Short sighted for protecting the income of the vulnerable taxi drivers and small time taxi companies? Since the introduction in London, waves of Minicab offices have closed down. Hats off to them to resist this. Not everything in life is automation and money saving. I'm sure the Portuguese have a decent taxi service as is.
We talked about an issue like this in a History of Science and Technology class I took in university.
Back in the day, if you had a tomato plantation, you would need to hire staff to perform the harvest. You couldn't do it yourself; half the tomatoes would rot before you could pick them. It would take hundreds of staff to harvest a large plantation.
Then the tomato harvester was invented. Almost overnight, a job that was done by 100 people could be done by one. All of the plantation workers lost their jobs and had to find new work. If a plantation did not buy a harvester, they would be undercut by the farms using one and would go out of business.
What would you have done, as a politician, in that situation? Would you have made the tomato harvester illegal?
I see Uber as this generation's tomato harvester. Technological advancements always come at the expense of the labour they replace. You can't inhibit progress, you have to work with it, otherwise you get left behind.
Why should we save jobs which are less efficient than other alternatives? Should the government have saved jobs (kill innovation) when 97% of humanity were farmers?
Because there is something good about a locally run business as inefficient as it may be. Uber sucks the income into some tax haven blackhole, with very little regard to the local economy and community. Uber kills any local transportation enterprise, everyone ends up being an employee rather than a small business owner.
