It's harder for an actor to masquerade under an Uber-style system than traditional regulation. Every move is tracked, and customers could even get photographs of registered drivers via their own trusted channel -- as opposed to the easily-faked licensing documents carried by traditional cabs. (Big cities sometimes have 'gypsy cabs' whose markings and meters can be hard for even local police to distinguish from licensed cabs.)
Uh, no. I don't know what podunk city you live in, but in my city, cabs must have GPS devices, driver's licenses, and a medallion, in addition to specially marked cars. All of these are inspected at least yearly, compared to Uber's one-and-done verification system.
And what if there are competitors? As long as all of them are branded, and can be reviewed on third-party sites, customers can decide whether they like the power of driver reviews, or some other mechanism for checking abuses.
I'm sure some drunk guy will have to presence of mind to review multiple car services at 3am in the morning. Cab services are regulated because the passenger has no or limited choice in their selection or their ability to review the available cars.
But now for users of technology, conditions A, B, and C are gone. Anonymous pick-ups are precluded by design.
Uh, no. See drunk guy at a bar at 3am, above. Uber does not solve this. Technology is not the magical solution to everything. Regulation exists to solve problems in this area which technology cannot, and especially in Uber's case, does not solve.
Indeed, if anything, Uber simply makes the fraud problem worse. Because there's very little to stop someone from scamming Uber, and there's a lot of financial incentive for Uber to downplay or even hide fraud.
Uh, no. I don't know what podunk city you live in, but in my city, cabs must have GPS devices, driver's licenses, and a medallion, in addition to specially marked cars. All of these are inspected at least yearly, compared to Uber's one-and-done verification system.
And what if there are competitors? As long as all of them are branded, and can be reviewed on third-party sites, customers can decide whether they like the power of driver reviews, or some other mechanism for checking abuses.
I'm sure some drunk guy will have to presence of mind to review multiple car services at 3am in the morning. Cab services are regulated because the passenger has no or limited choice in their selection or their ability to review the available cars.
But now for users of technology, conditions A, B, and C are gone. Anonymous pick-ups are precluded by design.
Uh, no. See drunk guy at a bar at 3am, above. Uber does not solve this. Technology is not the magical solution to everything. Regulation exists to solve problems in this area which technology cannot, and especially in Uber's case, does not solve.
Indeed, if anything, Uber simply makes the fraud problem worse. Because there's very little to stop someone from scamming Uber, and there's a lot of financial incentive for Uber to downplay or even hide fraud.