Comment Re:Perfectly appropriate action for the FAA to tak (Score 1) 199
People do get killed by these things.
People do get killed by these things.
There are special services that transport people in wheelchairs, but they're expensive (about $50 a trip, with wide variations). They usually have vans, that set up a schedule a day in advance. The elderly and handicapped people who use them could never afford them, and they're subsidized by local governments.
It's nothing like a cab. If you used to travel around freely, and you suddenly became wheelchair-bound, you'd never again have the freedom of being able to spontaneously decide that you want to go to a movie or restaurant that evening.
Nobody has ever developed an affordable wheelchair-accessible taxi service in the free market, to my knowledge.
OTOH, the NYC buses were required by federal law to become wheelchair accessible. It does take some expensive equipment, but now people with wheelchairs travel on the buses (and some trains) all the time.
The free market had its chance, all around the country (and the world). A free-market solution to the problem of handicapped transit didn't appear. It only worked with government regulation.
This isn't about taxis. It's an ideological debate over the free market and government regulation. The free market just can't provide transportation services to the handicapped.
This is one of the fundamental limitations to the free market. If you think back to the ideological justifications for the free market (and I used to read the Wall Street Journal editorial page), they argue that the efficient operators will survive and the inefficient will die, just like in darwinian evolution. That means that the free market can't accommodate inefficient buyers, like the handicapped. It's supposed to work that way. The darwinian struggle is supposed to kill off the weak and the helpless. That's how it gets so efficient.
Let them prove it. Let Uber start a service for the wheelchair-bound handicapped, and let's see if that "premium" service will be affordable. They haven't done it yet and I don't think they can do it. And if they take over taxi service in New York City, that will be the end of wheelchair-accessible taxis.
I went down to Zucotti Square in New York City during the demonstration, and I talked to people.
There were a lot of different people there for a lot of reasons.
The one central idea is that in this country, the people with the top 1% of income, like the Koch brothers, have more influence on the political system than the other 99% combined.
We allow corporate contributions in this country that would be prosecuted as bribery in other developed countries.
College loans are a good example. In most of the other developed countries, college is free, and they even have stipends to pay their expenses (as Linus Torvalds explained).
Up to the 1970s, we had a system of cheap or free college throughout the US. City College in New York City was free. They produced Nobel laureates, and captains of industry like Andrew Grove, who founded Intel. You can read the autobiographies on the Nobel prize web site where they describe how they grew up in poverty and could never have gone to college if CCNY wasn't free. It was a system that worked.
Students did protest the tuition raises. It's not something that they have control over. They protest, and the Koch brothers give the Tea Party candidates millions of dollars to run on platforms of cutting taxes. Unfortunately, amateur organizers can't beat professionals.
I would dare say that Insurance isn't like anything in the "free" market at all. Most of the "chronically unhealthy" people I know, are that way because they have unhealthy habits.
That's a common misconception. I saw a pie chart in the New England Journal of Medicine, which estimates that disease was 1/3 genetic, 1/3 behavioral, and 1/3 environmental.
Behavioral is mostly smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, not wearing seat belts, and obesity.
The doctors who treat these people tell me that "personal responsibility" isn't a useful concept.
When someone with schizophrenia takes an anti-psychotic drug, their weight goes up, sometimes by 100 pounds, and in fact one of the risks of the drugs is diabetes.
You have someone who weighs 180 pounds, who takes an anti-schizophrenic drug, and a year later weighs 280 pounds. Case after case. Did they suddenly lose their "personal responsibility"? Or is there a biological mechanism causing it, which is beyond their control?
Without political power, the students and Occupy are destined to fail.
The paradox is, all they have to do is vote. And convince others to vote, in their own interests.
The biggest industry in the US is the political industry that convinces people to vote against their own interests. Koch et al.
England imposed hefty student fees quite recently. There were riots, of course, but they led to nothing (except the arrest of a number of looters).
I know, and that's an interesting contrast. I can't understand why. The UK voted for Thatcher and Blair, and went down the road to Reaganism. It seems that the skill of governing in the 20th century is to convince the working class to vote against their interests.
The UK and US are also the 2 developed countries that have the least social mobility. Your social status and income depends on your father's social status and income more in the UK and US than anyplace else in the world.
The nice thing (for politicians and the bankers that own them) is that students have no political power whatsoever. So they can be ignored and told to turn around and take it up the ass.
I tell college students, "It's your own damn fault."
A German scientist told me, "I don't understand what's wrong with these American students." In Germany, when they tried to impose a $1,000 school fee, "We were demonstrating in the streets."
The basic problem seems to be that European students are organized, with strong organizations behind them. The socialist parties and unions organized them. We had that here http://www.peteseeger.net/talk... and it worked well. Now it's gone.
We got Occupy Wall Street because some Canadians generously came down and showed us how it was done. It picked up for a while and then it died down. I hope it will have an influence on people.
The next bubble is student loans, and it's already very far along in the pumping process.
Let's hope the whole thing collapses and students get back their right to go bankrupt.
I believe that in order for the free market to work, the banks who made bad loans should take the hit and go out of business. Their investors should lose their investment. That would make them more prudent in the future.
Do you think that we really would want to go back to what was the standard phone service in the 70's and 80's?
Or TV service (all 3-4 channels) of the sixties?
Today, I get a lot of calls where I can't understand the person. In the '70s and certainly the '80s, all the calls had a clear connection. So it's worse in some ways. I would still choose the mobile phone and cheaper service of today, but I realize I may be giving some things up.
Taxi service has not changed all that much. There is a bit of automation in the dispatching. But the basic model of a regulated (medallioned) driver getting hailed or dispatched by radio (now computer) is essentially the same as it was 50-60-80 years ago. And really that was little changed from the horse drawn equivalent in larger cities in the 1800's.
It is seriously time to look at new models of service.
You could always call for a cab on the phone. That's what Uber does. Now, when I call, I have to be prepared to wait at least half an hour for a cab. If Uber could give me the same service without waiting, I'd like that.
However, cab drivers have to undergo police checks, and pass a test. They have a cab license, which can be revoked for bad behavior. Their cabs are inspected and insured. I think they have $1 million in liability insurance, which is about what a major accident, like amputating a tourist's leg, would cost.
Uber doesn't do that. They ignore the law. That's their business model. They openly say that they will defy court orders. Their drivers get whatever insurance, police checks, and safety inspections that Uber feels like.
Some places have medallions and some places don't. When I take a medallion cab in New York City, they always have a working seat belt. When I visit my cousin in Levittown and take a cab from the Long Island Rail Road station, they never have a working seat belt. Long Island has less regulation, and their cabs aren't as safe.
If the medallion taxi industry disappears, and I'm left with Uber, what are the tradeoffs? In what ways will I be worse off? Will the cars and drivers be as safe?
Waving your hand and saying, "Innovation is good, regulation is bad," is not a rational answer.
We have a long history of privately held companies doing very evil things (even releasing products they knew would kill lots of people).
When has that ever happened?
Besides tobacco.
And asbestos.
And lead paint.
My solution is to figure out how many of these people actually need the service, figure out how often, and charge all the Cab companies a "surcharge" to opt out. Pay someone from that surcharge opt out fund enough to get the upgrades and service these people. Guess what, you'll have free market results, that probably work better than if you did it the "government mandated way".
My guess is that everyone would end up getting the right kind of vehicle and servicing people of all types, but it wouldn't be "mandated".
Those free-market results don't work. That's what we have in the private health care system. Most people are healthy, and don't need much health care. A few people are sick, and need a lot of health care.
Most other countries have a government-run system where doctors decide who needs what and give it to them -- yes, a "mandated" way. It has its problems but it works pretty well.
In our country, we make everybody responsible for buying their own health care. That works well for most people, because most people are healthy. Insurance companies are happy to sell them insurance, because they pay a lot and hardly cost anything.
But for the people who really are sick -- like somebody with asthma -- the insurance companies don't want them. Different states try different schemes, including some like you describe. Some states have "high risk" pools, but the premiums are so expensive people can't afford them. The conservatives want to give them "vouchers" to pay for private insurance, but they still don't meet the gap and the people who are sick can't afford that either.
There are lots of "market-based" schemes that sound good, but when you try them out in the real world, and the insurance companies actually have to offer plans, and people actually have to pay the premiums, they turn out to be too expensive for people to afford. There are lots of people dying in America because they can't afford simple things like asthma medication for children.
And of course one of the problems is that we have one of the lowest tax rates in the developed world, so our government doesn't have enough money to actually follow through and pay for these schemes.
That's why, whenever somebody comes up with a bright new "disruptive" idea, I say, "Show me someplace where it's working successfully." (Like Canadian health care.) Until then, you're just smoking opium. Or in Ayn Rand's case, benzedrine.
If Uber drivers are private cars, then only a small proportion of them will be able to carry wheelchairs. If they follow the free market, they will charge more. So instead of getting a $20 cab ride to the doctor or a theater, a wheelchair rider may have to pay $50 or $100.
The solution to this is for a company to start up that only caters to disabled passengers, charges the same rates as the other companies, and gets a subsidy from the city.
That's the problem with free market solutions. A lot of them require a subsidy from government. And subsidies can disappear the next time a politician is under pressure to cut taxes.
That's what happened to Medicaid. And the Obamacare market, which is only a good deal if you qualify for the subsidy.
Whenever entrepreneurs try to sell you on a free-market solution to a government-run or -regulated service, you should ask them, "How much of a government subsidy will you need?"
The point is largely moot anyway: many cities already have something like this (though you usually have to call a day in advance), in the form of paratransit services which offer door to door for slightly more than a standard bus fare.
Yes, there is a paratransit, and it varies around the country. In New York City, it's only available to people who have below a certain income, and they can't give you a precise schedule.
It's not the same as a wheelchair-equipped taxi, that you can pick up on the street fifteen minutes before a doctor's appointment or a movie.
Change isn't necessarily bad, and it's not necessarily bad to have winners and losers, but I just want to know who the winners and losers will be.
Oh, and most decent hotels have complimentary shuttles on top of that, throughout the country.
You don't get out much, do you?
I went to the Grand Hyatt Denver last time and they didn't have any complementary shuttle from the airport.
Now that I think of it, when I stayed at the Ritz Carlton, they didn't have a complementary shuttle either.
Those who are truly hapless are the ones who don't understand that you don't know whether new, hyped solutions will actually work or whether they will have unforeseen problems until you actually try them out for a while and see what happens in reality.
Airline deregulation gave us lower prices.
It also took away a lot of service to smaller cities that had depended on air service.
Then for a while it gave us an increase in accidents, until the federal government stepped in.
It also destroyed a lot of formerly-well paying jobs among airline mechanics and support staff. All those loyal employees, who worked hard, did everything right, never took shortcuts, drove to work in the snow, and thought their employers were going to be loyal to them in return, found out that the darwinian free market means that the weak and sick die soon.
It also turned a lot of financial wheeler-dealers into multi-millionaires.
Now the prices are back up again. They seem to cost about as much as they did during regulation. I know a shuttle to Boston costs me a lot more.
New solutions have winners and losers. I just want to know who the winners and losers will be.
I've been denied taxi service to good neighborhoods just because the cab driver didn't feel like going that direction.
In regulated New York City, I would report that driver to the Taxi and Limousine Commission, and he would have to take a day off and explain himself at a hearing.
(I would too, but enough people have been pissed off enough to file complaints in the past that taxi drivers don't pull that much any more.)
On the eighth day, God created FORTRAN.
