<story><title>To Protect Legitimate Interests, Seattle Should Cap All Forms of Innovation</title><url>http://starkravingvc.com/2014/03/18/to-protect-legitimate-interests-seattle-should-cap-all-forms-of-innovation-immediately/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>timr</author><text>I personally think the Seattle uberlyft rules are stupid, but it&amp;#x27;s worth remembering something that gets lost in the noise of &amp;quot;futurism&amp;quot; that clonks around the silicon valley echo chamber: it&amp;#x27;s not &lt;i&gt;inherently wrong&lt;/i&gt; to have laws that protect established businesses.  I don&amp;#x27;t like cab companies, but I do want to know that my hired driver is insured.  I&amp;#x27;m indifferent to hotels, but I don&amp;#x27;t want my neighbor running an SRO out of his apartment.  I don&amp;#x27;t enjoy high medical bills, but I like the ability to know that my prescription medications aren&amp;#x27;t radium-based elixirs.  And so on.&lt;p&gt;To the extent that stability of certain kinds of businesses is essential to the stability of our society, it&amp;#x27;s actually a very good thing that governments are somewhat conservative about protecting the establishment.  Moreover, there&amp;#x27;s no law of the universe that says that &amp;quot;disruption&amp;quot; is a good thing, and there &lt;i&gt;certainly&lt;/i&gt; isn&amp;#x27;t any clean way to weigh the interests of one big established industry with those of a large, successful, wealthy competitor industry.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I have a hard time getting worked up over the regulatory disputes of corporations -- we have bigger problems, not the least of which is the question of why those big, successful companies get so much influence over the laws in the first place.</text></comment>
<story><title>To Protect Legitimate Interests, Seattle Should Cap All Forms of Innovation</title><url>http://starkravingvc.com/2014/03/18/to-protect-legitimate-interests-seattle-should-cap-all-forms-of-innovation-immediately/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>yajoe</author><text>For those who don&amp;#x27;t know, Greg is one of the common faces of the Seattle VC scene.  He is a staple at nearly every startup event -- Startup Weekend, Geekwire events, TechStars, VC panels, etc.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t have a dog in the fight, but I did spend some time reading the actual bill since these blog articles felt like more political campaigns than informative pieces.  The last time this came up I posted &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7303232&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=7303232&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Seattle city council passed a law that made so-called &amp;quot;ride sharing&amp;quot; services legal after intentionally withholding prosecution for over a year.  The law isn&amp;#x27;t perfect, but it does feel like it strives to balance protecting existing investments with new services.  The most salient changes about the bill:&lt;p&gt;1. Seattle defines uberX, Lyft, etc as Transportation Network Companies (TNC) and declares all drivers as &amp;quot;for-hire&amp;quot; drivers, which is a legal distinction that means Seattle can regulate them.&lt;p&gt;2. TNCs are taxed at $50k for first year. Second year is the greater of $50k or .35% of gross revenue.&lt;p&gt;3. No more than 150 drivers may be associated with each TNC at a time, and each driver can work only 12 hours per 24 hour period.  Previously the law would have limited 300 drivers per TNC per quarter regardless of who was active, and this was &amp;quot;the cap.&amp;quot;  For comparison, there are 1100 taxicabs in the city.&lt;p&gt;4. Drivers can&amp;#x27;t double dip: They can&amp;#x27;t both drive for-hire cars and also do uberX on the side. They also can&amp;#x27;t work for both uberX and Lyft.&lt;p&gt;5. Rates may either be flat-rate between preset zones OR subject to RCW Chapter 19.94. RCW Chapter 19.94 defines appropriate measurement devices that may be used with commerce, which I think precludes most cell phones... uberX would need to install meters it seems and precludes surge pricing.&lt;p&gt;6. The insurance requirements are stricter than what uberX or Lyft provide today and are mostly in line with existing taxicabs.&lt;p&gt;7. There was a 30% increase in the cap on cabs at the same time.&lt;p&gt;8. TNCs have to report their activities to the city, which will be available to the public for inspection.</text></comment>