opendna

"Any travel guides welcome."

You might try reading up on the Heckscher–Ohlin model and Stolper-Samuelson theorem. There are a great number of criticisms of each but, to over-simplify, the counter-intuitive take-away is that returns will be highest for the most abundant factor of production. i.e. the larger the pool of unskilled labor, the more laborers will be paid. Scarcity actually causes the value of a factor of production to fall. (Yes, I know that's the opposite of everything you know about economics.)

For a more qualitative approach, try "The Coming Post-Industrial Society" by Daniel Bell (1973), available at a library near you [http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/473951691]. For a more culture theory approach, try Neil Postman's "Technopoly" (1992) http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/24694343]. If you're into old-school tech determinism and political economy, both Lewis Mumford's "Technics and Civilization" (1934)[http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/560667] and Harold Innis' "Communication and Empire" (1972) [http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/281110] are more intelligible than Marshall McLuhan's work.

I'm glad you caught that line because I thought it was confusing

Who are we supposed to understand is under-educated? The employers? Or was this a vain attempt to pull a fast one and shift blame to public schools for...? What? Pumping out kids with the mathematical literacy to understand that $14 is greater than $10 therefore McDonalds pays better than manufacturing?

Classic: according to the article, the definition of a qualified new hire is one with the qualifications to get accepted into university engineering programs.

Ya'll have probably read some of Prof Peter Cappelli's editorials (he's been making the rounds to promote his book "Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs"). One of the things he's pointed out is that HR use of resume databases encourages people with poor search habits to believe there is no choice. Basically, it's a failure consider the Bayesian math of nested filters.

Consider a company, in a city of a million people (don't want to pay for relocation), which wants someone with a bachelor's degree and five years of experience. The US unemployment rate for people with bachelor's degrees or higher is ~3.8% and about ~7% of the population is between 25-29 years old. Rough and tumble numbers put the pool of candidates around 2500-2700 before including any subject-specific knowledge. Ask for a specific discipline, like "Computers, mathematics, and statistics" for which 4.2% of bachelor degrees were awarded, and you can cut your your pool of candidates down to about 100 (1/10,000). If you also filter to require mastery of PHP, javascript, and Marqui, 10 years experience with Server 2008 and fluency in a Romance language...

tl;dr: the absence of time travelers in the applicant pool is not evidence of a skills shortage.

Many cities regulate taxis as public utilities, in a similar fashion and logic to the regulation of telephone, power, water and public transit companies. We don't see much discussion of it anymore, but if you look to the early-20th century, you'll find many examples of granting monopoly licenses in exchange for universal service and non-discrimination.

To the extent that you think this is unconstitutional, unprecedented or inherently destructive, I encourage you to look at US economic history before 1970. AT&T's monopoly and rate regulation included transfer pricing which allowed them to subsidize rural services and connect the last mile to (almost) every home and business across North America. (Most of Europe accomplished the same with state-owned telephone companies.) The AT&T monopoly came with the mandate to provide services even where they were unprofitable (and sometimes for free), with the guarantee of profits elsewhere. That regime ultimately extended Bell Labs' $0 transistor licensing, which made the semiconductor industry possible. Similar requirements were made of power utilities, and that's also the logic behind taxi regulations.

Vancouver's taxi laws require at least 6-days/week service, for a minimum of 10hours/24hours. Taxis are (basically) required to accept all fares and serve all areas at all hours, without discrimination. In return for providing universal service (and to keep monitoring practical), the licensed providers were guaranteed a monopoly (and kept small in number). Of course, as soon as you grant a monopoly, you set the stage for price gouging, which is (as with AT&T) where the government-fixed rates come from.

In short: the prices aren't fixed arbitrarily, technocrats use them to advance designated public policy objectives.

Vancouver taxi drivers have as little power to change BC's vehicle hire laws as Walmart greeters have to change the company's sourcing policies.

The taxi drivers are victims of the taxi license cartels: the only power they have is to stop driving and find another livelihood. If you asked the drivers (or did the most cursory google search) you'd find out that they want reform too. #1 on their list: issue more taxi licenses & smash the cartels.

So, no, if "enough taxi drivers get shot" and "change their tone", it still will NOT change the legal or regulatory environment for Uber.

Translink is completely and totally irrelevant to this story. You'd as accurately blame the New York Yankees for Uber's problems in Vancouver.

For those still following, it turns out that Uber has nothing to appeal because they never submitted an application to the PTB. The PTB did not reject a request by Uber.

It now appears that the PTB barely knew that Uber existed until they started getting hate-mail from angry users.

(The same is true, incidentally of the City of Vancouver. Uber doesn't have the business licenses required to sell bicycle courier services in Vancouver, never mind limousine services.)

The limo drivers and companies who worked with Uber, however, are being hit with fines and other enforcement actions.