So as a taxi driver with asthma and horrific allergies, I’ve found dog owners are not typically terribly understanding when I tell them we’re going to have another cab come pick them up. I’ve had several people insist that their animal is a service dog as if this somehow changes my own health condition.
I’ve often found that my own access to public spaces is limited by the use of service animals and straight up pets in public places. I don’t even try to go to breweries anymore. I wouldn’t bother trying to get on a plane. Even hotels are basically a no go for me unless i want to get sick more often than not.
I don’t pretend to have a solution to this, but access to public spaces for animals and for some allergy sufferers is mutually exclusive. It makes it a lot more complicated than ‘service animals should be everywhere’ or ‘allergy sufferers should have access to public spaces’. The two are kind of in conflict. It sucks.
Nobody pays any mind to air quality and it’s made my life a whole lot more difficult than it needs to be.
Anyway, i feel for her, but i think the service animal stuff is way over simplified and people forget that other people with disabilities also pay a cost.
Your disability is legitimate too, and should definitely be considered in any solution. I'm sorry to hear that your mobility is also affected by medical circumstances people don't understand, I know it sucks hard.
The fact that this blind lady needs to have both her guide dog and a taxi/rideshare to get around anywhere sucks for both her and the driver - the former for obvious reasons, and the latter for the reasons you listed out. It’s a sort-of perfect microcosm of the major issue a lot of modern cities seem to have: poor public transit and heavy car-centric infrastructure.
The unfortunate reality that she absolutely needs a car to seemingly get anywhere is the problem here. People - and not just people with disabilities, but in general - should have (and deserve) different viable options to get around. The whole idea of a person becoming stuck at their house because of not being able to get the transport they need to get around the place is fuckin atrocious and should be what’s actually talked about here, not “jUsT lEt ThE aNiMaL oN!” or “MaKe An UbEr ApP fOr PeOpLe LiKe ThIs!”
Just to add to the controversy, in a perfect world with good public transportation, how do you still accommodate both? On a train you could have an animal-free car but what about buses? You can’t have a separate bus for every single accommodation.
Where I live busses are often marked in the timetable as to whether they are wheelchair accessible. So there's precedent already for mixed accomodation transport and informing customers in advance, it might be possible to extend that system further.
These days in most regions that would be illegal and the only leniency is for existing infrastructure where upgrades are challenging - but even then you need a transition plan in place… even if it is one that will take decades. Eventually, every bus needs to be accessible.
It’s just not good enough for people who cannot drive to also have limited access to public transport.
For the person who can’t share a vehicle with an assistance dog… really the only possible answer is public transport isn’t really accessible to them. That’s unfortunate but I don’t really see a solution other than travelling by car.
Discrimination legislation doesn’t require services be available for ever person, they just require taking reasonable steps to be available to as many people as practically possible.
I have severe allergies and on public transport I wear N95 mask. It effectively filters out everything that might be a problem for me, and as a bonus have avoided getting sick even when everyone around me seems to be catching things. If everyone did this we could eliminate airborne viruses and many other conditions, but I’m not holding out hope for that.
The increased air resistance of a mask is often a deal breaker for people with breathing issues.
During covid-19 the best advice for those people is you just need to deal with it, but only because your breathing issues make covid-19 especially high risk for those people. But it was very uncomfortable.
in a perfect world with good public transportation, how do you still accommodate both
A) You have excellent public transport suitable for service animals, wheelchairs, blind people, etc
B) People who can’t take it for whatever reason travel by car. If you can get one (you won’t get one for asthma…) a disability parking permit is a huge help. They’re recognised globally and make it a lot easier to park in metropolitan areas. Those permits are valid whether you’re driving or a passenger. With one of those permits even car-hostile places like the Netherlands become practical.
Well, if we properly defined 'dog allergy' as a disability, maybe the accessibility tool that we could use to accommodate it might be like... a gas mask or something like that?
It'd be strange at first, but eventually we'd treat them no differently than a cane or wheelchair.
So the thing to understand is that while well designed cities have good public transit, what they actually have better is walkability. You should be able to do most of your business without taking any transit options. This saves the disabled woman from needing to use transit and helps reduce the amount of service animals in transit.
There still needs to be some degree of mixing but there's limitations as to how protected we can make things for everyone. Some people have an airborne allergy to peanuts but we aren't going to ban peanuts everywhere to accommodate. People with severe animal allergies will have up continue finding ways to cope since we aren't going to ban people from having pets. The best we can do is what's reasonable.
You hit a nerve. I’m not blind, but my crazy glaucoma prevents me from safely operating a vehicle, so I voluntarily gave up driving years ago.
I live outside a village with no buses, taxis, trains, or ride shares, so when I go to my quarterly opthamologist visit, I have to arrange for someone to take me on the 4 hours round trip drive. (There’s no closer office.) I had to cancel tomorrow’s appointment when my arrangement fell through. I’m housebound and it’s fucking madness.
Sure, but that doesn’t mean that every single taxi needs to be the taxi that picks up dogs.
I feel like the general approach taken by society when it comes to air quality, from strangers to my own family, is that air quality doesn’t really matter, and that no accommodations should ever be made to improve it.
Which is part of the reason I don’t really leave the house unless I have to. We’re both stuck at home, but the situations look a lot different, and in my case people almost never see the result.
In America, I’m sick and tired of seeing them. They’re minivans for insecure dads. They’re props for office workers who want to LARP as construction workers
Every time I see them, all I can think is that they hate kids (huge blind spots) and love to complain about gas/petrol prices. They also don’t fit in our huge parking spaces. Sure, they have their uses, but I really doubt that the shiny, pristine truck is being used to haul/tow anything
The real construction workers/laborers are usually seen driving normal sedans/cars, minivans, or actual vans. Fuck pickup trucks, they’re awful
I disagree with that. A minivan has a clear and specific function it does rather well (moving a lot of people comfortably, and having a lot of space). These things don’t, really. The cab takes up so much space the bed is close to vestigial, and the only thing it’s really good for is towing.
You can carry more with the minivan, compared to the pickup (just put the wood inside the minivan) and some of them even have all-wheel drive. You won’t be fording streams and climbing mountains with it, as fun as that might look, so that’s probably fine too.
Looks like it does do the thing Adobe claimed it wouldn't after all.
Still poor form from Nine for using it in the first place, and for not catching it in the editorial process. But seems this is just another reminder this week of the biases of generative models.
Does it though? Adobe simply claimed it would require human intervention and approval. Which is true and easily provable. You can’t replace someone’s clothing without selecting a part of the image you want to replace.
Someone had to go and do that. Someone hit generate on an AI prompt. Someone saw the result of said AI prompt (which gives you 3 possible alternatives each run) and said “yep, print it”.
This is not a tale of the biases of generative AI. There’s literally no reason for Nine to have even invoked any such thing in the first place.
I can understand the need for some secrecy, since we still have to deal with other countries etc… But otherwise I agree, you should have to have a pretty good reason for censoring government reports entirely.
Economists aren’t really in denial, they are just doing their job of giving a false sense of scientific legitimacy to the plan the ruling class will enact anyways: discipline labor, cut social spending, bail out finance when they inevitably crash.
“With perfect information in a market, all consumers and producers have complete and instantaneous knowledge of all market prices, their own utility, and own cost functions.”
Pure Economic is a science, but popular implemented Economic is a pseudoscience at best. It has been corrupted by commercial interests.
Different types of science are derivative of other forms of science. Physics is just applied Mathematics, Chemistry is applied Physics, Biology is just just applied Chemistry, Psychology is just applied Biology and Mathematics is applied Psychology.
Pure Economics is an amalgam of Psychology and Mathematics.
Economic Rationalism is a oxymoron because Economic relies on irrational psychology and is subject to change based on observations.
Exactly. There is science-based economics and there's also pseudoscience economics. They exist next to each other. It's a similar situation as in medicine.
Physics will approximate a cow as a sphere, which you can observe it is not.
In science theory you have to make assumptions and approximations to simplify and get at the underlying mehanics. THEN you can complicate everything with the reality of it all.
Who’s going to fund the new economics building at the University, the working class or some billionaire? Better make sure you don’t have any Marxists on staff.
I'd rather my taxes go to better universities instead of the war machine. But that would require the government in this country to do a 180 from where they've had their priorities for the last 70+ years.
Well yeah, universities have been starved of government funding for decades, so they raised tuitions, and have been turning to philanthropy to build new infrastructure. And you can bet that the funding for that new building came with more strings attached than just naming it after John Q Richcunt.
Ah yes. Let’s blame men for men’s problems. That should fix everything.
This shit is the major contributor to the problem. A woman expresses and embraces femininity? “You go girl!”. A man expresses and embraces masculinity? “You are broken and you are the problem of our society, and everything bad that happens to you is also your fault”.
And don’t give me this “Toxic masculinity is totally not just masculinity”. Almost every masculine trait has been called “toxic masculinity”. You might have your specific definition for what it means, but so does everyone else and together you all cover pretty much every facet of masculinity.
Ah yes, let’s use a gendered term to refer to behavior that’s not ok in either gender, because calling the general term for male attributes toxic will make young men feel welcome. Yes, I’m aware what “toxic masculinity” refers to.
Not sure what you’re trying to say. That the word hysteria exists is bad… because it assigned a certain behavior/emotion to women? And because of that assigning a certain behavior/emotion to men is something we should welcome?
Ah yes, jump to ad hominem immediately when you don’t have anything productive to say. Hysteria, can you do something constructing and give me a meaning that contradicts wikipedia?
I don’t see how what I wrote contradicts the first paragraph, I paraphrased the first sentence. Anyway, so your point really is “a word exists that shows women had it bad, so it’s ok if I use a word now that treats boys and young men badly”
No, people get bent out of shape because it’s a gendered, sexist term. End of story. Just like man-splaining. You can discuss male specific toxicity and men being condescending without using terms that very clearly are divisive and prejudicial.
If you use the terms while pretending to be progressive or for equality then you’re a liar and a hypocrite. Hope that helps.
to be fair, the article specifically references “toxic males” and is focused on the challenges for young men in particular. What seems obviously lacking in the story is any reference to the diminished economic potential that all young people face. 30 years ago education and housing were somewhat reasonably priced and and generally available to all. Economic stress is a huge factor and immediate source of stress and anxiety that is completely ignored in the article. How is one supposed to feel ‘cocky’ while struggling to keep their head above water financially?
If you know what it refers to then why complain? Why pretend this is some big attack on masculinity as a whole when it’s obviously not? Toxic is an adjective, it is used to separate the bad stereotypical attributes of masculinity from the good. No one is suggesting these behaviours can only exist in men and I don’t know why you’re so offended by the use of gendered words when we are specifically talking about problems associated with one gender. Enough with the manufactured outrage, engage in good faith for once.
Rather than make snarky, half-arsed replies why not take the time to articulate why you think “toxic masculinity” is such a problematic term? Why not engage in good faith with other people instead of instantly trying to turn this into yet another polarised yawnfest argument?
Look I get the knee jerk on hearing male. "Oh we're talking about masculinity, that's an attack on me." But the topic at hand is masculinity.
Why are so many boys and men feeling alone and in the cold?
Yes, toxic behaviors exists in both mainstream genders. Shallow ass women who play on male insecurities is a thing. BUT that's not the topic here. Like, you shoving the whole "but the other side" thing really comes like someone walking into a hospital being outraged they aren't going to do a quick dental clean while you're there. You're in the wrong place. There is such a place to go to, but it ain't here.
I mean nothing but love for ya, but the knee jerk comes off a bit hard. Like we can have that discussion, but honest, I don't think this is the thread for it. It feels like it detracts from introspecting by way of blaming the other team. I'm not downvoting you, I get where you're coming from. But I just feel it's distraction.
And that is my opinion on the matter and nothing more.
You entirely miss the important point here. It’s not about “muh other side”. It’s about sending young boys the message “toxic masculinity” over and over while they grow up and are trying to explore what masculinity means to them. Sure, if you give them a seminar on what “toxic masculinity” is supposed to mean every time you use the term, some of them might understand what you’re trying to say, but that’s not what’s happening. And every time a young boy questions the term in confusion he will be attacked “but the other side” yadda is not valid like you just did to me.
It’s about sending young boys the message “toxic masculinity” over and over while they grow up and are trying to explore what masculinity means to them
Is that what you think the point of the discussion here is? What you're saying is valid but that's not this setting. I think that's the aspect that might be getting lost with what I'm saying. I'm not discounting what your saying, what I'm indicating is that "your argument, completely valid in general. But are we not speaking specifically of this thread?"
It's one of those things of, do you want to speak in general or in specific terms? In general yeah, we cannot just toss the term toxic masculinity all over the place with zero context. That's just going to confuse people. BUT…
Men need feminism too. Patriarchy and toxic masculinity harm both men and women in different ways
The starting of this thread is examining a specific topic among the many and it feels like you want to interject a side topic for fear that someone here might get confused about the specifics of "toxic masculinity" and what the background of that is. We're adults here and I think it's safe to look at what the original comment was getting at without diving head first into what (to me and that may be different for you so I acknowledge that) feels like splitting hairs.
And every time a young boy questions the term in confusion he will be attacked “but the other side” yadda is not valid like you just did to me
Well. Are you a young boy? Are you confused about the term? And that's the crux of what I am putting forward. And it isn't in honesty an attack on you or at least wasn't meant to be. We can talk "in general" about a hypothetical young boy, or we can be "specific" and address what you are and are not confused by. But we ought to avoid strafing between the two loosely because that's going to be distracting in best light.
So I hope you understand when you have:
And every time a young boy questions the term in confusion he will be attacked “but the other side” yadda
and:
is not valid like you just did to me
Is taking the context of that first statement and attempting to apply it to the context of the second statement where the context of these two things are different altogether. "But the other side" yadda is dismissive in the first context and pointing out distraction in the second. We can use similar sounding statements in varied context to convey different ideas. Just like the statement "we need to go deeper" can have various meaning between the background of being on an oil derrick and being a gynecologist. Context really matters.
You just wrote a wall of text to justify when and why it’s ok for you to use language you apparently agree can be imprecise, hurtful and discriminatory. How about, you know, just find a better word?
Why are so many boys and men feeling alone and in the cold?
TOXIC MASCULINITY TOXIC MASCULINITY TOXIC MASCULINITY TOXIC MASCULINITY TOXIC MASCULINITY plastered all over the internet and toxic people like you defending why they should use toxic language that harms boys and young men. If you want to behave like a sociopath fuck off.
Well let's look at what you've brought to the table. Dismissiveness of folks who want to keep on topic and balme games for when your feeling get hurt by pointing out you're hijacking the thread.
So yeah, you're absoultely wanting to fix things here. You've done a banged up job thus far. You've acted like a child this conversation to everyone. You want an adult conversation but fuck you've acting in no matter of sorts. So, cool I think the convseration here is done. I've got better things to do than to speak with someone acting like a six year old who cannot even stay on topic.
Like how did you expect to debate things when you just wanted to keep changing the topic? Do you not know that? Everyone knows that's just a tactic people wanting to NOT HAVE a conversation do, to prevent the conversation. And then get upset and emotional when they get called out on it. That's what small children do. I was nice, I was giving you benefit of the doubt, and you just were like fuck it. So I'm calling it like I see it, you're acting immature and outrage that everyone is treating you as such. How SHOULD we treat you when you will not treat anyone else here in like manner? Hmmm?
So yeah, this talk is over. You have you and perhaps that'll be enough for you to figure out how to actually talk to people like an adult.
I've seen this from men recently here. They are attacking words like "feminism" and "toxic masculinity" with crap like this. It's because they know they have no real arguments against them that they go for ad hominem attacks. They hate the word "feminism" because they'd rather have equality for "all" and imply feminism is equality for women only. Now this dude is attacking "toxic masculinity" because "women can be toxic, too" apparently. As if it wasn't coined because the predominance was found in men and was trying to call attention to issues men face. It's just a new tact in misogyny.
You’re right, it is a common tactic from the right to just immediately present any given social issue as an “attack on X”. But I also think instantly lumping people into that group isn’t always helpful either, which is why I asked for that person to chill with the hysteria and actually elaborate on their point. Unfortunately they are clearly intent on divisiveness and meaningless point scoring, so at that point you can hardly blame us for assuming the worst of their intentions.
You know the thing that bugs me the most about social patriarchy is the same thing that really gets me about anti-apologetics. There is the notion that there needs to be this unilateral action of sorts and straying from it shows weakness of sorts. It's not uncommon to hear conservative and traditionalist indicate that admitting wrong is a sign of weakness. And the reality is that we learn best from our own mistakes. Trail and error is an incredible teaching tool.
Patriarchy goes against what we actually know about how human beings learn things. It goes against the nothing of taking multiple inputs to come to a conclusion. It goes against the process of being well informed. It's these absolutes within this kind of system that give rise to the various toxic behaviors. I think if men actually sit there and actually listen to women and allow women to participate in decisive action, men will learn infinitely way more.
Men need feminism too
Exactly. Good objective thinking relies on taking all input and being able to share executive action. Humans aren't stronger than a bear, we're not faster than a cheetah, and hell we don't live nearly as long as most trees. The quality that humans have that places them above all else, is thinking and reasoning. And we do better at that quality by broadening our horizons not limiting them. The whole wild arguments of "well male lobsters assert dominance…". Lobsters or whatever animal a particular someone who I won't name tries to parallel us with, they don't reason and think in any remote sense the same way as humans. It's silly to try and take some biological aspect of our species or other species and draw a conclusion about how we should use the thing that makes humans, human.
covid, expensive housing, war, climate change, death, destruction, doom
Honestly, I doubt any of these apart from expensive housing is playing a significant role. I haven’t seen any reliable data on it, but I suspect a vanishingly small number of people genuinely choose not to have kids “because I don’t want to bring kids into this terrible world”. The cost of living thing though? That’s something that affects the parents and their ability to feel like they even can raise a child right now.
I’m literally one of those people who you say is vanishingly small.
It’s not even a “the world is bad and I don’t want to subject my child to that” kind of decision. It’s more like a series of thoughts over the years: “is this the right time to have a kid?” and it’s never a good time.
A common misconception is that “the disabled are just happy to work, they don’t care about the money”. That’s bullshit. It’s just ableists taking advantage of the disabled.
It depends, my father is disabled and just wanted to feel useful. In the end he was unable to be productive enough for it to be worth the extra time from the colleagues supporting him.
I’d be happy for the government to subsidize the salaries to match an actual minimum wage, but it is unrealistic to expect disabled people to match the efficiency of abled people and compete with them for jobs of an equal salary. They might not be able to find employment very easily then, which really hurts those who wish to participate in society.
At this point, everyone should invest a fraction of that into automating youtube downloads. No ads, no buffering, and $200 will get you eniugh hard drive space for years.
The biggest challenges were costs and financial insecurity, with elite athletes spending more each year on travel and accommodation for competitions than they did on food.
Athletes living below the poverty line have to pay for their travel and accommodation, while our politicians earning up to $600,000 a year get everything for free. Then they piggyback off the success of these athletes and use them to boost their own public image, whilst also failing to provide adequate funding to support the future success of these athletes and the generations to follow. Good shit.
A lot of people are probably going to jump on the bandwagon and say that it’s too much and that they’re out of touch - just remember that the CEOs of big companies get millions of dollars per year for significantly less work and managing less stress. While we may not agree that these particular politicians particularly deserve this pay - I don’t think it is unreasonable
I’m pretty sure the PM is getting about half the amount the VC at my university gets for a more important more stressful job, there’s just the cynicism of people voting to increase their own income (which I’m sure my VC does too). I always feel like politician pay should be based on the median income (like, starting at 80% going up to 250%) adjusted yearly or something. Not much reasoning, just idle thought on that though.
That’s a really good way to look at it, should certainly incentivise them to do better for Australians, but they might just go corrupt or take donations
Well the point of adjusting rates is so people’s salary aggressively goes backwards and realistically the people at the top should sacrifice the most.
CEOs should probably just be banished though, legality has nothing to do with permissibility. Anyone that keeps those ludicrous salaries becomes a monster.
It is unreasonable for anyone to be earning that amount of money and the fact that others earn more should not be used as a justification. Particularly considering how many additional benefits politicians receive alongside their exorbitant salaries.
The number itself isn’t unreasonable. Its the disparity and ‘quality of life’ differences that yeilds, that i think are the key issues. Such as personal agency in life choices.
The worst parts of poverty are often about the choice constraints imposed.
Personally I do want politicians to be earning enough that it stops being super easy to bribe them. If that means giving them a few million a year that's fine, because it's pocket change compared to the cost savings in terms of corruption.
The other side of this is that higher wages increasingly attract people fixated solely on personal wealth accumulation, who themselves are hardly immune to bribery. Are these the personalities we need in positions of power?
In first world countries, wages do not influence susceptibility to bribery.
In high-income countries, petty corruption is less common because wages are above subsistence level. Corruption in these countries, if present, involves more secret deals, brings about larger payoffs, and is more difficult to detect. Government wages will arguably be less effective to combat the latter form of corruption. https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/higher-government-wages-may-reduce-corruption
And noting this, if %4 is all it takes to keep you out of the grasp of cronyism and corruption - take it.
But we need national legislated pay rise too because you bet your arse I’ll get 1-2% at best each year for a net -20% in relation to inflation over the last 5-10y.
Your not going to get rid of cronyism and corruption by the carrot alone though. I see that as a red herring to ease the passage of pay rises like these.
If you give a greedy person $100 in the hope they won’t take a $200 bribe, they’ll have $300.
Usually, they’ll then try and manipulate people into giving them even more. “Well of course I took the $200. You guys only offered me $100. What did you expect?”.
So you buckle and offer them $300 to not take the $200 dollars. How much does the greedy person end up with? $500 of course.
What comes next? Manipulating the new lowest bidder of course! “Well of course I took the $300. You guys only offered me $200. What did you expect?”.
If they can take it all, they’ll take it all. If they can squeeze you for more, they’ll squeeze you for more.
There is never a point they will say “no, I already have enough”. The closest they ever come is concluding “If I take the $100 now, I won’t be able to take the $200 later”.
Thats why this stuff needs to be properly regulated and fiercely enforced.
Big W, take your books off the shelves if you feel that’s the right thing to do, however, you have negotiated with terrorists. These fuckers now know that by abusing staff at Big W stores, they can get what they want. Well done!
I didn’t realise these kind of culture war astroturfing regressive religious groups were this active in Australia. I hope there is something we can do at a societal level to prevent this escalating.
Antivaxxers
Sovereign Citizens
White supremacists
Anti Trans “protesters” (making threats to libraries)
Religious “mothers” groups banning books
I’m happy for people to have their beliefs but these things all feel like they are being done cynically by dark forces that want to change the fabric of our society - Or maybe I am off with the fairies, I don’t know sometimes.
Am I alone in thinking that? What can we do about it?
these things all feel like they are being done cynically by dark forces that want to change the fabric of our society
At least some of it is from Kremlin and CCP shills and bots. They can’t compete with “the West” militarily, but they can get on social media and divide people.
I don’t fall into any of those groups but I find the book absolutely disgusting and not suitable for children. It’s basically telling young girls “oh it’s up to you… it’s fine to send nude selfies but only if you want to and maybe crop you head out of the shot.” No no no no no. We need to be empowering girls to respect themselves enough to never send nude photos under any circumstances. And that’s only one of my issues with this trashy book.
The alt-right social media propaganda effort from the US over the past decade has been a scattershot approach and had a large effect on a lot of the English speaking world.
Plus Rupert Murdoch, Boris Johnson, other right-wing grifters big and small using it to their advantage.
There aren't many good options except dealing with the people and the money running the operations, I think.
I have a disability but I do think rideshare drivers should be allowed to decide if they want dogs in their privately-owned cars or not.
I find it strange that the person in the article specifically mentions 23 refusals from Uber drivers, but what about taxis? Taxis should not discriminate, unless the driver has a particular condition like allergies to dogs. If I had an assistance dog, I would be seeking taxis, not rideshare, because I understand most people wouldn’t want dogs in their own vehicle.
Do note I mentioned assistance dogs, which require certification.
Ride share has been so devastating to the taxi industry that a lot of those businesses folded. Taxi businesses generally have been much more regulated than rideshare (much like hotels are more regulated than airbnb), so it was difficult to compete when Uber and Lyft popped up.
So she might not HAVE access to a taxi due to the way ride share has taken over. A lot of places are “ride share or nothing” now.
That’s a good point, and really unfortunate. I found the rising popularity of rideshare to be beneficial, as it meant more availabilities for rides and better pricing. However to get to that point, the barriers to entry for drivers had to be lower; the main appeal of being a rideshare driver is that you get more freedom than driving a taxi.
My concern is that by enforcing rules on rideshare drivers that they find too unfair, they are simply going to decide it’s not worth it, and leave the industry altogether. Then she will still find it difficult to get a ride, seeing as there are none.
It really is a tricky situation and my simple uneducated answer is “more taxis”.
In my experience calling a taxi leaves you on the phone on hold for 45mins, or the driver cancels on the way if they find someone else first (requiring you to rebook), or they don't frequently show up in the area you need one, or they straight up drive past you to deny you to your face. Or they illegally require destination before allowing you in.
It might just be that it's easier to count denials in the account history of the Uber app.
That’s appalling that that sort of behaviour is still prevalent with taxis. I think rideshare services also share the same problem though? There have been many anecdotes onine by Australians quoting their awful experiences with rideshare drivers and even some mentioning they found taxis to be the better option nowadays.
Regradless, I firmly believe the taxi industry should be held up to a higher standard.
Taxis were terrible before ride sharing came along and ride sharing has made them better - the Taxis have made significant efforts to improve now that they don’t have a monopoly. But they haven’t improved enough - Taxis are definitely worse than Uber in my city.
I think rideshare services have a bad reputation because they made some mistakes when they were starting out, and even now when they start in a new city and every single driver has zero experience so there will still be mistakes… but in general, now that ridesharing is well established, they are the best available service (at least in my city anyway - which is in Australia).
Yes, there’s still the occasional awful experience. “The best available” doesn’t mean “good enough”.
I avoid taxis more than uber because I tend to get poorer treatment from taxis for some reason. Other people I know find it's the other way around. The difference isn't hugely significant, probably.
Taxis and rideshares, at least here, are both private businesses with drivers governed by the company's rules. I'd like to see them both held to the same standard, and I would like the companies themselves to be not-so-gently encouraged to improve their systems to minimise these situations. They can now, they just choose not to prioritise it because there are no associated risks with doing so.
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