Why (Anti-Progress) Progressives Should Hate Innovation

via Uber and Lyft

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Uber and Lyft may sound like a good idea and may sound "progressive." They probably sound the best to people who know the least about cabs. We can start with the knowledge that St. Louis has a long history of cab companies. Some still operating and many who have went away. There are many professional cabbies who have been driving for decades. For cabbies to earn a decent living there has to be proper regulation of the industry. Too few cabs and the public isn't served and too many and drivers can't make decent money.

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Driving a cab in St. Louis is a job that has allowed drivers to buy homes, raise families and send their children to college. Its not a plaything for me. I work six or seven days a week on this job (usually 10-12 hours a day) and that's the money I use to support my children and pay my bills. While business in the fall, winter and spring is brisk, for the most part come summer time business grinds to a halt. Drivers barely make it in the summer time and there is little margin for error. With Uber and Lyft appearing on the scene that margin of error may be wiped away, drivers may lose their jobs, tuition may not get paid, the lights may go out, the gas may get cut off, evictions can happen, and marriages and relationships may crumble. Its that serious.

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you get the point. but then he goes into an attack on hipster and then starts to tell the customers what they should do to improve the cab industry in St Louis (seriously. i shite you not)

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However, allow me to share how customers can be proactive in improving their experience. Since Uber and Lyft are designed to serve the hipster population let me share with you some of the problems hipsters seem to have with catching cabs:

Making time-orders and then still coming out late or not coming out at all

Calling from high-rise apartment buildings and not waiting in the lobby forcing drivers to double-park and block traffic

Calling for a cab from a bar and then just hopping into the first cab you see regardless as to whether its your cab or not

Getting into unlicensed cabs and then complaining you got screwed

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so instead of pushing for his industry to adapt to the market, to better SERVE the population, he tells the market how it's wrong

then he fricking GOES OFF on hipsters

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So, now, let me use this time to call out hipsters and ask: What kind of a society do you want to live in? Do you favor the right-wing economics of the GOP or do you favor a more humane and just society?

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humane and just = do what the frick i say, you stupid peasant-customer. and i will use government to force you to use my services by making my competition illegal. that is a "humane and just" society, motherfricker

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If you're supporting the decimation of good working-class jobs you can't make a very good claim of being progressive.

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supporting progress in the market means you can't make a claim of being progressive

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Uber and Lyft are conservative economic ideas.

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improving a service industry by promoting what customers want? conservative idea

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If you're an economic conservative, despite how ironic and sarcastic you may be or how tight your jeans are, you, my friend, are a conservative.

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the 2012 election called...

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However, there is something even worse. If you believe the resources of the state should be used to help the affluent and disenfranchise the poor, which often happens during gentrification, that puts you in a category that conjures up some very nasty images from the 20th century.

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seriously you guys...seriously

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