Arbitrage. With Pizzas!
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@boomzilla said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@boomzilla said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
But if it's an unjust tax (or any other law) I shouldn't hate people for just following orders and going along with them, either. I'm not trying to be just a cheerleader for lawbreaking. I'm just not a cheerleader for mindless legalism.
The fact that they operate like this systematically in the face of different jurisdictions doesn't exactly color them as a heroic vigilante but simply as a criminal.
And I especially don't like one thing @Gąska mentioned (if it's happening): the getting away with it. If, at some point, they've established enough dominance and crushed enough competition with their unfair advantages and then turn to operating legally afterwards (because they no longer need the competitive edge of, e.g., drivers operating without a license or insurance), I still won't like them because they've gotten there through ill means.
I can't speak for Poland, but in the US my wife had to provide proof of insurance and license, plus go through a background check. It's illegal to drive on the road like that, period, and that's the driver breaking the law.
In Poland, to become a regular taxi driver, you have to obtain a license, which involves paying the price but also passing a city geography test - where is which street, mostly. It made sense back when there was no GPS, but nowadays it's just a relic of the past serving as an additional roadblock to becoming a taxi driver to reduce competition. But Uber ignores all of that and lets anyone sign up as a driver, as long as they have a driver's license (which isn't really an obstacle - everyone has it anyway).
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@boomzilla said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@boomzilla said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
But if it's an unjust tax (or any other law) I shouldn't hate people for just following orders and going along with them, either. I'm not trying to be just a cheerleader for lawbreaking. I'm just not a cheerleader for mindless legalism.
The fact that they operate like this systematically in the face of different jurisdictions doesn't exactly color them as a heroic vigilante but simply as a criminal.
And I especially don't like one thing @Gąska mentioned (if it's happening): the getting away with it. If, at some point, they've established enough dominance and crushed enough competition with their unfair advantages and then turn to operating legally afterwards (because they no longer need the competitive edge of, e.g., drivers operating without a license or insurance), I still won't like them because they've gotten there through ill means.
I can't speak for Poland, but in the US my wife had to provide proof of insurance and license, plus go through a background check. It's illegal to drive on the road like that, period, and that's the driver breaking the law.
Transport license, and passenger insurance. Most private car insurance will not provide for commercial passenger transport, only for private passengers. Obviously, commercial insurance is more expensive because there's more driving and more risk involved. Acting like you're not a business but just "sharing" rides doesn't fly. Anyway, that was just an example of things that are reasonable requirements.
Bah. They provide a valuable service for which people willingly pay. I'll grant that there are jurisdictions that have laws that make it illegal and they probably shouldn't operate there, especially with such crazy attitudes like yours about people making voluntary trades over egregious laws (which I'm sure you think my attitude is just as crazy as you think mine is, but eh?).
Reality isn't quite as binary as that. Back when BASF was still dumping their chemical waste in the Rhine they also provided valueable goods people willingly paid for. And they'd save money if they still did, increasing their competitiveness, but it's no longer legal.
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@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
Reality isn't quite as binary as that. Back when BASF was still dumping their chemical waste in the Rhine they also provided valueable goods people willingly paid for. And they'd save money if they still did, increasing their competitiveness, but it's no longer legal.
Sure, like I said, I'd consider dumping pollution into a river to be a bad thing, but not because it's illegal.
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@Rhywden said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@boomzilla Yes, because monopolies are sooo much better.
In my city, Lyft and Uber (maybe others, idk) both operate, and compete with the one (1) conglomerate of taxi companies that owns the entire crappy industry. Maybe some places have taxi systems that are less shit and not a literal government enforced monopoly?
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@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@Gąska said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
You're on the wrong side of Oder
Luckily, so is my car.
That joke's so old, it's probably been dismantled and shipped to Poland itself by now.
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@dfdub said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@Gąska said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
You're on the wrong side of Oder
Luckily, so is my car.
That joke's so old, it's probably been dismantled and shipped to Poland itself by now.
13 minutes?
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@boomzilla said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
Also a lot of this stuff is very subjective, like determining who is or isn't an independent contractor vs an employee.
I don't know how it is in the US, but over here, if a "contractor"'s income seems to be entirely dependent on one single company for an extended period of time, the authorities assume said company is trying to cheat them out of tax revenue and trying to avoid regulations. And usually, that's a fair assumption. There are many exploitative companies that try to get away with declaring most of their essential employees as independent contractors.
If you actually want to work for a single client for a few months/years as a freelancer, both parties have to make absolutely sure that their relationship cannot be mistaken for an employee-employer one.
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@dfdub yeah, I consider that to be pretty bogus reasoning, personally. In general, I think European labor law is relatively stifling.
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@boomzilla
Well, it's not like your labor laws aren't crazy at times. You guys still have Closed Shops in some jurisdictions, which sounds completely bananas to me.In general, the US relationship with labor organizations looks weird from a distance. Only the two extremes (all-powerful unions and completely unprotected workers) seem to exist, no sensible middle ground.
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@dfdub said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@boomzilla
Well, it's not like your labor laws aren't crazy at times. You guys still have Closed Shops in some jurisdictions, which sounds completely bananas to me.It totally is.
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@dfdub said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
If you actually want to work for a single client for a few months/years as a freelancer, both parties have to make absolutely sure that their relationship cannot be mistaken for an employee-employer one.
California "fixed" that. Fuck you, you're an employee.
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@dcon said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@dfdub said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
If you actually want to work for a single client for a few months/years as a freelancer, both parties have to make absolutely sure that their relationship cannot be mistaken for an employee-employer one.
California "fixed" that. Fuck you, you're an employee.
Sounds like, wild-ass-guess, in these cases that’s true at least 98% of the time. It’s not like they’d be picking between being a freelancer or an employee, they’re picking being between being declared a freelancer by their employer or not being employed.
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@topspin They were specifically going after Uber with it. So it was a little broad...
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@HardwareGeek said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
So get the laws changed.
Can't afford the bribes. Don't know what Uber's problem is.
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@Zenith Considering how profitable Uber is, they probably can't afford the bribes, either.
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@HardwareGeek said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@Zenith Considering how profitable Uber is, they probably can't afford the bribes, either.
I was gonna say they bribed the wrong people, but I like your answer better...
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@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@dcon said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@dfdub said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
If you actually want to work for a single client for a few months/years as a freelancer, both parties have to make absolutely sure that their relationship cannot be mistaken for an employee-employer one.
California "fixed" that. Fuck you, you're an employee.
Sounds like, wild-ass-guess, in these cases that’s true at least 98% of the time. It’s not like they’d be picking between being a freelancer or an employee, they’re picking being between being declared a freelancer by their employer or not being employed.
Consider you're a
fiction writer"journalist" and you write columns regularly (weekly-ish) for 3 or 4 different newspapers/magazines/websites/whatever. You write something; you sell it to whichever publisher will pay you for it. If you sell it, you get paid, and you set aside some of the money to pay taxes — regular + self-employment. If nobody wants to buy it, you don't get paid. And if you decide to take some time off and not write, that's purely your decision. That's pretty much the original definition of freelancing.But under California's law, if you sell more than 20 or 30 columns to the same publisher (I don't remember the exact number, and
to look it up), even if you're simultaneously selling columns to other publishers, you suddenly become an employee of that publisher, and they become retroactively liable for payroll taxes on everything they've previously paid you and a host of other labor laws — immigration status, minimum wage, working hours, working conditions — some of which aren't under their control because you're working in your own home officer (or wherever) not under their supervision.Unintended(?) consequence: Publishers are reluctant to do business with California freelancers, because they may suddenly find themselves with an employee they never actually hired. So instead of benefiting freelancers, the law makes it more difficult for them to get freelance work.
Same applies to photographers, graphic artists and other occupations that commonly do freelance work.
There are Federal (IRS) regulations that specify the difference between employees and independent contractors. They're a little fuzzy — there are multiple factors, and it's very possible to some to point toward being a contractor and others toward employee — but mostly pretty reasonable. Work when, where and how you want: contractor. Company tells you not just what to do, but when, where and how: employee. Work exclusively for a single company: employee. Can provide services to more than one company: contractor. Working for a company for an indefinite period of time: employee. Working for a company for a limited time, for a specific task or project, and when it's done, you no longer work for them: contractor. I forget exactly how it's worded, but there's one about how much independent judgement you're allowed/expected to exercise. Use your own tools/equipment: contractor. Use tools/equipment provided by the company: employee. None of them are definitive alone, but put them all together and most of the time it's not too hard to figure out whether a worker is an employee or contractor — unless, of course, you're trying to skirt the rules.
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@HardwareGeek yeah, as mentioned above, it seems like the US has only extreme options for everything with no sane middle grounds.
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@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@HardwareGeek yeah, as mentioned above, it seems like the US has only extreme options for everything with no sane middle grounds.
Not "only extreme options". We have 50 options! Maybe more, if we include DC and various other non-state entities...
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@HardwareGeek said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
Sure. So get the laws changed. Or engage in civil disobedience, knowing and prepared to face the consequences. But you can't just say, "I don't like that law, so I'm going to ignore it."
What do you think civil disobedience is? Does it depend on the level to which you advertise that you are breaking the law?
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@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
Acting like you're not a business but just "sharing" rides doesn't fly.
As I understand it, Uber's argument is that they're just a platform used by the drivers and passengers to connect, instead of the drivers' employer. If a self employed driver used PayPal to collect fares, you wouldn't say they're PayPal's employee. Similarly, their argument seems to be that they just offer a service to the drivers.
The situation is some pretty dark shade of grey because the "service" they provide is about 90% of what's needed for the driver to actually be able to do the job, particularly getting customers. So getting dropped from the platform has pretty much the same effect as getting fired, and they have little in the way of negotiating power to set the fares.
Not sure how the payment structure is though. I do wonder how the perception would change if drivers had a system to make bids for rides when a passenger requests a trip, so that even if Uber provided a suggested price, it was the drivers choosing the actual amount. And if Uber had a system where they charge a fixed rate per month for access to the service, or some fee per ride.
I don't understand how Uber is losing so much money in the first place, though. Like, what are they spending the money on? I would have thought servers and programmers would be their main costs, but they're spending billions per quarter?
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@Gąska said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
In Poland, to become a regular taxi driver, you have to obtain a license, which involves paying the price but also passing a city geography test - where is which street, mostly. It made sense back when there was no GPS, but nowadays it's just a relic of the past serving as an additional roadblock to becoming a taxi driver to reduce competition.
In London (UK), that test is called "The Knowledge". (Er, the knowledge of what's where, obviously.) In Birmingham (UK), they have a Knowledge(0), but it's not always immediately obvious. Some years back, I went up there on a number of occasions, and my experience was highly variable for unguessable reasons. Well, until I found a taxi driver (an older Irish bloke) who explained the situation when I asked him if Birmingham has a Knowledge:
- Birmingham does, indeed have a Knowledge.
- It is required to get a taxi license.
- He had done his properly many years ago, and it was pretty clear that he had kept it up to date.
- He passed comment on the younger generations of drivers, making it clear that he didn't have much respect.
So what did he say? Well, he said that most of them are [South Asians](1) who just take the test over and over again until they know just enough to pass it. The result is that these guys don't really know where anything is, or even, sometimes, that the thing exists. They are, I would guess, extremely grateful for the existence of GPS, although seeing as how all I knew was the name of the various places I had to go (and not an actual address), their adventures with the GPS were ... fraught.
(0) "The Knowledge" is the one in London. Any other is just "a" Knowledge.
(1) No. He did not use the words, "South Asians." He used a short ethnic slur beginning with P that refers to a particular nationality of South Asians.
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@Kian said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
I don't understand how Uber is losing so much money in the first place, though. Like, what are they spending the money on?
R&D towards self-driving cars and subsidizing rides (and other marketing) are big areas. They also lost a lot of money via stock compensation after their IPO.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
They are, I would guess, extremely grateful for the existence of GPS, although seeing as how all I knew was the name of the various places I had to go (and not an actual address), their adventures with the GPS were ... fraught.
Thankfully, with Google Maps etc. this isn't a problem anymore either.
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@Gąska said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
They are, I would guess, extremely grateful for the existence of GPS, although seeing as how all I knew was the name of the various places I had to go (and not an actual address), their adventures with the GPS were ... fraught.
Thankfully, with Google Maps etc. this isn't a problem anymore either.
I’d still prefer if my taxi driver knows where he’s going instead of “oh, google maps didn’t show this detour, don’t know what to do now.”
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@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
I’d still prefer if my taxi driver knows where he’s going instead of “oh, google maps didn’t show this detour, don’t know what to do now.”
Waze (owned by Google, of course) so far has been pretty good with local peculiarities and up-to-date stuff. Although I haven't used it abroad where villages are our cities and cities are megalopomopolis
.Of course, per modern custom, it works by actually doing fuck all themselves, and relying on users to do their work for them, slurping all it possibly can and then raking in ad money. But among several car navis I've tried it beats them all.
Dunno about Uber (never used it), but the thing about most taxis seems to be that they have a barely working company app (but of course they do!) that integrates some sort of map provider data. Now, who wants to bet this data is not being properly updated, because that costs them money?
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@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@Gąska said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
They are, I would guess, extremely grateful for the existence of GPS, although seeing as how all I knew was the name of the various places I had to go (and not an actual address), their adventures with the GPS were ... fraught.
Thankfully, with Google Maps etc. this isn't a problem anymore either.
I’d still prefer if my taxi driver knows where he’s going instead of “oh, google maps didn’t show this detour, don’t know what to do now.”
Me too, but if given a choice between this and paying 50% less, I'd choose to pay 50% less. The 0.01% chance of things going wrong isn't worth it.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
But among several car navis I've tried it beats them all.
The only situations where [what evolved out of Waze] doesn't do a particularly great job are where network connectivity is patchy or GPS location data is hard to come by. Car built-in ones do better there, because they've got far more power and better sensors for handling dead-reckoning. (They also tend to have better placed GPS receiving aerials.) There are a few other online mapping services that do a bit better too, but not by very much; Google's built up a very good dataset, and spent a lot of effort on doing so (and on curation).
Round here, all sorts of taxi drivers tend to have a mapping app available (usually on a phone nowadays, often Google Maps). They don't always need it, but it seems useful to them often enough that it's worthwhile and the phone's going to be there anyway…
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@Gąska said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@Gąska said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
They are, I would guess, extremely grateful for the existence of GPS, although seeing as how all I knew was the name of the various places I had to go (and not an actual address), their adventures with the GPS were ... fraught.
Thankfully, with Google Maps etc. this isn't a problem anymore either.
I’d still prefer if my taxi driver knows where he’s going instead of “oh, google maps didn’t show this detour, don’t know what to do now.”
Me too, but if given a choice between this and paying 50% less, I'd choose to pay 50% less. The 0.01% chance of things going wrong isn't worth it.
Knowing where you are going seems quite far from being such a high barrier that it'd make a 100% difference in cost (maybe except from the London extreme version of knowing every house in the city).
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@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@Gąska said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@Gąska said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
They are, I would guess, extremely grateful for the existence of GPS, although seeing as how all I knew was the name of the various places I had to go (and not an actual address), their adventures with the GPS were ... fraught.
Thankfully, with Google Maps etc. this isn't a problem anymore either.
I’d still prefer if my taxi driver knows where he’s going instead of “oh, google maps didn’t show this detour, don’t know what to do now.”
Me too, but if given a choice between this and paying 50% less, I'd choose to pay 50% less. The 0.01% chance of things going wrong isn't worth it.
Knowing where you are going seems quite far from being such a high barrier that it'd make a 100% difference in cost (maybe except from the London extreme version of knowing every house in the city).
Exactly! So why do taxi drivers charge so much?
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@dkf said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
Car built-in ones do better there
I suppose that's true. I wouldn't know.
Now, just like
likes to bang on about Poland, you have to remember I was talking from a reference frame of Eastern Europe backwaters. A 15 year old midrange car is the most common sight, especially A4 Avants and B6/B7 Passats.It may have been good long time ago, but otherwise good is not on the list I might use to describe all that old shite. In fact I'd like to send @Polygeekery to everyone who allowed Audi RNS-E Gen.1 to ever see the light of day. I've heard it's by far not the worst, but the borked DVD reader alone has caused enough trouble. Not that the maps have been updated since 2018 (and hadn't been actually updated anyway)...
all sorts of taxi drivers tend to have a mapping app available
I guess it depends on how "modernized" they are. Last time I used FreeNOW, for example, it looked like drivers were provided with a tablet which was also wired to have their fleet management, maps and payments running, all in one app.
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@Gąska said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@Gąska said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@Gąska said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
They are, I would guess, extremely grateful for the existence of GPS, although seeing as how all I knew was the name of the various places I had to go (and not an actual address), their adventures with the GPS were ... fraught.
Thankfully, with Google Maps etc. this isn't a problem anymore either.
I’d still prefer if my taxi driver knows where he’s going instead of “oh, google maps didn’t show this detour, don’t know what to do now.”
Me too, but if given a choice between this and paying 50% less, I'd choose to pay 50% less. The 0.01% chance of things going wrong isn't worth it.
Knowing where you are going seems quite far from being such a high barrier that it'd make a 100% difference in cost (maybe except from the London extreme version of knowing every house in the city).
Exactly! So why do taxi drivers charge so much?
Because they're actually covering their costs of business / living instead of riding the wave of making up losses with larger numbers?
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
A 15 year old midrange car is the most common sight, especially A4 Avants and B6/B7 Passats.
Passat B7 is from 2010. And as a bonus fun fact, they're considered a high-end car in Poland. Mid-range is more like Focus II.
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@Kian said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
I would have thought servers and programmers would be their main costs, but they're spending billions per quarter?
Lawyers ain't cheap.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@dkf said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
Car built-in ones do better there
I suppose that's true. I wouldn't know.
Agreed. When faced with a "it's free on the phone" and "it costs $1000+ as an option", the choice it pretty clear.
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@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
Because they're actually covering their costs of business / living instead of riding the wave of making up losses with larger numbers?
Hey! Stop knocking that business model! It obviously works since so many companies are doing it!
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@Gąska said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@Applied-Mediocrity said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
A 15 year old midrange car is the most common sight, especially A4 Avants and B6/B7 Passats.
Passat B7 is from 2010. And as a bonus fun fact, they're considered a high-end car in Poland. Mid-range is more like Focus II.Derp. I accidentally that Audi and Volkssturmwagen numbering was the same. It's the same thing, but different grill, to discern people who couldn't afford Audis, right?
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@Gąska said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@Applied-Mediocrity said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
A 15 year old midrange car is the most common sight, especially A4 Avants and B6/B7 Passats.
Passat B7 is from 2010. And as a bonus fun fact, they're considered a high-end car in Poland. Mid-range is more like Focus II.Derp. I accidentally that Audi and Volkssturmwagen numbering was the same. It's the same thing, but different grill, to discern people who couldn't afford Audis, right?
You mean it might be confusing that the B6 and B7 A4 are internally type 8E and built on the PL46/B6 platform, while the B6 and B7 Passat are type 3C but built on the PQ46/A6 platform?
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@dcon said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@Applied-Mediocrity said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@dkf said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
Car built-in ones do better there
I suppose that's true. I wouldn't know.
Agreed. When faced with a "it's free on the phone" and "it costs $1000+ as an option", the choice it pretty clear.
I wouldn't know about that either. We let you rich folks buy the options as you see fit. When they end up here, it's either "has radio" or "radio has been stolen, here's a shitty EUR 25 Kenwood instead, but the original code label is in the glovebox anyway - it's like new, really"
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@dcon said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@Applied-Mediocrity said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@dkf said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
Car built-in ones do better there
I suppose that's true. I wouldn't know.
Agreed. When faced with a "it's free on the phone" and "it costs $1000+ as an option", the choice it pretty clear.
I wouldn't know about that either. We let you rich folks buy the options as you see fit. When they end up here, it's either "has radio" or "radio has been stolen, here's a shitty EUR 25 Kenwood instead, but the original code label is in the glovebox anyway - it's like new, really"
That's not going to work for much longer. Cars used to come with radios in DIN racks, because we standardized that kind of shit, so you could just throw in whatever cheap chinesium RGB radio. But nowadays everything is built in so that it's got customized panels and everything and not as easily replaceable.
At least from what I can tell.
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@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
But nowadays everything is built in so that it's got customized panels and everything and not as easily replaceable.
At least from what I can tell.A lot of it is either DIN or double DIN still, just with different shape fascias so you just need a fascia kit to fit a normal headunit.
E.g. this which lets you fit standard double DIN to a VW Polo.
Some aren't but also there are aftermarket adapters which both sort the fascia and make the space into a DIN or double DIN space.
Others are, as you said, not as easy but the theft problem is solved differently as some manufacuters make it more difficult to fit the unit into another vehicle. it fucks up the market for theives so there's no point in stealing it, although it makes it more difficult (but not impossible) to do it legitimately.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
Waze (owned by Google, of course) so far has been pretty good with local peculiarities and up-to-date stuff.
Most of the time it's pretty good, but last year we had a strange road situation that Waze couldn't figure out. Basically, there was construction on one intersection, and they partially closed it in different ways throughout that time. So for a few weeks, you couldn't turn left or right coming from one street, but going straight through on the cross street was allowed. Then only left turns in one direction were allowed, or something like that. Waze didn't have reporting functionality advanced enough for this stupidity, so for the entire time it treated the intersection as open and would give routes through it that you couldn't actually take.
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@loopback0 said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
You mean it might be confusing that the B6 and B7 A4 are internally type 8E and built on the PL46/B6 platform, while the B6 and B7 Passat are type 3C but built on the PQ46/A6 platform?
You sunk my battleship
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@boomzilla said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
Reality isn't quite as binary as that. Back when BASF was still dumping their chemical waste in the Rhine they also provided valueable goods people willingly paid for. And they'd save money if they still did, increasing their competitiveness, but it's no longer legal.
Sure, like I said, I'd consider dumping pollution into a river to be a bad thing, but not because it's illegal.
Like most other cases, it's not bad because it's illegal, but rather was made illegal because it's bad.
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@dcon said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@HardwareGeek yeah, as mentioned above, it seems like the US has only extreme options for everything with no sane middle grounds.
Not "only extreme options". We have 50 options! Maybe more, if we include DC and various other non-state entities...
Do we really, though? How many of those 50+ are duplicates?
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@Kian said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@HardwareGeek said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
Sure. So get the laws changed. Or engage in civil disobedience, knowing and prepared to face the consequences. But you can't just say, "I don't like that law, so I'm going to ignore it."
What do you think civil disobedience is? Does it depend on the level to which you advertise that you are breaking the law?
I would say that it does. Civil disobedience is an act of political protest to make a point. If you're not doing so visibly and calling attention to it, then you're not engaging in civil disobedience; you're just evading the law.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@dcon said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@HardwareGeek yeah, as mentioned above, it seems like the US has only extreme options for everything with no sane middle grounds.
Not "only extreme options". We have 50 options! Maybe more, if we include DC and various other non-state entities...
Do we really, though? How many of those 50+ are duplicates?
Beats me. Way too
to actually investigate!
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@boomzilla said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
@topspin said in Arbitrage. With Pizzas!:
Reality isn't quite as binary as that. Back when BASF was still dumping their chemical waste in the Rhine they also provided valueable goods people willingly paid for. And they'd save money if they still did, increasing their competitiveness, but it's no longer legal.
Sure, like I said, I'd consider dumping pollution into a river to be a bad thing, but not because it's illegal.
Like most other cases, it's not bad because it's illegal, but rather was made illegal because it's bad.
Exactly my point.
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@Luhmann My guess was Pajeets.
