I wonder how Megan McArdle feels now that she knows Uber will turn her data over to the state if it is requested. Uber released a transparency report and says it released data on 12 million riders to law enforcement and regulators. They gave data about "trips, trip requests, pickup and dropoff areas, fares, vehicles, and drivers." Of course McArdle has nothing to worry about but she's more than a little paranoid about the government's tentacles wrapping themselves around her and smothering her with its road repairs, airplane inspections, and clean water.
Since nobody can do anything ever, there's nothing McArdle can do about it. If Uber were to change its policies, drivers would lose their jobs and she doesn't want that. And she has nothing to worry about because she doesn't do anything wrong. She's not using stolen credit cards or committing fraud and nobody will subpoena her information, one presumes. She's not one of those libertarian hipsters that buy herbs that are not yet legal in DC. Nobody cares how many times she visits bars or where those bars are.
Since corporations are people, we would never want to stifle their free speech by forbidding them from releasing data.
A little off topic,but Obamacare is back in a death spiral. First sentence of McArdls'spost today.
ReplyDeleteWell, the hammer has fallen: The largest health insurer in the U.S. has started pulling out of select Obamacare exchanges
Emily
It looks like we need National Health.
ReplyDelete"That local element is important. Areas with deep markets and lots of insurers seem to be able to deliver a product at a reasonable premium -- maybe without all the choice of doctors and hospitals patients would like, maybe with high deductibles, but with premiums that you can fit into a family budget, especially when subsidies are included. On the other hand, some states -- particularly rural ones, since there’s not much scope to offer “narrow networks” in communities served by a single hospital -- are seeing a worrying combination of premium increases and insurer exits."
And it looks like McArdle is tired of being called lazy or stupid because she only presents one side of the picture.
"Supporters of the law saw a company that had come late to the exchanges; offered a high-cost, high-value product; and consequently experienced losses as the sickest people rushed to buy their policies. The law’s detractors saw the canary in the coal mine, a view that gained some credence as other companies made similar statements."
...
"Moreover, there was reason to take UnitedHealth’s grim forecast with a pinch of salt. Every time a highly regulated firm makes a public statement, it’s likely to be part of a multidimensional game of political chess that the firm is playing with regulators. So you can’t quite take their more fearsome predictions at face value. As with so much about this law, we’d have to wait and see. When I was asked on a panel a couple months back to estimate the probability that UnitedHealth would pull out this year, I put it at about a third."
Going by the increased effort, McArdle realizes her Death Spiral proclamations aren't having any effect and are only considered intellectual or convincing by deeply inept conservative sites.
Hi Susan, you might enjoy this read lol
ReplyDeletehttp://thefederalist.com/2016/04/14/economic-inequality-complaints-are-just-a-cover-for-anti-rich-prejudice/
Naturally I thought of this blog.
Why, this has been written before: Eddie Willers on Dagny Taggart.
ReplyDeleteAnd it was all voluntary exchange when Drumpf held up the banks with a series of threatened bankruptcies, dontcha know.