Matthew Yglesias has a good piece up this morning on the immigration debate in the wake of the Boston bombings. He points out that historically, as we’ve tightened our border lockdown, we’ve not decreased illegal immigration, we’ve just made the coyote industry more lucrative.
In my favorite line, he suggests that rather than tighten our lockdown, we should open up:
by far the best way to keep dangerous foreigners out of the country is to make it easier for nondangerous ones to enter.
In other words, the best approach is not lockdown, but antilockdown.
If you think about it, this counterintuitive thinking applies to lots of other issues, and particularly reminds me of the debate over piracy — e.g., the best way to decrease illegal downloading is not to make it harder to copy files, but rather to make it easier to buy & share them legally.
I am going to keep thinking of other issues where this kind of thinking applies.
What happened yesterday in Boston so sad and awful. And it’s deeply scary. All of the communities I’m part of — family, work, school, city — have been shaken by this.
But the most important thing we can do coming away from this is not get scared in our core. If that happens, they win and we lose - way bigger than we lost yesterday.
I’ve been scared before — deathly scared. For me, it was 1991-1993 when I was 12-14 years old, growing up in Brooklyn. At that precise time, there was a lot of street crime in New York. Pretty much everyone I knew got jumped, robbed, or beaten up doing things like walking home from school.
For me it started when I was 12, riding my bike home from baseball practice in Prospect Park. Two kids stopped me and relieved me of my bicycle (hand-drawn “Nick” license plate and all). I was upset that day, and cried when I got home. But the “terror” didn’t set in until sometime later — when I started getting harassed (usually in small ways, sometimes in larger ways) nearly every day.
The world went from being a place to joyfully explore to being a place to be fucking terrified of. I didn’t want to leave my house, not even to go two blocks to the grocery store. Taking the subway home from school was a mission. I detoured my route at the slightest sign of danger on the horizon. I was in a constant state of
Over the weekend, Christina pointed me to Uber’s new policy white paper on ridesharing. In a nutshell, Uber has decided to compete (with Lyft, Sidecar and others) in the ridesharing space, and will use a framework for deciding how and where to do that, based on the perceived regulatory friendliness in each city. Here’s their rubric:
Uber’s Ridesharing Policy
Uber will roll out ridesharing on its existing platform in any market where the regulators have tacitly approved doing so.
If a competitor is operating for 30 days without direct enforcement against transportation providers, then Uber will interpret that as “tacit approval” of ridesharing activity.
If clear and consistent enforcement has taken place within 30 days of a competitor rolling out a ridesharing service, then Uber will not roll out its platform for ridesharing in that jurisdiction.
Matthew Yglesias has a good piece up this morning on the immigration debate in the wake of the Boston bombings. He points out that historically, as we’ve tightened our border lockdown, we’ve not decreased illegal immigration, we’ve just made the coyote industry more lucrative.
In my favorite line, he suggests that rather than tighten our lockdown, we should open up:
by far the best way to keep dangerous foreigners out of the country is to make it easier for nondangerous ones to enter.
In other words, the best approach is not lockdown, but antilockdown.
If you think about it, this counterintuitive thinking applies to lots of other issues, and particularly reminds me of the debate over piracy — e.g., the best way to decrease illegal downloading is not to make it harder to copy files, but rather to make it easier to buy & share them legally.
I am going to keep thinking of other issues where this kind of thinking applies.
What happened yesterday in Boston so sad and awful. And it’s deeply scary. All of the communities I’m part of — family, work, school, city — have been shaken by this.
But the most important thing we can do coming away from this is not get scared in our core. If that happens, they win and we lose - way bigger than we lost yesterday.
I’ve been scared before — deathly scared. For me, it was 1991-1993 when I was 12-14 years old, growing up in Brooklyn. At that precise time, there was a lot of street crime in New York. Pretty much everyone I knew got jumped, robbed, or beaten up doing things like walking home from school.
For me it started when I was 12, riding my bike home from baseball practice in Prospect Park. Two kids stopped me and relieved me of my bicycle (hand-drawn “Nick” license plate and all). I was upset that day, and cried when I got home. But the “terror” didn’t set in until sometime later — when I started getting harassed (usually in small ways, sometimes in larger ways) nearly every day.
The world went from being a place to joyfully explore to being a place to be fucking terrified of. I didn’t want to leave my house, not even to go two blocks to the grocery store. Taking the subway home from school was a mission. I detoured my route at the slightest sign of danger on the horizon. I was in a constant state of
Over the weekend, Christina pointed me to Uber’s new policy white paper on ridesharing. In a nutshell, Uber has decided to compete (with Lyft, Sidecar and others) in the ridesharing space, and will use a framework for deciding how and where to do that, based on the perceived regulatory friendliness in each city. Here’s their rubric:
Uber’s Ridesharing Policy
Uber will roll out ridesharing on its existing platform in any market where the regulators have tacitly approved doing so.
If a competitor is operating for 30 days without direct enforcement against transportation providers, then Uber will interpret that as “tacit approval” of ridesharing activity.
If clear and consistent enforcement has taken place within 30 days of a competitor rolling out a ridesharing service, then Uber will not roll out its platform for ridesharing in that jurisdiction.
The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman
Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman
Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
condition orange
. It sucked.
The terrorists (in my case, the kids on the street who were bigger and badder that I was) totally won. I hated it. I wanted to get as far away from NYC as fast as I could. And in fact, by the end of high school, that’s exactly what I did (even though things were better by then).
I lived for years — a small number of years, but formative ones — in terror. And when I got through with it I vowed never to live that way again.
Part of what makes it possible to live without terror is to be in it together. If my 1992-era self had had a bigger posse (no offense, Dave; we did what we could), things would have been different, easier.
I don’t mean that we need to be in a constant state of vigilance together — rather, we need to be there to help each other keep calm and carry on. We — people in the US and elsewhere who don’t want to live in fear — have to be each others’ posse, coach, shoulder, and heart.
I refuse to be scared by this.
In the absence of regulatory clarity, Uber will implement safeguards in terms of safety and insurance that will go beyond what local regulatory bodies have in place for commercial transportation.
At minimum, there will be a $2,000,000 insurance policy applicable to ridesharing trips. This insurance applies to any ridesharing trip requested through the Uber technology platform.
Extensive and strict background checks will be performed on any ridesharing transportation provider allowed on the Uber platform. The criteria for which a driver will be disqualified will be stricter than what any existing local regulatory body already has in place for commercial transportation providers.
Conclusion
Innovation and consumer safety are at the core of Uber’s culture. Until this policy shift, Uber hesitated to engage in a market perceiving extreme regulatory risk. Finding the principles for engagement with such risk in this market was crucial. We wanted to set the rules in a place where everyone would agree that safety and welfare of consumers was taken care of while regulators catch up to the innovation they are letting flourish. We look forward to ridesharing spreading across the country but look to do so only after first getting a read from regulators on this new relaxed approach to transportation licensing and enforcement.
I think this is a pretty brilliant move. Rather than wait for cities to challenge ridesharing and react defensively, Uber is leading with a clear and reasonable policy position. This puts cities in an interesting position as they consider how to respond — both in terms of allowing ridesharing or not, and also in terms of being consistent and not playing favorites.
It’s also interesting as an example of Uber’s philosophy re: disruptive competition. As new and disruptive as Uber has been to the traditional taxi market, ridesharing presents a similarly disruptive threat to Uber. In his post, Travis makes a point of calling this out and highlighting the fact that Uber is choosing to compete in the marketplace rather than fight using legal means:
In the face of this challenge, Uber could have chosen to do nothing. We could have chosen to use regulation to thwart our competitors. Instead, we chose the path that reflects our company’s core: we chose to compete.
This should be a great case study in trying to establish certainty in the face of ambiguity. I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out.
condition orange
. It sucked.
The terrorists (in my case, the kids on the street who were bigger and badder that I was) totally won. I hated it. I wanted to get as far away from NYC as fast as I could. And in fact, by the end of high school, that’s exactly what I did (even though things were better by then).
I lived for years — a small number of years, but formative ones — in terror. And when I got through with it I vowed never to live that way again.
Part of what makes it possible to live without terror is to be in it together. If my 1992-era self had had a bigger posse (no offense, Dave; we did what we could), things would have been different, easier.
I don’t mean that we need to be in a constant state of vigilance together — rather, we need to be there to help each other keep calm and carry on. We — people in the US and elsewhere who don’t want to live in fear — have to be each others’ posse, coach, shoulder, and heart.
I refuse to be scared by this.
In the absence of regulatory clarity, Uber will implement safeguards in terms of safety and insurance that will go beyond what local regulatory bodies have in place for commercial transportation.
At minimum, there will be a $2,000,000 insurance policy applicable to ridesharing trips. This insurance applies to any ridesharing trip requested through the Uber technology platform.
Extensive and strict background checks will be performed on any ridesharing transportation provider allowed on the Uber platform. The criteria for which a driver will be disqualified will be stricter than what any existing local regulatory body already has in place for commercial transportation providers.
Conclusion
Innovation and consumer safety are at the core of Uber’s culture. Until this policy shift, Uber hesitated to engage in a market perceiving extreme regulatory risk. Finding the principles for engagement with such risk in this market was crucial. We wanted to set the rules in a place where everyone would agree that safety and welfare of consumers was taken care of while regulators catch up to the innovation they are letting flourish. We look forward to ridesharing spreading across the country but look to do so only after first getting a read from regulators on this new relaxed approach to transportation licensing and enforcement.
I think this is a pretty brilliant move. Rather than wait for cities to challenge ridesharing and react defensively, Uber is leading with a clear and reasonable policy position. This puts cities in an interesting position as they consider how to respond — both in terms of allowing ridesharing or not, and also in terms of being consistent and not playing favorites.
It’s also interesting as an example of Uber’s philosophy re: disruptive competition. As new and disruptive as Uber has been to the traditional taxi market, ridesharing presents a similarly disruptive threat to Uber. In his post, Travis makes a point of calling this out and highlighting the fact that Uber is choosing to compete in the marketplace rather than fight using legal means:
In the face of this challenge, Uber could have chosen to do nothing. We could have chosen to use regulation to thwart our competitors. Instead, we chose the path that reflects our company’s core: we chose to compete.
This should be a great case study in trying to establish certainty in the face of ambiguity. I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out.
