Uber ads on Prop 1 for May 7

[seeker_two]

Holy crap, that asnwers the question of "Is Jim Hightower still alive?"

I always like when I thought people were dead turn out not to be. The wifey is still in Prince mourning.

Somebody should send that man a guitar and a record contract. The year is still young.....

 

[Mreed911]

Yep, so now this comes out: Ride Austin, a new NON-PROFIT ridesharing company designed to pay more to the drivers without costing the customers more (yeah, right! we'll see!)

http://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2016-05-23/rideaustin-enters-the-ridehailing-market/

http://www.rideaustin.com/faq/

And the other side, the "free market" side?

Black Market Ride-Sharing Explodes In Austin After Voters Drive Out Uber And Lyft

http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/23/black-market-ride-sharing-uber-lyft/

Now that Uber and Lyft are gone, Austin—generally thought to be a tech-savvy city—has instead put itself on the map for its ham-fisted governance. The city’s response is only making things worse. Last week it held a job fair for out-of-work Uber and Lyft drivers, at which it encouraged drivers to get fingerprinted and sign up for the only remaining ridesharing company in town, a local app called Get Me.

In other words, the city used taxpayer dollars to promote the one private ridesharing company that chose to comply with its onerous regulations.


If that weren’t absurd enough, the city’s transportation department recently floated the idea of deregulating the local taxi cab industry to “level the playing field” with ridesharing companies. Austin Mayor Steve Adler even imagines a “third-party, cross-platform validator badge” the city could use to regulate everything from ridesharing to Craigslist transactions in the city.


In a moment of un-ironic cluelessness, Adler told The Atlantic’s City Lab: “My sense is we were innovating too quickly for Uber and Lyft. You get to be a big company, you’re less nimble. But these companies have to expect disruption.”

Adler gets it exactly backwards: city regulators and their government-backed taxi cab cartel are the ones who should have expected disruption—and a thriving black market—when they tried to shut down ridesharing in Austin.

Businesses are feeling the hit, too:

http://www.twcnews.com/tx/austin/ne...-movement-explodes-after-uber-lyft-leave.html

A major Austin bar owner said Monday his sales are taking a dive. They dropped 20-percent this past weekend alone.

Bob Woody and several of his fellow bar owners blame the loss of well-known ride-hailing apps Uber and Lyft for their business decline.


"For us not to have it is to go back in time," Woody said. "To have had it and now not have it--really difficult."

 

[TheDan]

http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/23/black-market-ride-sharing-uber-lyft/
the city used taxpayer dollars to promote the one private ridesharing company that chose to comply with its onerous regulations.

Cronyism at it's finest.

 

[coachrick]

Cronyism at it's finest.

Onerous??? Which regs are onerous?
https://www.google.com/search?q=onerous&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

BTW, I was not aware of ANY rideshare company being 'promoted' by the city. (I don't doubt the cronyism, however)

 

[Younggun]

I wish there was data to show how many of the people who voted on the prop actually use Uber or Lyft, and which way users voted vs non users.


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[Hoji]

I wish there was data to show how many of the people who voted on the prop actually use Uber or Lyft, and which way users voted vs non users.


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Kind of like the nanny staters that voted to ban smoking in bars in Austin. I wonder how many of them actually go to bars.

 

[rushthezeppelin]

I wish there was data to show how many of the people who voted on the prop actually use Uber or Lyft, and which way users voted vs non users.


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As I've said, some of us that use them in Austin can't even vote anyway.....

 

[Mreed911]

As I've said, some of us that use them in Austin can't even vote anyway.....

And for those of you they still operate.