The key word in this title is "proposes". That's a strong signal that the article is political fluff.
Sure enough, read the text for actual information and you'll see that it's reporting on a press conference about a commission that issued a report. This, through the magic of journalism, turns into "Sweden".
So, they want to encourage ride-sharing in the original meaning - carpooling. Not the "taxi company in disguise" meaning. Sounds fair enough to me.
For context, the taxi regulation in Sweden is very light. There is no medallion system limiting the number of cars, and no regulation of prices. You just need an extended driver's license, an approved taxi-meter (same as how grocery stores need their scales to be approved), and the pricing plan listed clearly in the window.
There has been quite a bit of criticism of this lack of regulation, since some private taxi drivers will prey on tourists by overpricing their services by 3x and waiting at airports. Since their rip-off prices are displayed right there in the window, it's fully legal. Tourists don't know the typical price of a taxi, and fresh off an airplane are not sure what the local currency rate is (Sweden isn't on the Euro), and hence get ripped off.
"So, they want to encourage ride-sharing in the original meaning - carpooling. Not the "taxi company in disguise" meaning. Sounds fair enough to me."
I'm not necessarily a fan of Uber, but this is ridiculous.
If 'taxis' are legal in Sweden then there's no reason Uber should not be able to operate so long as they are obeying the laws.
Ostensibly, this is about a specific issue - distance travelled and the lack of ability for tax authorities to measure that.
Two things to know about Nordic countries:
1) They are super, super aggressive when it comes to tax things. Cheating on taxes is worse than some major crimes!
2) They are culturally anti-business and anti-entrepreneurial. I know this may seem odd given the number of startups - but their version of 'socialism' is cultural. To be a 'business person' or 'CEO' or to 'have your own company' even up until the 1980's was considered a 'dirty word'. They have this view that 'private business is immoral' in some ways. It's hard to describe. They are just default skeptical of anyone creating a business. Obviously that has evolved a lot over the last 30 years, but the underlying cultural phenom is still kind of there.
Finally - this may simply be political. Taxi entities around the world are trying to find ways to get Uber banned, and so they find an issue or concern that gives them a legal footing.
1) Cheating on taxes is quite literally stealing from every other person in the country. That being said I think there is a lot of small scale cheating going, especially for small cash-driven businesses.
2) There's no hostility towards entrepreneurs as far as I've seen it, quite the opposite. However people in general do seem to realize that there is a very real tradeoff between business interests and the interests of citizens. You can't have 0% corporate tax and free healthcare and education.
As for Uber Pop, the drivers are not volunteers and are simply either taxed for the profits they make through Uber Pop or they can do actual not-for-profit car pooling.
"As a Swede:
1) Cheating on taxes is quite literally stealing from every other person in the country."
Yes - thanks for this.
You made my point better than I could.
'Cheating on taxes' is seen as much more of an 'immoral crime' in Scandinavia, than in other places.
In Canada, 'cheating on taxes' is seen like maybe 'cheating a payment' or something. It's 'wrong' obviously, but there is not a 'stigma'.
For whatever reasons (socialized culture, very small community where cause/effect are direct - I don't know? - you tell me :)) - cheating on taxes is a 'much bigger deal', socially, and probably even legally.
>You can't have 0% corporate tax and free healthcare and education.
I don't think this was really your point, but is there any particular reason you think there's a need for corporate tax, rather than just taking the same money via capital gains tax?
Reducing corporate friendliness to the tax rate is overly simplified of course. Sweden is on the whole a rather easy to start a company in, there is one single government entity to deal with and it can all be done online. There are relaxed accounting rules unless you reach a certain size etc.
I think you should study the field of tax incidence a bit.
Corporate tax actually falls on shareholders and workers. It sounds nice: tax those faceless corporations and not us nice citizens. But the actual end result is not necessarily what one may think.
You will of course find lots of material claiming this and that about corporation tax, because people are passionate about it, but for some balance, this is a summary I picked at random:
> Cheating on taxes is quite literally stealing from every other person in the country.
Does Sweden use some sort of flat fee tax system -- e.g. take the total annual expenses and divide by the population and everyone pays the same amount? If not, then I'd ask whether it's stealing for a person to make less than another person and therefore pay less taxes.
Do you live here in Scandinavia? Because the comment on entrepreneurship sounds VERY odd for me living here in Stockholm. I've literally never seen an instance of that, quite the opposite. Being a business person is just an occupation as any other, what Swedes are quite against is for you to make 100x to 1000x what your workers earn just by being the owner or CEO of the company.
This sense of equality is well ingrained in society and it's one of the reasons I wanted to live here (after living most of my life in Brazil).
Like another comment in this thread said: Uber can still operate here, you just can't disguise a service making profit as carpooling. I've used Uber quite a lot here and every single time it was just a taxi also running with Uber, I don't think this ban will affect Uber at all.
1) They are super, super aggressive when it comes to tax things. Cheating on taxes is worse than some major crimes!
Which major crimes would that be? I'm a Dane, and this sounds ridiculous to me.
2) They are culturally anti-business and anti-entrepreneurial.
That is way overstating it at best, and at worst just BS. True, we in the Nordic countries (or at least in Denmark), don't have quite the reverence for business men and entrepreneurs that Americans seem to have. But we do generally have a great deal of respect for our captains of industry and for people who've succeeded at building something.
The 'anti tax' statement is his, told to me, while I was in Denmark. The Danish tax authorities have to know specific things about your status - including if you carpool to work or not, in order to establish your tax status. They tax in a different way there - they establish your 'effective rate', rather than doing tons of deductions. Whether or not you carpool for example, affects your rate. He indicated to me that misrepresenting anything - even a minor issue to the tax authorities - is a fairly serious crime.
To contrast - the last time I met with him in Denmark, I went to dinner with some of his 'friends'. One of them had just gotten out of a 'halfway house' for murder. He spent almost no time in actual jail.
Anecdotal, but legitimate nevertheless.
The 'anti business' attitude in Scandinavian countries is (or was) palpable, esp. among anyone over say 45. It's a much more difficult thing to illustrate, but go ahead and talk to an older Swede. You'll see what I mean.
misrepresenting anything - even a minor issue to the tax authorities - is a fairly serious crime
You have to understand that in Denmark, salaried workers don't have to report their own taxes. Their employers and bank are obliged to do it for them. Only on the rare occasion when the bank or the employer don't have all the information, do most Danes have to edit their tax return. This state of affairs makes it hard to make "an honest mistake", when doing your taxes, and you have to go out of your way to cheat outright.
It's hard to comment on your anecdote about the murderer when I don't know the details, but I can tell you that the penalty for murder in Denmark is between 5 years and life in prison. I think the average sentence is 12 years, but I can't find a source for that.
But isn't the system the same as we have in Finland: although employers report to the tax authorities and deposit PAYE, the tax authorities make a calculation and send it to the employee. But the individual is still responsible for declaring any income. You don't have to send back the report, if it includes everything and you aren't making any deductions. But if you have income that's not known by the tax authorities, and you don't report it, that's a crime.
Yes, that sounds similar. My post was not meant to contrast Denmark with the world, but Scandinavia with the US, where it's the task of the individual to report any income. This makes it easier make mistakes or to cheat.
Sure, but my point on the other hand was that also in Scandinavia, the responsibility of submitting a correct report still ultimately lies with the taxpayer.
> The 'anti business' attitude in Scandinavian countries is (or was) palpable, esp. among anyone over say 45. It's a much more difficult thing to illustrate, but go ahead and talk to an older Swede. You'll see what I mean.
I'm Swedish, my Aunt is a hardcore "thought the USSR was great"-Vänsterpartiet-leftist, but even she does some work as self-employed entrepreneur and when I came of age and started doing contract work breathlessly started telling me about all the stuff I could deduct off my taxes.
Denmark has gotten a lot better at encouraging business growth, lowering the capital requirement for registering a private company and introducing a new "start-up" business type that costs 1-DKK to register. With that business type you have three years to grow up to the capitalization level of private company and your qualification as such once you do achieve that level is pretty much automatic, at least as far as I can recall from my Knowlege Based Entrepreneurship class from a year ago. The start-up business type is mostly unknown, as it hasn't been marketed very well to the public. I'm glad I got to learn about it because it seems quite a bit easier and cheaper than starting a similar company in the US.
The Nordic companies are not 'the best' at startups, not remotely close.
They have some nice attributes.
I worked for the EU government studying these issues a decade ago.
One of the primary reasons it's hard for startups over there, is that there are really weak eco-systems - you need 'big pocketed' acquierers (among other things) to sustain the model.
Paradoxically, the (admittedly older) 'anti business' attitude, which again doesn't really exist so much among younger people today - doesn't imply that they are 'bad at business'.
I would actually agree, that 'pound for pound' Swedes are decent at startups, but because of other factors - i.e. market size, eco-systems, language, geography ... it's hard for them to compete with Valley startups.
You are contradicting yourself and honestly I don't see the point of correcting these falsehoods but I will note that Sweden and other Scandinavian countries are doing pretty damn well internationally considering how small the populations are [1][2][3].
Also - your 'references' are standard 'glam posts' by media outlets, they are pop culture references, not serious measures of the success of businesses.
Those types of articles and the common 'country rankings' are surprisingly not particularly relevant - the later, almost always depend on the criteria chosen.
For example - if you have as your 'startup criteria':
A) The prevalence of educated population
B) Access to healthcare
C) Quality of Universities
etc.
Then you'll get certain results that may have nothing to do with startups.
My point that 'Swedes are good at startups but Sweden is not the best place for startups' is not remotely contradictory.
Given the choice between Sweden, and any of the American tech-hubs, there is little comparison: America is better.
And it has mostly to do with market size, access to capital, exit opportunities, exchanges, talent pools etc. etc.
+ The scale of American business means there is a level of specialization unheard of almost anywhere else. There are tons of jobs in the Valley that literally don't exist anywhere else.
+ Growing fast and need to hire 1000 developers over the next 5 years? Impossible in Stockholm. Possible in the Valley. Plausible elsewhere.
+ Looking to be acquired? Tons of buyers, many with deep pockets in the Valley. Sweden? Almost none. You'll have to get someone in Germany/UK/USA etc. interested in making a very foreign acquisition. Much harder.
+ Language and culture are barriers. Swedes have access to EU talent, but how many will move? Low rates of mobility in Europe. In America, people move 1000Km for a job, less so in Europe.
+ Want to go IPO? It's a lot easier for an American company.
Do you know why at YC, young entrepreneurs are seriously pressured to simply 'move to the Valley'? It's related to all the reasons above. These are essentially the reason that 'the Valley' is a powerhouse, compared to other places - even when 'other places' may have consistently higher degrees of education etc. etc...
> + Language and culture are barriers. Swedes have access to EU talent, but how many will move? Low rates of mobility in Europe. In America, people move 1000Km for a job, less so in Europe.
I completely disagree with this statement and I'll have to call your sources for it. Even more here in Stockholm, but mobility around Europe for tech jobs is huge, I work at Klarna with 45 different nationalities. Same thing happens at Spotify where I have friends working in.
Hell, even in a small startup and a small to medium-sized company where I know people working at they have people from 10 different countries in Europe, even from richer countries such as Germany, England and Switzerland.
I have friends working in Dublin, London, Berlin, Frankfurt, Zurich and all of them working with different nationalities all the time.
That's an odd statment. Not all startups need gigantic cash influx nor (oh god) 1000 engineers. 100 million a year businesses can operate with under 100 core developer staff (need more for other operations of course but those are generally easier to hire for).
> 1) They are super, super aggressive when it comes to tax things. Cheating on taxes is worse than some major crimes!
Yes. It is seen as freeloading. Which, in fact, it is[1].
> 2) They are culturally anti-business and anti-entrepreneurial.
That is simply ridiculous, unless you want to define a recognition that externalities are a thing as 'anti-business'. Or put another way, what exactly is it about the profit motive that transforms bad behavior into good behavior? (You may define 'bad behavior' differently, but that's a different question.)
A friend who lives in Sweden, and has spent several years living in the U.S. put it well. Americans are weirdly uptight about sex, believing that public acknowledgment that humans like rutting at least as much as other animals somehow poisons the commons. Swedes are weirdly uptight about preservation of the commons itself.
It isn't anti-business to recognize that commercial activities, like any other activities, effect others in potentially good and bad ways. Every first-world country does. Nordic countries generally value the social norms and structures they've built more than they value enabling the scraping every possible niche for profit.
[1] You may not like the bundle of services provided, but the obligation exists. That's how government works, at least until someone builds that infinite-land machine. I'm really not in the mood for a rerun of Net.libertarians vs. Rousseau, so won't respond to that argument.
I am a Swede and I kind of disagree with what you are saying. Maybe creating a company was considered "dirty" in the 80s but nowadays it is completely reversed.
I don't believe anyone is skeptical of anyone creating a business, in fact I think most people would be very positive towards it.
Also, I like Uber and have used it several times when in Stockholm. Altough, more often than not it's a normal taxi that picks you up. Why I like Uber is simply because of the app and that it is so much better than any competition.
Plus, I hope that soon I will get picked up by a robot driver and want to contribute to that happening asap.
> "So, they want to encourage ride-sharing in the original meaning - carpooling. Not the "taxi company in disguise" meaning. Sounds fair enough to me."
> I'm not necessarily a fan of Uber, but this is ridiculous.
> If 'taxis' are legal in Sweden then there's no reason Uber should not be able to operate so long as they are obeying the laws.
I think you've misunderstood what was said in the original article. This doesn't make Uber illegal at all in Sweden, they can continue providing taxi services like they have done. However, it makes the ride-sharing part of it, UberPOP for example, illegal. I.e if you want to ride share then that's fine, but you shouldn't be compensated for it. Bringing it back to the original concept of carpooling.
However, Uber Black or UberX would be, from my understanding of it, perfectly fine and they can continue to offer those services.
I don't believe so. UberX is not ridesharing, UberPOP is. Also, if I am mistaken, please point me to the source in the article that actually states that they're targeting UberX. The article explicitly mentions UberPOP, if it would affect X I'm fairly certain they would've mentioned that along the way.
The fact that POP is not operational in Sweden at all doesn't mean it automatically targets X. UberPOP is just the ride sharing service most people are familiar with so it makes sense for Reuters to use that as an example, as well as add to the appeal of their article. There are however other companies that do provide for-profit ride sharing services in Stockholm. This just means that there's now going to be a law that prohibits UberPOP and similar for-profit ride sharing services entirely, regardless of if they already operate or not.
As also noted by Uber itself, X is not ridesharing.
UberX is the most popular private car service that Uber has to offer. It's commonly referred to as the "low-cost option" for riders, it allows you to quickly arrive at your destination without breaking the bank.
To contrast with UberPOP
With UberPOP, you can share your UberX and split the fare with multiple users.
UberPOP is what we have in Helsinki. You're able to split the fare with multiple users, whom you know, going the same route as you are. Imho actual ride sharing would be the "taxi" picking up random other people along the way and then the service billing everybody fairly in the end. With UberPOP fare splitting is just a convenience feature of the service, i.e. "instead of you giving me that 5 euro note for your share of this taxi ride, let's do it automatically".
Maybe pop works differently in places which have both it and X though. Those descriptions certainly make it seem like that.
Well, the problem is that for some reason Uber and its drivers do not think they have to live up to the same regulations that taxi drivers do, even though they provide the same exact service and compete for the same customers. That is called unfair competition.
So if you allow Uber to exist in its current form then you'd also have to waive taxi regulations, and I do not see why we would be interested in doing that.
Oh, and I have never experienced the hostility towards entrepreneurship and private business. But of course I wasn't born before the 80's, so can't comment on that :-)
Neo-liberalism has gone too far. Anything that limits the company power to do everything is seen as "anti-business". It is not like that, good rules improve fair competition. That rules can hurt ONE or a FEW companies while creating a more healthy system that benefits the rest of companies and citizens.
In Norway there is definitely no hostility in any form towards entrepreneurship. In fact it is safer to start a private company here as after closing down the business one still can apply to some social support from the state.
Also there are lot of various free courses about how to do reporting and accounting for new businesses. And one can do the accounting oneself in a spreadsheet and/or free web sites when the business is small.
I heard that Norway is great for new businesses. Like if you are located outside the city you can pay lower taxes, that's not the case in Sweden. Also the culture seems a bit different when it comes to startups. A friend of mine said that it's easier to attract investors in Norway although the country is smaller, I don't know how deep those differences go but norwegians are probably more open to new companies.
In most places they are breaking laws and calling it 'disruptive innovation':
Losing crazy amounts of VC cash to [often illegally] compete against traditional companies that must be cashflow positive. It's not a level playing field. Laws exist so that drivers could make a livable wage; Uber is devaluing the medallions they've invested in.
Meanwhile in Europe they're still trying to argue that they're not a taxi company.
There's real disruptive innovation where laws don't exist yet. Digital data mining, surveillance, self driving cars, AI, etc.
If you're young, and talk mostly to young Swedes, it's a different story.
Actually, one of the reasons that this may be 'contentious' is because of 'startup culture'.
When I say 'business' - you might be thinking 'startup'.
Surely - it's 'cool' among young people to be at a startup, doing some cool thing like 'games' or 'music'.
But the attitude towards most business, by that I mean what is really 99% of the private economy is still pernicious.
Cultural example - do you know the film 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' - the Swedish version? The film is about the follies and evil of an old Swedish noble/industrial family. In the film they are all portrayed as bad, they hate each other, they are greedy, one is a rapist/murderer. Arguably this could be 'populist' anywhere, but it's I think anecdotally relevant for a Nordic country. Across Europe 'business' remember, is the 'bourgeoisie' - i.e. one of the 'offending' classes of 'the revolution'. The view that 'rich people' are basically entirely get their wealth from the economic enslavement of the 'working people' is a cultural epitaph there - and across Europe, to varying degrees.
The idea that people can 'create things of value' an 'exchange them' and 'create jobs' - was not widely held. Wealth was a 'zero sum game' - some had it, other did not and that was it.
As further indirect support, I'll offer the rise of the Social Democrats during the early 20th century, who had enormous power (near total) and influence for decades - and become so entrenched that the were almost de-facto the nature of Swedish/Nordic (and to some extent European) political culture. This did not happen quite as much in the UK, and certainly not in Canada, Australia or the USA.
During the 1980's-1990's they underwent a series of reforms to undo some of the 'socialization of the economy' (same time as Thatcher, Reagan). Same thing happened in Germany in the 1990's, but on different terms.
Anyhow - 'startups among young people' - surely. And surely nowadays the government 'gets' that startups are 'good'. But the cultural aversion to 'big business', I believe, still exists if you factor in all generations, government, institutions etc...
You started talking about "anti-business and anti-entrepreneurial", now you moved the goalposts to "big business".
Yes Swedes don't worship people like Trump like Americans do. But people going into business (hairdressers, contract work, running a supermarket, startups) is very different.
The guy who wrote "the girl with dragon tattoo" was a leftwing journalist. There is no cultural epitaph of pervasive leftist majority anymore in the Nordic countries. If anything there are much more nationalist conservative right-wing views among the common population because of the recent waves of ME immigrants. The media by an large is still left.
It's true that many west european countries had very strong socialist movements for decades (not as much now though), but there isn't even possible to make such statements that it's somehow became engraved in the culture. Look at the former East Block countries, there it might be true, but then the mistrust of the public to businesses is because of the corruption. Sweden also has a fair bit of corruption, but the authorities together with lobbying organizations and media spread enough propaganda that the country is somehow the least corrupt in the World.
Possibly: young Swedes on HN talking about young cool startup culture vs. someone who has lived around the world, in many countries (i.e. strong comparative basis), including a fair bit of exposure to Scandinavia, and worked for the European Government (European Investment Bank) towards establishing comparative basis for entrepreneurial and business clusters in USA and EU.
Someone who has not lived outside of Sweden does not know what how their culture compares relative to others.
General attitudes towards business in Sweden are far, far different than they are in North America, and it's a cultural/historical issue - a point by the way, which is not very contentious, despite how it may seem here on HN.
some private taxi drivers will prey on tourists by overpricing their services by 3x and waiting at airports. Since their rip-off prices are displayed right there in the window, it's fully legal. Tourists don't know the typical price of a taxi, and fresh off an airplane are not sure what the local currency rate is (Sweden isn't on the Euro), and hence get ripped off.
Typically this should lead to more competition there. Is something preventing that? Taxi thug groups (i.e. cartels), lack of space, ..?
If the price and product are clear, and if there's opportunity for competition, well.. I don't want to sound too libertarian, but, you know... :)
Not really. There is an econ paper that explains why (Xavier Gabaix's shrouded prices theory), but the idea is this:
There are some consumers that are naive (tourists in this case) and you can exploit them (go to the airport, and wait until you get a naive guy).
Now, suppose a competitor can find a way to educate consumers: you print pamphlets listing the true costs and hire someone to distribute them everywhere. Now tourists are well informed, but what's the benefit for the competitor? It just did something expensive but now he faces informed guys that will only pay the competitive price. So in equilibrium no one will teach the naive consumers.
But isn't this exactly the duty of an entity like, say, the municipality or the airport administration? That's one of the major roles of the state: To step in when there is no profit motive to do the 'right thing'.
Indeed. But I was replying to the pro-libertarian point of view, where municipalities or airport administrations play no role in the taxi industry, which sorts any problems "by itself"
I'm pretty sure I've seen exactly this - information booths at airports saying "this is what a licensed cab looks like, this is the fare to downtown, don't be fooled". It's not universal, though, because you'd need to get rights to put up the sign.
Also, at least in Sweden, each licensed taxi company sets their own fares so the problem isn't one of licensed vs unlicensed taxis. A sign saying you shouldn't pay more than X to get down town could work, but who gets to decide what X is?
Or just set up a taxi next to it for 2.5x the price? Or maybe force taxis at airports onto a centralised exchange with a big electronic comparison billboard that everyone can see?
I get that something is preventing that, otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation. But what is? Can we fix that instead and make the market more accessible?
Or just set up a taxi next to it for 2.5x the price?
There's almost certainly a taxi next to it that only charges X, and all taxis are required to clearly post their prices in their windows. The taxi charging 3X is simply banking on the fact the enough people are operating with incomplete information and will just hop into the first taxi they see without fully understanding how the system works.
In the UK, taxi rates are regionally regulated, with local councils dictating the maximum fare (per mile, per minute waiting in traffic, etc). I thought this was fairly common (in first-world countries).
As a tourist flying into Sweden, it wouldn't have occurred to me that the fare would be unregulated, and that I would need to exercise caution when choosing a licenced taxi.
So... we got so used to being coddled we can't do the smallest amount of due diligence (per a comment above, "will just hop into the first taxi they see").
Taxi ranks at (wealthy) airports are almost never subject to market competition. To avoid crowding and crime, some number of drivers or companies get permission to pick people up at the airport, and everyone else is shut out. Other taxis can drop you off, but not pick up a return fare. Usually this comes with fixed prices to avoid extortion, but if it doesn't you get this oligopoly pricing.
Incidentally, this is part of the vehement objection to Uber - on-demand pickup still happens, which breaks the stranglehold on cab ranks.
> There has been quite a bit of criticism of this lack of regulation, since some private taxi drivers will prey on tourists by overpricing their services by 3x and waiting at airports. Since their rip-off prices are displayed right there in the window, it's fully legal. Tourists don't know the typical price of a taxi, and fresh off an airplane are not sure what the local currency rate is (Sweden isn't on the Euro), and hence get ripped off.
I was in Stockholm over the summer, and prior to going I read about this beforehand on almost every site I visited. Is it the most tourist friendly thing? No, but it is listed in big numbers on the taxi. It only takes seeing a few taxis to get an idea of what is a good price. Everything in Stockholm ended up being expensive, so the taxi was just a minor inconvenience.
> You just need an extended driver's license, an approved taxi-meter (same as how grocery stores need their scales to be approved), and the pricing plan listed clearly in the window.
You're omitting the most important thing here: the actual taxi traffic permit. That's the hard part in this process.
I'm currently going through this process and there's some bureaucracy involved:
1. You need to show that you have financial resources of 100 000 SEK for one car and 50 000 SEK for all subsequent ones you're registering for. This needs to be reviewed and attested by an auditor. https://www.transportstyrelsen.se/globalassets/global/blanke...
> Uber is currently seeking to convince Europe's top court that it is a digital service, not a transport company, in a case that could determine whether app-based startups should be exempt from strict laws meant for regular companies.
Uber found a way to abide by New York State's existing regulations for a special license for drivers and commercial insurance. Everywhere else it plays make-believe - 'we're just a technology company' - for as long as it can.
The end-game in Europe is probably that Uber Technology will abandon its ambitions to be a not-a-taxi company, and provide its app to local transportation companies who are already regulatory-compliant.
The taxi company that I used to drive for was large enough to build its own modern [1] app-based dispatching system. So they don't need uber's technology anymore.
> The taxi company that I used to drive for was large enough to build its own modern [1] app-based dispatching system.
If nothing else, I appreciate that Uber is pushing taxi companies to develop on-demand hailing apps. I've started seeing local companies advertise them specifically in response to Uber's success.
The end-game you propose has a problem in that they're already companies in that space. It might still make sense for Uber to enter that space, they have the brand recognition others lack. I don't really see how this will generate enough growth and profit to make their investors happy though.
My take on the whole Uber vs Taxis thing is much more about just convenience and user experience.
If the taxis got together and created an app that you could hail a taxi, track its progress, and follow it to your destination, and take the payment automatically, there would have been no (or far less) need of Uber.
I have had several experiences where I called for a taxi, but none arrived. Then I went to the main road and hailed one within minutes.
> If the taxis got together and created an app that you could hail a taxi, track its progress, and follow it to your destination, and take the payment automatically, there would have been no (or far less) need of Uber.
The problem is that it doesn't solve the problem with availability. With surge pricing, Uber is able to get you a ride whenever you want, if you are willing to pay for it. With fixed pricing it regularly happens that you won't be able to get a taxi for hours during busy periods. I've just been to Potsdam (Germany, Uber is banned there) and wanted to get a taxi back at night. I tried for 45 minutes by hailing and calling the local number several times, with no success. Either I couldn't reach anyone or they told me they don't have anyone available. Luckily I did this while already walking in the right direction, so I was at the hotel after 80 minutes. With uber I'd have paid more but would've had a ride within 10 min or so.
This ability to always get a ride within a few minutes, no matter where and when, that is what I (and many others) like about uber. Tracking cars in the app is nice but hardly the defining factor.
The most amazing ride service exists in Thailand. All throughout the cities are modified Izuzu trucks with a signature red color (there are other colors for going outside the city) where the truck bed has a covered canopy with two benches (parallel to the direction of travel). To use the service you walk to the road, raise your arm and any available passing red truck will stop and ask you where you're going and then they take you there. The fee you pay is dependent on the distance but generally starts at 20 Bath per person (in the city I live). For context, that's the cost of an ice cream at the park, or water bottle at 7/11.
In comparison, Uber recently came to this city and it's very poor. It's more expensive than a red truck and the only possible extra convenience it could provide is a pick up from your door, but most red truck drivers would arrange that with you too. The Uber drivers here also seem not to have had any training.. I gave up trying to use it when the driver asked me to walk a few hundred meters instead of picking me up where I was on the GPS.. that's not the point! I'm glad to continue using red trucks
Not sure if the following has already been mentioned in other comments, so apologies if I'm posting redundant information.
The "ride-sharing services" that make profits are already illegal in Sweden according to court decision, since it essentially means "taxi company without the annoying taxes". And consequently UberPOP has been suspended in Sweden along with several other EU countries (as also noted in the original post).
So the new proposal mostly seems like a way to clarify legislation: If you do something systematically to make a profit, we call that business and you pay taxes and follow all other relevant legislation (worker's rights etc). Makes very much sense to me.
I would use any taxi company that charged me the price up front, paid through the app, calculated based on distance from source to destination and some heuristics about time-of-day, time-of-year, etc.
The driver would be incentivized to get you to your destination quickly and there wouldn't be that awkward tension about whether the guy is taking the best route, driving too slow or whatever.
Even if they occasionally lost money because of freak traffic conditions, I'll bet they would win over a lot of customers.
I feel like the discussions of what Uber does undervalue this. Medallion systems are silly, Uber is using some shady legal arguments, etc, fine. But the actual taxi experience is often terrible.
Last time I took an actual taxi in a new town, the driver spoke next to no English, misunderstood my destination, and got lost 3 times. He tried to drop me off in the middle of the woods because his outdated Garmin told him to. He then tried to charge me ~$80 because of all the bizarre detours, demanded cash instead of a credit card (at the end), and tried to follow me when I objected.
That's exceptional, yeah, but not hugely so. Uber's biggest value to me is the guarantee that the driver will have clear directions, not try to change route, take a credit card, and otherwise not scam me. The cab industry in a lot of places is really corrupt compared to other businesses.
It's not that exceptional, I've experienced that in several countries. Of course you could complain, but first you have to know who to contact at the local authority. With uber it's easy. If the driver tries to rip you off, you contact them and get fast and helpful support. And you won't have to pay if the driver decides to take a detour.
That's a common offering here in my home city by any company. You can ring them up and agree a price.
On the technology side... Gett.com seem to be offering an identical solution to Uber with the bonus of fixed price service within certain bounds. Looking at trips within a few miles of the city centre it'll offer a fixed price or "by the meter". Anything too far out however and it'll offer only "by the meter". Still, worth a punt?
EDIT: Bit more of a review...
I've contacted their support in the past and it's been pants. A couple of weeks for a human reply.
I also don't like how you have to decide the tip before the trip ends. Once you're dropped off, 'bing' the money is gone. I guess this is a culture difference but I prefer to decide to tip once I've decided I'm happy with the service. it's not a given.
Regular, real/official, taxi's are easily recognisable by their number plate which is orange with black letters whereas regular vehicles are white with black letters.
You don't have to use fake taxi's, that's your choice. A regular taxi ride in Stockholm and a Uber ride (depending on the time of day) usually don't have a big price difference between them. Unless you want to take one of the Tesla taxi's.
And taxis sometimes are cheaper than Uber here. I just moved apartments and paid 400 SEK for a taxi van to carry most of my boxes from one part of Stockholm to another, Uber XL was quoting a fare between 550 and 620 SEK.
I don't think that problem is unique to Stockholm, plenty of other cities have that issue.
Usually when I go to a new location, doing a Google search or two on these things proves helpful. The number plate stuff is on wikipedia and the VisitStockholm.com website for example: http://www.visitstockholm.com/en/Good-to-know/Getting-around... has all the information on taxi's, how to recognise them, what the regulations around them are and other methods of getting around.
A little bit of research upfront can spare you many unpleasant experiences no matter where you're going and regardless of if you know a local or not.
The issue is that there is no meter on the "fake" taxis. In other countries, you can easily tell if you're being ripped off based on the meter. If it's off, then you can be 100% certain.
"A photo illustration shows the Uber app logo displayed on a mobile telephone, as it is held up for a posed photograph in central London" - that's some caption!
So I'm guessing that Uber is going to start a Swedish non-profit and pay all profits to their (likely) Irish entity as tech licensing fees and keep moving.
Anyone have a reason to think this won't be the outcome if they can't fight this in court?
As a German, I say that is exactly what is wrong with Blablacar, so this is a good thing ;) Blablacar rpesents itself as a service that matches people having a spot in their car and people needing to travel from A to B, and for a long time they did just that. Now they started mandatory booking though their payment system (with the added benefit of insurance, granted), and everything about it has become worse: my girlfriend lives far away from big cities, but relatively close to the Autobahn, and it is much worse now for her to get a ride. Previously she could message people offering rides that should take them close to her place and ask them how much they wanted, now private communication is prohibited, fares seem precalculated, etc...
I guess it is a hard market, sure, but nobody forced them to compete against simple ride sharing websites, but they did, and now try heavy handed tactics once they captured a big piece of the market... /rant
If a comment starts like this you can be sure it's not a good one for Hacker News. This site is not a platform for political and ideological warfare, and this account has been abusing it primarily for this purpose, so we've banned it.
Please don't. This the kind of thing we mean when we ask people not to post generic ideological tangents to HN. We're not going to get anything useful out of the 30,000th "taxation is theft" flamewar.
People who feel passionately for or against these generic positions need to contain themselves on HN, because the railing and ranting they lead to is inimical to thoughtful, curious discussion—the kind we want.
One monkey says to a group of other monkeys: "We all need to take one of the 5 bananas we individually have to feed the doctor monkey, the asphalt monkey and the teacher monkey, from whom we receive services."
One monkey from the group, which just came back in his car from the doctor monkey with his daughter that goes to the local monkey school: "I refuse to give up my bananas!".
One monkey says to a group of other monkeys: "We all need to take one of the 5 bananas we individually have to pay for a 1.2 trillion banana fighter jet that doesnt work, and also to give bananas to people who aren't contributing any bananas at all"
One monkey from the group, who makes 4 of the 5 bananas, and doesn't want a 1.2 trillion banana fighter jet notices that all the people who are clamoring to take bananas aren't putting in any of the bananas themselves but are instead on the receiving end of the banana transfer, gets annoyed that they are basically having a meeting to take his bananas and give them to themselves. He gets upset by this"
Now now now Mr. Monkey, these fighter jets are for your protection! And the blanket banana surveillance we conduct on you and your community is also important so that we can collect a banana salary while protecting you from people that want to hurt you :)
Why can we not assume that the doctor monkey is operating a private medical practice, his daughter is sent to a private monkey school, and they drove together in a privately produced car on privately maintained roads?
In the USA, I pay income taxes, and I still have to pay for all of these things above (fees, fines, tolls, surcharges, sales tax...)
That is called Starve the Beast and has been the strategy of the right for decades. It goes like this: Use a slight budget deficit as an excuse to immediately cut back on services and infrastructure investments. Never raise taxes. If there's no deficit, lower the taxes on the rich while promising 'dynamic effects' that will magically increase revenue for the government. Repeat until the services are so underfunded so that they are more or less useless. Use that as proof that the government is worthless and never can provide anything of value, so it is better to privatize what is left of it. So in the end the only thing you actually pay for with your taxes is wars overseas to keep the oilprice low and corporate welfare.
It's no wonder Americans are complaining about their taxes.
I pay 25% VAT (less on e.g. food) and about 30% income tax. For that I've got a free eduction (Ph.D), can commute to work with (mostly) very good public transportation. Currently my pregnant wife is getting weekly checkups free of charge. I look forward soon start working halv time sharing 390 days of paid parental leave with my wife.
I cringe at your response. There's so much wrong in it.
>>Use a slight budget deficit as an excuse to immediately cut back on services and infrastructure investments
A 'slight' deficit that's led to trillions in debt over a very short period of time.
>>government is worthless and never can provide anything of value
It is mostly worthless and hardly provides value(the worst part about this is is that a lot of times, I don't even have the option to opt out of these value-free services and pick something else that works)
We can assume the doctor monkey is paying for his kid's school, but it's possible that doctor monkey also benefits indirectly from the other monkeys' kids education as well.
All the roads you drive on are toll roads? Here in Oregon none are, and when I was back East only some highways were toll roads. Surface streets are nearly all paid for through taxes AFAIK.
I don't get the severe anti-tax stance some folks have. Yes I want my taxes spent efficiently, but I absolutely recognize that I gain benefits from paying them. Even when some of those taxes go to poor people. Without a peaceful society nobody will care that much about computers and the 'net ;).
I admit I'm a bit biased, because I get Welfare myself. That is, the gov't gives me a fair amount of money to offset the interest I pay to the bank for my mortgage. My effective income tax rate is less than 10% so I probably get quite a lot more welfare than any really poor family does. What a world we live in.
Thank you for your well-formulated points and civil response :)
Re: roads, I agree that not all roads are toll roads. The good news is that roads are relatively inexpensive to build and maintain (for example, the federal transportation budget is only 2.3% of total yearly spending, 28 billion dollars).
So, those who want to use roads, should be charged a fair price, and road companies should compete to lower costs where possible.
The argument that "if we don't pay taxes (which are ever increasing and are going towards services that are decreasing in quality), then everyone will go nuts and modern society will collapse!!!" is actually extortion and a clever diversion.
We all want cheaper, more effective services. We all want the poorest members of society to not be kicked when they are already down.
The issue is that world governments are run by an elite few people who funnel our taxes to their bank accounts through scams and poorly rendered services.
And when we figured out this scam and went public with the info, we were yelled at to keep paying our taxes ;)
> Re: roads, I agree that not all roads are toll roads. The good news is that roads are relatively inexpensive to build and maintain (for example, the federal transportation budget is only 2.3% of total yearly spending, 28 billion dollars).
Wow, so you have an extra half-billion or so just sitting around? ($28 billion x 0.023 = $460 million) How fortunate for you!
Beggin' your pardon, M'Lord, but the peasantry doesn't consist of multi-millionaires. And they need to use roads to live their lives in a modern, industrialized society.
So, no, you can keep your libertarian dystopia where everyone has to build their own roads, hire their own police forces, etc. Go build your own civilization, away from ours.
That sounds like forcing a service (that you might not want) down your throat, and accusing you of stealing if you refuse to pay. It would be surprisingly better to let monkeys pay for what they want to use, instead of making every monkey pay for what they won't ever use.
Ah, yes, the old "I have totally done this so far in my life and thus it is a model for all peoples" chestnut.
I have this vague memory of someone who was litigating about obamacare being unconstitutional for forcing people to have insurance and then defaulting on their sudden unexpected large hospital bill...
Realistically you've been lucky, and that's fine. You're against risk pooling because you feel that's not something you need. Self evidently the pooling is to cover the less fortunate. the "there but for the grace of god go I" situation. Maybe you think they're all scroungers and wastrels? Or that they don't deserve access to medical care just by virtue of existing and being ill.
Man, I don't often wish life threatening or chronic diseases which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat on anyone. But I would pay to see the moment your smug tone changes to one of despair.
You must be fortunate not to have any preexisting conditions or to not need any medical procedures that, without insurance, can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars.
The real question is why are medical procedures so artificially expensive.
The only thing I would really need medical insurance for is a rare emergency procedure like an appendectomy. Information online says an appendectomy can cost anywhere from $1,500 to $150,000.
Why is there such a deviation? This is how insurance companies make their money.
When we consider that medical insurance in the USA is several hundred dollars per month, $1,500 out of pocket seems completely reasonable.
> The only thing I would really need medical insurance for is a rare emergency procedure like an appendectomy.
If you need an appendectomy, then you do not have time to fiddle around and comparison shop for medical insurance. If an appendix needs to come out, then it needs to come out ASAP (otherwise, the appendix could burst, causing sepsis). And there's no insurance provider on the planet that will take on a new customer and cover a procedure done before the customer's policy goes into effect.
Let me guess: you also think car insurance is a sham, and that you shouldn't be required to have it. And if, heaven forfend, you get into a car accident, you can just call up State Farm (or whoever) and get them to retroactively approve a claim for the accident. Am I right?
> And exactly how many people do you think have $1,500 laying around? (Hint: not many)
If you're paying $300/mo and are reasonably healthy (i.e. not going to the doctor regularly) then you'd save that up in now time. The real fix to all of this is to remove day-to-day care from health insurance and let it be just "insurance" (i.e. not healthcare). They have a bit of that with catastrophic plans but there are limitations on who can sign up for them (which I personally think is really stupid).
That's totally different. Government vs Business. First one forces you to pay for things you don't asked for in the first place. The latter is optional, as no one has the right to force you buy their stuff/services.
I can't see my original reply, so I think something is wrong with HN.
Reality is more like:
2 out of 10 monkeys spend all their waking hours sacrificing and working so their children can have more than 1 banana and then give 15 out of the 20 bananas they earn to the group.
The majority of monkeys in the group gives 0 bananas, but continue to say that the ones that do give the most aren't paying their fair share (and need to give even more).
They then have many discussions on how they can force the other monkeys to give the rest of the group even more bananas, rather than putting energy into earning their own.
2 out of 10 monkeys spend all their waking hours sacrificing and working so their children can have more than 1 banana and then give 15 out of the 20 bananas they earn to the group.
The majority of monkeys in the group gives 0 bananas, but continue to say that the ones that do give the most aren't paying their fair share (and need to give even more).
They then have many discussions on how they can force the other monkeys to give the rest of the group even more bananas, rather than putting energy into earning their own.
"One monkey says to a group of other monkeys, "we all need to take one of the 5 bananas we individually have and place it into a central banana disbursement fund".
Then, another monkey from the group refuses to give up one of his bananas. How is this refusal equal to stealing?"
This is the most American and the most stupid thing I've read on HN. It's almost pop art.
Because the banana was grown on the fields that the other monkeys paid for, transported on the roads that the other monkeys paid for and the monkey received it's education on how to get it's banana from a school that the other monkeys funded.
If you live on a farm off the grid have solar power, collect your own rain water and don't ever leave your plot of land fine don't pay taxes. But if you want the niceties of civilisation don't expect to get it for free.
I agree, the monkey that does what you described shouldn't be forced to pay taxes.
But I am still confused as to why the monkey and his family can't attend private schools, drive on private roads, receive medical services from a private doctor, and donate any bananas he voluntarily decides to contribute to right the wrongs of his monkey island :)
In my opinion, the other monkeys that are trying to force him to subsidize other monkeys' consumption habits are just trying to collect rent from him!
And private police, private military, private customs & border security... You cannot live in a modern nation and not rely on services that are paid for by taxes.
Why is the average able bodied citizen unable to protect himself the local and national level?
Why don't the concerned citizens pool their funds together to pay for their own defence?
If we must pay taxes for these things, why must their be so much corruption and fraud (think of the expensive fighter jets and missiles that government agents purchase at inflated prices, from companies that funnel profits to a very select few rich individuals, who funded the campaigns necessary to get the government agents in power?)
You are correct. So then why do those same citizens yell at me to pay my taxes, when I am not concerned as they are, and don't want the sub-par and expensive defense services they are providing me :)
Because all those private services that you describe in turn use public services.
Unless all these private services band together so that they become truly widespread and form something that makes paying for them easier. Maybe to make it fair the people that use them the most and profit the most from them should pay the most. Maybe we could call such a banding of public services a nation and call the usage fees taxes....
If the monkey expects other poor bananaa-less monkeys to behave in same standards as his educated ass deserves , then he better his bit to help progress the society which allowed him to have all those said benefits .
The monkey may buy his "private banana peeling education" , but failing to remember his anscestor monkeys and community monkeys who kept improving art of banana peeling and publishing it freely lead to the said monkey to live in era of "modern banana peeling" is a crime.
There is no price for education than helping others receive it , paying your bit to improve the overall condition of monkey kind is the only way to repay the debt
When the banana production facility is predicated on the collective effort and value that all of the monkeys provide, then refusing to pay taxes is tantamount to sealing from the society. Since the society provides for the common good, including the production of bananas, it follows that the individuals must honor and provide for that social function--which in the end serves _them_.
Okay, so the monkey produces all he needs for himself. And all he ever needed? That would be 10k bananas for previous monkey education. Monkey may pay them over time.
Because there's no way to opt-out of the benefits of a well-educated, well-protected society with good infrastructure. If we could send everyone who wants to opt out of taxes to some island somewhere, we would.
And if you could allow them to leave without taxing them 50% of their wealth on the way out the door, a lot of them would go. You pretty much hit the nail on the head in 2 directions. People are not given the option to vote with thier feet or their dollars. I know I wont ever need social security (if it even still exists by the time I want to stop making money) and yet I can not opt out of it. Why? The reason why is I'm not paying into my own retirement at all, I'm funding someone elses. I'd even happily give up everything I've already paid in if I could just stop paying in the future.
Also this notion of a well protected society is total bunk. I could have paid $50K in taxes last year as a self employed guy, but if my business collapses this year and I don't have a wife or children there is no safety net for me. The government isn't going to swoop in and pay for my rent and bills while I get back on my feet. Something I could have easily accomplished for myself with those same $50K. The federal safety net pretty much excludes childless single men entirely.
You're talking about the US now right? The US is a special kind of fucked up. No way I'm going to defend that, I'm Swedish. We have safety nets and self-funded public pensions (you can even choose the investment).
If you look at many factors Sweden is way more livable than the USA. Perhaps that explains why culturally they don't mind paying higher taxes. I've worked in the US and Canada. I pay more taxes in Canada but the social services and health care are much better here and I can go to great public facilities like gyms and pools that I had to pay for privately in NY
Fully public facilities like gyms and pools are just one brand of soda, as it were. Some people don't like Pepsi, they'd rather drink Coca Cola, or put more plainly at least go to gyms and pools where the people have an appreciation of the cost of good things. There is the central difference between the American way of doing things, people have more freedom to choose what they spend their money on. If you are subsidizing everyone's pools and gyms, and you don't care to go yourself, money is being stolen from you in a sense, or to use the soda analogy, you're being force fed Pepsi when you really want something else.
> There is the central difference between the American way of doing things, people have more freedom to choose what they spend their money on.
And people which don't have money have less freedom and no choice about it. Maybe the problem is that you decided that freedom is dead presidents printed using green ink.
>And people which don't have money have less freedom and no choice about it
So, what are you proposing? That everything is funded from taxes, so that people who make less money could enjoy the same things as people who make a lot?
This is called communism, and has failed miserably (see Venezuela, Cuba, etc).
There is an acceptable level of sharing (healthcare, defense, police), but swimming pools? What about spas?
Equality is all about equality of opportunity, not equality of consumption.
Public swimming pools can also be found in most european countries, and western europe is not exactly a collection of failed communist states.
There is a nice ring to the ideology of freedom, but practicality beats purity, and when it comes to the social cost vs reward of public institutions, the cursor in the US is way off.
If swimming pools are out of the question for you, free education and health care are an easier starting point.
How are you being forced? You're free to leave the country and live somewhere else where there is no health care for the poor.
It sounds as if the Swedish people are fine with the system. It works for them. It works remarkably well indeed.
A monkey can live for himself, in a modern society no human is an island. You need extremely complex systems on place: Communications, education, law, law enforcement, infrastructures, etc.
Millions of human beings in a complex society are not 5 monkeys. I understand your point, but I think that it doesn't apply at this scale.
I greatly appreciate your accurate and civil response!
I think it is achievable at some scale. The right number of course is somewhere between 5 monkeys on an island, and 7 billion monkeys on a planet.
You could conceivably take your money, buy a boat, load it up with 20 years worth of solar panels, greenhouse materials, medicine, guns, etc... and you can boat out to a cold desolate rock in the ocean like Bouvet Island, and you can live a complete life of anarchy and no taxes, etc etc.
But this is an extreme example, and shouldn't be what you have to do to live a life that is 100% free of being coerced into paying for the systems that are present in modern society.
An equally extreme situation, though, is being forced to pay an ever-increasing portion of your income in taxes, fines, levies, fees, and surcharges to the government... so that it can subsidize the wrong technologies and human behaviors.
> You could conceivably take your money, buy a boat, load it up with 20 years worth of solar panels, greenhouse materials, medicine, guns, etc... and you can boat out to a cold desolate rock in the ocean like Bouvet Island, and you can live a complete life of anarchy and no taxes, etc etc.
And over time, the panels will deteriorate and break, medicine will run out, guns will rust, explosives in ammo will go bad (assuming people haven't already used it all up trying to kill each other). Then, the Anarchy Island will quickly revert to hunter-gatherer/early agrarian level of advancement and quality-of-life.
I understand that you'd love not to pay for things you disagree with, but what alternative do you propose? I think America itself is a perfect example showing that education, security and healthcare do not work well when privatized.
"Then, another monkey from the group refuses to give up one of his bananas. How is this refusal equal to stealing?"
You're leaving out the veterinarian who accepts a payment of bananas equal to the number of monkeys within the group. That'd be fine if the refusing monkey didn't go on to accept healthcare from said vet. But since he does, the other monkeys must chip in more banana to meet the required payment since not paying would force the vet to stop working for any of them, period.
This is a fatal assumption to make ;) I personally pay income taxes, do not have health insurance, and on the off times I require medical/dental care, I go to a private medical practice.
It is therefore immoral to force me to pay for a service I am choosing not to use :)
> It is therefore immoral to force me to pay for a service I am choosing not to use :)
Only if you define moral as "everyone for himself, weaker ones be damned" and sure that's your privilege to hope (and vote) for, but not a society I'd want to live in.
I think it's also relevant to point out a sort of butterfly effect.
For example, John doesn't ride the public bus, but Sally, the after-school-care provider, rides it to and from work each day. John, is a single father and can't afford a private daycare so he relies on the public school's after care provided by Sally. Sure, John could vote to abolish the bus system, and save a few dollars in taxes each year, but then he's cutting off his own nose to spite his face as he no longer can afford after care for his children.
I've heard that Westerners misunderstand the "socialism" of Nordic countries. More than one person has posited that the majority favors free and public healthcare and education systems because they are better for the individual; it ensures their family, regardless of personal circumstances, are taken care of and have the backing of an entire country. Not sure if this is true, but I hope it is.
All the monkeys only got the bananas because they were transported to them on public roads paid for by taxes, etc. Wait, you mean your example doesn't really fit the problem at hand?
I 100000% agree! The only issue is that on this Earth, far away = Antarctica, Bouvet Island, a barge in the ocean....
Surely there needs to be some middle ground where I can live in a relatively hospitable place without having to worry about being placed under surveillance and being forced to pay large income and property taxes ;)
Those places are called tax havens, but they still operate on taxes paid by the regular citizenry, which is unfair.
You are unfortunately stuck sharing your respective country with other people, and if you ever use a road, a doctor, an emergency service, have a standing army or series of power stations and central banks that keep the economy chugging along, you should absolutely pay what the people consider a fair share of taxes.
Maybe, just maybe, if there is literally nowhere on the earth that you can go to find your ideal society, that your ideal society can't exist? There are hundreds of countries and 7 billion people. If none of them have the system you want, that might suggest it isn't workable in practice.
They're trying to prevent people from earning money in exchange for a service.
Let's say I have a garden, and grew a bunch of tomatoes. Should I be allowed to sell them for money, or should I only be allowed to trade them for other tomatoes?
"Profit" and "revenue" are two very different things and getting them mixed up is how you get all sorts of economic excitement that's best viewed from the distance of history.
Sorry, but either regulate it as the taxi industry or force the taxi industry to be a profitless business as well. If being professional is defined by having a certificate or such then simply have these services require their drivers provide such certification.
Honestly, just how many ways can we find to prevent innovation from disrupting the protected by daunting regulations from occurring? At times I am beginning to wonder if this is less about protecting current businesses as it is government losing control over its people.
Taxi regulation in Sweden is very lax and it's trivial to become a certified taxi business and get a taxi license. Uber could have the paperwork taken care of by early next week if they wanted, they just doesn't want to comply with the few necessary regulations.
> Sorry, but either regulate it as the taxi industry or force the taxi industry to be a profitless business as well
What is the difference between "ride sharing" and "taxi" anyway? Sounds to me like they're saying that ride sharing is people sharing their car, and taxi is if you're for-profit. If Uber wants to be for profit, they need to follow the taxi regulation.
I think in this case it may be a 'fine point - but that fine point is fair.
Tax authorities are gods in Nordic countries.
'No meter' = 'no way for tax guys to know what's what'.
Swedes are not stupid though ... Uber might respond with giving up GPS data of rides to tax authorities. This would not be entirely unreasonable and would quash the specific legal point.
Sure enough, read the text for actual information and you'll see that it's reporting on a press conference about a commission that issued a report. This, through the magic of journalism, turns into "Sweden".