Mistrust by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Chapter 7

PRODUCTIVE DISRUPTION

TAXIS DON’T GET A LOT OF LOVE.

In many cities around the world, taxi driving is a dangerous and low-paid profession, a job often held by recent immigrants. In the United States, the cultural image of taxis is shaped by films like Taxi Driver, in which an unstable Vietnam veteran who drives a taxi descends into vigilantism, and Taxi, a sitcom in which a range of down-on-their luck characters drive taxis because they can’t find other work. American taxi drivers are twenty times as likely to be murdered on the job as the average worker—and taxi and limousine drivers die via homicide more than twice as often as police officers.1

In London, taxi driving is an honored and carefully regulated profession—cabbies must pass a legendarily difficult test on London geography called “The Knowledge.” But London taxis also suffer under the pressure of market forces. Their high cost per ride has led to the rise of minicabs. This less expensive option, piloted by drivers who have had less rigorous training and have less understanding of the city they navigate, threatens to undermine the existing regime.

It’s hard to find many defenders of the current American taxi system. Arguing against the spread of ride-sharing services like Uber, the law professor and civic technologist Susan Crawford doesn’t bother arguing that the current taxi system is worth saving. She agrees that “taxis aren’t viewed as expressions of the public value of clean, safe, city-validated, superior, inexpensive transport for everyone involved—and as a vehicle for good jobs.” But she hopes that we could imagine a good, safe, affordable taxi system provided by someone other than a private company.2

Today’s taxis aren’t an especially good deal either for riders or for drivers. Many cities provide a limited set of taxi licenses, which tends to concentrate power in the hands of “medallion holders,” who make money renting that limited monopoly out to drivers. Conservatives and libertarians don’t like taxis because they’re a tightly controlled, government-regulated system with an artificial monopoly on the market. Progressives aren’t big taxi fans because they’re far from the affordable, accessible, environmentally sound models of public transportation they advocate for.

In other words, taxis are an institution—a system of interchangeable parts that we interact with as an entity rather than as a set of individuals—ripe for disruption.

When Uber was founded in 2009, it aimed to reduce the cost of renting luxury cars with drivers, the chauffeured “black cars” that serve a higher-cost part of the on-demand transportation market than taxis fill. By 2014, Uber’s controversial founder and then CEO, Travis Kalanick, announced, “We didn’t realize it, but we’re in this political campaign, and the candidate is Uber, and the opponent is an a—hole named taxi.” As Uber decided to challenge the taxi industry as well as car services, his rhetoric grew blunt: “We have to bring out the truth about how dark and how dangerous and evil the taxi side of things is.”3

As Uber grew from disrupting black cars to disrupting taxis and delivery services—promising ultimately to disrupt public transportation as a whole—its business model has emerged as a new paradigm.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.