivers are less likely to drive when impaired. It also means the cars are likely to be better maintained, therefore polluting less.

jdc

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6992 on: April 09, 2021, 09:24:43 PM »
True, licensing across the board will usually restrict the available pool and drive up wages or costs.  You can see how taxi medallions created an artificially high valuation for taxis until Uber disrupted the market. That is something that won’t often happen outside a free market as the barrier to the market is controlled by the gov’t.  There is still a strong resistance in many places, opposed by taxi unions and city councils this is not to the benefit of the people.  But it can’t be turned back at this time, at best, they put additional restrictions and licensing requirements on them 

How is it not to the benefit of the people? Higher wages for Taxi drivers, means a higher standards of living for the drivers families, safer roads as drivers are less likely to drive when impaired. It also means the cars are likely to be better maintained, therefore polluting less.

Artificial barriers to entry limits the available of potential jobs for those that might want to do it and artificially raises the costs to those using the service to the benefits of those that are controlling the market.  Owners of medallions were becoming millionaires by controlling the available market at the expense of those using the service and often those driving (the owner of the taxi may not be the driver).

"Beer. Now there's a temporary solution."  Homer S.
“The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations” - David Friedman

jdc

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6993 on: April 09, 2021, 09:32:38 PM »
As far as safety, the average grab and Uber I have taken have been better maintained and more pleasant than the average taxi. The typical experience I receive from the driver has usually been better as well. Before ride sharing came along, most taxi experiences could be average to unpleasant from my experience having taken them in dozens of countries.  Also, they are extremely slow to adapt to new technology. 

Uber changed all that, taxis have to keep up now, the experience has generally improved though still lags, they have adopted better booking apps but still lags, and reduce so many misc fees that make it impossible to understand what you are paying for, et

When I mean the people, I am talking about the vast amount of consumers using the service, not the few that are creating barriers to the market and making profits from those barriers

"Beer. Now there's a temporary solution."  Homer S.
“The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations” - David Friedman

Bondo

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6994 on: April 09, 2021, 09:43:04 PM »
Yeah, my experience with taxis pre-Uber was you had to call them, it was hard to arrange where they were picking you up, you had to have cash (and a lot of it because it was so expensive). It was just thoroughly difficult to orchestrate. There's a good argument that Uber/Lyft are too cheap at the expense of their drivers (though I don't accept the argument that the drivers are employees rather than contractors because there is actual law that is used to determine that and the drivers definitely fit in the contractor category), but they definitely filled a real hole in the market.

Eric/E.T.

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6995 on: April 09, 2021, 11:06:17 PM »
Also, Amazon is good? What planet are we on?

I'm on a planet where poor people are not just laborers but also consumers. Walmart and Amazon are great for low-income consumers (and to be honest, for laborers in comparison to small businesses). They have used scale to achieve great efficiencies and bring/keep prices low on a lot of products consumed by low-income individuals, boosting their quality of life. As per the above, if you hit a point of minimum wage hike that really starts hitting prices, that starts to look like a regressive tax hike. It's the conundrum with our agricultural labor too. If we had a $15/hr minimum wage and strictly enforced immigration, the cost of food would skyrocket and make people at the bottom worse off. That may not justify the pay or conditions that migrant farm workers live in, but it is at least something to keep in mind. Also worth keeping in mind is that the conditions migrant farm workers live in are still arguably better than in their home countries. See also concerns about sweatshops overseas...not something we should completely ignore, but if the alternative is no jobs, just subsistence farming, you've made their lives worse by trying to make their lives better.

Amazon and Walmart keep people poor by being the only business in town, thus being able to control wages, then peddle their shit to them, and no one needs to be thankful for that. It is not good. It is evil. Through this wondrous mechanism known as the "free" market (in quotes because it's impossible to actually get into without the proper backing, so very few people can actually be anything besides cogs in the play thing of the rich), they put their competitors out of business or co-opted them through so-called "marketplaces", so an individual has to do some level of research and (and, I'm sorry, but it's true) have a decent education to even know what the alternatives are. Walmart and Amazon are the race to the bottom, they are near the logical ends of capitalism. Once they merge or just make some sort of mutual pact to coexist, then that will be the actual end. Let us not even talk about the impact on the environment from shipping all this meaningless crap all over the planet. BTW if Amazon and Walmart were so effective at what they supposedly "do" for low-income consumers, then we wouldn't have problems with items such as food insecurity, so how efficient and effective can they really be. I wouldn't be going to a community garden tomorrow if they just had us all taken care of.

Might sound crazy, and I'm saying this out of anger, but also kind of actually feel this way: People might just get what they deserve. No one seems to stand up for themselves. They're just comfortably consumed by all of their cheap, meaningless, stupid things. Not enough people wonder how things came to be this way, or how we can take hold of this infrastructure for the people's benefit. Part of that is why I feel the need to get active. I am incapable of toiling in cynicism for too long. But I do wonder why it just seems like nobody gives a shit. While I'm at it, is this the ends of identity politics? That instead of just white men screwing over 99.9% of the country, the world, the planet, now LGBTQ+, Black, indigenous, Latinx, women, etc., also get a chance to screw over 99.9% of the country, world, and planet?

Humanity might just not know how to be human anymore. Maybe the word "human" should just be replaced by "consumer". I don't know, I will have to try to have more faith going forward, but every time I talk with someone who is so taken by this awful system, I just want to disappear.
A witty saying proves nothing. - Voltaire

Beavermoose

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6996 on: April 10, 2021, 12:54:18 AM »
People might just get what they deserve. No one seems to stand up for themselves.

Neoliberalism has gutted education and so the people standing up for themselves are storming the capital rather than trying to dismantle the corporations oppressing them.

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6997 on: April 10, 2021, 11:31:16 AM »
The Amazon comment baffles me because they displaced local grocery stores which provided easy access to food from communities. Plenty of poor people do not have access to Amazon because they do not have Internet access. Plus two days for food you need today is not helpful at all. Amazon and Walmart made poor communities poorer.

Bondo

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6998 on: April 10, 2021, 12:15:21 PM »
The Amazon comment baffles me because they displaced local grocery stores which provided easy access to food from communities.

This is such a massive stretch considering Amazon is hardly even in the grocery business (they have a niche same-day service that mostly serves upscale costumers). They aren't in competition with grocery stores in low-income areas. The various dollar store chains would be much more relevant to that area of the market.

People might just get what they deserve. No one seems to stand up for themselves.

Neoliberalism has gutted education and so the people standing up for themselves are storming the capital rather than trying to dismantle the corporations oppressing them.

This is an offensive interpretation of the insurrection. The insurrection wasn't a problem of being misdirected anger, it was a problem of being illegitimate anger. Anger based on a lie. The people who stormed the capital were not working class, by and large. They were the white collar oppressors in your scenario.

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6999 on: April 10, 2021, 01:47:11 PM »
I should have said Walmart there, not Amazon. Walmarts have destroyed neighborhood grocery stores. And Amazon is trying to get Whole Foods to get into the grocery market. It's only a matter of time.

 

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