One thing that both the minimum wage and the taxi/TNC debates constantly remind me, is that contrary to our popular mythology, this is not a country that honors hard work. No, this is a country that honors financial success.
Start a successful business or reap a stock option windfall at some spiffy startup, and we celebrate your ingenuity and effort. Fail at business, or find yourself on the wrong side of some economic disruption (or just unable to overcome the inherent socioeconomic disadvantages of being born poor) and we revile you as a loser and a moocher, no matter how long or strenuous your labor.
It is no doubt comforting to believe that those less comfortable than ourselves struggle due to some fault of their own, rather than from some structural inequity in the system from which the rest of us prosper. But it is much more than that. No, this fetishization of financial success (and contempt for failure) is deeply rooted in the Calvinist ethos that still pervades even the modern secular American psyche—one in which your reward in this world is reflective of your reward in the next, and thus a full measure of your moral worth.
You do not need to understand the theology behind this ethos to understand that it still holds sway. How else to explain the unselfconscious argument that the interests of business owners are somehow more worthy than the interests of the low-wage workers they exploit, or the total lack of empathy for (and even vilification of) the taxi drivers who have failed to effectively compete against the disruptive technology of the TNCs?
We do not reward hard work in this country because we do not honor it. And it is financial reward alone by which we generally measure a person’s true worth.
Tell that to my father who lived the American dream came here with little money is very well off now.
How you explain it is this, the taxi cab are doing a very bad job and uber is not. Hence there support.
And you say we tried deregulation once and it didn’t work. So by that logic no more attempts at a state income tax then?
This is an excellent article
Point well taken on the minimum wage issue, but that argument is flimsy at best regarding TNC’s/taxis. I think those of us more sympathetic to TNC’s would argue that it is actually the lack of hard work that has gotten the taxi industry into their current predicament. Notice I didn’t say taxi drivers. Some taxi drivers are moving between for hire and TNC vehicles. There are some good taxi drivers out there, and they will also make it as TNC drivers. Taxi service and the “industry” in Seattle sucks. I don’t understand the continual defense of a system that delivers bad service over one that is meeting a consumer need. Yes, there have been some onerous restrictions on taxis, but no one is arguing that it should be kept that way. It’s backwards to cap the progress of TNC’s as a solution to the problems of the taxi industry.
The taxi drivers are a small group of people trying to screw over a large group of people for purely selfish reasons. Those guys are arseholes, that’s why people have vilified them.
I have to strongly disagree with the point about failing at a business. Americans, as a whole, hugely favor the owners of failing businesses because it’s always someone else’s fault, typically the government. I remember maybe a couple of years after Obama’s election, a drive-thru coffee stand in “real” America went out of business, and its neighbors were explicitly blaming Obama for it, because you know the president has so much influence over the drive-thru coffee business.
The demographics of small business owners (largely white or the “good” kind of minorities) I’m sure is just a coincidence to American attitudes toward failed businesses.
You must be new here, Goldy. Taxi drivers in Seattle have been vilified, with very good reason, for many many years, starting long before Uber was even a gleam in some geek’s eye. And the vilification had, and has, nothing to do with taxi drivers’ financial success or lack thereof. It is pretty simple: provide really shitty service for a long time and people will hate you and your product. That’s true whether we’re talking about the DMV, Century Link, or the taxi industry.
If you want to be in business, you not only have to work hard, you have to provide a good product! Taxis don’t.
And in this corner, an unemployed man will complain about how the big mean capitalist economy is so unfair to hard workers.
Enjoy your victory dance for the Taxis Goldy, because it won’t last long. Technology and consumer demand will find a way around the City Council’s bullshit protectionist regulations.
Why shouldn’t the new taxi services have to conform to the same rules and regulations of the old taxi services?
Having never taken any of the new taxi services, are they mostly white guys driving?
No, my uber experiences were all east African and Indian drivers
“We do not reward hard work in this country because we do not honor it.”
That’s what I’ve been saying all along! Working your ass off for $9/hr gets you labeled as a “loser.” But I’m “successful” because I made $2,800 in the stock market today by sitting on my big fat rabbit ass and staring at a computer screen. Not only that, I get a big fat discount on my taxes! Why should anyone work in a system like that? Everyone should be a capitalist like me.
I fear that the TNCs are going to fail after gutting the existing taxi industry, and then we will have nothing.
I remember the gypsy cabs in New York City, back 20-30 years ago. These were cabs with a state license but not a city license, and were therefore operating illegally. Now a fair case could be made that the city’s handling of taxi licensing was corrupt. But even so passengers of the gypsy cabs were at risk.
I am left wondering if the profitability of the new TNC services comes from on the one hand, putting passengers and drivers at risk, and on the other, shutting out passengers without credit cards.
And bravo for a great lede.
I had a “great” experience in one of those TNCs. 45 minutes to go 4 blocks in light traffic. I was with someone who was handicapped or I would have bailed early on.
I yelled at the idiot driver 3 different times to keep him from getting on the freeway and heading to Renton. That is where his GPS told him our destination was. And speaking of scary, he was driving while looking at that GPS and punching the buttons on it AND talking on his cell phone to another driver. That other driver eventually showed up to guide our driver to our destination, which I had pointed out several times during our circling the city.
CAPITALISM MEAN!!!!!!HHHRRUMMMPHHH….UNFAIR!!!!!!!!!EVERYONE MUST BE EQUALLY POOR!!!!!!!!!RACISM!!!!!!!!!!
You’re linking positions — specifically, being against a minimum wage increase and being for relaxed restrictions on TNCs — that have nothing to do with one another. Red herring.
I side with TNCs because I don’t believe the government should be in the business of restricting competition unless it has a damned good reason. And the government doesn’t. Regulate them? Sure, and I haven’t really heard anyone argue against that. But cap them? Ridiculous. That’s just a special interest (cab companies and their drivers) trying to protect their market share via legislation. It’s the same reason I’m appalled by states that restrict the ability of Tesla to pursue a direct-to-consumer model. It’s just incumbents using legislation to forestall competition.
I’m for a significant minimum wage hike because I think it’s unreasonable that some people who work full-time are unable to support themselves. Decades of experience have shown that the market is incapable of correcting this injustice on its own, so it’s reasonable to step in. And a minimum wage seems like a mechanism that doesn’t change anyone’s business model; just changes what they have to pay for one component of their expenses. That seems to me to be the least intrusive method of addressing the problem. And as long as it’s applied uniformly, it doesn’t favor any particular business or set of businesses over any other.
I’m betting there are a lot of folks in the Seattle tech community who are on the same sides of both issues as I am. I value hard work. I think people deserve a fair shot at a decent life. But using the legislative process to forestall competition, which you yourself engendered through decades of lousy service? Unacceptable.
Plus, since you apparently value hard work so much, why are you devaluing the hard work of TNC drivers?
How’s that unemployment cock you’ve been sucking, Goldstein?
Any bets on 14 & 16 being the same TEAHADIST RETHUG MORON?
@15 Would you make an exception for massive government intervention in the agricultural industry — including planting restrictions, crop subsidies, and government purchases of farm surpluses — supported by Republican representatives of farm belt states for generations?
Update On Plane Search
An Australian satellite has spotted two objects floating in the Indian Ocean about 1,500 miles off the coast of Australia, southwest of Perth.
The Australian prime minister told his parliament that “specialist analysis” of the satellite images indicate the objects may be “plane parts.” The largest object is about 79 feet long, about the same size as a 777 tail, and the objects were bobbing on the surface.
He warned the images are indistinct and the objects may not be debris from the missing plane, but said this is “the best lead we have.”
At least 4 aircraft and a recovery ship are en route to the scene. In addition, commercial satellites are being repositioned to get a better look. A U.S. P-8 surveillance aircraft is believed to be already on the scene, but visibility in the area is described as “poor.”
The site is described as “far away” and distant from the main search area.
Oops, intended to post #19 on a different thread.
@18 If the US government’s intrusion into agriculture were a) completely focused on overall societal good and b) minimally designed to meet its objectives with the smallest possible regulatory footprint, I’d be okay with it. But the current US government approach to agriculture is the opposite of all that.
As an example, if we as a society said to ourselves, hey, it sucks that healthy vegetables are so expensive, while unhealthy crops are cheap, because it’s terrible for our health (overall societal good), and so we decided to tax high fructose corn syrup at the source and then redirect those funds to making certain healthy crops cheaper to grow and/or sell (minimal footprint), that’d be cool.
Take a look at what New Zealand (my favorite little social democratic/libertarian hybrid state) did. They went cold turkey on agricultural subsidies. Despite predictions of the complete collapse of that sector, in fact, their farmers and ranchers roared back to become some of the most efficient in the world. Heck, unsubsidized NZ lamb is cheaper in Europe than heavily subsidized European lamb.
UberX and Lyft announced their expanded insurance coverage the Friday before the Seattle City Council’s vote. This mean that the TNCs can no longer run over pedestrians without paying up.
Passenger transportation is littered with the bodies of private companies that go out of the business. Black Ball Ferry lines – bought out by the state in 1951. Heavy rail passenger service – abandoned by the railroads leading to the creation of Amtrak. Interurban Light Rail – bankrupt by 1927 due to competition from automobiles, only reemerging 70 years later as taxpayer funded Sound Transit. SeaTac/King County airports – funded by port and county. Metro took over private bus companies Seattle transit and a number of suburban bus lines that were facing bankruptcy in 1972.
Taxis and long distance bus lines are really the only forms of passenger transportation left that are unsubsidized private businesses.
Taxis are public utilities with regulated rates. They are available to those without credit cards or smart phones. Wheelchair vans are not profitable but are provided as part of the public utility function.
Part of the bargain is that the number of taxis are capped so that the operators can make enough money to meet their responsibilities such as insurance. That is something that the corner cutting TNCs have not demonstrated that they can do.