Uber Boston, the Sharecropper Cabbie, and the Fear of the Future

How Uber being served notice to cease in Massachusetts is the product of a corrupt system and a fear of changing an already outdated system. 

In case you missed it, Uber was Served, with overzealous Cambridge City officials spearheading an attack on the future of commerce. Uber explains it like this:

  In essence, the Division of Standards is claiming that until the National Institute of Standards and Technology has guidelines in place for GPS location technology, we cannot provide our application to the public.

So let me get this straight Massachusetts, our country thinks it is ok to make GPS guided bombs to drop on human beings but you don’t think citizens can choose to order a service that uses it to measure a distance to a nearby destination? hell we have all been using it to get us places for a decade in cars, seems to work pretty freakin’ good to all of us. For a city that has so many smart people at Harvard and MIT in it, your city officials are pretty dumb.

On the Other hand Perhaps they are Corrupt

What could possibly motivate a politician to investigate a service that people like, with no customer complaints? Money? Maybe it is the notoriously corrupt taxi medallion system that allows individuals to own vast quantities of the medallions, and in the process create a class of workers that are more like sharecroppers than modern day workers. So a service in which a customer calls a car service to pick them up, and the service uses gps to determine distance is not fit for our streets? Even when all the customers willingly agree and request the service and its terms. It is important to recognize that nobody is forced to take an Uber ride, they seek them out, plain and simple. This is not a jump in a cab and have a different meter issue, this is a requested service that comes to you and brings you somewhere. Oh yeah I almost forgot, in a nicer vehicle, with a driver that is rated by customers. Not a cab with no A/C and a broken credit card reader who refuses to pick you up if the distance is too short and subjects you to filthy vehicles.

In other Words this is a Quality of Life Issue

Somehow the Cambridge Government Employees, like James Cassidy, can look themselves in the mirror and say they are protecting the public. When all they are doing is taking freedom away from us, subjecting us to the second rate quality of the taxi medallion owner’s cabs, restricting the ability of drivers to make more money in a more free system, and sticking their head in the sand when it comes to modern technology. Which brings me to my last point.

If this is not Reversed Governor Deval Patrick and Mayor Menino Should never be able to utter the word Innovation Again

For all the talk of innovation districts to attract creative technology companies to Boston, the fact that we may be the only city/state that can’t see that GPS is the perfect technology for the transportation industry is a slap in the face to anyone that believed them. This is an opportunity for each of these leaders to actually do that, to find a way to allow for the future to come to Boston, to say to all those that believed in their words about fostering the future of technology here in the Bay State, NO we don’t agree with this order and we are doing everything to make sure nobody is as stupid as Cambridge and James Cassidy again.

Innovation is things like developing a simple interface that allows idle drivers to take people willing to pay them where they want to go in a nice car. Innovation solves problems that real people face, like finding a car nearby to take you somewhere when a cab is nowhere to be found. Innovation is ideas that take car service drivers from doing nothing to earning a living in between their regular gigs. It allows the people of Boston to get a ride where they want and start spending money faster than they could if they had to wait for a short supply taxi.

Innovation helps people find ways to do things, it doesn’t find ways to prevent them from doing things.

If you agree with me, sign this petition to stop the stupidity in its tracks.

Petition in Support of Uber

 

 


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