alt Hacker Newskindly, what would make you believe that the private, highly-likely-to-ignore-or-skirt-regulation ride sharing industry would produce a mass-transit product that remains price/service-competitive in an american city?
i have zero trust in the private sector to do anything that won't turn into a gated community, become abandoned, or rely on labor that they won't exploit worse than what they already do with "the gig economy".
we can have the private sector provide public good but we don't have the regulatory infrastructure in place to enforce that, and the more we strengthen the private sector at the expense of the public sector, the further we get away from that, and the closer we get to Biff's America.
> kindly, what would make you believe that the private, highly-likely-to-ignore-or-skirt-regulation ride sharing industry would produce a mass-transit product that remains price/service-competitive in an american city?
Your question very unkindly builds in a biased premise, namely that "highly-likely-to-ignore-or-skirt-regulation". Also, ride sharing killed taxis by essentially working around a ridiculous pile of regulations, and good thing too, and we should all be thankful for that. So right off the bat your reply is phony. You were not being kind.
But I'll answer it anyways: I gave you an existence proof that such a product can exist. Buenos Aires is even an American city in a way :) Sure, it's not proof that such a thing can work here, but then too no U.S. city has tried to put together a public-private public transportation partnership like Buenos Aires', so in fact we can't know until we try, but your attitude is one of the reasons we can't even try.