Sunday, August 20, 2017

Fluid Law and how Uber Successfully Exploited It

The guy almost gets the story. One thing he misses, though, is how Uber, with its "Madison Avenue" strategy is able to exploit the natural, systemically inevitable, corruptibility of most politicians.

This whole Uber phenomenon would not have been successful at all, given that taxi regulations already exist, unless they could get the politicians on board, and convince them, or persuade them to pretend they actually believe, that Uber was not in the taxi business. Hence, Uber taxis are exempt from existing taxi regulations.

Most people would interpret this state of affairs as a tilting of the playing field, which it is.

The sleazebags at Hamilton's City Hall came up with the term, "New Licensing Category" in order to facilitate Uber's circumvention of the existing taxi bylaw.

"New Licensing Category" is nothing but a code word for tilting the playing field in favour of a politically sexy fad. In every-day taxi industry parlance, it is the equivalent of granting an unlimited number of taxi licenses to the Uber corporation, which of course, instantly devalues the lifetime investments of those poor suckers who made the error of investing their lives in the "Old Licensing Category." Both categories of licenses, obviously exist at the whim of trusted politicians.

This leads me to ask the question: How can anyone in today's world make any kind of plan for the future? People in the Hamilton taxi industry have spent decades in the business, have configured their lives and investment decisions around the City's taxicab regulatory system, only to discover that the political invention of a "New Licensing Category" has turned their lifetime efforts into worthless dust.

This is the price we all pay by putting too much power into the hands of government, and too much trust into the hands of those who gravitate to elected office.

The most important lesson here is not that Uber managed to cleverly provide a cheaper service by cutting corners on regulatory costs, but that they were allowed to get away with it.

Uber is a perfect lesson in political science.