Uber banned in Portugal
algarvedailynews.comGreat country to live, awful country to start/host any kind of company. Unfriendly tax climate, lack of startup infrastructure, lots and lots of bureaucracy.
Their (national association of road transport) next step is trying to get Uber to pay up for missed income - or as they state it "compensation for damages to the industry" [1].
[1]: http://www.publico.pt/sociedade/noticia/uber-proibida-de-ope...
Things are better on the company/bureaucracy front. Not as good as US/UK where you can do everything online, but it is 90% there. As for the tax climate, corporate tax has come down quite a bit (and is quite low compared to rest of Europe) but personal tax is a pain.
I think the main issue with Portugal, startup wise, is the people. We (as a nation) are very risk adverse and scared. There are many logical reasons for that that I won't get into the details here, but on the technical level, our graduates are quite good and salaries/cost of living are low. A typical YC investment on a Portuguese company would probably give them about one year of runway without any further investment.
Well, Uber has issues here in The Netherlands as well. Here it's also illegal to run your own taxi company. It's a very regulated business.
I don't think legislators would have a problem with Uber per se, it's just that they cheerfully ignore the existing legislation (and pay the fines incurred by the drivers) and basically just try to force themselves onto the market. If they would take the time to get proper legislation passed it could end up fine.
But why would governments that explicitly forbid illegal taxi services start making an exception for Uber?
If they would take the time to get proper legislation passed it could end up fine.
Except that doesn't work (with a few exceptional countries/cities), because the incumbents have massive political capital and Uber doesn't, and it's very hard to get popular support for something people haven't experienced.
I don't like Uber for other reasons, but regarding this tactic, I'm fine with it.
Even if we agree that these laws are important, surely there's no short term harm in having Uber around - it's not like they're dumping waste or performing unlicensed surgery - the courts just have to issue a ruling and everything can go back to normal in a week.
I would love to know who these "incumbents with massive political capital" are. Where i live most licensed taxi firms are small businesses run by local people providing local jobs.
Uber are now stomping these small companies by ignoring local law because they can afford the fines or just don't care.
I agree they are being allowed to do this in many places, and that it the fault of the government -- but i am certainly NOT fine with it.
They want to be the taxi service for the world which is a fast track to disaster for everyone except Uber.
I would love to know who these "incumbents with massive political capital" are. Where i live most licensed taxi firms are small businesses run by local people providing local jobs.
Yes they are. And they group themselves (here in Portugal we have a single, national association of taxi companies, which was the organization that got the court to ban Uber) and have long standing relationships with local parties and politicians.
The fact that they're small business is irrelevant; we're talking about political capital, ie., influence, not money.
A good example is how the Portuguese court ruled without even hearing Uber.
Uber are now stomping these small companies by ignoring local law because they can afford the fines or just don't care.
By stomping, you mean competing?
Sounds similar to Germany. Ever wonder why SoundCloud and maybe Wunderlist are the only thing you see coming out of that economic "powerhouse"?
As a German myself, I'm still amazed by the existence and nature of SoundCloud. Doing a music sharing startup in the land of GEMA takes a lot of bravado. Or money.
I guess it would be easier to work with GEMA because the service is supposed to be for your own creations, instead of licensing popular music.
Are there laws preventing founders from living and running a businesses in Portugal which is domiciled in a business and tax friendly jurisdiction?
This is much due to the fact that in some european countries the government gives monopoly status to some business areas if they are willing to work how the government want them to work. This usually has a negative impact on the winnings of the local company.
For example taxis are supposed to work and be reachable all around the country with the same prices, not just in high volume areas. If there is a new company that steps on the prices of the high volume areas, the older local company won't be able to offer the service in low volume areas.
People get angry if they don't have good services in their living areas.
If there's one country where Uber is needed...
When I was there last year, we were given a list of 5 taxi phone numbers. When you needed a taxi, you'd cycle through the numbers until you found one that 1) answered the phone 2) was available 3) managed to understand where you wanted to be picked up. When we were leaving and needed to catch a bus, I made 15 fruitless phone calls, then asked somebody for a ride.
At least it's cheap-ish (last time I was in Porto, at least).
If there's a country it's France. An airport ride to my place, 16 km (10 miles), no more than 20 minutes, goes for a whooping 60EUR/66USD, more than the roundtrip flight to London. Nope.
And when I needed a ride at 4-5AM I called only to be hung up because "I didn't book it 24h in advance".
It's not "cheap" if you cannot take a ride. Total cost is a sum of the price, time wasted and the risk of being late. "Cheap" taxi that is impossible to catch is not actually cheap.
That's the same fallacy as when people whine about Uber's "surge pricing". When there is huge demand, Uber prices may go up 2x, but you still will be able to get a ride in 5 minutes instead of waiting half an hour or not even knowing if you will be able to catch a car at all.
You conveniently omit that Uber, in some cases, jacked up prices 8 fold.
There's a very good reason why taxis are regulated in most jurisdictions. If Uber doesn't like such regulations they're free to try to change it. And they do have very heavy hitting lobbyists on their payroll to do just that.
They are not free, however, to break the law.
This can of course be solved without Uber; in London, Ubicab manages this seamlessly, while using local taxi companies. They seem to coexist well with Uber, Addison Lee, Hailo, and the rest.
10 words in to become incorrect, and that was due to sentence structure. Top comment on Hackernews is also wrong.
These two reasons are why Uber (a crappy company anyway, do use their competitors, don't reward their anticompetitive policies) are banned.
> by the Court of Lisbon which accepted an injunction filed by Antral, the road carriers association.
Incorrect
> Politicians are too short sighted, always protecting the status quo.
Incorrect.
Why is uber a crappy company? And how have they been anticompetitive?
Because they don't "oblige themselves" to follow local regulation and are therefore able to offer services at lower rates, even at the expense of the occasional fine.
Apparently being better than the competition is anti-competitive.
Being "better than the competition", by e.g. using children of slave labour is anti-competitive yes.
Being "better than the competition", by sidestepping laws and regulations, like Uber does, is also anti-competitive.
Politicians are too short sighted, always protecting the status quo.
The "next thing" (as opposed to "status quo") is not always better. It's not even "most of the time better", more like a coin toss.
Why should politicians make it easy for a foreign company to destroy a local, tax-paying, profession that gives jobs to people and follows certain obligations and rules voted for public safety?
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.
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.
Who protects the income of the people who want to drive Uber cars?
Valid argument until Uber rolls in self driving cars.
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.
So much for the free market...
The "free market" is not something supported by our political parties, not even as propaganda. We have a great diversity of parties, from the Reorganized Movement of the Party of the Proletariat to the Nationalist Renovator Party, but they're all statists.
I agree that it's sheer insanity to prevent people from interacting consensually. It's ironic, considering drugs are decriminalized in Portugal. Free markets can't effectively exist as long as corporations as we know it exist. It's not as if there was a "free market" prior to this.
Regulation is the reason why corporations are thriving.
Regulation is also the reason why your cabby has mandatory rest times, which are strictly enforced.
They're the reason why (at least where I live) there's a alcohol limit of 0 0/00 for taxi drivers, with zero tolerance for violating it.
Those pesky regulations enforce mandatory maintenance standards for vehicles. They don't only have to look shiny. They actually have to be safe to drive.
Damn regulations dictate valid and adequate insurance, which covers commercial driving activity and covers the drivers liability in case you are hurt, maimed, or killed.
Regulations enforce that you can't be price gouged, they enforce some sensible mandatory standards (drivers may be prohibited by law to refuse transportation because you're blind and need a guide dog) and provide you with a venue to complain when things go wrong.
But hey, just do away with all that in the name of commerce.
>it's sheer insanity to prevent people from interacting consensually
The modern state seems to have become little more than a huge and complex tax-collecting machine. Of course people can interact consensually, with or without the mediation of technology. But as soon as money starts changing hands, then the state will get involved, because it wants its pound of flesh. It would be naïve to believe otherwise.
Yeah, because free market means "free to run an illegal operation and break multiple laws because it makes money"...
Did you miss the obvious circular reasoning here?
Politicians decide what's illegal. Legislative decisions are frequently ethically repulsive if not crooked. It's usually circular logic to point to text on paper as justification of anything, especially in the context of ethics and discussion.
Who should then decide, what's illegal? Companies? That would lead to even worse results.
Corporations already decide what's illegal, largely, thanks to deficient systems. That revolving door exists. It's wide. The fact about law makers was worth mentioning because it often escapes people: pointing to a law, rather than thinking critically about the ethics of a law, is circular reasoning.
Answering your question isn't simple. I foremost think about how the lawmaking process itself could be changed to make it significantly harder to create superficial laws: the type of laws that interfere with consenting people; the type of laws largely responsible for so many prison economies and victimless "crimes." This doesn't answer your question. This is to say that it's a good question and it should be thought about.
Has already led to worse results, when you take into account corporate lobbying and regulatory capture.
Why don't we let citizens decide? Companies produce a product and if consumers don't want to use it, they don't. Uber irrefutably makes a city easier to navigate, and in most cities far cheaper. They've only succeeded in some cities by launching irrespective of what laws and modified to fit them, imagine if they responded and subsequently shut down when they received a cease and desist from SF in 2011 (prior to UberX launch). How ridiculous is it that they needed to let consumers (which the laws are supposed to help) experience the service 'illegally' for it to become accepted by those whom are supposed to be acting in their best interest.
Its not only customer convenience and service price which is at stake. Regulations exist as well for: - protecting the workers providing the service - protecting customers against information asymmetries (like lacking appropriate insurance on side of the provider).
At least for the latter there are regulations in place in the taxi market here in Europe.
Finally citizens can decide. Vote for politicians which going to make change injust law (or what we see as injust). This works at least sometimes. Homosexuality was a criminal offense in most countries forty years ago.
Finally citizens can decide. Vote for politicians
Frankly, that's a cop out, because you'd be insane to vote for the politician based on his/her opinions on taxi regulation laws. Our political systems simply don't allow real choice.
And even if you count voting in a broad direction as having real choice, that still doesn't work, because we have no pro-"free markets" party in this country.
So, no, we can't.
> Frankly, that's a cop out
So is saying that the rules can be broken because there are no parties who would remove them. European democracies generally allow people to form new parties, and I don't belive Portugal is an exception. If the population was pro free market, there would be parties that are pro free market. If there are no such parties, that is because the population doesn't support that idea.
> Why don't we let citizens decide?
Because people are terrible at assessing risk and would chose cheaper cabs rather than insured cabs.
So we should protect people from every single conceivable 'bad' outcome?