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Artist's Impression Of What China Just Did To Uber
Uber - the $40 billion valued cab-app company (or massively disruptive awesome transportation optimzation company) - has a problem. As Bloomberg reports,
- *CHINA BANS PRIVATE CARS FROM OFFERING CAB SERVICES VIA APPS
The crackdown appears to have been set in motion following lobbying efforts by Beijing’s established licensed taxi companies, which operate cabs whose prices are capped at below-market rates by the state; adding to Uber's banned countries list...
How Uber drivers (and investors) feel now...
* * *
Car-hailing apps such as Uber are facing a new year crackdown against “illegal” taxi drivers in Beijing, making the city the latest in a long line of trouble spots for the San Francisco-based start-up that has sought to disrupt city transport worldwide.
Liang Jiangwei, director of Beijing’s traffic enforcement unit, said in a statement to the Financial Times on Wednesday that the use of unlicensed taxis by internet hailing apps violated a ban on illegal taxis. He said a crackdown began on January 1, and drivers face fines of up to Rmb20,000 ($3,221).
“Some of these vehicles are ‘taxi clones’,” he said. “Many passengers have filed complaints.”
According to the Beijing Youth Daily, a state-run paper: “This is the first time that Beijing has publicly affirmed that private cars operating via taxi apps is considered an act of illegal operation”.
...
Uber operates both premium car service Uber Black and newly launched Peoples’ Uber, which is priced to compete with regular taxis in Beijing. The company said they were looking into the matter and planned to issue a statement.
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The list is mounting...
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Ho Li Fuk !
Ding bang ow!
Unregulated = state doesn't get its cut = illegal
It's not that, it's protectionism by the taxi unions and their govt pals,
Uber drivers don't take cash, its all cards, ie records, they'd be crazy to try evade tax, esp in China,
Hmmmm, Uber wit Bitcoin might be interesting,
"Hmmmm, Uber wit Bitcoin might be interesting,"
Not in the US. The beat downs from the popos would be epic when the light bulb that the state wasn't getting its cut went off in some sniveling bureaucrat's mind.
true,
although, if the cops were smart they could sign up and pick up passengers in their patrol cars, they could even charge a premium to stick on the lights and sirens to get you there in double time:)
I'd pay for that, it'd be great to ride in the back of a police car without a set of cuffs on for once:)
It's stuff like this that lets me know the US is still FAR behind the rest of the world in banning things.
I can understand the discomfort that elites have with the US. We are still allowed far too much freedom. Obama is doing what he can, but he can't do it all alone. We need to get some REAL movements started to ban a lot more things. We should start at the top of the list and work our way down. That would be the first and second ammendments to the Constitution for openers. Those two alone would bring us at least to a competitive level with other far more progressive and elightened societies throughout the world.
You need regulated industries to protect consumers. You never know who will come to pick you up in an Uber car, best bet to go with the nice person in the cab
/sarc
I don't think the US would have lasted this long without the second ammendment, perhaps that was the idea, use the US to globalize the world and add a second ammendment to keep it from eating itself like most fascist regimes do.
Is this one of those street chalk drawings? impressive
Gov't bans out of control; Uber, sledding and hoodies.
http://rt.com/usa/219499-oklahoma-lawmakers-ban-hoodies/
Key and Peale explain the utility of hoodies to Black youth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhiuOtF07SQ
Uber is a criminal enterprise evading local taxes on the scale of billions of dollars worldwide and facing RICO charges in multiple jurisdictions.
With 161 paid lobbyists in DC alone(!!) Uber can continue its deception on US soil for quite some time. Ads, lies, corrupt politicians - anything and everything will be used to perpetuate this massive fraud.
At our collective expense.
Half of Europe and Asia have already banned Uber. Others awaiting pending court decisions.
because the cab drivers have found a loophole way to abuse and make money off of fake cab bookings done on app from non-driver cell phones.
That's why.
Mi sink Lo!
NO PROGRESS ALLOWED.
How Hi Was An Uber Driver !
Uber nicht alles.
Free markets!
/s
Free markets doesn't mean I pay my share of taxes - and you don't, I follow existing laws - and you don't, I pay municipal and regulatory surcharges - and you don't.
Free markets means we are competing by the same rules, and if you don't like the rules - then lobby to change them in a legal ethical way. Don't pirate around in the industry that employes millions worldwide and feeds millions more. We are not barbarians.
What's next to be banned, hitchhiking?
Rambo had that problem.
well played, sir. Just wanted something to eat!
So much for getting the bail of weed from Columbia to Toronto. Now my customers in San Fran are gonna be REALLY ticked off.
My entire supply chain had ZERO humans in it.
Time to ring up Senator Smashinov again....
That's Funny.
Like am getting hot flushes because i'm down to my last bale.
The government is here to help.
Man, it was a really bad day today. it got ubered, corzined and stolpered.
The funny thing is many of the cab meters are jerry-rigged to show much higher [and illegal] rates. I remember being told my first time to Bejing to be sure the cab had a meter. So I picked one where the cab had a meter and the cabbie kept repeating "see, meter...see, meter.." as he pointed to the meter again and again.
Only one problem, the meter was tampered with to triple the rate.
Fake money, fake meters, and so on...it's par for the course there. If Congress approves Perdue sending their chickens over there to be "processed" who knows what will come back.
Where does ZH getthis shit? "prices are capped at below-market rates by the state"
If cabs are priced below larket then Uber can't compete because nobody goes out fo their way to spend more.
So maybe cab prices aren't "capped at below-market rates by the state"
Public transportation is usually a point of rape and control by the state, not discount.
delete
You didn't read the article that was linked did you? Otherwise you would have found this in the fifth paragraph:
"The crackdown appears to have been set in motion following lobbying efforts by Beijing’s established taxi companies, which operate cabs whose prices are capped at below-market rates by state fiat."
So to answer your question they got it from FT.com.
It hasn't been banned in Ireland, yet, but you need a taxi licence to do it,
And guess who gives out taxi licences?
It's disgusting, fck govts and fck the taxi unions,
Uber is the future, eventually it will get around all this crap,
And when it does, my arse will never touch the seat of a poxy rip off taxi ever again,
Why? Uber issuing its own licenses is better than your local government collecting these funds?
Note. This is not your federal government. Federals actually support this power-grab by Uber.
It's your local government that is collecting those funds.
Next they will ban car-pooling....
Uber and the like ought to be killed this way before they are drawn and quartered by the A.B.A.
This is corporate power stepping in to tell ordinary people they may not participate in the market place. They must stand a side and let politically connected corporations take business with out competition. Corporations hate the word "competition" more than they hate the word "socialism".
This type of law is coming to America. Where ever the internet brings people together to sell and trade services outside corporate America, these will be attacked by the bought and paid for whores of congress. Anyone who still argues for free markets and American capitalism is off their head. You think today's system is free market? You think congress does not smash small business on orders from corporations? All the rgulations corporations complain about are a hoax, corporations are the ones who pushed congress to heavily regulate business in order to kill all small business. Ever try to start any kind of small business, even tiny business? Government will laugh at you, send you mountains of paper work, then come visit you with threats, then bankrupt you, while your corporate competition takes back the people you tried to service as customers.
Local Governments have two main reasons to exist. #1 To give high paying jobs to all the well connected sons and daughters of local elites. I see this in my town, look who works at city hall or the school districts offices, if you live in a small town, you know how they got those jobs! #2. to kill off all little people trying to make a living in small business, so to clear the playing field for corporations and their chains.
This is ended up longer than I thought but I have to say one thing positive for nepotism. It exists because it means an employer doesn't have to take any undue risk by hiring a known commodity as opposed to an outright stranger who is probably lying on their resume and the HR department in charge is too lazy to do any fact checking themselves outside of LinkedIn. It's pretty safe to deduce that a person who gets a job these days is going to be grateful to get one. Also, if they are not a total douchebag, they will work so as to not make their connected relative look bad either.
I have to agree with your view that corporations are the problem but not all corporations are equally evil.
The problem is the concentration of wealth. The wealthy have a vested interest in alienating the general population from the one institution they have a say in: government. It's all about the numbers and who directs public policy is their own threat. So, for the longest time, there has been considerable treasure and effort to make government look bad. The most obvious example is the think tank, which is simply a group of people paid to say things that would be riduculed if their rich patrons said it themselves. Other examples include business schools as a whole, but also the gradual takeover of post-secondary education where STEM is emphasized over everything. That's done so people can answer "how" questions, not "should we" questions as much as can be possibly done. "How do I create GMO food" instead of "should we make GMO food." Post-secondary education is now about restricting thought through as much specialization as possible so people do not naturally think outside their siloes.
Any surprise that a corporation will work in these ways to benefit themselves? This is also one of the benefits of the silo mentality our education system produces. They can discount any negative effects as externalities if they can actually see them at all.
Basically, the wealthy merely want government to do one thing: protection of their private property and to have the judiciary exist only to service them. Even when spending for social services goes up, nearly all of it is funnelled through outside organizations (not all non-profit, either, i.e., JPM runs EBT cards for SNAP/food stamps). What's interesting is just how amazingly brazen ZIRP has been the single largest wealth transfer exercise in human history, light years beyond any sort of "welfare queen" nonsense that ever came from the far right. It's even giving the military-industrial complex a run for it's money.
More and more of the take is being sucked up by the 'parasite' class because they produce nothing of value but need wealth and resources to live just like everyone else needs to. Look at the explosion of lobbyists and "social media image experts" corporations are now hiring. The frontline worker in charge of delivering services, both public and private, is worked to death because it's advantageous to the employer and a ready pool of eager workers to replace "difficult" employees. People jumping up and down on public employees are buying into the propaganda. One person described it as an inverted pyramid where you have a tiny group of people who actually do the work but have to funnel up paperwork to more and more people above them. Classic example of "too many chiefs and not enough indians." We pay the chiefs way too much and the indians way too little. I believe that is the core of Western dysfunction. I've seen sh*t in the last transnational corporation I worked for that made North Korea look like a streamlined vision of the future. It was so unbearable I had to leave in 2009 and I was literally questioning the value of humanity and caused health problems.
The idea that markets would make things better is just a classic case of the grass being greener on the other side. Bolsheviks thought that by coopting capitalism and creating their state capitalist utopia would work out in the end, but it didn't. All they merely did was replace a private owner with a Kommisar but nothing else changed (literally).
It's no surprise that the GOP often campaigns that "government doesn't work" then they get elected and prove it true. Any shock? No, just look at the revolving door nature between government and big business. The same people are basically running both either directly or having the ear of key policymakers and run the show behind the curtain. The elected know where their bread is buttered and so merely have to bamboozle enough of the voting public to get elected. Because of this, I often say that the only smart voter now is the non-voter.
So, is government REALLY the problem here, or their overly powerful paymasters on the outside who have gamed the system for their benefit? It's pretty obvious why these paymasters are determined to drive a wedge between Joe Public and the idea of governance or simply make people apethetic to their plunder of society.
The idea that we can somehow return to the Eden of free markets to solve the problem is not an idea people have thought through. The wealthy and affluent will have the resources and means to undermine "free markets" just as they have done to undermine democratic representational government. They will adapt in order to preserve themselves.
Anways, my $0.02.
I took a lot of taxi's in Beijing. I take a ride to the airport in canada and its 40 bucks. That same ride in Beijing is about 7 bucks. What gets me is the price of gasoline is almost the same here and there.
Ok, David Plouffe, what do you do now?
Fark David Plouffe and other corrupt creeps working for Uber.
Jesus Christ, own your own car, how hard is that? I have at least five of them.
In my county, they recently allowed ATVs full access to the roads. Seriously, how fucked up is that?
Get one of these for under a grand. Live long, and prosper.
What are you on about?
Where is this magic place you live where there is ample free parking everywhere and it's not illegal to drink and drive?
It's still illegal to d&d of course, but with a Rhino-brand ATV, you're less likely to get pulled over heading home! Just like a scooter that requires no papers, only all your buddies can fit in it after going to the strip club.
Mesa County, Colorado.
Fair enough, but where I live you would be pulled over instantly on one of those yokes, drunk or sober,
and i'v yet to meet a women who would be cool with being picked up on an ATV to go out for dinner:)
Yeah, I know. And although legal, cannabis is prohibited here, yet driving an unregulated 35mph multi-person fatwagon is AOK.
It was odd that Mesa County decided to stay dry. They had a huge grower population in the 90's and 00's.
They're still here, only they own big second homes in Glenwood, plus businesses and grow-space in warehouses all the way to Carbondale. Stupid, backward Mesa County. Fills me with lulz, though.
You can park anywhere you want to out where I live. (which also happens to be in Colorado but a different county)
And you can drink and drive all you want because there are no cops, no traffic lights, and really no traffic out here.
The problem with Uber is that it is a corporation.
If it was a free app it would be like a physical ride sharing board.
Corporations are now "individuals" which means they can be mugged, not just mug us.
Bitcoin has the same problem; supossedly an egalitarian alternative to banks and central banks yet using corporate hardware over military connections.
This new fangled company named Uber
Offers cheaper fares to end users
Taxis & limo’s are miffed
And governments pissed
Looks like Uber winds up the big loser.
With all due respect to the Limerick King. I know, I know, dont try this at home. Leave it to the professionals!
It factually didn't offer cheaper fares. What it did instead it manipulated the prices using its surge-pricing model. In this model prices change many times a day.
it didn't take a while for Uber itself to admit that "yes, we have artificially reduced number of available drivers so that prices could go up".
See, they are taking their cut off the charged fares. They have direct and immediate interest in bringing the prices up.
Uber goes under. Oops.
Did you expect anything different from the lobbying by the licensed taxi companies (hint, the ones that pay taxes to the government) - against a citizen centered untaxed service?
You see the same thing if you want to open a business selling popcorn or hot dog or loosies -- no license (i.e. tax) - thus the cops will hound you and arrest you (even if you are Muslim or Black)!
I'd just like to know in what fucked-up world do we live in which a company of ad-hoc taxi drivers is valued at $40 billion?
http://worldhistoryproject.org/topics/dot-com-bubble
Mirror, mirror on the wall, what is the most repressive government of them all. They started to shut down facebook, then they shut down Twitter, they're trying to shut down Bitcoin, now it's time for Uber. Hah! We can see you! - Andreas M. Antonopoulos
We have Uber here in Boise, ID. The city started to cite them for working with out a license.
http://www.ktvb.com/story/news/local/2015/01/08/uber-free-rides-boise/21...
shitbag communists
If anybody wants to know why the world is so fcuked up and the economy is sliding into depression, look no further than the anti-competitive actions being taken around the world to Uber. Spain's blanket ban doesn't surprise me one jot. And all to protect rip-off fares by taxi drivers.
Innovation, progress and free market competition are fast becoming bad things that must be banned.
We are entering a new Dark Ages.
Uber is not innovation. They literally stole the idea and Uber wasn't the first app that allowed to dispatch a vehicle using a smartphone.
What's next? We will be calling Fartbook and Twinner - "innovation" ?
The sad state of affairs is that we swallow this corporoate sponsored agenda, same way that Walmart generated decades ago. Nothing changed - same lies, same deception, same ads.
As far as I know, none of the countries/cities/towns that have banned Uber did so because "they [Uber] literally stole the idea", as you say. It is being banned to stifle and restrict competition and to keep taxi prices up.
I wouldn't put Uber in the same category as FB or Twitter, Uber is useful.
China's shrinking economy is causing them all sorts of issues. It should be no surprise that Uber would be banned there to protect taxi industry. They can see the writing on the wall in several industries...
http://www.globaldeflationnews.com/deflationary-forces-continue-to-exert...
http://www.globaldeflationnews.com/which-banking-system-is-more-at-risk-...
http://www.globaldeflationnews.com/chinese-housing-market-suffering-from...
This has nothing to do with China's economy. This has everything to do with Uber being a criminal enterprise violating laws, evading taxes and facing RICO charges in courts worldwide.