In Seattle, St. Louis and elsewhere, “ridesharing” services such as Uber and Lyft are causing a kerfuffle. These services, which allow users to submit orders via a smartphone app that are then filled by individuals driving their own cars, run afoul of long-standing regulations requiring the special licensing of taxis by municipal authorities. These licenses, known as cab medallions, have a long and ugly history and are justifiably reviled by libertarians and many others as one of the myriad ways in which the state centralizes control of the economy in the hands of the wealthy.
But in this discussion, some key aspects of the way our capitalist system operates have become crystal clear. When Uber arrived in Seattle in direct contravention of city laws, the system did not react the way it does when a street pharmacist arrives in Seattle in direct contravention of city laws, or when an unlicensed barbershop opens, or a wildcat food truck is spotted. Rather than immediate and forceful enforcement of the law, the government dithered. Special sessions of the city council were held. A special committee thereof was formed. The press reverberated with debates on whether or not Uber and Lyft should be let alone or shut down or somehow accommodated without undoing the city’s taxi laws. KUOW, our local NPR station, regaled its mostly well-to-do audience with roundtables and interviews on what the city government should do.
Why is this? If I, a nurse, started selling my health care services outside the state licensed and approved system, if I put an ad on Craigslist advertising my nursing services to anyone who wanted to pay me directly without bothering to get all the mandated licenses and insurance and certifications, I would lose my nursing license and face stiff fines with very little palaver, and certainly no hour-long roundtables on KUOW. But Uber does not get this treatment. Why?
For exactly the same reason that centuries-old standards of liability were hastily undone in the late 19th century — because capital demands it. Once upon a time, individuals and companies were liable for their actions to the full extent of the damage done, but this simply would not do for the industrialists of the Gilded Age. Without the ability to belch filth into the air and pour it into the water, how could they make money? How could they survive if every peasant or proletarian with a respiratory problem from their factories’ soot could sue and win? “New” standards had to be developed.
The removal of old-fashioned obstacles to capital’s new way of generating profits was the most pressing issue of the age, and the solution was found in the regulatory state, which established both a presumption of innocence if minimum standards were met and capped liability if any harm was found. Even today, these laws protect corporations from the full consequences of their actions, as we saw in Louisiana after the BP spill and as we are seeing today in British Columbia, where the oil industry is lobbying hard to keep their liability cap intact.
And so the same pattern holds with Uber. Cab medallions are stupid, a vicious and damaging relic that actively harms the poor for the benefit of the wealthy investors who can afford to buy them. But when they weren’t harming anyone but the poor, no one cared to discuss them. The odd libertarian or anti-poverty activist might have raised the issue now and again, but the mass media was totally uninterested and no special committees of the city council were formed. But now, they impede capital. Now, wealthy men want to make money, and cab medallions are in the way. So now, cab medallions are an issue.
Should we hail this development as proof of an alliance between capital and freedom? Should we salute Uber as heroes of the struggle for liberation? Absolutely not. Uber is utterly dependent on different forms of state privilege — most obviously intellectual property laws, which protect its trademarks and its app, but also and more fundamentally the state’s monopoly provision of free-at-the-point-of-use roads, along with its certification of cars and drivers as “safe.” Uber is a state capitalist enterprise just as the cab companies are, and this is not a strategic alliance but a momentary convergence of interests- they need something done, and we have arguments that can help them. Of course cab medallions should be abolished. But we should not be content with letting capital set the agenda and call the tune.
Citations to this article:
- J. Edward Carp, Capital Uber Alles?, Before It’s News, 05/18/14
Lots of good stuff in here, but I think the basic factual claim you are arguing from is wrong.
Seattle's politicians didn't get together to figure out a way to accommodate Uber, they got together to try and figure out a way to tell a company in San Francisco what it could and could not put up on its web site or communicate over smartphones. And they convinced themselves they could actually do that.
Next week, perhaps they will pass a law forbidding any web site except Cheezburger, anywhere on earth, to post funny pictures of cats.
Seattle's ordinance did not regulate anything Uber did with its website or its smartphones: http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023149338…
It does in fact what I said it does: it carves out a new space in the regulatory regime in order to permit Uber and Lyft, etc., to operate.
Seattle's ordinance did not regulate anything Uber did with its website or its smartphones: http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023149338…
Not only did Seattle's ordinance regulate what Uber does with its web site or its smartphones, that's the ONLY thing it regulated.
When the article says it "limits the number of drivers" Uber and Lyft can have "on the road" at any given time, that's saying that it can only link its web/phone apps to a certain number of drivers at any given time. The web/phone apps are what DEFINE whether or not someone is an Uber or Lyft driver "on duty" or "on the road."
Nonsense. Uber can link to whoever it wants; it's when those people start driving around in Seattle, picking people up and ferrying them to other places that the Seattle City Council takes an interest.
Well, yes, that's the way it should be.
However, that is most manifestly not how it is.
Seattle's politicians didn't try to regulate Uber's drivers (the people in the cars, picking people up and ferrying them to other places).
Seattle's politicians tried to regulate Uber (the company that operates the web site and smartphone app with which the people in the cars and the people they pick up connect with each other).
You're just flat wrong. You don't have to like it. You're wrong whether you like it or not.
Again, read the text of the ordinance, or just watch the news. Is SPD kicking down Uber's front door? No. All enforcement everywhere is on the drivers, not on Uber the corporate entity. This notion that Seattle is proposing to ban Uber's app or tell Uber what it can do with it is just absurd, totally contradicted by facts. Uber can do whatever it wants with its app. The city takes an interest when people are ferrying other people around in cars, which is precisely what the ordinance regulates, and precisely what the ordinance creates a new regulatory space to permit.
Prior to the enactment of 1244451, anyone who wanted to give rides for money needed a cab or limo license. Now, a special regulatory space has been carved out to permit certain people to dispense with that requirement. This space was created at the behest of Uber. This is not even remotely controversial.
I disagree with Johathan Carp’s thesis that Sidecar, Lyft, and Uber are connected crony capitalists who control government officials and can sweep away regulations just like that. The local governments ARE resisting and trying to regulate these ride-sharing firms because of their existing cartel with traditional taxi services. I have, I think, a better theory explaining why the alt ride services are getting away with bucking the corporatism while doctors and nurses cannot: Size. Taxi corporatism is a local thing, controlled by local or municipal governments. Medical corporatism is on the provincial (“state”) or central State level. The more centralized (better funded, better cartelized) cartels are harder to oppose than local ones. Challenging cartelized local cabs is much easier than challenging e.g. an interstate airline cartel.
Well, I would say my thesis is more precisely that Uber et al. are connected capitalists, as are the taxi companies, and we are witnessing an internal struggle amongst the capitalists. So for instance in Seattle, the cab companies would've liked to keep Uber entirely criminalized, but Uber's political power was too much for that, while the cab companies' power was too much for Uber to get what it wanted entirely.
I've been unable to find the text of the ordinance on Seattle's government web site. However, according to the story you link, the ordinance:
"would limit each company to a maximum of 150 drivers on the road at any one time, collectively limiting them to 450 drivers working at the same time."
Since the drivers are ordinary people driving their own cars, the ordinance surely doesn't say "if you drive for Uber, you're not allowed to go out for groceries if 150 other people who driver for Uber happen to be on the road at the same time."
No, it says "if you are Uber, a company located in and operating from two states away from Seattle, your web site and phone app must connect ride-seekers in Seattle with no more than 150 prospective drivers in Seattle at any given time."
That's the only plausible way for Seattle TO regulate Uber, and it's something they came up with on the fly to increase, rather than decrease, city government involvement in local transportation in order to protect the existing city-privileged cab monopolists.
Ah, found it:
http://clerk.seattle.gov/public/meetingrecords/20…
It's even more bizarre than I expected.
First, it tries to magically bring Uber under Seattle's jurisdiction by claiming that any company which transmits transportation information to/receives it from phones in Seattle is "operating in Seattle."
But then it tries to nail it down by requiring companies "operating in Seattle" to maintain physical offices there.
And it dictates the content and structure of the app communications, including a requirement to "report information from their systems deemed necessary or convenient to allow enforcement of regulations."
Is it true that Seattle could have just outlawed Uber drivers within its city limits? Sure — and that prohibition would have been utterly ineffective absent the voluntary cooperation of Uber itself. At most, they might have nailed a few drivers with stings.
Seattle's real choices with Uber were to either ignore it or to assert strange powers of interstate tech regulation and hope that Uber decided to cooperate instead of give them the finger.
Uber is not operating in Seattle? Tell Uber that. They're thrilled to be operating in Seattle, and in many other cities. Their blog is full of such boasts.
You're being absurdly pedantic here. Clearly Uber is operating in Seattle. Were Uber not operating in Seattle, no one could get a ride from Uber in Seattle. And prior to this city council ordinance, all ride-for-pay services *were* outlawed within the city limits, unless the driver, wherever his corporate parent was, was in possession of a special tiny license plate.
By your logic, under existing law I could open a cab service in NYC as long as the garage and main office was in Long Island. After all, I wouldn't be "operating in New York City." Shall we try that experiment? You first.
There's no need to "try the experiment." We're doing it right now.
I am writing this in Gainesville, Florida.
You are reading this in Tacoma, Washington.
I will pay you $5 to go pick up a random stranger in Tacoma and give him a ride.
Am I "operating a taxi in Tacoma?"
No. You are.
If the Tacoma Washington city council thinks it gets to tell me whether or not I can write here, and if so what the content can consist of, it's got another think coming.
But that's exactly what Seattle claims it gets to do with Uber in San Francisco.
Except, as I said, SPD isn't breaking down Uber's door. They're allegedly going to give tickets to drivers, except it hasn't come to pass yet. So they're doing exactly what you say would constitute regulating drivers and not Uber.