I'd fully support removing any barriers to that. They'll surely get charged out the nose, but it's a reasonable proposal. What's not reasonable is having regular drivers subsidize Uber drivers by letting Uber drivers do commercial work on non-commercial insurance.
So democracy is mob rule, hmm, OK.
Yes, it is. Which is why the very smart people who wrote the US constitution chartered the country as a republic, not a democracy. And a good thing, too.
How does Uber improve "the amount of car pooling we do" in a significantly useful way (i.e., one that furthers the goals for which car pooling is usually advocated)?
Consider if an individual leaves their home, drives 8 miles to their destination, and later returns home driving another 8 miles. Total miles of pollution and "road space" is 16 miles worth.
Suppose that same individual uses Uber using the same type of car. Obviously the same 16 miles would be traversed - but even then, the car weighs slightly more so would consume slightly more fuel and produce slightly more greenhouse gasses. But, in addition, an Uber driver will almost always have to drive from wherever they are TO the customer's location to pick them up and have no one else in the car during that time - and this scenario repeats on both the outbound and the inbound trip. Suppose that, on the average in that area, the Uber driver "deadheads" three miles on each trip. Now we an additional six miles of driving and associated environmental impact (including road congestion).
Sure, in the 'self driver' case, there's 0 miles of dual occupancy (a.k.a. carpooling) while in the Uber case there's 16 miles of dual occupancy (with slightly higher pollution due to the additional 150 or so pounds resulting from dual occupancy) -- but the cost is an additional six miles of single occupancy.
About the only "carpooling" type benefit is that less space needs to be devoted to parking at the destination if enough people take taxis, Uber, public transport, cycle etc...
If the goal is to increase average vehicle occupancy, why don't we just pay people to pile into cars and then drive the cars in circles?
Haha, yeah, I remember back when all that was on fark.com was a picture of that squirrel with the oversized genitals. Heck, I knew him before Fark.com, when he was the wizard Cletus on the mud Three Kingdoms.
God I feel old...
Even if it is simply "I will hold public opinion polls and honor their conclusion"
So, you'd be OK with him supporting mandatory labeling on all foods that contain DNA? Because 80% of the population says they support their government helping them out with that.
I'd never support a politician who says he'll do what the majority say they want. We don't need mob rule directly, or by proxy, either.
Statistically, a commercial driver drives way more than a noncommercial driver, and they're much more likely to be sued, and for more money. It's absurd to argue that they should be able to drive on insurance rates calculated for statistical norms of noncommercial drivers.
The number of miles you drive every year is one of the factors used to calculate your non-commercial insurance rate. Go read your complete auto insurance policy if you don't believe me. There's a line in there for number of miles driven per year. Most people ignore it, but if you exceed it and get into an accident, your insurer may refuse to cover you.
That falls into statistically normal usage. Being a commercial driver absolutely does not. Statistically, a commercial driver drives way more than a noncommercial driver, and they're much more likely to be sued, and for more money. It's absurd to argue that they should be able to drive on insurance rates calculated for statistical norms of noncommercial drivers. If you allow that sort of ignoring of statistics then you might as well get rid of all statistical tables period and charge every last person the same rate for all types of insurance.
Why, exactly, should Uber drivers get to drive passengers using regular non-commercial drivers' insurance? Commercial insurance costs more because people who drive people around for a living are much more likely to cost the insurance companies more money. If you're letting them drive on non-commercial licenses than that means that regular drivers are subsidizing Uber-drivers.
Yeah. But with gasoline. You get...gasoline.
To the AC who missed this most important half of the gasoline "wealth redistribution program", you fail economics. To the moderator who modded Chas's post as "troll", get off my internet. This is a basic observation about the oil trade that everyone should acknowledge from the start.
And that's just where it sparks, if you could guess that the rise of Hitler would lead to the attack on Pearl Harbor your crystal ball is good.
The two weren't correlated so your crystal ball would be broken.
what makes the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists experts on how much closer global warming puts us to global catastrophe?
They have a consensus.
It's more complex than that. Of course your willingness to pay for them will be $0. And let say they are willing to reduce their CO2 emission to close to 0 because they don't want their country to disappear. It won't be enough. Their sea level will still rise because of you. Does it mean they should pay the cost (losing their island) because you emit CO2? Seems unfair to me. You should pay for your own negative externalities, and not push them to other people or other generations.
Well, how much is an island worth? Again, I don't see anyone paying very much to protect these things. If it's not valuable to anyone else, then it's not valuable to me.
And if we're paying for our own externalities, shouldn't we also get compensated for our own externalities with the opposite sign?
Alright, where can I read these reports? I want something comprehensive that covers the whole issue. So don't give me a source that covers only a specific country/region or a specific consequence.
How about the Stern report where you take the estimated cost of global warming and divide it by ten. Then take the estimated cost of carbon dioxide emission reductions and multiply them by ten? That's a report that probably has more accurate cost/benefit analysis than the original report.
Bringing a fighter jet to a bomb threat. That makes sense!
You don't have much of an imagination, do you? Or pay any kind of attention to actual events, pretty much ever?
Escort aircraft can make observations and help with communications and recordings that can't be made any other way. One of the threats suggested the bomber was on board, implying the possibility that he might make demands which could include, possibly, making that aircraft into a weapon aimed at a metropolitan area
Whoosh?
Just as an exercise, imagine the original star wars movies without the spaceships and you'll know what i mean.
Do you mean this?
"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity." - Oscar Wilde
