That said, Taxi drivers have something Uber drivers don't- a union.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Taxi_Workers%27_Alliance
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2024
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Taxi drivers in my city also have something else Uber drivers don't- a licence that was bought decades ago and is limited to a certain number, they never expire and can be bought and sold between private parties and you end up with one asshole who owns a bunch and rents out the licenced car to drivers who pay him a rent. It's a pretty hardcore mafia and predates on immigrants.
They are also fucking maniacs who almost kill people every day with their reckless driving, but Ubers do that too.
To the immigrant thing - I was on vacation a few weeks ago and took five Uber rides. None of the drivers spoke English. I wonder if ride sharing is going the immigrant predator route these days.
For clarification, it didn't bother me to have non-English speaking drivers. They were all great.
90% of Uber drivers for me were immigrants. Its normal to me.
Oh yeah, I don't think either are great, but at least Uber didn't require drivers to submit to some crazy legal Ponzi scheme while paying for special driver's licenses and competing with other drivers for the good shifts on a shared taxi licence. The Taxi mafia lobbied my city pretty hard and now Ubers get the opportunity to lose money to a middle man too! I've seen a bunch of taxis straight up also driving for Uber throughout the city.
Same in France. They had huge protests years ago to ban Uber, because they didn't want competition making it harder to pay for their license.
Motherfucker, who lobbied to limit the number of licenses in the first place?
That’s Uber propaganda. The system was created because prior to that cities had traffic jams with a ton of freelance cabs with no quality controls or regulation. The medallion system set a price floor and mandated inspections and insurance and background checks. Uber bypassed all of that for years and surprise; women were being assaulted by drivers with criminal history, passengers were injured from uninspected vehicles and couldn’t get remedied because the drivers were uninsured, and cities have worsening traffic jams because there was no limit on Uber drivers choking downtown streets.
The taxi industry evolved this way for good reasons. Uber was initially sold as good for immigrants and now immigrants protest how that company gets special treatment over every other cab company and hurts their bottom line.
Yet I value those licenses and medallions more than any rideshare contract.
I drive a delivery truck around the city for a living and watch taxis "drive" all day, ~~I wouldn't piss on them if they were in fire~~ I don't value them.