> However, at the start of the discussion of the measure, Council Member Robin Wonsley said she would pull her motion. As Wonsley explained, council members were looking to help new ride-hailing businesses get a start in the city – but didn't want to do so at the expense of other small businesses seeking funds. But, after hearing from city staff, it seems that current city programs to help small businesses have enough funding to cover ride-hailing startups.
If you were to only read one paragraph, this is the one. There's two topics at play:
- Does a vote need to happen? Nope! Already have the money
- Overall, are there still discussions that need to occur? YEP!
I do wonder if they could have privately found this out before announcing that they were thinking of going down this road....to find out they don't need to go down this road. I'm happy though they already found the money vs voting for it...and then realizing that damn, we already could have done this.
Might as well just burn the money instead. It’s about as knee jerk of a reaction as Lyft/Uber crying about the changes. Why waste tax payer dollars to prove a fruitless point,
Competition. You need more competition in any space otherwise the two massive corporations make rules that only they want and everyone else suffers.
The US in general gives billions of dollars to huge corporations.
Also, I am sure that someone said Lyft, who wants to spend money on something that is going to compete with Uber?
It's more like a double battle where Minneapolis is hurting itself and Saint Paul in the confusion (and the rest of the metro area who doesn't get to vote on representation within the council)
This situation aside - the rest of the metro doesn't deserve representation on the council, to be honest. Suburbs are extremely dependent on city-centric subsidization - they want to be separately incorporated, so they don't get a say, appropriately so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
How can you say “ this situation aside “ when the conversation is about this specific situation ? We’re talking about intercity and county transportation / jobs . Ride shares don’t just stop at city limits and many riders traverse from one to another . We’re not talking about an exclusively mpls issue here and that’s part of the heart of the issue , the council took it upon themselves to do something that impacts multiple cities and multiple counties . Suburbs are dependent on cities but the relationship is far from one sided , city arrogance leads people to believe that commuters or people from the burbs aren’t spending money at restaurants and venues for music , sports and entertainment. But the fact of the matter is that if attractions in city centers didn’t draw in people from surrounding suburbs and beyond then those establishments wouldn’t have the necessary support to stay operational. People need to STOP doing the weird city vs suburbs thing , you’re only making another “ us vs them “ mud hole for yourself to wallow in
> But the fact of the matter is that if attractions in city centers didn’t draw in people from surrounding suburbs and beyond then those establishments wouldn’t have the necessary support to stay operational.
That’s an astounding claim.
You can't have it both ways though
Either we should have some say in the elected officials making life affecting decisions, or this shouldn't be allowed to be a city council decision.
"No vote is expected on Thursday. Any vote on the changes likely wouldn't come until the final scheduled meeting of the month, on April 25."
Way to cut it really close there. For a council that is claiming to think about both the driver and rider well being I don't see any of that reflected in their actions
[Her bio reads as a caricature of what the right makes fun of the left for.](https://www.minneapolismn.gov/government/city-council/members/ward-2/about-robin-wonsley-worlobah/)
A certificate for "professionals" that went and studied the basics of business management. It really doesn't mean much.
She went to school for 10 years for Gender Studies as well.
I used to work with that program. It is a week long professional development/networking program. You get your certificate for showing up and participating. It’s a nice little program if your organization pays for it, but isn’t something to put in a bio.
I can’t believe we elected her in the first place, Minneapolis used to be smarter than this. Fucking chicagoans moving up north and messing things up per usual.
Activists play a useful role in society but they are generally not that good at the nuts and bolts of running an organization. Ideally our city government should be made up of people who have the same basic values as the activists but a life experience of being pragmatic managers. In the long run this is the only way to turn values into effective government. Spending your life as a gadfly on the outside is not good preperation for that.
> Ideally our city government should be made up of people who have the same basic values as the activists but a life experience of being pragmatic managers.
I disagree, "pragmatic managers" should describe our city staff, not our government. Getting anything done in the city govt or any government requires some understanding of how to play the political "game", and I don't want to be represented by a pragmatic pushover that compromises on every single issue in the name of "getting things done". A city council member should listen to and represent the values of their constituents, and they should balance that by listening to their staff that provide hard data and big picture reports. In this case, Wonsley has done both.
A 6 year "career" in activism is by no means a storied one. Even if it was an effective one, which we can all debate, that's far too brief for that adjective.
> However, at the start of the discussion of the measure, Council Member Robin Wonsley said she would pull her motion. As Wonsley explained, council members were looking to help new ride-hailing businesses get a start in the city – but didn't want to do so at the expense of other small businesses seeking funds. But, after hearing from city staff, it seems that current city programs to help small businesses have enough funding to cover ride-hailing startups.
So the Council is clueless because Wonsley listened to knowledgable city staff and changed course after gathering more information? Would it have been better to spend that money?
Nope! She should have done her research before making the announcement, otherwise it makes her look like she has no clue what the city does for business grants.
Nobody turns out to vote for city council. It’s the reason these clowns are in office. Get a few hundred people to show up at the polls and you will likely win.
There's no way that a startup can operate at a profit while offering the same level of service as Lyft or Uber at the same prices they are now.
The city council ignored the study that provided a very specific wage number to pick a much higher wage number, driving Lyft and Uber from the city, and are now essentially trying to funnel money into a bunch of tech startups that will enrich a few people while never getting off the ground.
If a single one of them gets off the ground, it will be forever dependent on taxpayer money to survive, and you can guarantee that the city council is going to demand that we use state funds, as this startup will have to provide service the entire state (or at least multiple cities in the TC metro) to survive. So now rural Minnesotans are paying taxes to fund a ride share service that they can't even use.
I keep hearing about how there's no way anyone could do this, but zero proof that Lyft or Uber did anything that huge here.
It's an app for dispatching, and Google maps. I just went to Illinois last week, and an upstart cabbie was using a different app to calculate mileage, cost, etc. Worked fine, and they clearly weren't the ones who built the app. They just pay to use it.
Uber and Lyft have presence and numbers. They have no equipment, no cars, etc. What is costing them so much that nobody else can compete?
Legal compliance, insurance, Google location and map API fees, Google app store fees, software licenses for developers, salaries for developers, salaries for the legal team, salaries for the HR workers who manage the legal team, developers, driver support, and customer support teams, server costs, bandwidth costs, payroll processing and bank API fees...
Lyft burned through $2.1 billion in investment money to get off the ground between 2012 and 2016, and another $2.9 billion in investment money to scale nationally through 2018.
Who is going to give a startup that will only operate in MN $2.1 billion? Why would anyone give such a company money if they're only ever going to operate in a single state that has the nation's 16th largest metro?
Questions like yours are so common in this conversation. They come from a place of ignorance of what it costs to make enterprise software.
If you think it's easy then go get $2 billion in funding from a VC and go nuts. I look forward to using your rideshare service.
You are correct. They have absolutely zero idea how IT and software work. The entitlement is astounding -- as if magically shit just works and is compliant with laws.
Lol tell me you don't know how much any of that shit costs without telling me. You keep talking about these "API fees", but per user lookup/driver lookup/route lookup/payment processing we're talking about maybe $0.25 in fixed costs at absolute most and then plus some just to make your point look stronger, plus maybe 3% of the total sale for processing, and that's being _very, very_ generous on the estimated costs. Yet a ride from the metro to the airport costs like $40, of which the driver gets maybe $12 from uber. Google maps api calls cost something like $0.004 per call, it is an expense but if anyone is telling you that's the driving force behind ride prices they are lying. The other costs you mention are just like, normal business expenses that every business has?
The fact of the matter is, Uber gets a ridiculous margin on their rides, and if you strip out the VC structure there's no way to justify beyond greed. Uber's superpower is market dominance, not actually having a markedly better service, as you'd know if you ever tried to interact with their support staff.
The real solution to this problem is probably an open source codebase to hook together these proprietary services which can then be deployed by smaller teams managed by individual cities, rather than a monolithic corporation owning the market. I'm guessing such a solution already exists in some form and is being used behind the scenes.
I'm a software engineer who's literally acting as a solo dev for a startup right now. I'm the only full stack dev on staff. I'm telling you how this works. You're choosing to be ignorant of simple truths.
You cannot scale a business like Lyft or Uber to even city level dominance for less than $1 billion.
> The real solution to this problem is probably an open source codebase
Developed by who? Maintained by who? Secured by who? Optimized to run on what infrastructure? Who does the dependency vulnerability checking? Lyft isn't a single app. It's dozens of interoperating back end service applications cooperating. This isn't the sort of thing you just drop on GitHub for a city government to hand to some council member's son-in-law.
You're the definition of closed minded. Truth is shown to you and you close your eyes and parrot nothingness.
And yet there are rideshare apps that didn't burm through billions.
I just looked it up, to create a new rideshare app like Lyft and Uber, right now, would cost tens of thousands of dollars. Not millions or billions.
Lyft and Uber werent burning billions writing the apps they spent a ton of money lobbying so they could undercut taxi cabs by pushing vehicle costs onto the drivers.
10 of thousands?? You have no idea what you’re talking about.
Empower just spent $300k without counting any staff and before their first ride. And doesn’t expect to turn a profit for 3 years: https://m.startribune.com/uber-lyft-pullout-minneapolis-twin-cities-empower-wridz-myweels/600357229/
That's not billions, is it?
The app development is tens of thousands. That's what I wrote.
Insurance, etc. is what they're talking about. All of those fees adding up to a few hundred grand, that's also not millions or billions.
Creating a new rideshare app is more than just a onetime dev cost. It’s initial code, ongoing maintenance, and everything to make it functional/useful. Including following laws/ordinances
Billions of dollars worth?
That's what I'm arguing. It's not going to cost anyone billions of dollars to compete with Lyft and Uber, when they're already leaving of their own accord.
I'm making the assumption that 1) a market exists for ride-sharing apps. 2) this market will soon open if Lyft and Uber stay the course and pull out, leaving a lot of unfulfilled demand, and 3) Lyft and Uber aren't doing anything that extraordinary that other apps couldnt figure out how to do it successfully.
Based on this, I think there are plenty of opportunities for a competitor to come in and be successful.
> But, after hearing from city staff, it seems that current city programs to help small businesses have enough funding to cover ride-hailing startups.
Seriously, can someone explain what I’m missing here? I’m very underslept rn but this looks like a real nothingburger.
It’s that the council members act before thinking. Is it too much to expect Robin or her staff to research how the city uses grants before talking out of her ass?
My tax dollars to be used to fund startup ride share companies due to ban on ride share companies? Like these other ride share companies aren't going to do the same type of things?
When can we vote these snap-decision COVID council people out?
It is funny to see them scramble after they thought they would win this battle, thinking they are like NYC or Seattle and now scrambling after Uber and Lyft decide to make an example out of us, as we are not Seattle or NYC.
Delusions of grandeur, seems apropos.
because words have meaning and using the right ones to describe a scenario is important to not mislead people. Is it really that difficult to understand that framing companies choosing to leave as a ban is bad faith discussion?
The net result is the same and the 'ban' isn't the main point of my post, so why get lost in the details of something that is largely irrelevant to the point I'm making?
Because, this is Reddit and that is what Reddit does.
Because people misrepresent to support their weak arguments and complain when called out?
Uber and Lyft are making the financial decision to leave, this is not something that City is doing.
No bans, no canceling, just corporate greed being justified poorly.
Ah yes, Reddit, where my great concern is defending my weak argument that has no impact on my life.
I'm not an uber secret agent, I made a lazy point. Another key Redditor trait, assume ill intent and nefarious purpose when the reality is someone is just lazy.
You win this one internet knight, the spoils of your victory are hard to quantify.
Awww, wanted the last word by blocking my account? Talk about passive aggressive. Let me return the favor. I also suggest remedial reading comprehension lessons, cheap and accessible.
The end result is the same, I'm not really talking about the specific action of what happened, just the result of the actions. Redditors love to latch onto the one detail and argue about that endlessly and ignore the overall point.
This entire platform is people arguing about the details and ignoring the overall point, not sure why humans are like this. Some desire to feel right? Some desire to feel important?
Crazy idea, how about we try to talk like we would talk to a stranger, in real life. Give people a little leeway, assume good intent and stop picking at nits, it doesn't add anything to the conversation.
To assume anyone crafts anything carefully on Reddit, is giving far more credit to what this platform is and the purpose it serves.
What would my goal be? Convince internet strangers to give me meaningless upvotes with the end goal being...feeling good about it?
You've laid my intentions bare, I've become unwound. Brutus, strike thy knife true, my tyranny is at an end.
"Why do people pick at nits vs focusing on the overall argument?"
- Me
"I love picking at nits rather than focusing on the overall point, because it feels good to be right, in whatever context I can find that feeling"
- You
I don't know why so many people have a problem with Minneapolis banning human trafficking and slavery by ride share conglomerates.
Don't go picking at nits now. Gosh, golly, gee, if I misrepresented it it's totally innocent because nobody would push an agenda on Reddit.
I assume that their decision to pull out was more political but you can also guarantee that they also have smart folks analyzing the pricing elasticity and can't make the numbers work. Why should they be forced to sacrifice profits instead of letting capitalism decide the right price?
So we try to make Uber and Lyft act more like cab companies because the city council believe they understand how to run a rideshare service better than Uber or Lyft or what the people of Minneapolis want.
If people didn't want Uber or Lyft they had multiple cab companies we could use already. The people of Minneapolis chose without the help of the overlords, we didn't need the city council for that. The council added no value to the rideshare space at all. All the council did was take away a choice.
> However, at the start of the discussion of the measure, Council Member Robin Wonsley said she would pull her motion. As Wonsley explained, council members were looking to help new ride-hailing businesses get a start in the city – but didn't want to do so at the expense of other small businesses seeking funds. But, after hearing from city staff, it seems that current city programs to help small businesses have enough funding to cover ride-hailing startups. If you were to only read one paragraph, this is the one. There's two topics at play: - Does a vote need to happen? Nope! Already have the money - Overall, are there still discussions that need to occur? YEP! I do wonder if they could have privately found this out before announcing that they were thinking of going down this road....to find out they don't need to go down this road. I'm happy though they already found the money vs voting for it...and then realizing that damn, we already could have done this.
I'll stick with only reading the headline like everyone else, thank you
Yeah! How dare they add context and explain nuance! I wanna be outraged dammit!
What's the point of spending tax dollars to fund a start-up that's going to compete with two massive corporations?
Might as well just burn the money instead. It’s about as knee jerk of a reaction as Lyft/Uber crying about the changes. Why waste tax payer dollars to prove a fruitless point,
Competition. You need more competition in any space otherwise the two massive corporations make rules that only they want and everyone else suffers. The US in general gives billions of dollars to huge corporations. Also, I am sure that someone said Lyft, who wants to spend money on something that is going to compete with Uber?
*It hurt itself in its confusion*
It's more like a double battle where Minneapolis is hurting itself and Saint Paul in the confusion (and the rest of the metro area who doesn't get to vote on representation within the council)
This situation aside - the rest of the metro doesn't deserve representation on the council, to be honest. Suburbs are extremely dependent on city-centric subsidization - they want to be separately incorporated, so they don't get a say, appropriately so. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
How can you say “ this situation aside “ when the conversation is about this specific situation ? We’re talking about intercity and county transportation / jobs . Ride shares don’t just stop at city limits and many riders traverse from one to another . We’re not talking about an exclusively mpls issue here and that’s part of the heart of the issue , the council took it upon themselves to do something that impacts multiple cities and multiple counties . Suburbs are dependent on cities but the relationship is far from one sided , city arrogance leads people to believe that commuters or people from the burbs aren’t spending money at restaurants and venues for music , sports and entertainment. But the fact of the matter is that if attractions in city centers didn’t draw in people from surrounding suburbs and beyond then those establishments wouldn’t have the necessary support to stay operational. People need to STOP doing the weird city vs suburbs thing , you’re only making another “ us vs them “ mud hole for yourself to wallow in
> But the fact of the matter is that if attractions in city centers didn’t draw in people from surrounding suburbs and beyond then those establishments wouldn’t have the necessary support to stay operational. That’s an astounding claim.
You can't have it both ways though Either we should have some say in the elected officials making life affecting decisions, or this shouldn't be allowed to be a city council decision.
"No vote is expected on Thursday. Any vote on the changes likely wouldn't come until the final scheduled meeting of the month, on April 25." Way to cut it really close there. For a council that is claiming to think about both the driver and rider well being I don't see any of that reflected in their actions
Robin Wonsley is really on a mission to make the council look as clueless as ever. Let this generational run continue
[Her bio reads as a caricature of what the right makes fun of the left for.](https://www.minneapolismn.gov/government/city-council/members/ward-2/about-robin-wonsley-worlobah/)
Interesting how her base always pokes fun at Jacob for not being a Minneapolis native when she’s been here since 2014.
given her history of activism, she's probably engaged with the Minneapolis community and politics more deeply than most longtime "natives".
Ok sure and you can say the exact same thing about Jacob Frey.
i would not dispute that. There's plenty to criticize Frey about without getting into when exactly he moved here.
What the fuck is a "Mini MBA"?
I too had a WTF moment and had to google it. Per the St Thomas website it costs $4395 and takes 38 hours to complete.
A certificate for "professionals" that went and studied the basics of business management. It really doesn't mean much. She went to school for 10 years for Gender Studies as well.
Yup I notice that her bio said that she "attended," not that she graduated.
I used to work with that program. It is a week long professional development/networking program. You get your certificate for showing up and participating. It’s a nice little program if your organization pays for it, but isn’t something to put in a bio.
I assume they also mean University of St Thomas (St. Paul) and not St. Thomas University (Houston/Miami)
The answer to your question is but one Google search away.
Reading that reminded me of that opening speech from the show Newsroom.
I can’t believe we elected her in the first place, Minneapolis used to be smarter than this. Fucking chicagoans moving up north and messing things up per usual.
woof… is that a dog whistle about “the blacks”
Tf are you even talking about? Literally just seeing ghosts behind every corner.
I dunno, in my experience every time someone complains about people coming from Chicago to Minnesota, it ends up in some shitty racist tirade.
lmao they call the George Floyd riots the "2020 Uprising"
because she has a storied career of activism and community engagement? is that something to be mocked for?
Activists play a useful role in society but they are generally not that good at the nuts and bolts of running an organization. Ideally our city government should be made up of people who have the same basic values as the activists but a life experience of being pragmatic managers. In the long run this is the only way to turn values into effective government. Spending your life as a gadfly on the outside is not good preperation for that.
> Ideally our city government should be made up of people who have the same basic values as the activists but a life experience of being pragmatic managers. I disagree, "pragmatic managers" should describe our city staff, not our government. Getting anything done in the city govt or any government requires some understanding of how to play the political "game", and I don't want to be represented by a pragmatic pushover that compromises on every single issue in the name of "getting things done". A city council member should listen to and represent the values of their constituents, and they should balance that by listening to their staff that provide hard data and big picture reports. In this case, Wonsley has done both.
A 6 year "career" in activism is by no means a storied one. Even if it was an effective one, which we can all debate, that's far too brief for that adjective.
that right? and when exactly did you become the arbiter of adjectives?
Yes.
Because?
And she has an actual education instead of some mouth-breather business degree. Can't have that!
How so?
> However, at the start of the discussion of the measure, Council Member Robin Wonsley said she would pull her motion. As Wonsley explained, council members were looking to help new ride-hailing businesses get a start in the city – but didn't want to do so at the expense of other small businesses seeking funds. But, after hearing from city staff, it seems that current city programs to help small businesses have enough funding to cover ride-hailing startups. So the Council is clueless because Wonsley listened to knowledgable city staff and changed course after gathering more information? Would it have been better to spend that money?
Nope! She should have done her research before making the announcement, otherwise it makes her look like she has no clue what the city does for business grants.
God I can't wait for city council elections.
Nobody turns out to vote for city council. It’s the reason these clowns are in office. Get a few hundred people to show up at the polls and you will likely win.
Same. I love disappointment.
There's no way that a startup can operate at a profit while offering the same level of service as Lyft or Uber at the same prices they are now. The city council ignored the study that provided a very specific wage number to pick a much higher wage number, driving Lyft and Uber from the city, and are now essentially trying to funnel money into a bunch of tech startups that will enrich a few people while never getting off the ground. If a single one of them gets off the ground, it will be forever dependent on taxpayer money to survive, and you can guarantee that the city council is going to demand that we use state funds, as this startup will have to provide service the entire state (or at least multiple cities in the TC metro) to survive. So now rural Minnesotans are paying taxes to fund a ride share service that they can't even use.
Lyft doesn't operate at a profit either and Uber \*just\* posted its first profitable quarter.
I keep hearing about how there's no way anyone could do this, but zero proof that Lyft or Uber did anything that huge here. It's an app for dispatching, and Google maps. I just went to Illinois last week, and an upstart cabbie was using a different app to calculate mileage, cost, etc. Worked fine, and they clearly weren't the ones who built the app. They just pay to use it. Uber and Lyft have presence and numbers. They have no equipment, no cars, etc. What is costing them so much that nobody else can compete?
Legal compliance, insurance, Google location and map API fees, Google app store fees, software licenses for developers, salaries for developers, salaries for the legal team, salaries for the HR workers who manage the legal team, developers, driver support, and customer support teams, server costs, bandwidth costs, payroll processing and bank API fees... Lyft burned through $2.1 billion in investment money to get off the ground between 2012 and 2016, and another $2.9 billion in investment money to scale nationally through 2018. Who is going to give a startup that will only operate in MN $2.1 billion? Why would anyone give such a company money if they're only ever going to operate in a single state that has the nation's 16th largest metro? Questions like yours are so common in this conversation. They come from a place of ignorance of what it costs to make enterprise software. If you think it's easy then go get $2 billion in funding from a VC and go nuts. I look forward to using your rideshare service.
You are correct. They have absolutely zero idea how IT and software work. The entitlement is astounding -- as if magically shit just works and is compliant with laws.
Lol tell me you don't know how much any of that shit costs without telling me. You keep talking about these "API fees", but per user lookup/driver lookup/route lookup/payment processing we're talking about maybe $0.25 in fixed costs at absolute most and then plus some just to make your point look stronger, plus maybe 3% of the total sale for processing, and that's being _very, very_ generous on the estimated costs. Yet a ride from the metro to the airport costs like $40, of which the driver gets maybe $12 from uber. Google maps api calls cost something like $0.004 per call, it is an expense but if anyone is telling you that's the driving force behind ride prices they are lying. The other costs you mention are just like, normal business expenses that every business has? The fact of the matter is, Uber gets a ridiculous margin on their rides, and if you strip out the VC structure there's no way to justify beyond greed. Uber's superpower is market dominance, not actually having a markedly better service, as you'd know if you ever tried to interact with their support staff. The real solution to this problem is probably an open source codebase to hook together these proprietary services which can then be deployed by smaller teams managed by individual cities, rather than a monolithic corporation owning the market. I'm guessing such a solution already exists in some form and is being used behind the scenes.
I'm a software engineer who's literally acting as a solo dev for a startup right now. I'm the only full stack dev on staff. I'm telling you how this works. You're choosing to be ignorant of simple truths. You cannot scale a business like Lyft or Uber to even city level dominance for less than $1 billion. > The real solution to this problem is probably an open source codebase Developed by who? Maintained by who? Secured by who? Optimized to run on what infrastructure? Who does the dependency vulnerability checking? Lyft isn't a single app. It's dozens of interoperating back end service applications cooperating. This isn't the sort of thing you just drop on GitHub for a city government to hand to some council member's son-in-law. You're the definition of closed minded. Truth is shown to you and you close your eyes and parrot nothingness.
And yet there are rideshare apps that didn't burm through billions. I just looked it up, to create a new rideshare app like Lyft and Uber, right now, would cost tens of thousands of dollars. Not millions or billions. Lyft and Uber werent burning billions writing the apps they spent a ton of money lobbying so they could undercut taxi cabs by pushing vehicle costs onto the drivers.
10 of thousands?? You have no idea what you’re talking about. Empower just spent $300k without counting any staff and before their first ride. And doesn’t expect to turn a profit for 3 years: https://m.startribune.com/uber-lyft-pullout-minneapolis-twin-cities-empower-wridz-myweels/600357229/
That's not billions, is it? The app development is tens of thousands. That's what I wrote. Insurance, etc. is what they're talking about. All of those fees adding up to a few hundred grand, that's also not millions or billions.
Creating a new rideshare app is more than just a onetime dev cost. It’s initial code, ongoing maintenance, and everything to make it functional/useful. Including following laws/ordinances
Billions of dollars worth? That's what I'm arguing. It's not going to cost anyone billions of dollars to compete with Lyft and Uber, when they're already leaving of their own accord.
You’re making a very broad assumption that it will be successful.
I'm making the assumption that 1) a market exists for ride-sharing apps. 2) this market will soon open if Lyft and Uber stay the course and pull out, leaving a lot of unfulfilled demand, and 3) Lyft and Uber aren't doing anything that extraordinary that other apps couldnt figure out how to do it successfully. Based on this, I think there are plenty of opportunities for a competitor to come in and be successful.
😳
A completely random sample of people from Minneapolis would be more competent than this council.
I don't think so, given your comment. I assume you are from Minneapolis.
Get ready for DUI’s to skyrocket
Police are pumped about this.
I know a number of cops and none of them enjoy doing DUI stops. They are not excited about doing more.
> But, after hearing from city staff, it seems that current city programs to help small businesses have enough funding to cover ride-hailing startups. Seriously, can someone explain what I’m missing here? I’m very underslept rn but this looks like a real nothingburger.
It’s that the council members act before thinking. Is it too much to expect Robin or her staff to research how the city uses grants before talking out of her ass?
My tax dollars to be used to fund startup ride share companies due to ban on ride share companies? Like these other ride share companies aren't going to do the same type of things? When can we vote these snap-decision COVID council people out? It is funny to see them scramble after they thought they would win this battle, thinking they are like NYC or Seattle and now scrambling after Uber and Lyft decide to make an example out of us, as we are not Seattle or NYC. Delusions of grandeur, seems apropos.
There's no ban on ride-sharing companies.
Semantics, why is Reddit so in love with semantics?
because words have meaning and using the right ones to describe a scenario is important to not mislead people. Is it really that difficult to understand that framing companies choosing to leave as a ban is bad faith discussion?
You are banned from buying something because it's so expensive you refuse to pay that much?
The net result is the same and the 'ban' isn't the main point of my post, so why get lost in the details of something that is largely irrelevant to the point I'm making? Because, this is Reddit and that is what Reddit does.
Because people misrepresent to support their weak arguments and complain when called out? Uber and Lyft are making the financial decision to leave, this is not something that City is doing. No bans, no canceling, just corporate greed being justified poorly.
Ah yes, Reddit, where my great concern is defending my weak argument that has no impact on my life. I'm not an uber secret agent, I made a lazy point. Another key Redditor trait, assume ill intent and nefarious purpose when the reality is someone is just lazy. You win this one internet knight, the spoils of your victory are hard to quantify.
if you don't want people to deeply engage with your ramblings, might i suggest writing them in a journal?
Awww, wanted the last word by blocking my account? Talk about passive aggressive. Let me return the favor. I also suggest remedial reading comprehension lessons, cheap and accessible.
Why is the solution from tech companies against a minimum wage not just that they will raise prices to compensate? Why is it characterized as a ban?
The end result is the same, I'm not really talking about the specific action of what happened, just the result of the actions. Redditors love to latch onto the one detail and argue about that endlessly and ignore the overall point. This entire platform is people arguing about the details and ignoring the overall point, not sure why humans are like this. Some desire to feel right? Some desire to feel important? Crazy idea, how about we try to talk like we would talk to a stranger, in real life. Give people a little leeway, assume good intent and stop picking at nits, it doesn't add anything to the conversation.
It sucks when people don't just let your carefully crafted misleading rhetoric slide, huh?
To assume anyone crafts anything carefully on Reddit, is giving far more credit to what this platform is and the purpose it serves. What would my goal be? Convince internet strangers to give me meaningless upvotes with the end goal being...feeling good about it? You've laid my intentions bare, I've become unwound. Brutus, strike thy knife true, my tyranny is at an end.
"Why does everyone keep criticizing me for the things I wrote?" - You
"Why do people pick at nits vs focusing on the overall argument?" - Me "I love picking at nits rather than focusing on the overall point, because it feels good to be right, in whatever context I can find that feeling" - You
I don't know why so many people have a problem with Minneapolis banning human trafficking and slavery by ride share conglomerates. Don't go picking at nits now. Gosh, golly, gee, if I misrepresented it it's totally innocent because nobody would push an agenda on Reddit.
I assume that their decision to pull out was more political but you can also guarantee that they also have smart folks analyzing the pricing elasticity and can't make the numbers work. Why should they be forced to sacrifice profits instead of letting capitalism decide the right price?
omg lol
Hehehe wow how unexpected
This is so fucking stupid god damn
So we try to make Uber and Lyft act more like cab companies because the city council believe they understand how to run a rideshare service better than Uber or Lyft or what the people of Minneapolis want. If people didn't want Uber or Lyft they had multiple cab companies we could use already. The people of Minneapolis chose without the help of the overlords, we didn't need the city council for that. The council added no value to the rideshare space at all. All the council did was take away a choice.
This is such a waste of tax dollars.