Well let's put it this way. I travel a lot. I don't know every city I go to. If I rent a car, I just use a GPS and I'm fine. If I request an uber and he is as competent with a GPS as I am, then it is satisfactory for me. I suspect most uber drivers are probably better at both using GPS and more knowledgeable about the city than I am on any given trip.

This is why we trust operating cash registers to high school drop outs. They may not know all the intricacies of arithmetic, but they can be taught how to use a cash register good enough. The whole point of the machine is to allow an mathematically inexperienced person to do it.

You need mathematicians and computer scientists to design the GPS devices and cash registers, but not to use them, and quite honestly their time is far better spent designing things anyway.

And yes if I need something done right with high accuracy I will certainly hire an expert. And that one thing is designing the thing that we will mass produce for all the laymen, saving millions of man hours of time and effort. Now everyone is more of a expert on any city than everyone without a GPS, and now everyone is better at arithmetic than everyone without a calculator. That's a pretty good version of "good enough" in my book.

We don't need people to be good at arithmetic anymore. We don't need people to memorize maps and fastest routes anymore. Just like we don;t need 80% of the population to be farmers anymore. That's progress.

Or he could be pardoned...

The "He should face the consequences of his actions" argument can be used for any crime. The request for a pardon is a specific request that someone *not* face the consequences of their actions, or more accurately, that the consequences of their actions be changed to "no longer be punished".

It's like she is not even acknowledging what is being asked for.

It's like If I go to a car dealership and ask them if they sell any other cars besides what can be seen in the showroom, and the dealer then proceeds to list all the cars in the showroom. If he only has what is in the showroom, a better answer is "I only have what is in the showroom"

If the don't intend to pardon Snowden, all they need to do is say "We don't intend to pardon Mr. Snowden". If everyone *always* had to "face the consequences of their actions", then pardons wouldn't even exist.

In California where I live, you are forced to buy insurance, so maybe I'm just used to that idea. I am in favor of freedom, but I don't think people should have the freedom to risk other people's property and health.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to require people to either have insurance, or if they don;t want to pay for insurance, put down a deposit for the coverage amount that they can retrieve if they stop driving. If you can't put down that deposit, it's means you can't actually pay for damages in the event that you are at fault in an accident.

People who don't drive with a GPS are more likely to get lost, because they can't memorize an entire city map. City knowledge is great, but I'll take google maps over city knowledge any day.

Knowledge of arithmetic helps, but if I had to choose between a mathematician doing math by hand, and a highschool dropout with a calculator to add a bunch of large numbers, I'll take the high school dropout. I'll bet the mathematician would too.

My point is not that the "tool" > "tool + knowledge". That's not possible. My point is that "tool" == "(tool + knowledge) * 0.95" (i.e. the tool is doing most of the work). You get the first 95% very cheaply, and that last 5% is very expensive.

So rather than hiring a few mathematicians with a calculators to add a bunch of numbers, it probably makes more sense to hire a ton of high school dropouts with calculators (and maybe one mathematician to supervise) for the same price.

While this is true, it seems a better and more direct approach would be for insurance companies to consider time spent driving (and if that's hard to gauge, then mileage would probably be a good substitute). Surely the insurance companies would want to charge someone who is on the road 12 hours a day more than someone who does a couple uber jobs a week.

I don't think I really buy this claim. I could see it going both ways. If you are employed to drive, you might be more likely to observe legally mandatory breaks and limits on number of consecutive driving hours, etc. If you are just driving for yourself you don't have any of those restrictions. I think it depends on the type of person.

I really don't see the point of making people's lives easier if it means that we will have unsafe drivers on the road. If someone crashes into me because they can't drive, I don't feel any better if it is a person who has worse insurance and is just living an everyday life.

I buy hazard insurance for my house. If I falsely report that I have a fire extinguisher to get a lower rate (but actually don't), and my house burns down, is the insurance company still on the hook to cover my loss? I honestly don't know, but I think they still are because I think it is the insurance companies job to verify the information I give them and determine if they want to charge me a higher rate. I suspect that it is this way, because if it weren;t insurance companies would find all sorts of ways to get out of paying out for claims.

Regardless of whether hazard insurance actually works this way in various places, I think this model might work well for auto insurance as well.

The insurance companies that really care if you are specifically driving for commercial purposes can request documentation that shows your job description does not include driving, as well as something showing you are a full time employee, etc. The insurance companies that don;t really care, can just check the odometer on your car and charge you based on how much you drive regardless of what it's for.

I wouldn't have a problem with a law requiring uber (and others) to release license plates of current uber cars to insurance companies.

I don't doubt that it's a problem that some drivers are not covered. But I think the way to fix it is to make better laws, rather than simply punishing uber. We need robust laws that capture the accurately spirit of what we are trying to achieve. That way, they won't need to be rewritten every time someone comes up with a new technology, product or business model.

Do you have any sources for this claim? Or is this your opinion? I'm just interested in the subject and would like to learn more.

There is javascript and HTML5.

I imagine that people who write shitty mobile app code, also write shitty mobile web code. I think web code is safer, because browser code is more highly scrutinized, and sandboxing is a good feature, but I don't think you should expect it to hog less memory, if anything it will be more.

Browsers are perfectly capable of uploading photos. It's not 1997 anymore.

The web started with content and formatting bundled together in html. Then we got tools like css, javascript, xm, json, web components, etc, that allowed (but didn't force) us to separate content and formatting.

Separating content and formatting is better for consumers and also developers/ Even google does it in their own pages.

I'm really not sure exactly what you are referring to. Is there a particular standard that Apple supported and Google opposed?

Because I think what you are talking about is actually the standard way of organizing web content, but some people elect to use older paradigms that browsers still support.

It doesn't *need* it. But if it is the case that we don't want a system where a person can get screwed by not having health insurance *AND* the taxi they are injured in also doesn't have insurance, and we want to fix this by forcing the taxi drivers to have insurance, then I would say we probably don't want a hole in this safety net mechanism for non-taxis. This also applies to non-health insurance claims (e.g. damage to other cars, etc).

I suppose it matters what knowledge is required to be a taxi driver in a particular city. I don't doubt that some cities may require taxi drivers to possess some special knowledge that regular drivers don't need, and I'm fine with those cities having those requirements if they are necessary. If the knowledge is just something like "know your way around the city", then I think Uber's mobile app (along with any GPS) pretty much removes the need for that skill like how calculators removed the need for people to be good at arithmetic.

In the places I have used uber, some drivers had not even lived in the city very long, but their phone told them exactly where to go without any problems. As far as I can tell, the basic skills of a taxi driver are owning a car and knowing how to drive it. Navigation is done by machines, and the actual driving probably will be one day as well, and we won;t even have taxi drivers anymore.

For all the same reasons you might want insurance in a taxi, you probably also want insurance when riding in a friends car. It's not like medical bills are more expensive when injured in a taxi.

Yes it would.

My solution would require the same level of coverage, meaning that if a regular driver causes the same damage as a taxi, their insurance would pay out the same amount to cover the same things. That doesn't mean that both sets of insurance would come with the same price. It just means that if you are injured, you don't need to hope and pray that the person at fault has good taxi level insurance.

I am saying that we remove the legal difference between commercial and non-commercial driving, and have that be a distinction that insurance companies can choose to make. Just like how they make distinctions between drivers based on any number of other factors like age, health, mileage driven per month, driving record, type of of their vehicle, etc. "commercial driver" can just be one more check box they can tick.

I'm not even sure what the extra risk about being a commercial driver even is. Is it just that they are on the road more? If so, they non-commercial drivers who are on the road a lot should pay more too. I don't even know why we have this distinction, but it should be insurance companies deciding how much extra if anything commercial drivers should pay.

I'm sure some people disagree with compulsory insurance, but it is not something I am *just now* mandating.

The private sector insurance companies are where taxi drivers and regular driver *should* be treated differently, because making an assessment of risk is the job of insurance companies not government bureaucrats. Society benefits from having simpler laws. They are already adjusting rates for age, health, type of vehicle, and previous driving records. They probably also factor in mileage driven.

All that matters is that they are covered. The law shouldn't mandate *how* they are covered. If some insurance company thinks taxi drivers are less risky than regular drivers, whats the problem? That should be for them to decide. Markets can't solve every problem, but this is exactly the kind of problem they are perfect for solving.

That is typically true, but it could be for each insurance company to decide who they want to insure and for how much money.

They can make that distinction if they want to.

People are dishonest about all kinds of things when it comes to getting auto insurance. My mom lies about who the primary driver is on all the cars in our family to get a better rate. This is not a problem specific to taxis or uber.

But as I said. If the insurance laws are simpler, then we don't need special laws for taxis. We can just make two laws. "You must buy insurance." and "You must not lie to your insurance company."

taxi drivers and regular drivers are currently not treated the same, but they *could* be from a legal standpoint, and I think that would solve a lot of these problems.

The government could simply require a minimum level of insurance for all drivers (e.g. covers X things up to Y dollars, etc), and the price of that insurance would be determined by each insurance company for each individual driver probably based on things like amount of time spent on the road, type of vehicle, whether it is a taxi or uber car, etc.

In this way we wouldn't need special rules for insurance for taxi drivers, which makes sense, considering the sorts of damage that is caused by a taxi accident is basically the same as the damage caused by a car driven by a friend.