Italian Court Bans Uber Over Concerns of 'Unfair Competition'
An Italian court recently went ahead and issued a ban for uber, ironically citing unfair competition in the market.
Following the order, the company will not be allowed to have its app activated in the country. The ruling comes as a result from a lawsuit that was launched collectively by Italian taxi groups who are arguing that Uber operations constituted an unfair competition.
Taxi drivers around the world have resulted to engaging in harassment, violence, and more, in trying to prevent competition from coming to the market. Now they are using the state to try and protect their monopoly within the industry from competition that might come from others.
Uber has had a long and uphill battle in numerous jurisdictions around the world, with officials in many countries looking to try and hinder its success and prevent people from voluntarily choosing to use this ride-share service. Uber has taken to challenging the critics and funneling millions into various legal battles in order to defend itself. They are still a prominent service provider in the ride-sharing space despite the taxi drivers who want to shut them down.
Italian taxi drivers have been dedicated in launching coordinated national strikes, pushing for new rules and regulations to protect their already established monopoly within the industry, and they've been reluctant to try and negotiate with Uber representatives in order to try and find some middle ground.
Taxi licenses can cost up to 200,000 euros and banning competition like Uber doesn't help consumers because it only limits the options for them in the marketplace. Uber is said to have 10 days after this recent ruling in Italy, in order to stop advertising and stop operations within the country.
Pics:
Entrepreneur
Sources:
http://fortune.com/2017/04/08/uber-italian-court/
https://steemit.com/news/@doitvoluntarily/california-dmv-tells-uber-to-shut-down-its-self-driving-car-program-in-san-francisco
http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/7/15226400/uber-italy-ban-court-ruling
https://www.engadget.com/2017/04/07/uber-banned-in-italy/
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/288346
Why don't the taxi companies try and innovate? Make a better product...
Why innovate when you can just get the government to enforce your monopoly?
complaining is much easier 👍 😉
Isn't that the truth. Doers > Complainers
And to be honest, taxi driver do not understand that they're not in direct competition with Uber Pop or BlaBlaCar, customers are not exactly the same.
Definitely some crossover, but they can certainly co-exist.
When you paid such a sum for a license, and you likely have debts with a bank for it, it is obvious that you are against anyone doing the same you do, but without that extra cost. To be fair, Uber drivers should buy such a license too, or the state should refund taxi driver or exstinguish their debt.
Anyway, to say the truth, taxi drivers are guilty of their own misery. Many of them contributed directly or indirectly to keep the “license markets” (selling/buying licenses) high, even blocking municipalities from issuing new licenses at their original cost, which isn't so high. Some of them wanted licenses to be a scarse good to keep high their prices in order to speculate on those; others wanted to preserve the value of their investment, to avoid to remain only with a huge debts.
The situation won't be normalized until those debts finish or become sustainable.
Maybe the licenses are a problem in the first place?
As italian I would prefered the second option by far!
there should not be any centralization on force involved when it comes to one person needing a ride, and one person wanting to offer them a ride for something in exchange. It becomes quite the bureaucratic mess otherwise. Competition is better for the consumer,monopolies are not.
luckily, innovation continues to find a way around the nonsense of the state, the p2p economy is still flourishing despite them trying to stunt the progress :)
yes!
Solution?
Ignore the government and use black market TOR based "uber" replacements.
Use the power of internet anonymity and make sure you can do your business privately, paying with cryptocurrency so a malicious state can't steal/tax your money, and can't spy on who you do business with, or spy on where you go, or whatever other weird, bizarre things governments do to control you.
Fight back, and use Tor. Run a Tor node, even a Tor exit node, and make sure no one can stop you from getting a ride with a person of your choosing, rather than whoever the state deems appropriate.
Freedom is won when you choose to fight back.
Funny how resistant people are to change, while also admiring the advancements we make. In a time gone by, there were also all sorts of rules to keep "those horseless carriages" under control.
That's now happen in my country too, indonesia..in this case,the government should make policy to this polemic..if not,will happen conflict interest between online taxy and conventional taxy..
I hope they don't :) because that isn't freedom.
I hope so,,the government should pay strong attention and give fast respon to this problem...
if you want even MORE problems in life then that is when you turn to get the gov involved :) it's best to just leave them out of things lol
Lol...
What a situation...
i have to say that, here in Italy, the taxi drivers have the entire monopoly and it's not right. Taxi licenses are free from the Municipality (they are assigned trough an application for grant), but they are few, so there is a "market" where people sell these licenses and his taxi car and yes, the prize in this market is about 200,000 € for the license in some big city .
Here in Britain, years ago, I said to people about having either a trade-run or City Council run cab network that would allow all cabbies to participate, even if they're a 'one man band'. Of course people ignored this idea, now Uber is in my City and the cab firms here have lost a lot of business because Uber has managed to recruit drivers from London to come down.
I love technology and I think Uber is a great idea, but it still angers me that my idea could possibly have made it difficult for Uber to gain any real market share here as a cab network could make use of loyalty schemes to reduce costs for customers and providing an excellent service (with bad drivers being booted out by licensing authorities) would have kept customers happy, all to ensure local firms keep the advantage. Banning Uber isn't the way forward, firms need to compete properly.
We will soon have flying cars and jetpacks meanwhile these narrowminded idiots are still begging for more government babysitting.
how italians uber...