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[Matthew Strongin]

You should have walked!

I told my wife the same thing! We would have gotten home sooner and burned off the 4 Old Fashioneds.

[colker]

My experience with Uber has ranged from "this car smells better than a cab" to "why the eff are we going the wrong direction on the highway." My last Uber ride was after a kid free night out with some friends and a few drinks at a restaurant/bar about 4 miles from my house. Due to Uber's amazing in-app navigation that the driver wouldn't deviate from and his generally terrible driving skills, it took about 50 minutes and an extra 30 miles of wrong turns on highways with no quick and easy exits. But at least Uber made it impossible to speak with a customer service rep about the incident so I had the pleasure of paying for the 50 minute ride, since that's what the app recorded, rather than the 8 minute ride it should have been. So, yeah...much better than cabs.

I had the same experience w/ uber the other day. It was exasperating. Most if not all uber drivers have zero idea of the city and rely entirely on google maps or waze/ maze(?).
Airbnb is such a great idea untill an entire family die from leaking gas in an apartment in Santiago/Chile.

[Matthew Strongin]

I had the same experience w/ uber the other day. It was exasperating. Most if not all uber drivers have zero idea of the city and rely entirely on google maps or waze/ maze(?).
Airbnb is such a great idea untill an entire family die from leaking gas in an apartment in Santiago/Chile.

Don't get me started on Uber Eats, too. It started as a way to get delivery from a bunch of great restaurants. Now it's just a great way to get lied to about when your expensive and now cold (or warm if it started cold) food will actually arrive.

[vertical_doug]

Except for the lives saved because folks now have a quick, convenient, pleasant option after having drinks. While you note the 'disrupted' lives of taxi drivers, no mention of the good folks making ends meet with an uber side hustle. Comparing uber to taxi cabs in dallas is ridiculous. In Dallas taxi cabs took forever to arrive, if they ever arrived at all. At certain times, taxi cabs simply were not available ever, no matter how long you were willing to wait. Uber normally arrives within 5-10 minutes, and in my experience drivers are chipper & happy.

Help me understand your dislike of uber. Is it just a preference for more government control in your daily life?

Some of Uber's innovations are very good, and the whole dispatch system was a fine improvement over hailing a cab on the street. It just has some baggage with the using the loophole to classify employees as independent contractors. It is quite predatory on that front. Also the whole grey ball program should have resulted in fines.

The issue on having to work a side hustle to make ends meet is a sad commentary on needing more better paying jobs. Some of the people working the side hustle may now be cabbies who cannot make ends meet. Laissez-faire capitalism doesn't work when the system is controlled by monopolies.

The 'preference for more government control' is just a well worn trope. Over regulation is bad, but equally under regulation can also be very bad. You would not enjoy living in a purely libertarian society with no regulation.

[mzilliox]

Some of Uber's innovations are very good, and the whole dispatch system was a fine improvement over hailing a cab on the street. It just has some baggage with the using the loophole to classify employees as independent contractors. It is quite predatory on that front. Also the whole grey ball program should have resulted in fines.

The issue on having to work a side hustle to make ends meet is a sad commentary on needing more better paying jobs. Some of the people working the side hustle may now be cabbies who cannot make ends meet. Laissez-faire capitalism doesn't work when the system is controlled by monopolies.

The 'preference for more government control' is just a well worn trope. Over regulation is bad, but equally under regulation can also be very bad. You would not enjoy living in a purely libertarian society with no regulation.

there is no such thing as libertarian society, it goes against the idea of being libertarian. Libertarianism is fantasy, plain and simple. a "libertarian society" is a chiefdom. but it smells oddly of unnecessary fear when someone mentions government control in our lives in regards to uber, but no mention of government control when Trump announces another lie to nudge the market upwards, or has another rally to stir his base into a frenzy. no fear or mention of the government controlled fox news? we live in civil society, it requires a liberal government. we wouldnt be here without liberal ideals and liberal governments being liberal, and we wouldnt be where we are today if we didnt have a government that took control of things and steered the ship in a vaguely morally correct direction. instead wed have monarchs still, rich folks controlling everything, and we arent so far from that anyway.

rings hollow.

[caleb]

Help me understand your dislike of uber. Is it just a preference for more government control in your daily life?

Some questions one might ask when evaluating a change in services within a community:

1) Is this new service provider lawful, and does it express a respect for the rule of law?
2) Does this new servicer have a track record of doing harm?
3) How does this change in services affect the poor, weak, and vulnerable in my community?
4) How does this new servicer impact public goods in my community, including infrastructure?
5) Does this employer provide the sort of employment that is correlated with positive life outcomes?
.
.
.
#) How does this change in services impact me personally?
.
.
.
##) Does this change in services provide a reliable Plan B for people to go and get blitzed in far-flung locations not served by public transit or cabs?

With Uber, I didn't make it far down the list before saying, "no thanks." If I inverted the list to put my own personal convenience or enabling excessive drinking at the top then I could see how the outcome might be different, but I don't want to live in a society of self-centered hedonism.

[Scott G.]

I watched Hallmark Xmas movies with the relatives, they seemed odd to me, nice but odd,
religion free Xmas movies ? I'm used to watching Charlie Brown's Christmas or Meet John Doe,
those are Christmas movies.

How Hallmark Took Over Cable Television | The New Yorker

[mzilliox]

Some questions one might ask when evaluating a change in services within a community:

1) Is this new service provider lawful, and does it express a respect for the rule of law?
2) Does this new servicer have a track record of doing harm?
3) How does this change in services affect the poor, weak, and vulnerable in my community?
4) How does this new servicer impact public goods in my community, including infrastructure?
5) Does this employer provide the sort of employment that is correlated with positive life outcomes?
.
.
.
#) How does this change in services impact me personally?
.
.
.
##) Does this change in services provide a reliable Plan B for people to go and get blitzed in far-flung locations not served by public transit or cabs?

With Uber, I didn't make it far down the list before saying, "no thanks." If I inverted the list to put my own personal convenience or enabling excessive drinking at the top then I could see how the outcome might be different, but those aren't my values.

I like how you put your own choices far down the list when considering policy that affects everyone. This is the spirit. To make choices with "ME" at the center seems counter to any concept of democracy i have come to understand. To consider the collective of humanity is the only way to consider choices which affect humanity.

[Dallas Tex]

I use Uber. My experiences with Uber have been stellar. The only negative thing I wonder about is It’s effect on public transportation. Dallas has a surprisingly good light rail / bus service. it’ll be interesting if Uber negatively affects growth of public transportation options.

[Dallas Tex]

.
.
##) Does this change in services provide a reliable Plan B for people to go and get blitzed in far-flung locations not served by public transit or cabs?

........ If I inverted the list to put my own personal convenience or enabling excessive drinking at the top then I could see how the outcome might be different, but I don't want to live in a society of self-centered hedonism.

Can I assume you're against needle exchange programs also?

[Dallas Tex]

I watched Hallmark Xmas movies with the relatives, they seemed odd to me, nice but odd,
religion free Xmas movies ? I'm used to watching Charlie Brown's Christmas or Meet John Doe,
those are Christmas movies.

How Hallmark Took Over Cable Television | The New Yorker

The Hallmark Christmas movies are a guilty pleasure of mine every year. Also, it wouldn't be Christmas with out Heat Miser & Snow Miser.

[guido]

Opinion | The Legacy of Destructive Austerity - The New York Times

[vertical_doug]

The Hallmark Christmas movies are a guilty pleasure of mine every year. Also, it wouldn't be Christmas with out Heat Miser & Snow Miser.

Those old Christmas stop animation puppet movies - Rudolph, Year Without a Santa Claus and Santa Claus is coming to town, were all produced by Rankin/Bass with the animation done in Japan at MOM/Toei Animation and TopCraft. The Japanese Staff from Toei formed Topcraft and later went on to form Studio Ghibli which gave us Princess Monoke, Spirited Away and all the other top Japanese animated movies.

How can you not love BergerMeister Meisterberger ... who hates toys...

[guido]

Opinion | Trump: The Year in Charts - The New York Times

[72gmc]

The Hallmark Christmas movies are a guilty pleasure of mine every year. Also, it wouldn't be Christmas with out Heat Miser & Snow Miser.

There is a good article on Hallmark movies in the New Yorker: How Hallmark Took Over Cable Television | The New Yorker

It almost makes me feel sorry for Lori Loughlin that she threw a career away on college admission bribes. Maybe she can come back as the black hat in every nine-act Christmas tale.

[cash]

Bored with politics. Stumbled upon this story:

The Day Treva Throneberry Disappeared

[Dallas Tex]

Rank-and-File Workers Get Bigger Raises - WSJ

[Dallas Tex]

The Equalizer - WSJ

[ides1056]

Science matters:

Science Panel Staffed With Trump Appointees Says E.P.A. Rollbacks Lack Scientific Rigor - The New York Times

[mzilliox]

Rank-and-File Workers Get Bigger Raises - WSJ

paywall, so unable to read it, but there is a line that says "collapsing claims of soaring income inequality"? This is in reference to the denzel article as well. there is no collapse of these claims, inequality is real and growing. hard to take anything else he says seriously. telling he reports for fox and wsj. though he does actually have a piece out there on how the trade war is hurting the economy, he also has a piece spouting nonsense about the whistleblower, as if that person has anything to do with the present anymore.

thats all i can say about that one. The other, if demand for workers is high and supply low, wages must rise, its simple econ. and if the economy is expanding, wages should go up.

good for them, i hope the trend continues, they've a lot of ground to make up over their owners. And there is a lot of work to do to evn the playing field some, see if we can get the distribution a little more fair.