Here is just one of many reports that continue to trickle in, in the wake of granting the Uber taxi corporation legal exemption from the bylaws covering all other taxi operators.
Predicting this outcome was not rocket science. (Published on Aug 21, 2016)
Meanwhile
and so true to form, the same boneheads who created this monstrous two-tiered taxi system in Hamilton are now setting their sights on "fixing" the payday loan industry.
The campaign, spearheaded by none other than the prominent fake social justice warrior, Matthew Green, and seconded by the mayor, who never met a touchy-feely, virtue-signaling slogan he didn't like, aims to "help" vulnerable people.
And this is where the true genius of these infuriating politicians really comes out. They think they are going to "help" people without bank accounts by reducing the number of payday outlets to 15.
Duh!
How is limiting competition supposed to lower the costs of these services? And how is limiting the number of locations supposed to "help" the desperate and poor by forcing them to expend more of their limited resources in getting to those outlets?
If there were more payday outlets they would:
A: face more competition. Competition always drives prices lower. The vulnerable would like that. (Don't expect a politician to understand it.)
and B: it would remove barriers to the desperate and poor by making them easier to get to. This would lower the true cost of payday loans. (Don't expect a politician to understand it.)
Leave it to virtue signaling politicians, who rarely spend five minutes in the real world, to get it all ass-backwards, again.
From my cab experiences, I can remember taking many of these vulnerable people to Money Mart when it was just about the only game in town at 15 King Street East. Some would spend as much as $40 or more, in today's rates for the round trip, ON TOP OF whatever Money Mart charged them. It was always a stressful trip, because I would have to wait in the no stopping lane while they went inside to argue about whether the check was any good. This often happened around rush hour. Buses would rudely honk at me for occupying their stops. Parking enforcement officers were swirling around like flies around outdoor privies, and some countries.
I HATED those trips.
And to make matters worse, if the check was no good, the desperate and poor cab driver didn't get paid. Where is Matthew Green when you really need him?
These phony virtue-signaling politicians would probably support having zero payday loan outlets in the city. Then the vulnerable might have to take cabs to Toronto to cash their checks.
But since most desperate and poor payday customers don't have credit cards, it's doubtful they'll be using Uber cabs to get their money.
Another virtual signaling fake, a guy by the name of Tom Cooper, director of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction is also doing some hand-waving, and other mystic gesticulations to pretend that he is doing "something" to eliminate poverty. And just like all of the other members of his cult, he's busy cooking up ideas about how someone else could, followed by should, followed by be ordered to, solve the problem. Or else!
"Banks also have a role to play in opening up their credit services to customers they're now turning away, Cooper added."
Yeah. A really innovative idea. Make someone else pay.
You can read all about this latest initiative from Hamilton's roster of busy-body interlopers in the link below. It might be advisable to have a motion sickness bag handy while you do.
You have to thank the many private citizens and businessmen who, through the production of real value through hard work, continue to do a great job making Hamilton a livable city, in spite of the interminable efforts of Hamilton's politicians to screw things up. If it were left up to the politicians, who's handiwork is most visible in the condition of our streets, Hamilton would be a real shithole.
Well, not just Matthew Green. These criticisms broadly apply to most politicians, especially those of a communist, or "liberal," bent.
But since Mr. Green seems to enjoy the publicity he gets when squirting his virtue signals on every political hydrant he can find, to bolster his self-image as some kind of hero for the marginalized, I will use him as an example in this analysis.
He just got more digital ink on (where else?) the CBC website.
Now he's pretending to care about people who, for whatever reason, choose to patronize payday loan places. He claims, "he's tired of what he says is a predatory industry that preys on Hamilton's most vulnerable." And by this, he is not referring to that predatory industry that pays his salary at the expense of the tax vulnerable customers of the Corporation of the City of Hamilton. (You know, like the people who are being forced to pay for engineered gridlock on Hamilton's downtown streets.)
Nope. He's talking about expanding the market for his own business. I.E. Government Inc. The bigger Government Inc. gets, the more secure Mr. Green et. al.'s careers become. And he wants it all done without lifting a finger, or spending a penny of his own. Just like his soul brother in Queen's Park.
For the mayor to write to the province asking it to strengthen the Payday Loans Act.
For the letter to include a request to let municipalities limit the number of payday loan businesses in their cities, and to regulate the locations.
For city staff to research the feasibility of establishing a licence for payday loan outlets.
For city staff to map out payday loan and check-cashing outlets and report back on possible "alternative accessible financial services."
Let's go over these one by one.
1 - For the mayor to write to the province asking it to strengthen the Payday Loans Act.
Brilliant. Make it more difficult for payday loan places to operate, and expect that the price of their services will go .... down. This kind of economic thinking is all too comon. Also common, is that those advocating the policy do basically nothing more than advocate it. No personal risk or expense is involved.
2 - For the letter to include a request to let municipalities limit the number of payday loan businesses in their cities, and to regulate the locations.
Sure. Brilliant idea Mr. Green. Limit the number of payday loan businesses, thus limiting competition among them, and expect the price to go ... down.
Not to mention that, limiting the number of payday outlets only makes it harder for the people whom Mr. Green pretends to care about to access the services they value. Duh!
Not to mention it will cost Mr. Green $0.
3 - For city staff to research the feasibility of establishing a licence for payday loan outlets.
To do what, exactly? To give people like Mr. Green more power in manipulating the market? To, for example, mandate the rates that will be charged?
But what if Uber decides to get into the payday loan game? Just tap an app and poof! There goes up to 50% of your digital paycheck. Will Uber get an exemption just like the one they got with taxi licenses?
With this current crew of politicians on city council, anything is possible.
How much would this "solution" cost Mr. Green? Zip. Zero. Zilch.
Would Mr. Green end up with a seat on the licensing tribunal, with the power of life or death for people caught in its net? I'd be willing to bet that he would.
Politicians, man. Their motives and incentives are so blazinlgy transparent. Government is a business, just like any other. And it's officers and employees are governed by the exact same forces as govern those in the non-exempt sectors.
If they figure out a way to rip you off, they'll do it.
4 - For city staff to map out payday loan and check-cashing outlets and report back on possible "alternative accessible financial services."
Again, such imbecility from the Pavlovian mentality of a politician. If there were possible "alternative accessible financial services," the people who are being ripped off would already know about them. By the time "city staff" ever got around to identifying any of these "alternative accessible financial services," the world would have already changed, rendering their discoveries worthless.
But again, none of this pissing away of public resources would cost Mr. Green one red cent. If it turns out to be a wild goose chase, no one will even know about it. And if, by some remarkable anomaly, it returns something of value, Mr. Green will be happy to take credit.
Working with numbers can be a lot of fun. At least, I think so. I once took an in-house course, back when I had a real job, called "Strategies of Experimentation." I can't remember anything I learned in that course, but it made an impression on me that impacts my thinking to this day. It says that if you don't have solid data to work with, use the next best thing. Try to build a cloud of probability. Use whatever information you do have and think about whether it falls within the realm of reasonable expectation.
The following analysis attempts to use this approach to some degree.
What is known for sure is the approximate amount each taxi operator pays to the taxi broker for the service of matching riders with drivers - just like any other "technology company." That is $500 per month, per cab, or $6000 per year, per cab. With 448 licensed cabs in Hamilton, the two brokers share an income of 448 X $6,000 = $2,688,000 (two million, six hundred and eighty-eight thousand dollars.)
In accordance with Hamilton politician's shady deal with the Uber corporation, the city has declared that it expects to receive an initial bribe of $50,000 (the so-called Uber license fee,) plus an additional bribe of $20,000 to exempt Uber from any accessible transportation mandates. In addition to that $50K the deal that received "unanimous" support from council, Uber, the two brokers, and the taxi school, requires that Uber transfer six cents from every Uber ride to the City. According to published reports, the city estimates that Uber drivers will run one million trips per year. At $0.06 per trip that adds up to $60,000 extra dollars for the city.
It will, of course, be very interesting to see how the real numbers add up, now that Uber has been operating under this deal for almost a year.
In the meantime, I will use the City's estimates to arrive at a picture of how much local Hamilton money is being extracted and sent to Uber's banks in the Netherlands, for eventual distribution amongst Goldman Sach's, Saudi Arabia, and the rest of Uber's investors.
First off, there is Uber's $2.80 "booking fee," the equivalent of the non-exempt taxi brokerage fees. At one million trips per year in Hamilton, Uber makes $2.8 million dollars. That amount, alone, exceeds the $2,688,000 the two brokers earn for doing the same thing as Uber.
The real brilliance in Uber's "business model" is not the technology built in to its dispatch software (a dime a dozen,) but in its ability to sucker its hundreds of thousands of drivers into surrendering an additional 25% of the income they earn after rider and driver have been matched, using "assets they already own" in Tim Hudak's famous words. In other words, Uber's driver/"partners" turn assets they already own (or financed) into income for Uber.
It's a stroke of pure genius.
Note: My calculations exclude HST.
In the absense of data, I will asume that the average Uber trip in Hamilton runs about $12.00. Minus the $2.80 booking fee, the remaining $9.20 is composed of the $2.50 basic fare, the $0.90 cents per Km charge, and any time charges at $.15 per minute.
Out of that $9.20, Uber receives an additional 25%, or $2.30. Multiply that by the estimated one million Hamilton trips per year, and Uber sends another $2.3 million dollars to its Netherlands banks.
Adding that $2.3 million dollars to the $2.8 million dollars, it emerges that Hamilton City council basically handed the Uber corporation $5 million dollars per year to provide a redundant service.
Hamilton's non-exempt taxi sector was already at roughly 400% over-capacity. (That is why you see long queues of taxicabs all over the city. They have been idled by regulatory incompetence. Are you pissed off by that taxi driver loitering in the parking spot you wanted? Don't blame him. Blame the city council.)
Correspondingly, the Hamilton City Council transferred about one million trips per annum from the non-exempt taxi drivers to Uber.
One million trips per annum, at an estimated $12 per trip for non-exempt taxis equates to about a $12 million reduction in income amongst Hamilton's 1,200 non-exempt cab drivers, or $10,000 per driver. This estimate jibes with the cab driver I interviewed regarding Mayor Fred Eisenberger's fake news. When I asked this driver how much income he has lost as a result of Uber partnering up with the city he stated, "Oh, a couple hundred per week." $200 per week times 52 weeks equals $10,400 per year. Two numbers in the same ball park.
Again, these numbers are ball-park. The real number could be between, say $8,000 and $12,000. (Or wider. Prove me wrong if you can.) If anyone reading this has better data, I beg you, please share it with me. Similarly, if anyone wishes to quibble with my arithmetic, please speak up.
Numbers aside, from some of the feedback I have been getting from some of the drivers I have spoken to, the City's rigging of the local taxi market in favour of Uber has really hurt them. Many have resorted to paying Uber to use their personal cars as taxicabs.
One driver told me, "I never would have believed I would find myself wishing I was ten years older, so I could be out of this mess."
Another driver expressed delight at the fact that his diabetes condition had escalated to the point where his prescription costs finally made him eligible for the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP.)
Think about that for a second. ODSP is now seen as a step up the career ladder for some Hamilton cab drivers.
The members of council had to be aware of the harm and hardship their decision to allow Uber to enter the Hamilton taxi market would impose on the most vulnerable members of the taxi industry. Yet they went ahead and did it. If the mayor is to be believed, the council vote was unanimous.
Last night (Dec 4, 2017) one driver told me he had to use overdraft protection to pay his rent, for the first time ever.
Thank you, Hamilton City Council.
And then think about this the next time you see one of our local politicians flatulating about their desire to eliminate poverty in Hamilton, or virtue signaling their approval of the pending minimum wage hike, which will only serve to lotterize (my word invention - "to make a lottery of") income distribution for those on the margins. Just like McWynne's guaranteed income project.
And then think again, about the $5 million dollars Hamilton City Council handed to Uber on a silver platter on the pretext that this had anything to do with "technology."
The same tales of misery have been replicated in every jurisdiction in Ontario where local politicians complied with Uber's business model.
Of note: "Mr Rowe said drivers are working increasingly long hours and being fined by gardai as they are unable to even find a place to park on a rank." (See Hamilton GO station, or King St. near the Sheraton Hotel.)
50 taxi driver suicides in past 4 years - See here.
December 2017 - Hamilton's "Check Engine Light" Crisis
The latest in Hamilton's Fake Campaign to "Level the Playing Field" between Exempt and Non-Exempt Taxi Companies
Over the latter part of November, I started to hear several reports about the newly deployed "Mobile Enforcement Officer(s)" accosting, and in one case, following and cornering a non-exempt cab driver for on road spot checks. In too many of these reports, the cabs were cited for having "check engine" lights glowing on the instrument panels.
Last summer, then Senior Project Manager for the city, Monica Ciriello responded to an inquiry by taxi school lobbyist, Steve Jones, regarding the status of the City's enforcement of the terms of its new arrangement with the Uber cab company. In her response, she noted that the city was in the process of hiring a mobile enforcement officer to perform on road spot checks.
I suspected at the time that this would be another one of the City's classic bait and switch tactics. Yes, one or more mobile enforcement officers would be deployed, but instead of focusing on the invisible Uber cabs, they would end up targeting the non-exempt taxis.
As the reports started coming in to me, I felt vindicated. I can read this city government like a book.
In the case of Uber, the City collects a six cent per trip dividend from Uber. The City, therefore, has a built in incentive to see Uber not only succeed, but expand. In effect, Uber and the City of Hamilton are now partners. The non-exempt taxi operators are their competition.
On 25 November, 2017, I sent a followup to Mr. Jones' email to the addressees, which included the members of council as well as Director of Licensing, Ken Leendertse, requesting the following:
Would you be kind enough to let the people on this list know how many Uber cabs have been inspected by the City's mobile enforcement officers vs. non-Uber cabs, and how many, if any, compliance orders and/or fines were issued to them vs. the Uber cabs?
As I have come to expect, the response was D E A D S I L E N C E.
A Small Break in the Silence
One of the places cabs like to queue up in Hamilton is at the designated taxi stand just outside the GO terminal at 36 Hunter St. E. The City has allocated four spaces for cabs to wait for bus and train passengers. Even before Uber, the city had issued too many taxi licenses. Therefore, those four spaces are not nearly enough to accommodate all of the policy-idled cabs that line up, on Hunter St. east of John for one of the coveted legal spots at the stand.
It was Tuesday, November 28, 2017 at approximately 7:30 P.M. when one of the City's white law enforcement SUV's showed up at the designated cab stand at the GO, and cornered one of the cabs waiting there. Suddenly, the other three coveted parking spots became vacant.
Not a single cab parked on the east side of John moved across John to occupy one of the now vacant spots. The sight of those white SUVs strikes fear into the hearts of Hamilton's cab drivers these days. The slightest flaw, like a glowing "check engine" light is often enough to have the cab pulled off the road until the problem is fixed. The driver loses even more income. The owners also lose time and money as they must now drop everything and try to get the cab back on the road, lest some faulty O2 sensor jeopardizes public safety. The icing on the cake, of course, is that while this harassment is going on, the exempt Uber cabs continue to swirl around them, unhindered, like buzzards cleaning the last pieces of flesh from the carcass of the once vibrant taxi economy.
When it appeared the mobile enforcement officer (MEO) had finished with the cab he had detained, and it looked like he was going to cross John St. and accost the hapless hacks sitting back there, I left. I was willing to sacrifice my position in line, and extend the waiting time before my next fare, rather than risk being yanked off the road, or getting fined for one of the encyclopedic list of finable violations contained in the bylaw as it applies to non-exempt taxicabs. I circled around the block, but I guess the rest of my fellow drivers all had the same idea, because when I got back to the GO station all of cabs were gone and I was able to slide into the first spot.
It seems the MEO has already caught on to this cat-and-mouse game, because he also drove around the block and swooped down on me from behind. There was no escape. For whatever reason, I was not cited with any violation even though there is probably not one single cab operating in Hamilton that is in full compliance. So I took the opportunity to dig for an answer to the question I had sent to City officials just three days prior.
Me: How many Uber cabs have you inspected, by the way?
MEO: We're actually doing a blitz on those guys this Friday and Saturday.
In other words, the answer to my question was "none." But a blitz was planned. He said if I visited Hess Village on Friday and Saturday, I would see him and two of his officers doing a "full out" blitz on them. I speculate that he was a relatively green MEO by the way he tried to assure me that the MEO's were driving around, and actually trying to "help" us by trying to make "us" safe. Yeah, "I'm from the government and I am here to help you." Going by actions, rather than words, it would appear that most of the cabbies who scoot away from the scene whenever an MEO show's up fear the harm that the City government might inflict on them far more than the extreme danger that might occur should they have a failed O2 sensor or loose gas cap.
MEO: What can I do? The only thing I can do is make sure they are following all the guidelines that were set out for them.
As the conversation progressed, he informed me that the MEO's would be looking for Uber drivers that are not supposed to be driving the vehicle, I.E. people who are not the person using the Uber taxicab dispatch app. He also stated that he would be looking for Uber drivers who "are picking up hails, which means waving people down." Talk about chasing ghosts, especially if the white MEO SUV's are seen in the area. Talk about a sting operation that was hatched right out of the pages of Monty Python. In my forty year span in Hamilton's taxi business I have only seen two instances of cab drivers "waving down" random passers by in an attempt to solicit business. Both were very recent. One was a Toronto taxi driver fishing for a passenger for his return trip. The other was an Uber driver, or alleged Uber driver who recently tried to scoop up a young woman who was trying to hail passing cabs from the front door of the GO.
MEO: We're trying to enforce that they have stickers on the back. It's in the bylaw that they should. (and also) We're going to take the numbers of Uber cabs that are driving around without stickers and then go to Uber and (demurely?) ask them why those cars don't have stickers.
In other words, there will be no tickets issued to Uber drivers who have ignored the bylaw as it relates to the stickers. And of course, none of them will be pulled off the road.
So I guess it comes down to how Uber will rule on this sticker issue and whether Hamilton's politicians will comply with Uber's business model. Their performance to date indicates that the politicians will toe the Uber line.
After all, if Uber had to follow the same laws that apply to non-Uber taxis, how could the Uber business model succeed? And what would happen to the City's six cent per trip dividend?
The systemic incentives tip the scales against the non-exempt taxi operators. It's Kindergarten simple.
For my part, the prospect of having to work my shifts in constant fear that the City's Taxi Gestapo will swoop down on me at any moment and impose further barriers to my efforts to avoid poverty have turned what once used to be a job with which I had a love/hate relationship into an unambiguous nightmare. I almost wish I had diabetes.
Papers, please?
MADD Canada Whoring for $Uber$
Distracted driving is gaining increasing attention as a contender for preventable death and injuries on the roads. MADD Canada is obviously being very selective about the kind of impaired driving they oppose. Drivers impaired by alcohol are demonized, while drivers impaired by Uber's "Distractive Technology," are encouraged and promoted by MADD Canada in exchange for cash.
Right, MADD. Encourage parents to tell their kids it's safe to ride with a bunch of inexperienced, GPS addled, fly-by-night, amateur taxi drivers. As both a parent, and a taxi driver, I can offer this advice to parents who would place their trust in Uber to get their kids home safe: Don't Buy It. The thought of some naive parent advising their kid to "take an Uber" evokes in me in the same reaction I would get I heard a parent telling one of their kids to eat glass.
If there were an organization called, "Drunk Drivers of Canada," (DDC) which purported to accept only well trained, responsible drunk drivers, with no testing, no trainining, so long as they own a car and pay a membership fee, and kick some $$$ back to MADD, no doubt MADD Canada would be happy to partner up with DDC too.
The saddest part of all of this is that the destruction of viable, full time, professional taxi driving occupations brought on by Uber and its sycophantic politicians has resulted in an exodus of experienced drivers from the non-exempt taxi sector as well. This only compounds the risks to the public.
Meanwhile, the City of Hamilton hires a crew of "Mobile Enforcement Officers," to run around the city making sure the taxis don't have glowing "check engine" lights.
Duh!
"More than 3,470 lives were claimed due to distracted driving in 2015, according to statistics furnished by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Taking your eyes off the road for seconds at 55 mph is like driving the length of a football field blindfolded, the agency said."
Hit and Run on Main St. E. Near Holton Ave. S. caught on dashcam.
What happens in a taxi, including Uber taxis, stays in a taxi... including residuals from unpleasant body effluents.
"About 2-3 months a go, a drunk rider took a piss on the back seat of my car. When asked for a cleaning fee, Uber only gave me $150. Needless to say, the piss was dried and cleaned by other riders sitting on top of it. I don't know of any professional that would clean the seat for just $150."
Public Lies, Private Truths: Why Communism FELL & Trump WON
Hamilton Project Zero
King Street 2020.
Other News
"Three university policies are cited by the signees as evidence that Peterson’s termination is justified. The first is the Statement on Prohibited Discrimination and Discriminatory Harassment, which reads, “The University aspires to achieve an environment free of prohibited discrimination and harassment and to ensure respect for the core values of freedom of speech, academic freedom and freedom of research.” The letter alleges that Peterson’s conduct “constitutes an obstacle” to that aspiration."
The problem with most communists, and this goes for all of their imitators on the left, all the way up to the misnamed "liberals" of today, who are anything but liberal, is that they are such BRAZEN HYPOCRITES! If you're paying attention, it's damned easy to extrapolate the "liberal" agenda which is invariably premised upon Karl Marx's dictum:
Try this test, and decide for yourself, if you don't recognize the Marxist dictum embedded in the "core beliefs" of just about every politician, and every big-mouthed leftist professor or "activist" or fake-stream media commentator you've ever seen.
Homelessness: force someone else to pay for housing.
Health care: force someone else to pay.
"Education:" force someone else to pay.
Income Security: force someone else to pay.
Prescriptions: force someone else to pay.
Food Security: force someone else to pay.
You have a disability that restricts your mobility: force someone else to pay.
Make a living from your shitty art, music, and movies: force someone else to pay.
You're a boy who wants to turn into a girl: force someone else to pay.
You want an abortion or free birth control: force someone else to pay.
You want to be addressed by your preferred gender pronoun: force everyone else to do it, or make them pay.
You want "reparations" for the injustices done to your long forgotten ancestors, to be paid for by everyone OTHER than the long dead perpetrators of those injustices?
This is the new morality. (Actually, it isn't. It's been around since the beginning of time. Political history has always been about forcing someone else to pay.)
Yep, it's the same thing you hear extruding from every politician's lips, force someone else to pay.
The Marxist dictum is explosively obvious in every one of these issues.
What it always boils down to, is that everyone wants something for nothing, and if it doesn't just fall into their laps, well then, it just stands to reason: force someone else to pay.
Because I have long understood this simple dynamic, it has cursed me with the ability to see the future. The future I see is not in perfect contrast. All I can see are vague outlines. Ball park eventualities. But because of this ersatz clairvoyance, I am almost NEVER caught off-guard and surprised by events. Well, I didn't see the election of Donald Trump. I really didn't expect that one.
The problem I have with most politicians is that they never see themselves doing any of the actual work.
They care about homelessness, but it goes without saying, that the politician's role in this holy endeavor, is to make someone else pay. They don't lower themselves to digging in the ground, or hammering in the nails. Nope. That is someone else's job, even if it doesn't really need a whole bunch of that Marxian, "ability."
The same goes for health care. The politicians aren't the ones diagnosing the illnesses, suturing the wounds, writing the prescriptions, emptying the bedpans and cleaning up the vomit and blood. Nope, they will just be the ones getting someone else to pay for it, and then voting themselves $5,000 gold rings. And then they build fucking statues of each other. And, of course, someone else always ends up paying for it all.
And so on. And so on. For every political issue.
It's so simple. So easy to see, And yet the vast majority of the population remain blind to the whole scam. Why is that? I have some ideas, but I won't attempt to answer that question here. (But a good start for you, if interested, is to read a few books by Ayn Rand.)
Oh. I almost forgot about why I wrote this rant in the first place.
I was thinking about this die-hard Marxist friend of mine, and about the time back around 1983 when we happened to bump into each other in a quiet bar in the center of Hamilton. I always enjoyed jousting with this guy, because unlike too many phony, Che Guevara, or Nelson Mandella T-Shirt-wearers of today, this guy had some real intellectual power behind his convictions.
What a real treat. Someone who can actually defend his position, instead of what people do today, like kick you out of forums, or block you on Twitter.
The real bonus was that, despite the fact that we were both about as opposite as possible on the political spectrum, we were nevertheless able to joust away without resorting to insults or recriminations. The discussions were pure, as if examining a disagreement over math, or chemistry.
Never once did he accuse me of being a fascist, or a Nazi, or a white supremacist due to my fondness for individual rights, equal rights, and freedom of speech.
I enjoyed the conversation so much that I kept on buying more rounds. It was pure market economics, and I was willing to pay for the value I was getting out of this challenge.
The one thing that I did notice, though I never protested, was that the communist didn't offer to pay for a single round of beer.
I guess it came down to that greater need theory.
Once need becomes a politically valuable commodity, as it has become in most of the West today, the law of supply and demand, combined with scumbag politics, will ensure that it will become extremely abundant.
And in the modern welfare state democracies, it has.
Need is a bottomless pit. It will eventually drag every civilization, that predicates its politics on it, into the sewers of history.
What a shame.
Monday, November 20, 2017
Abuse of Power by Mini-Tyrants
This morning I discovered that I had been blocked from accessing the Facebook Group, World Wide Anti-Uber Society, for having allegedly "dumb" and "hateful" opinions. Perhaps surprisingly, the mini-tyrant did not go so far as to accuse me of being a NAZI as well.
At first World Wide Anti-Uber Society Facebook admin, Justin La Plante, tried to bully me into complying with his world view by deleting a couple of my posts and threatening to use his administrative power to block me from the group.
During a private message session he tried to justify his bullying by accusing me of lighting fires he then had to put out. Seeing as how the "offending" post had garnered little attention or commentary, I'm not sure of what kinds of fires he imagined he had to put out, unless he was deluged with a bunch of private messages, which I doubt. In other words, his real message was that no controversial views would be permitted in HIS group if they happened to clash with HIS opinions.
No Donald Trump Supporters Allowed
He then dug himself in deeper by confessing that he had a problem with my support for Donald Trump, and that he equates my posting of a Confederate Battle flag on my own facebook page with "hatred" rather than my life-long interest in, and love of American history, and the spirit of rebellion that flag represents. In bringing up these matters, he did nothing but reinforce the fact that he was using his admin POWER to enforce compliance with his god complex.
So it came down to another small example of what we've been hearing about all year with respect to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google, the censorship of opposing views.
During the discussion, which he later published on the group page to demonstrate how flawed my character is, he tried to show how big his brain is by asking me some civics questions.
He obviously wanted to keep kicking this ball back and forth in the PM session. I don't like wasting my time arguing with fools in private. I'd much rather poke fun at them, and expose their self-righteous hypocrisy in public so I invited him to take the debate back onto the group he wanted to block me from.
He took the bait.
I was confident I had sized this guy up rather well during our PM session, that he was an intellectual lightweight, and that it would be easy to publicly humiliate him in the light of day.
After he agreed to an open debate, I proceeded to annihilate Justin La Plante in the World Wide Anti-Uber Society group.
It was no surprise to me, therefore, that after a few punches were thrown, he took the coward's way out, posted a few twisted misrepresentaions to get the last word in, then deleted the debate, and blocked me from the group.
Maybe the guy is not such a coward in the end. After all, it takes some balls to brazenly demonstrate that you have none.
Also of interest:
The Fred Eisenberger Comedy Special
Saturday, November 18, 2017
My Warning from an Uberpeople.net "Moderator."
I just got a message from one of the moderators of the uberpeople.net Toronto driver's forum. In it he states,
"This forum values opinions from all angles. However, being argumentative, name-calling, personal attacks, instigating other members, and any post that can be deemed confrontational will not be tolerated. Please refrain from any posts of this manner, even if instigated. We hope you can tone it back a bit going forward.
Please review the terms and rules http://uberpeople.net/help/terms"
I think he was feeling a bit humiliated after he read my criticism of his limp response to my "Uberpeople Service Animal Discussion" that I posted in the Toronto Uber taxi driver forum.
Things have really changed in the last twenty-five years. It used to be quite the rollicking back and forth in discussion forums. Now, whenever you get the better of some smart-ass who takes shots at you, he threatens to have your views censored.
As an example of my objectionable conduct, the "moderator" cited the following passage by me,
"Are you dyslexic? The individual referenced in my post was not "terrified of driving," he was terrified of dogs. A remedial reading comprehension course might help you in this thread."
I thought I was being kind in attributing the respondent's dishonest and deliberate misquoting of my post to dyslexia rather than the slimy tactic that it obviously was. It seems to have escaped the "moderator's" attention, that deliberate and dishonest misquoting of forum participants is, itself, "confrontational." Yet I doubt the individual who slandered me received any similar warning. I doubt that the thought even occurred to the censorship muscle-flexing "moderator," Mugats, or whatever his real name is.
I could be wrong. Maybe "Mugats" did send a similar warning to "Fuzzyelvis," but I sincerely doubt it.
By the way, and perhaps of some significance, is the apparent fact that this "moderator" uses a fake name and a fake picture of himself.
In my reply to his "warning" I challenged him to reveal his true identity. Any bets as to whether he will have the guts to step up?
I anticipate that Mr. Mugats will use his power to shut me down on the discussion board.
My last reply to him was,
Relevant Screenshots
Did this person receive a "warning" from Mugats for this?
Or this?
Bets?
I am not omniscient, but I remain certain that none of the other "offenders" received a similar warning from the mysterious moderator. Notwithstanding, I will happily recant if Mr. Mugats provides any evidence that proves me wrong.
At this point, I would say the odds that Mr. Mugats uses his power to borf me from the forum is about 99.9 % to the .1 % chance that he will identify himself and provide evidence that he sent the other confrontational users similar warnings.
By the way, I love it when people are confrontational with me. It gives me the opportunity to work on my debating skills. If no one ever confronted me, I would be bored as shit.
Unfortunately, these days, it seems that whenever you challenge the crooked scumbags that spew their fraudulent effluvia on social media, rather than engage, they run and hide.
Well. That didn't take long.
Also of interest:
The Fred Eisenberger Comedy Special
Thursday, November 16, 2017
Uberpeople Service Animal Discussion
I knew a guy who was terrified of dogs, no matter how small. Even a Mexican Chihuahua would terrify him. It would be a dangerous mistake to force someone like that to drive passengers with service animals.
Some of the people in the thread claim to have pet allergies. Should they be forced to take service animals?
And what about those who have strong religious beliefs about dogs? Whose rights rights should prevail in our new utopian socialist caste system?
I prefer one of the greatest achievements of Western civilization, the now deceased ideal of equal rights for all. In accordance with Rand's statement,
"Any alleged right of one person which necessitates the violation of the rights of another is not, and can never be a "right."
According to that simple formula, there would be no question about the Ubercab driver's right to refuse service animals.
And there's no reason it should be a problem in the first place. There will always be drivers willing to take service animals. The installation of a simple marker or flag in each driver account indicating a desire to accommodate service animals (or anything else, for that matter, including heavy bags or luggage and wheelchairs, tobacco use, racial or ethnic background, music preferences, intelligence, alcohol, prostitutes, drug addicts, people who stink like corpses, etc.) would solve most driver/rider incompatibility issues.
Everyone could be happy. It's the manifestation of Milton Friedman's "Unanimity vs. conformity" argument in favor of the free market vs. the coercive democracy lorded over by slick, mendacious, manipulative, sociopathic, and above all, uninsightful politicians we must all presently endure.
Instead, the politicians opt for brutal mandates, the equivalent of using a legislative sledge hammer to force square pegs into round holes. It creates nothing less than a social pressure cooker. A war of all against all. It's dumb and it's evil.
It also explains why all socialist regimes eventually descend into chaos and mass murder. If the sledge hammer isn't big enough, try a bigger one. And if that doesn't work, use internment camps, guns, gas chambers, and gulags.
For my part, I have never refused animals in my cab. In fact, they are often preferable to many of my "human" passengers.
