February 22, 2015

Random Scandal Sheet for Sunday 2/22/15

What southern Florida is talking about this week:

How wonderful Uber is* ...

*Unfortunately, it seems that much of the local opinion praising Uber comes at the cost of the local Haitian cab community.  Yellow Cab, which handles half of the county's cab traffic, has a workforce that is composed of 82-85% Haitians.  (Another statistic to help put this in perspective ... nearly half of all Haitian immigrants in the country live in this state.)

And, as per the article linked to this post, about 10% of all the comments collected by a local politician investigating the phenomenon had undertones about how Uber is better because Uber drivers speak English and present a more polished presence (code phrasing for "aren't Haitian", if you haven't deciphered them).

I did a little digging on the interwebs, and it turns out that Uber is under attack all across the country (and not just locally) for many of the same reasons -- that the whole business model relies on the class structure as it currently exists in society -- "wealthy" folks with smart phones arrange for rides from others like them ... leaving the poor people to take the poor way home.

Of course, from a personal perspective, I'm rarely in a taxi and I've never Uberd anywhere ... so I'm only observing the scandal from a distance without too strong an opinion ...

SOME COMMENTS ARE LESS THAN SUBTLE:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fl-uber-taxi-haitian-20150207-story.html

ANTI-UBER:
https://umarlee.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/uber-and-airbnb-elitist-possibly-racist-and-designed-to-circumvent-the-law/

PRO-UBER:
http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-has-changed-my-life-and-as-god-is-my-witness-i-will-never-take-a-taxi-again-where-available-2014-1

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