Thursday, January 3, 2019

Should Uber go into the Pot Business in Hamilton?

What difference would it make?

Consider the following fake report, courtesy of Uncle Block's Bullshit Detection Academy:

Councillor supports additional resources for police effort to close Illegal taxi operators.

Colon doesn't have much faith in courts to impose maximum penalties

City Coun. Collin Colon said he would support providing additional resources to Hamilton police in the ongoing effort to shut down illegal taxicab operators.

“I’d love to confiscate every single car that’s involved with this. I’ll be the first one to work with my colleagues to give (police) the resources,” Colon said during the first Hamilton Police Services Board meeting of the new council term.

City councillor and fellow new police board member Naomi Chomsky asked Chief Pondar Zullini to elaborate on the difficulty of permanently shutting down illegal taxi operators.

“We want to make sure we do it properly,” Zullini said.

“I’d love to confiscate every single taxi that’s involved with this."

Collin Colon

Deputy Chief Vink Blohrheim spoke to city councillors at a general issues committee earlier in the week regarding challenges shutting down illegal taxi cabs. He noted 30 Uber drivers were pulled over and given summons between January and October this year. Of those, none ever paid a fine and went right back into business.

Zullini noted one former illegal taxi operator told councillors they averaged between $200 and $400 a day. He said a minimum fine of around $0.00 is seen as the cost of doing business (And by gosh! The price is right!) and doesn’t stop the illegal cabs from operating.

Blohrheim told the board that since legalization in October, no more Uber cabs were pulled over and none were shut down. Meanwhile, the non-exempt, non-Uber cabs continued to be subject to rigorous bylaw enforcement.

“There might be a perception in the courts that it’s just a business. It’s not. There’s no regulations,” Zullini said.

Blohrheim said that impounding the cars of illegal taxi operators would require the police, and the City of Hamilton, to accept legal liability for the cabs and any assets inside. That would incur additional costs such as hiring security.

“We don’t want to expose the police, and the city, to lawsuits,” Zullini said.

He said he’s holding out hope the courts will recognize the huge profit margin of the illegal taxis and the risks involved in unregulated cabs that could be mixed with other modes of transportation.

“I don’t have great faith in the courts doing the maximum,” Colon said. “My fear is we’ll be left in the same situation, with dozens open. I firmly believe the federal and provincial governments have dropped the ball.”


Uncle Block's Thoughts on Pot Shops.

One thing I have noticed on my daily travels throughout the Hamilton area is that, unlike the Beer Store and the LCBO, the pot shops don't have a panhandler stationed outside.

The fake news report I presented above was taken from a report in the Hamilton News..

What I did was to cut and paste the text of the report into my editor and proceed to change some of the words and names. It's actually a technique I frequently use when reading any alleged "news" from the legacy media. It's one of my analytical tools. I find it very handy in determining whether those advocating a given position on an issue do so out of adherance to certain principles, or merely out of political opportunism. Bureucrats and politicians never get a good score, in my mind.

Imagine this report,

Mr. Trump told the woman at the time, “I’m sorry. If I had known you were reporting for a national paper, I never would have been so forward.”

In other words, "if I had misjudged your potential leverage, given our obvious power differential," I would have pretended to be someone else.

Did Trump really say that?

Ask your friends.

Comparing the way politicians dealt with the Uber issue gave me an idea as to how Hamilton's beleaguered pot dealers could circumvent the politicians and their "principles."

Get an APP.

Get an APP.

Instead of having 30 or 40 physically static dispensaries, which is so 19th century, consider "sharing" your pot. Bribe the city for a "ride-hailing" license ($50,000) and mobilize your stores. Overnight, your 30 or 40 easily raidable dispensaries could turn into a thousand moving targets.

And if you get in early, you could turn yourselves into a $60 billion dollar company.

Problem

How do you actually get your legal product from A to B?

The first part is easy. B is the buyer. All they have to do is tap an app.

As to the supply side, off the top of my head, I can visualize two solutions at this point.

The first would be to engage the entrepreneurial skills of the army of private pot growers who were competently serving the citizens of Hamilton long before any retarded politician ever imagined he could erect a system of "responsible" and efficient pot distribution. All they would have to do to join the network would be to download an app for homegrown pot "sharers" who happened to own cars, or had friends who owned cars. The pot would be free. The customer would only pay for the delivery. The original grower would be awarded a "booking fee." (Nudge, nudge.)

Or....

The pot dispensaries could be located on the Indian reserves. Pot distribution could be modelled along the lines of the current tobacco sharing industry.

And it may come to that yet.

Even better would be a combination of the two.

"Sharing Posts" on the res, and a thousand and one immigrants and college students looking to pay off their student loans, or make a few bucks to buy beer, and thousands of quality private growers looking to reduce the odds that their homes will be confiscated in some bullshit forfeiture proceeding would pop up like weeds.

Capitalism, though hampered, will continue to do what it does best. Matching buyers with sellers.

Maybe this is what Marx really meant when he said,

"To each according to his need, and from each according to his ability."


Fucking hilarious!

I kept imagining I was reading something from Monty Python.

"Germany entices illegal migrants to leave with bribes — free rent for a year back home".

( https://nationalpost.com/news/world/germany-entices-illegal-migrants-to-leave-with-bribes-free-rent-for-a-year-at-home )

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