As Qualified Immunity Takes Center Stage, More Delay from SCOTUS - <AUTHOR> https://www.unlawfulshield.com/2020/06/as-qualified-immunity-takes-center-stage-more-delay-from-scotus/ <comment><USER2> Just so we know what we're talking about, here is a description of the 13 Qualified Immunity cases that may get to the Supreme Court soon.

[https://www.cato.org/blog/may-15th-supreme-court-will- finall...](https://www.cato.org/blog/may-15th-supreme-court-will-finally- decide-whether-hear-cases-calling-abolition-qualified)

Sample:

 _Jessop v. City of Fresno._ In this case, the Ninth Circuit granted immunity to police officers who stole over $225,000 in cash and rare coins in the course of executing a search warrant. The court noted that while "the theft [of] personal property by police officers sworn to uphold the law" may be "morally wrong," the officers could not be sued for the theft because the Ninth Circuit had never issued a decision specifically involving the question of "whether the theft of property covered by the terms of a search warrant, and seized pursuant to that warrant, violates the Fourth Amendment."

<comment><USER3> If Congress is considering legislation to change QI then the Supreme Court has little reason to take up these cases. SCOTUS should stay silent when the legislative branch is at work to correct something that was a judicial creation or when it looks like Congress intends to legislate in an issue.

Edit: I will just reply to all of the comments downthread at once because they all seem to urge the same thing. SCOTUS has no incentive to act when the legislative branch is doing something that could easily overturn or not align with their decision, which would render their decision moot. A law that Congress passes overrules any and all SCOTUS precedent on the issue because Congress "legislates against the backdrop of the common law." Further, Congress has the ability to move much faster than SCOTUS: a bill could be passed on less than a month in Congress while it will take at least a year for SCOTUS to reach a decision.

<comment><USER4> You misunderstand the law completely in your comment and your edit. Congress (with good reason) doesn't get to shape the boundaries of constitutional law (for example the doctrine of qualified immunity we're discussing here).

That is specifically and only in the hands of the court, unless you want to amend the constitution.

<comment><USER5> _> That is specifically and only in the hands of the court, unless you want to amend the constitution._

The Constitution nowhere says that the Supreme Court has the sole ability or power to "shape the boundaries of constitutional law". It grants the Supreme Court "judicial power", but judicial power is not the only power related to the law.

<comment><USER4> Check out Marbury v. Madison.

<comment><USER5> I'm quite familiar with Marbury v. Madison; it does not give the Supreme Court the sole ability or power to "shape the boundaries of constitutional law" either. It simply defines a key part of what "judicial power" means.

<comment><USER4> And "judicial power" includes the sole power to shape the boundaries of con law.

Who do you think can determine the boundaries of con law?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Understand that many have been predicting that some amount of reform will come so Police Unions have been pushing legislatures for indemnification within contracts negotiated.

This in effect may still shadow some of the abusive officers but it also will mean pay outs will be from the very community they were abusing people with in.

Simply put, public employee unions within the United States have an exaggerated affect on politics at local, city, and state levels. This includes both police and teachers and in many cases fire. besides bankrupting communities with excessive pension and benefits plans; in fact these were some of the golden plans mentioned as being a limiting factor to what the ACA encompassed and the House only recently tucked a provision into law that passed which removed all consideration of these plans from future ACA fudning; they are leading to bankruptcy issues for some localities. On the teacher front a three year veteran is near immune to firing in NYC if not all of NY state.

It really comes down to this, the laws have to change. Both QI as well as the legality of these particular type of unions which do not serve the same purpose unions in corporations do. They are bleeding America dry and not just in money. Be very watchful for the House to attempt to bailout all these public sector employee pensions in the near future. [0][1][2][3][4][5]

[0] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2018/10/26/ill...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2018/10/26/illinois-100000-club-94000-six- figure-public-employees-and-retirees-cost-taxpayers-12b/#2b4fac0481a4)

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/business/dealbook/coronav...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/business/dealbook/coronavirus- public-pension.html)

[2] [https://www.chicagobusiness.com/html- page/848696](https://www.chicagobusiness.com/html-page/848696)

[3] [https://www.chicagobusiness.com/greg-hinz- politics/pritzker-...](https://www.chicagobusiness.com/greg-hinz- politics/pritzker-pension-team-looks-savings-finds-costly-threats-instead)

[4] [https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/commentary/public- he...](https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/commentary/public-health- crisis-no-time-private-pension-bailouts)

[5] [https://www.ai-cio.com/news/10-billion-illinois-pension- bail...](https://www.ai-cio.com/news/10-billion-illinois-pension-bailout- request-ignites-controversy/)

<comment><USER7> While I tend to agree with everything you said and would further say that there's a nefarious nexus between buying off public unions with pension agreements states can not afford to pay, a half-step in the right direction was outlined by Ilya Somin and Johnathan Adler recently [0]:

"State and local governments should consider banning police unionization, or at least curbing unions' powers by, for example, eliminating disciplinary issues from the list of matters that are subject to collective bargaining. Whatever the merits of public-sector unions in other contexts, they create too much of a conflict of of interest in the case of employees who often literally wield the power of life and death over civilians."

[0] [https://reason.com/2020/05/31/how-to-curb-police-abuses- and-...](https://reason.com/2020/05/31/how-to-curb-police-abuses-and-how-not- to/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Qualified immunity has become a get-out-of-jail-free card for law enforcement.

I believe it's the primary reason for the complete apathy law enforcement shows towards de-escalation and self-restraint in general.

Why bother behaving when the standard for prosecuting you is so high as to be laughable?

<comment><USER9> This is my feeling also, but in general I'm very frustrated at how this whole conversation is based on these "feelings" because the data is so poor. I think an important component is an independent oversight apparatus that (among many other things) is responsible for collecting standardized, high quality data that can be aggregated at a national level so we can conclusively answer questions like, "do police target certain races in their killings or is it an artifact of different crime distributions or etc?". It just seems insane to me that we keep going through this cycle over and over and spend so much time debating these questions, but we don't avail ourselves by the relatively inexpensive, straightforward step of collecting more/better data. Of course, not everyone will respect data over their own feelings/experiences, but (1) the data might agree with those feelings/experiences and (2) the rest of us can move toward a consensus at any rate.

<comment><USER10> This "feelings" complaint is a major dog whistle you know.

The fact is, the relationship between unprivileged communities is such that:

\- Crime rates to not reflect actual community grievances

\- Community members do not want to rely on police even if they would like to bring in some sort of neutral authority / arbitrator to a dispute.

\- The portion of would-be crime where the would-be victim is happy for the police presence is incredibly low.

\- The portion of actual crime where the actual victim is sad for the police absence is incredibly low.

So it doesn't even matter if the statistics show the police kill extra in proportion to the neighborhoods the patrol and that in turn is proportional to the crime rate, because you haven't Baysianed deep enough to find the cycle. As exemplified by the latter two points, there is no way to find any value for the police as they currently with a democratic basis, and as such they must be defunded and replaced with something else.

<comment><USER11> Your "facts" are actually feelings or conjectures, and are demonstrably untrue. Black communities in fact want police (and the criminal justice system) to address high crime rates.

This article collects a number of statistics: [https://slate.com/news-and- politics/2014/12/black-community-...](https://slate.com/news-and- politics/2014/12/black-community-is-concerned-with-black-on-black-crime- suggesting-otherwise-is-ignoring-the-facts.html)

> Finally, Atlantic Media's "State of the City" poll—published this past > summer—shows an "urban minority" class that's worried about crime, and > skeptical toward law enforcement, but eager for a greater police presence if > it means less crime. Just 22 percent of respondents say they feel "very > safe" walking in their neighborhoods after dark, and only 35 percent say > they have "a lot" of confidence in their local police. That said, 60 percent > say hiring more police would have a "major impact" on improving safety in > their neighborhoods.

In fact, even today, a slight majority of African Americans say that the criminal justice system in their area is "not harsh enough" on criminals: [https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/documents/899/download](https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/documents/899/download) (Table 2). At the height of the crime wave of the 1980s and 1990s, over 70% of black Americans felt we needed harsher punishment of criminals. Half of African Americans today say we are spending "too little" on law enforcement.

Hispanics are even more strongly in favor of policing. 53% of Hispanic people supported NYC's controversial (and unconstitutional) stop-and-frisk policy: [https://www.blackenterprise.com/nypd-stop-and-frisk-poll- rac...](https://www.blackenterprise.com/nypd-stop-and-frisk-poll-racism-nyc).

Notions of "defunding the police" are an idea dreamed up by people who don't actually live in these disadvantaged communities. Poll after poll shows that is not what disadvantaged communities actually want. They want the law to be enforced; they can't criminals brought to justice; and they want all that done with due process protections, just like police manage to do for white neighborhoods.

<comment><USER12> Wanting criminals to be brought to justice in theory doesn't match the reality of the entire community being criminalized and treated as such.

<comment><USER9> What does it even mean to "criminalize an entire community"? And why don't you think these respondents understand what they're asking for? Presumably they understand their own experience with police?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm curious - it's obvious what abuses of qualified immunity are driving this, but the law must have been originally put in place for a reason. Are there any examples where a police officer was shielded from prosecution for something that, if you or I did it would definitely be a crime, but that a reasonable person would say, "yes, this is a good application of qualified immunity"?

<comment><USER14> Lets say you want to build a deck. You put together the plans, take them to the planning commission, and they rightfully reject it for being structually unsound.

Qualified immunity is what prevents you from personally suing each member of the planning commission to pressure them in to reversing their decision. Think of it like the legal system throwing an exception, we aren't even going to consider this because your beef is with the city not an individual employee.

Police have qualified immunity because otherwise they would face personal lawsuits every time they wrote a rich guy a speeding ticket, or a convicted murderer has nothing better to do but get his law degree in prison.

In my opinion, qualified immunity is _not_ the problem. If an officer does something in their official capacity that is wrong, it is up to the department and the DA to deal with. Just like if the hypothetical planning commission did something illegal. Unfortunately police unions prevent that from being a viable option.

<comment><USER15> I still don't get it though. What would you be suing a commissioner over that would get them to reverse their decision? If you're suing them directly for their decision, then surely that just wouldn't be a valid lawsuit. If you're suing them for some unrelated valid issue, but using that as pressure for them to change their decision, then surely that's already illegal. Isn't it considered extortion or blackmail to compel someone to give you something of value by threatening to sue them or report them to law enforcement?

<comment><USER16> > If you're suing them directly for their decision, then surely that just > wouldn't be a valid lawsuit

The commenter is saying that the fact that this isn't a valid lawsuit is what is meant by qualified immunity, I believe.

<comment><USER15> Why shouldn't it also be invalid in an analogous non-government situation?

<comment><USER16> I believe it is? If a starbucks employee treats you poorly while on the job as a starbucks employee, then starbucks is liable because their employees are their agents. The difference is that the government, unlike starbucks, enjoys sovereign immunity -- they can't necessarily be sued and held liable. There's probably more to it. I'm not a lawyer.

<comment><USER15> That's certainly not the case. The government can be sued.

<comment><USER16> The government can be sued because Congress has consented to being sued, not because the government is suable by default.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_United_States#Federal_sovereign_immunity)

> In the United States, the federal government has sovereign immunity and may > not be sued unless it has waived its immunity or consented to suit.[7] The > United States as a sovereign is immune from suit unless it unequivocally > consents to being sued.[8] The United States Supreme Court in Price v. > United States observed: "It is an axiom of our jurisprudence. The government > is not liable to suit unless it consents thereto, and its liability in suit > cannot be extended beyond the plain language of the statute authorizing > it."[9]

The only reason the United States can legally appear as a defendant in a civil suit currently is because Congress has consented to being sued:

> The United States has waived sovereign immunity to a limited extent, mainly > through the Federal Tort Claims Act, which waives the immunity if a tortious > act of a federal employee causes damage, and the Tucker Act, which waives > the immunity over claims arising out of contracts to which the federal > government is a party. The Federal Tort Claims Act and the Tucker Act are > not the broad waivers of sovereign immunity they might appear to be, as > there are a number of statutory exceptions and judicially fashioned limiting > doctrines applicable to both. Title 28 U.S.C. § 1331 confers federal > question jurisdiction on district courts, but this statute has been held not > to be a blanket waiver of sovereign immunity on the part of the federal > government.

But in general, the government of the United states is immune from civil suits, and Congress can decide at any time -- even during an active case -- to decide to not want to be sued anymore.

The governments of the states -- being the ultimate sovereign authority of the United States of America -- are also generally immune from civil suit, except in limited circumstances. I believe most have however consented to being sued.

On this matter, the supreme court has said:

> we have understood the Eleventh Amendment to stand not so much for what it > says, but for the presupposition of our constitutional structure which it > confirms: that the States entered the federal system with their sovereignty > intact; that the judicial authority in Article III is limited by this > sovereignty, and that a State will therefore not be subject to suit in > federal court unless it has consented to suit, either expressly or in the > "plan of the convention." States may consent to suit, and therefore waive > their Eleventh Amendment immunity by removing a case from state court to > federal court.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If someone could explain this to me, please do. The wiki [1] on qualified immunity talks about civil action. So US officials (cops among those) are mostly shielded from civil action for their misdeeds and to even a greater degree than the former test that asked whether they legitimately believed they were following the law And acted in good faith. (Which is already a stretch since I don't quite follow how ones understanding of the laws enters the question of having followed it.) So no civil action then.

But isn't the larger differentiator from most other first world countries the way officials are treated regarding the criminal code? I am expecting most countries to have a quite independent prosecuting office that prosecutes both officials and laymen, hopefully to the same degree? (The exception I expect is the military?)

In my locality one of the things I like 'best' is an article in our criminal law that lets a victim ask a judge to reconsider the decision of the prosecution not to press charges. It's one of the final balances in our criminal law.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity)

<comment><AUTHOR> Qualified immunity is especially hurtful because it is the only recourse left when prosecutors decline to prosecute cases against police, the norm even in Floyd's case (only one out of four killers has been charged). Yes, it would be ideal of prosecutors prosecuted police properly or if we had an independent investigation/prosecutor for such cases but this is never the case, even when officials pretend it is. It's always cops investigating other cops and the same prosecutors that normally work closely with police and have clear conflicts of interest doing the prosecution. Activists want to get rid of qualified immunity because trying to reform the actual criminal investigation and prosecution is impossible. Also, the doctrine changes the actual law to make it the exact opposite of what was intended, effectively rewriting the law into its opposite. The focus on qualified immunity assumes there will be a miscarriage of criminal justice. That's almost always the case.

<comment><USER18> Which happens in part because the office of attorney general is an elected position. Police are very powerful politically. And for whatever reason, you are seen as "soft on crime" if you attempt to prosecute police for carrying out crimes.

<comment><USER19> As an example, the VA GOP yesterday called for Lee Carter, a member of the VA house of delegates, to resign for even _suggesting_ cutting police budgets.

[https://twitter.com/VA_GOP/status/1267164943994032128](https://twitter.com/VA_GOP/status/1267164943994032128)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I applaud this.

EDIT: I applaud Justin Amash's proposal to eliminate qualified immunity[1] (Thanks, dang).

One of the scary things about the George Floyd incident is that resisting arrest might have been the better option. That has some pretty dark implications about rule of law.

I understand the impulse of those on the right to give police officers the benefit of the doubt when it comes to what can very often be a dangerous calling, but I think that everyone (including police officers) will be safer if the police can be legally held accountable to a higher standard.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23379576](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23379576)

<comment><USER21> I wonder what a bystander can do when they see a police officer doing something like holding a knee on a person's neck for 8 minutes? If you do nothing, Mr. Floyd dies. If you get involved, Mr. Floyd may live but you may be the next person under the knee.

Could a good Samaritan defense for people who interfere with the police in good faith work?

<comment><USER22> Don't take legal advice from Hacker News, obviously :-)

In Texas[0]:

      (c)  The use of force to resist an arrest or search is justified:
      (1)  if, before the actor offers any resistance, the
      peace officer (or person acting at his direction) uses
      or attempts to use greater force than necessary to make
      the arrest or search;  and
      (2)  when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes
      the force is immediately necessary to protect himself
      against the peace officer's (or other person's) use or
      attempted use of greater force than necessary.

Elsewhere:

      Sec. 9.33.  DEFENSE OF THIRD PERSON.  A person is
      justified in using force or deadly force against
      another to protect a third person if:
      (1)  under the circumstances as the actor reasonably
      believes them to be, the actor would be justified under
      Section 9.31 or 9.32 in using force or deadly force to
      protect himself against the unlawful force or unlawful
      deadly force he reasonably believes to be threatening the
      third person he seeks to protect;  and
      (2)  the actor reasonably believes that his intervention
      is immediately necessary to protect the third person.

Assuming you survive the encounter, it is possible you could prevail on your day in court.

[0] [https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PE/htm/PE.9.htm#C](https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PE/htm/PE.9.htm#C)

<comment><USER23> I mean, sure, but the moment you attack a police officer--even if you intend to save someone's life--you're probably going to end up getting hurt even worse, if not simply shot (ESPECIALLY in Texas).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> An inside look into the operation of the Supreme Court is Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong's "The Brethren" [1], which covers the years 1969-1975.

There's a surprising amount of persuasion, negotiation, and coalition-building in order to find the votes to grant cert or hold a majority. It's interesting to see how the interpersonal dynamics among the Justices influence decisions.

An example of this is looking for unanimous decisions to send a strong message, whether it is for school desegregation:

> _Since 1954, the Court had always been unanimous in school cases, its strong > commands to desegregate joined by every member. For fifteen years, the > Justices had agreed that it was essential to let the South know that not a > single Justice believed in anything less than full desegregation._

or to reject Nixon's executive privilege claims in Watergate [2]:

> _The Nixon challenge had to be met in the strongest way possible. An eight- > signature opinion would do it [...] The country would benefit from such a > show of strength now._

These decisions required significant reconciliation between the original ideas of the Justices. They don't operate in a vacuum of law study. The Muhammad Ali draft dodging case [3] also demonstrates this, where a 4-4 deadlock is turned into a unanimous 8-0 decision centered around a technical error which would not set precedent - the book describes Burger as considering that "it might be interpreted as a racist vote" if he dissented.

Like the link, I am also curious about why these delays have occurred, especially the most recent one. Wildly speculating, maybe the Court does not want to appear too politically activist in this moment; or maybe the members are trying to find consensus for their preferred outcome before granting cert at all. One other option, though I hope it's not this one:

> _[Stevens] said, it was "pointless" to grant cert only to have the majority > reaffirm its well-known view [regarding Liles v Oregon, an obscenity case]._

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brethren_(Woodward_and_Arm...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brethren_\(Woodward_and_Armstrong_book\))

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Nixon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Nixon)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_v._United_States#Opinion_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_v._United_States#Opinion_of_the_Court)

</comment><comment><USER25> This[1] article helped me get a good understanding of the actual tests that the courts are applying:

1\. The court considers whether police used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. If yes, the court moves to part two of the test. If no, qualified immunity is immediately granted.

2\. The court determines whether police should have known their actions violated the Constitution because court precedent clearly established their conduct as unlawful. If yes, the case goes to trial. If no, qualified immunity is granted.

Cases need nearly identical circumstances and in the same court jurisdiction for precedent to be "clearly established". Most cases are dismissed outright so that new precedent is never established, which leads what's "clearly established" being frozen in time.

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa- poli...](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-police- immunity-scotus/)

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm not sure it's that simple. Or, Qualified Immunity is just one aspect of why cops are not prosecutable.

One reason is the close relationship between police and the judiciary. Both work closely together and need to preserve that relationship for various career and practical reasons. In theory a branch is designed to act as a check against another branch, in reality, this is not the case in our justice system.

Another reason is US voters. We vote "hard on crime" people into office and then are surprised when they give Police complete immunity. If we want justice, we've elected the wrong people to give it to us.

It's also not clear if any of this is politically viable. The US is politically farther right compared to Europe and some other countries. Is a more liberal "European style" justice system palatable to US voters? For some, definitely, but overall, I'm not sure if some parts of the US are culturally ready for some of the reforms discussed. There's a lot of "eye for an eye" syndrome here.

I don't have any answers to this, just adding some context.

<comment><USER27> >Another reason is US voters. We vote "hard on crime" people into office and then are surprised when they give Police complete immunity. If we want justice, we've elected the wrong people to give it to us.

>It's also not clear if any of this is politically viable. The US is politically farther right compared to Europe and some other countries. Is a more liberal "European style" justice system palatable to US voters?

Are we living in the same country? What's "politically viable" varies massively from place to place.

While there are definitely "tough on crime" districts many major cities elect DAs and elect/appoint judges specifically because they make campaign promises to not be tough on certain classes of crime, recommend community service and treatment instead of jail, etc, etc. These are generally not the cities who's cops you see embroiled in excessive force controversies but they are by no means free of problems with their police forces use of violence.

<comment><USER26> > Are we living in the same country?

Overall, the US is entirely to the right of many other places. So even the more liberal places are still "tough on crime". I'm not sure comprehensive reforms will be accepted even in moderate places.

> What's "politically viable" varies massively from place to place.

That's exactly my point. So having any kind of national or federal reform is impossible because Americans cannot agree on anything. Reform from the federal system is needed but any kind of sweeping reform at a nationwide level is impossible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > the senseless violence committed by Derek Chauvin—and the stunning > indifference of the officers standing by as George Floyd begged for his > life—is the product of our culture of near‐ zero accountability for law > enforcement.

So true. We need reform of how abuses by law enforcement are handled. Many things could be done besides and in addition to relaxing qualified immunity. For example: send all cases to the States' Attorneys General rather than to the local district attorneys -- district attorneys have to work closely with police, so they have social barriers to effectively policing the police. Another thing is that being placed on desk duty or off duty with pay is abusive when it turns out the behavior was a fireable offense or criminal, so the officer should have to pay back that pay or simply not get it to begin with. Another thing is that police need to be trained in stepping in to their partner's business and halt brutality (preferably before it crosses the line) -- again, there are social problems here -the blue wall- that make this difficult, so maybe, too, change partners often.

Also, normally, when someone gets charged with a crime, the Speedy Trial clock begins running immediately (or at arraignment), so it's unwise to charge persons before the State is ready to try the case, and filing charges only to later drop them due to being baseless in retrospect is problematic, but perhaps for LEO there could be a notice of intent to charge whose purpose is to signal to the public that the State intends to charge the LEO if they can find enough evidence to go to trial with.

We need to get serious about dealing with police brutality and the system's inability to deal with it effectively. Preferably we should not overshoot and render the police vulnerable, but I think we can avoid that problem.

<comment><USER29> There also needs to be a registry of officers fired for cause. There is a long and sordid history of cops finally crossing one line too many, only to get the same job two towns over and repeat the process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is there ever an instance of power being taken away from armed groups like police or military, in any country? I think it's very easy to grant power, and very hard to revoke. Also, what happens if the police departments refuse to accept the decision. I am not kidding, I read that there was a strike by San Francisco police in 1975 where the police refused to follow court orders and declared them "illegal".

<comment><USER31> My understanding is that ending qualified immunity would open police officers up to lawsuits around their use of force that they're currently exempt from today. So, officers risk significant financial damage by choosing to ignore this change if it becomes law.

<comment><USER32> There has been proposals to have something similar to malpractice insurance, where cops that get sued a lot will have higher rates and will likely be kicked off the force, and good cops would bring the rates down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This article explains the issue in more detail: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23360295](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23360295)

<comment><USER34> That NYT article and more is linked to from a link in the submitted article.

[https://www.cato.org/blog/wake-george-floyds-death-all- eyes-...](https://www.cato.org/blog/wake-george-floyds-death-all-eyes-turn- scotus)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> OK but agencies, such as local PDs and governments, still need to be on the hook financially at a minimum.

We absolutely need criminal accountability for individuals, but damages need to be paid out from real coffers and not just assigned to judgement proof + un-hirable individuals.

Will this simply push all responsibility onto the agent?

</comment><comment><USER36> Make cops carry liability insurance. Like car insurance. Make every wrongful death or civil rights violation payable by the insured NOT the tax payer.

If the whole "few bad apples" argument is valid, then the premiums will stay low.

Like car insurance, an officer's premium will go up and insurability will go down with continued claims.

This will root out the bad apples and protect local budgets.

Arguments have been made that this will cause cops to second-guess themselves in the line of duty. They'll think "how will this effect my premium". Welp, they should already been considering whether their actions violate an individual's civil rights. This just shifts the liability from the tax payer to the perpetrator.

</comment><comment><USER37> Back in the day police departments used to do psychological screening on candidates as part of the hiring process. I've heard that many departments no longer do so under pressure from the police unions. I wonder how many of the extremely brutal cops would have been caught by this type of screening?

<comment><USER38> I've read police unions are way different from other types of unions, but in a "bad way". I read the IUPA wiki, but I'm wondering if anyone with experience has an insider's take

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Another project fighting qualified immunity: [https://ij.org/issues/private- property/project-on-immunity-a...](https://ij.org/issues/private- property/project-on-immunity-and-accountability/)

</comment><comment><USER40> One night I was dispatched to a fare in an area known to not be especially prosperous. I was trying to read numbers on houses, then I saw flashing red and blue lights ahead and knew where my prospective passenger would be found.

A police officer was on watch outside; his colleague was inside wrapping things up. The police officer told me the family had called for an intervention. The fire department had already departed, as Grandpa had declined medical assistance.

I asked what the story was. The police officer said simply "probably meth", and pointed out the right to refuse medical care is fundamental. I was supposed to take Grandpa to a motel.

At one point in our interaction, the police officer pointed out that it takes different kinds of cops to work in Scottsdale (for example), where some drunk kid might have a prestigious lawyer as their parent, vs. his ghetto precinct, where it's a point of pride to have 'taken a swing at a cop'.

Eventually Grandpa came out and got in my cab, the two police officers departed... Then grandpa wanted his son's phone number. I started the meter and pulled forward a few feet to where his son was standing. He got the phone number, then a woman appeared... She said they just wanted him to get help, Grandpa said "I just want to get some rest..." "oh, you can rest here..." My passenger's son paid me $6 for the 20 feet, and that was the end of that.

There's a lot of collateral damage in policing... Many other passengers had stories of being pointlessly harmed through their interactions with the police. One white fellow let his medical marijuana card expire. One day he got mouthy with a cop, who searched him and found his non-medical "dangerous illegal drug". My passenger said the search was probably illegal, but his overworked public defender didn't get the charges dismissed. I remember him saying it cost him about $5000.

The modern police officer's job involves, in part, hurting people who don't actually need to be hurt. Qualified immunity allows them to do the full spectrum of their job responsibilities without being hurt themselves. Ending auto-immune drug war, and finding ways to help people who need help, are the actual reforms that policing needs to break it of its destructive tendencies.

<comment><USER41> I was with you until the last paragraph. I don't think police violence exists because of the drug war; a large percentage of people who become police, and an even larger portion of people who _remain_ police are those who enjoy wielding power over others.

The only way to restrain the power-hungry is to be vigilant and use discipline; police unions and culture have proven very skilled in removing effective oversight. Given the situation, qualified immunity removes the only real restraint on police.

note: I am personally in favor of legalizing all drugs, recreational and medical. That said, I'm not really sure what you mean by 'auto-immune drug war', as the 'war on drugs' doesn't specifically target immuno-suppressants.

<comment><USER42> What percentage of them become police because they enjoy power over others?

This statement seems like a false bias to me, particularly given that pretty much every policeman/policewoman that I've known personally have been humble and good people and became police either on a desire to help people, or just because it was a paying job.

My evidence is anecdotal, but what is your evidence based on?

<comment><USER41> I have anecdotal evidence in the other direction, but here is the oft- referred-to "Police Family Violence Fact Sheet". [http://womenandpolicing.com/violenceFS.asp](http://womenandpolicing.com/violenceFS.asp)

Here is a really brilliant Reddit comment that covers a broad survey of studies that broadly support my point: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskSocialScience/comments/b9fkny/is...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskSocialScience/comments/b9fkny/is_the_claim_that_40_of_police_commit_domestic/ek500oo/)

<comment><USER42> Thanks, that still seems to be a reach as to the cause that they became police originally though. Though the studies seem to disagree with each other, it could be indicative of why they remain police.

I'd argue though that working in a profession that is inherently violent at times and in which you see the worst in people can't be good for your mental health, not to mention potential PTSD from some of the things that police witness. Family abuse is absolutely not good and should be looked into/stopped, but correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation.

<comment><USER41> I never said that a potential for violence was the _reason_ they became police, I only said there was a _correlation_ , and that the correlation increased with respect to tenure.

<comment><USER42> I took your statement to mean that they became police BECAUSE they enjoy wielding power over others. Re-reading your statement though, I see what you mean

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I feel like we are conflating a civil issue (qualified immunity) with criminal issues like murder.

<comment><USER20> I would say that the moral hazard introduced by qualified immunity increases the likelihood that criminal violations will also occur.

Weeding out the officers that would commit infractions that result in civil suits will probably also weed out those that would actual commit a more serious crime.

<comment><USER44> Hmm? The civil suits are for filed for serious crimes.

<comment><USER45> What they are saying is officer's that kill someone often have a pattern of bad (and sometimes escalating) behavior.

If one of the 18 use of force complaints against Chauvin had also resulted in a civil lawsuit that found Chauvin liable, he might have been removed from the force earlier.

That's one theory at least—I think it's a reasonable one.

I don't think removing QI from police officers should be the end-state of reform, but I think it's a necessary step and a good one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Libertarian talking-points ahead. Charles Koch Foundation = Cato Institute = climate change deniers (remember the fake IPCC-look-alike propaganda "addendum"?[0])

0\. [https://external- content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...](https://external- content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.b7Ri33IeiCYXz2PRcgOzPQE3DI%26pid%3DApi&f=1)

[https://www.climatecentral.org/news/cato-addendum-tries- to-u...](https://www.climatecentral.org/news/cato-addendum-tries-to-undo- federal-climate-report-15143)</comment>


Flat UI colors - <AUTHOR> http://flatuicolors.com <comment><USER3> And here we see the ultimate extension of the web designer's aesthetic into the realms of the absurd: colours, artfully chosen and arranged; a Flash (?) interface allowing exactly one interaction, of utter triviality. And because it would no doubt ruin the perfection of simplicity, _nothing_ to explain what it's for, why it exists, what will happen if you click Reload, and so on. No doubt part of the reason the site is being so hammered at the moment is because people are reloading over and over, trying to make it do something different.

Very odd indeed. And not the good kind of odd. Just odd.

<comment><USER4> It also doesn't seem to do anything. I click on stuff and it says "Copied!" but there's nothing in my clipboard. Unless I'm not understanding what "copy" means...

<comment><USER5> Can you tell me about your OS, Browser and Browser Version?

<comment><USER6> It doesn't work for me on Safari Version 6.0.4 (8536.29.13) with no Flash installed on OS X Mountain Lion.

Javascript Console says: TypeError: 'undefined' is not an object (evaluating 'this.htmlBridge.style')

I'm guessing this is because I don't have flash installed.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately it depends on Flash due to OS level copy functionality. Browsers doesn't allow JavaScript to access copy functionality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Haters gonna hate. I like it. Those are so similar to the colors I use, not too saturated, not too dim, not too bright, not too loud. (And it's hard to find a good yellow)

It's not made for the average person it's made for people who understand design and don't need explanation. It's a micro-web-app. Click on the colors to copy them to the clipboard. That's it.

Man, are you guys going to criticize him/her because they didn't have a call to action button? There's a time and place for those things, and a time and place for these micro-web-apps.

If you guys keep shitting all over people's side projects they're going to stop posting them here. The goal is constructive criticism.

<comment><USER8> Good UX should be intuitive, if you've done it right you don't need to explain what it does. The fact that so many people are utterly confused by this site shows that clearly it wasn't done right. If it isn't intuitive that's fine, it can still be good UX, so long as you add proper explanation, context, and callouts to make it obvious what the various interactions are. This site is neither obvious, nor does it have proper callouts to explain the interactions, which is why everyone is so confused. In short, it's bad UX, on top of a tool of questionable use to begin with. It's a single fixed color swatch. It would make a nice component on a larger site, say one of the myriad ones that allow you to select from a large collection of user submitted pallets, but as a standalone it comes across as kind of a flop.

If you post something you've done here, it's because you think you've created something others will find useful/interesting in some way. If it turns out that most people don't that just means you were wrong about how useful/interesting you expected it to be. You can do one of two things then, either try to fix/improve your effort and re-submit it later on to hopefully better result, or else abandon the idea and try to come up with something better. Either one is fine. What you can't expect is that people will heap praise on something they consider either boring, useless, or flawed in some way. The fact that people are taking the time to call out any perceived flaws is a service to the creator, its up to them to read others opinions, evaluate them, and decide how they want to react to them (either by accepting them as valid criticisms and working to fix it, or else rejecting them for whatever reason).

Ultimately if your "side project" isn't in a state yet to be evaluated by a large readership it probably shouldn't be posted here unless you're looking for feedback on how to fix it. That's the purpose of a site like this, it's to aggregate/discover interesting content, it isn't a dumping ground for every half finished project on the internet. I've got dozens of "side projects" that I'd never dream of posting here because frankly they aren't worth wasting peoples time with.

<comment><USER9> Was the "Why?" link not there when you went to the site?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's with all the negativity on HN lately? Not getting the hate really. The site looks good and the UI makes it feel like a game - fun to use and there's not really a lot to 'figure out', come on. Useful or not and (design) educational values aside, the creator enjoyed making it.

</comment><comment><USER5> hey there, whether if you find it useful or not thank you for your interest which led the site down :)

people at designmodo are aware of this project and actually they mentioned it on their last blogpost <http://designmodo.com/flat-design-colors/>

it was not even a side project for me, the thing is I was obsessed with these colors and started to use them a lot, and got bored of the copy - <USER2> progress. I did it because it was useful for me and I shared for those who like the flat ui color as much as I do and I didn't know that it was going to drew this much attention.

now moved a cloud server, hope DNS changes will affect soon.

at least it was fun to create some mini app mentioned in the hacker news :)

<comment><USER10> Minor bug report: when I open the 'What da copy?!' dropdown at the top and don't select anything but hover on a color, then hover on the second or third item in the dropdown again (coming from below the dropdown), there's no highlighting of the dropdown items and clicking selects the 'peter river' color. Something to do with z-index maybe? I am using the latest Chrome beta.

Also: hovering on any of the colors in the bottom row brings up the vertical scrollbar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If a separate website with a separate domain name is going to be created for every color palette (<http://www.colourlovers.com/palettes>), we might have to speed up the ipv6 migration.

</comment><comment><USER12> While I appreciate the effort that went into this (and keeping in mind that taste is indeed a very subjective thing), I just don't feel comfortable with this corralling of styles and colors. I get the impression that there's some uniqueness, and maybe even a bit of quirkiness, lost when the web adopts a uniform.

Which is probably why Geo exists : <http://divshot.github.io/geo-bootstrap/>

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder why they've used Flash. Flash is obsolete right now for these kind of things. A waste of time, IMHO, specially if you want to do this kind of simplicity UI and interaction, why the heck you will choose Flash over JS.

<comment><USER14> Javascript doesn't have access to the clipboard, so the creator is using Zero Clipboard, which utilizes Flash's ability to do one click copying:

<https://github.com/jonrohan/ZeroClipboard>

<comment><USER5> That is right. I don't like flash too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Coincidently I came across this a few hours ago from <http://designmodo.com/flat-design-colors/> when looking for some quick and easy flat colour palettes for an iOS application.

It is no doubt initially confusing, I clicked a colour but had no idea it had copied to the clipboard. Furthermore when it wasn't apparent what the top drop down menu actually did when you didn't know about the copying functionality.

Regardless, in the end I got the colours I wanted. Had no idea they were the same colours as from the flat-ui package.

</comment><comment><USER13> I still think making a website for just 1 style is a bit, useless. What if I do just one website saying "Art Deco colors" featuring a miserable color palette of 12 colors. It's just crap utility for any good designer.

I love colors, I personally own 6 o 7 color books with thousands color patterns for working on specific designs. But this, this is just 1 color palette and not the only one you can use on "flat designs".

Sorry but the website fails, show me thousands, not 1.

</comment><comment><USER16> The only colors I'd really recommend taking from this are Sunflower and the Midnight blues. The greens and blues and purples are all too safe. They look like defaults, like choosing "red" in CSS for one of your brand colors. Like someone else in the comments said, they are "not too saturated, not too dim, not too bright, not too loud". And although he used it as a compliment, it sounds like a failure to me. You don't want all of your colors to live in the same value and saturation spaces; that's boring.

Edit: The Pumpkin's interesting too.

</comment><comment><USER17> Can any designer out there speak to how these colors are chosen? It seems to me that it'd be a matter of taste more than anything else, but if there is some trick to choosing better palettes I'd love to hear it.

</comment><comment><USER18> As someone who struggles with good color selection, this is amazing. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER19> Really useful, thanks!

<comment><USER20> Useful for what?

<comment><USER21> For finding some nice colors to try in his/her flat designs I'd presume?

<comment><USER22> But these are the exact same color swatches as are included in the Flat UI package. Even the labels are the same.

I don't see any added value.

<http://designmodo.github.io/Flat-UI/>

<comment><USER23> I guess it adds value for someone who doesn't know that Flat UI exists.

<comment><USER24> Someone shoot me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> AKA "solid colors"

</comment><comment><USER26> As a designer, this might just be the most stupid thing I've ever seen.

<comment><USER27> That's a very unproductive and mean comment. If you have specific criticisms, post them.

If you think your criticisms are so obvious that they don't need saying, then don't say anything. If you think that, but the post stays on the front page, well, you were wrong. The criticisms did need saying. So post them.

<comment><USER28> Excellent criticism. Neutral tone, logical, accurate, specific.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Sites down loll.

</comment><comment><USER30> this site has been hacked by hackernews (aka the site is down because of hackernews) :D

EDIT: Working for me again

<comment><USER3> Used to be called the Slashdot effect; nowadays you see it more in reference to Reddit. There should be a name for it that doesn't need to change every time a new web link aggregator becomes flavour of the month.

Incidentally, whatever it's called, "hacked" is not the right terminology. Whether you're of the belief that "hacker" means "programmer" or "evil nasty person", this doesn't qualify for the term.

<comment><USER30> it was just a joke nothing more... and the hacked was because of "hackernews" and i know what hacker means ;)

<comment><USER3> Ah I see. Still, you got me thinking about the need for a general term for that sort of hammering, so it's not all wasted.

<comment><USER31> general term: friendly dos</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


If Uber works, you might be less happy with your transport options - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/10/if-uber-works-you-might-be-especially-unhappy-with-your-transport-options.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+marginalrevolution%2Ffeed+%28Marginal+Revolution%29 <comment><USER3> If Uber works, you won't be happy about it, period. Their top management has constantly demonstrated sociopathic behaviour over the last few years. They show no respect for law, dignity, privacy and are willing to screw over journalists and their own drivers alike. _What exactly do you think will happen if they win?_ Will the company suddenly discover God and become a good citizen?

Their tech is good, but they are a menace to society.

<comment><USER4> The top management of every company is sociopathic. Uber just isn't experienced enough yet to appropriately hide it.

<comment><USER3> I don't think so. There are many bad and many good companies. Sure, over time, market pressure may push successful ones towards more and more antisocial behaviour. But here, such behaviour is an exception. I guess Uber is just far left on the normal distribution of young companies over evil/good axis.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's a matter of good or evil. It's that the decision making process for most executives is amoral. The question is not "is this good or evil?", it's "Does this help the company, or harm the company?". Executives have a duty to do things that help the company and avoid doing things that harm the company. Sometimes pursuing that leads to decisions that appear "evil" in the bigger picture, but when many people are depending on you for their livelihoods, letting the company fail and leaving them unemployed may also appear evil from that perspective. I doubt it's ever as black and white as the media likes to paint it.

<comment><USER3> I will agree that the decision making process for most executives is pretty amoral - but not completely, they are human beings with conscience, after all. Of course, as the company gets bigger and its management structures grow both in people and in layers of abstraction separating them from the bottom line, decisions become dominated by non-human forces (i.e. incentive structures).

But we're not talking about IBM or Oracle here. We're talking about (what was just recently) _a taxi startup_.

Choosing their business model to be throwing VC money at lawyers to shield them from consequences of breaking the law around the world wasn't a decision made on a shareholder meeting on the top floor of a skyscraper. The pattern of behaviour, both at the business model level and more personal one stretches years back and suggests it's not the market pressures, but the company DNA itself that makes Uber act in the way they do. Keep in mind that not even a year ago, the media story was "Uber the knight in white armour against the old, evil goblins of the Taxi Mafia". The industry may in fact be goblins, but Uber turned out to be Sauron himself.

<comment><USER4> If you consider it a moral imperative to honor a regulatory monopoly granted to certain members of an industry, then I guess it would be immoral for Uber to do what they're doing. Personally, I consider laws and morals to be two separate things.

<comment><USER3> Consider that laws, be them right or wrong, are what keeps society together. Those particular laws seem to be outdated and it's good that someone challenged them. But there are many ways and motivations to do it, and Uber is doing it in _a very bad way_ for very bad reasons. It worries me they're so loved, because the mindset they promote is "just fuck the law". It's not the example we want every new startup to follow - because as you point out, companies tend to grow amoral, and the law is the only thing that keeps them from hurting people for profit.

Also, if you look outside the US, we had Uber-like companies in Europe for some years. The process of destroying taxi monopoly was way under way here. It was going slowly, but in a way that didn't threaten the social order.

<comment><USER4> I think that's backwards. We had society first, then we had laws. Laws exist to serve society, not the other way around. When a law stops being useful to society, we get rid of it.

There's absolutely no evidence to suggest that disregarding one law that's considered unjust implies someone is going to disregard ALL laws. Rosa Parks didn't immediately decide to start murdering and raping people after she sat in the front of the bus. Uber does not promote "fuck the law". They promote "fuck this one particular law that sucks for everybody except a few who benefit from it".

Maybe we could have had a long, drawn out process where the taxi system was slowly dismantled over the course of several decades, but who benefits from that? Not the customers who are stuck paying for overpriced, inefficient taxi service. Not the many drivers who are able to get flexible part-time work.

<comment><USER3> > _We had society first, then we had laws. Laws exist to serve society, not > the other way around._

Laws are extensions of social customs that happen when society grows beyond a certain size (think few dozen - hundreds of people). The things Uber does break are against social customs as well.

> _When a law stops being useful to society, we get rid of it._

Yes, but the way we usually do it is not by someone unilaterally deciding they don't like it and breaking it, while raising enough money to keep its enforcement at bay.

> _They promote "fuck this one particular law that sucks for everybody except > a few who benefit from it"._

They break this particular law (and a set of others, like tax laws, insurance laws, etc., as well as ideas of being decent and not threatening people who disagree with you - ideas that are sort of important in a civilized society) because that's the area they're doing business in. But other companies enlightened by their example will be breaking other laws. Who knows, maybe next SV-backed startup decides to ignore FDA? Because who cares about those "clinical trials", they're only slowing progress down. And the next one after that will ignore biosafety. Would you like to live in that world?

> _Maybe we could have had a long, drawn out process where the taxi system was > slowly dismantled over the course of several decades, but who benefits from > that? Not the customers who are stuck paying for overpriced, inefficient > taxi service. Not the many drivers who are able to get flexible part-time > work._

We _had_ that in Europe before Uber, and it was going fine. As a customer, I benefited from local company that offered pay-for-distance drive-by-GPS service stirring up the taxi market. They had some legal battles, there was a law adjustment, and the local market improved (the company is still around, and I'm still their happy customer). Rinse and repeat. That's how you do the progress of civilization.

<comment><USER4> Uber doesn't get to unilaterally decide anything. _Customers_ overwhelmingly decided that they prefer Uber to whatever benefits they had been receiving from the regulated taxi industry. If they hadn't, Uber would be out of business and we'd only have taxis.

> _maybe next SV-backed startup decides to ignore FDA? Because who cares about > those "clinical trials", they're only slowing progress down._

Maybe they will? If a company can reliably produce safe drugs without FDA trials, why wouldn't we want that? Right now we have expensive drugs that are very safe. Few people die because they got a drug that was manufactured incorrectly (presumably, I don't know the actual statistics), but many people die because they can never afford the drug in the first place. Maybe without the trials more people would die from bad drugs, but more would live because they'd have access to cures that were previously out of reach. I don't know, but it's a question worth asking. There's also the issue of the black market created by the high prices caused by FDA trials, where drugs are sold from shady online pharmacies and manufacture under who-knows-what conditions. Desperate people will take risks like that when they have no options.

If you were poor and contracted some rare disease where the treatment costs $100,000, but only has a .0001% chance of complications, would you rather die because you can't afford it, or try a $100 treatment that has a 1% chance of complications? Right now you don't even get the choice. For whatever reason we've decided it's better for people to die because they're poor than for them to die because of a manufacturing / clinical problem with a drug. If that's what we all think, that's fine, but we should be aware we're making that choice.

> _As a customer, I benefited from local company that offered pay-for-distance > drive-by-GPS service stirring up the taxi market. They had some legal > battles, there was a law adjustment, and the local market improved_

The fact that they had "some legal battles" and the laws was changed, implies to me that they were also operating in defiance of the law at the beginning. How is that different from what Uber does? Besides, now you have the taxis, your preferred company, and Uber as options. With your recommended strategy of "everybody obey the taxi laws", you would only have the taxis. Aren't you better off this way?

<comment><USER3> > _Uber doesn 't get to unilaterally decide anything. Customers overwhelmingly > decided that they prefer Uber to whatever benefits they had been receiving > from the regulated taxi industry. If they hadn't, Uber would be out of > business and we'd only have taxis._

Customers don't know shit. They only see the cool, new, better taxi company. Ask around, most people don't realize Uber is operating illegally.

Questions you ask about FDA and consequences of prolonged trials are important. They are being asked. But my point is, you don't want random companies operating in the light while ignoring medical safety laws - <USER2> will lead only to people getting seriously hurt. You always have an avenue of operating under the radar; the enforcement around drugs is not _that_ strict, if you want to ignore safety there are tons of ways to get pretty much any chemical. Folks over at nootropics communities order various experimental chemicals from chem labs, and it's probably even mostly legal. But they know all the dangers and they take full responsibility over what happens.

> _The fact that they had "some legal battles" and the laws was changed, > implies to me that they were also operating in defiance of the law at the > beginning. How is that different from what Uber does? Besides, now you have > the taxis, your preferred company, and Uber as options. With your > recommended strategy of "everybody obey the taxi laws", you would only have > the taxis. Aren't you better off this way?_

They didn't break the law. They found a loophole in the licensing process and exploited it. Taxi companies got angry, the issue went through the legal system and the law was adjusted in a way that took into account the innovation and increased efficiency, while also keeping the good parts of the existing system. Contrast that with Uber, which not just breaks the law, they're being blatant about it.

<comment><USER4> It probably varies by city whether Uber is breaking the law. In my city Uber argued they were considered a limousine service rather than a taxi company, which falls under different regulations. The difference being that a taxi is hailed from the street while a limo is not. You could argue that using an app is the same as hailing, but you could also use your phone to call a limo service to send a car to you, which is not considered hailing. So, it's a bit of a technicality.

Customers do know one important thing. Uber is beneficial to them and taxi regulations are not. The taxi regulations were set up to protect the taxi companies, not the customers.

I don't think it's likely that any business is going to start flouting regulations that actually protect customers from something, because harming your customers is not a good business model (tobacco industry aside).

<comment><USER3> > _Customers do know one important thing. Uber is beneficial to them and taxi > regulations are not._

There are a lot of things that are beneficial to some parties while being destructive to everyone else. Strip-mining is beneficial to those enjoying the cheap metals. Dumping toxic waste into a river is beneficial for those upstream, not so much for those downstream.

> _The taxi regulations were set up to protect the taxi companies, not the > customers._

Some, maybe, and many eventually grew to serve taxi companies more than the customers. But not all and probably not most, initially. A lot of regulations and the monopoly taxi companies get exist, so that you:

\- can actually get a ride if you don't live in the city centre

\- can actually get a ride if you're sick, elderly or disabled, in a car that's equipped to handle you

With Uber you can't get either of the above, because it's unprofitable for the company _and_ the drivers (actually, a friend is reporting that people are now lying about their location and then calling to the driver directly to ask them to start counting the fare on their way; we'll see how that dynamics evolves).

> _I don 't think it's likely that any business is going to start flouting > regulations that actually protect customers from something, because harming > your customers is not a good business model (tobacco industry aside)._

Of course they are, and they're constantly doing it. Things like safe medicine, safe food, safe clothes, etc. were all things we had to fight them in courts for. If you're the only provider of something your customers need, you can be as evil like you want to them, and they will still buy from you.

Also, regulations are not usually about company vs. their customers, because those are not the only parties of the transaction. Regulations also serve to protect _the rest of society_ from externalities that are being dumped on it through the transaction. In case of Uber, they have a good value proposition for customers. But they dump a shit ton of externalities on the rest of us, including fucking over their drivers, destroying the taxi industry _while not covering for all the parts they dismantled like catering to elderly and disabled_ , and eroding the rule of law. Oh, and fucking us all over again with taxes that should have been paid.

To take your tobacco industry aside, they're not really hurting their customers. The customers were obviously participants in voluntary trade. And the families that have to take care of them and bury them when lung cancer finally ends its work _were not the customers_ , so why would a tobacco company care about them?

\--

I understand the appeal of Uber. People who like them like them, because they're breaking the law in their favour. But that's a stupidly childish attitude. The next company will break law in favour of someone else, and then you'll be pissed.

<comment><USER4> > _Some, maybe, and many eventually grew to serve taxi companies more than the > customers. But not all and probably not most, initially. A lot of > regulations and the monopoly taxi companies get exist, so that you: \- can > actually get a ride if you don 't live in the city centre \- can actually > get a ride if you're sick, elderly or disabled, in a car that's equipped to > handle you_

Except taxi regulations don't actually accomplish any of these things. It's well known that if you want to go from Manhattan to Brooklyn you better get in the cab first before telling the driver that, or they'll drive away. Even then, they might demand that you get out anyway. If you look like you might inconvenience the driver, or if you're black, good luck getting them to even pull over in the first place.

You can complain of course, by sending a message into the black hole of the taxi regulation bureaucracy, but it's unlikely anything will ever come of it. With an app that allows immediate feed back and user ratings of each driver, drivers are far more accountable to providing a satisfying customer experience than they ever were under the taxi regulations.

> _If you 're the only provider of something your customers need, you can be > as evil like you want to them, and they will still buy from you._

Yes, like if you've manipulated the local government into making it illegal for anyone else to provide your service unless they buy a multi-hundred thousand dollar taxi medallion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Total volume of privately owned vehicles isn't going to dramatically decrease because of the new slightly more convenient option of private taxis.

The set of privately owned vehicles is going to decrease as a function of increase in population density and truly alternative transportation options.

It still takes a while to find an Uber driver in lower density areas, and in both the City and the Suburbs, alternative services like Curb and myTaxi have been leveling the competitive gap between Uber's microservice taxis and traditional taxis.

But an Uber-facilitated ride-for-hire is still a taxi ride, albeit one that's easier to schedule.

Cars will go away when people don't need them. Yes, some people wealthy enough to afford to take a taxi everywhere are going to get rid of their cars. And it does constitute further saturating a market with car hiring options.

But folks that don't live within walking distance to daily needs like their bank, grocery stores, barber, doctor... are going to rack up extra costs switching to hired cars.

If your town grows 2x or 4x and suddenly there's a grocery store two blocks down? Less need to get in the car. In those scenarios, eventually yes you're going to see the cars-per-person go down.

I'm rehashing I suppose, but fleets of subscription-service autonomous cars will be the next big disruptor. This is where Uber could make that big dent -- when you have a stable cadre of always-on, always-ready people movers, optimally distributed for service, picking up and dropping people off.

These could replace that second car, or the beater you keep limping along to get down the highway to work.

<comment><USER6> > But folks that don't live within walking distance to daily needs like their > bank, grocery stores, barber, doctor... are going to rack up extra costs > switching to hired cars.

This may be a bit too simple. Technology is solving these problems, too. Online banking continues to improve. Instacart is expanding to more cities. People are consulting with doctors over FaceTime for a flat fee. Many other errands can be batched up into one day a week or month. With all these improvements combined together, Uber becomes an economic choice for many people sooner than later. (I have saved ~60% on car costs over the past year by switching to Uber exclusively. I realize not everyone is in the exact situation I am, but I'm not riding Uber because I have money to throw away.)

<comment><USER7> It's certainly fair that Uber + Zipcar + online banking + grocery delivery + etc. can make a difference in the need for car ownership at the margins. For example, I know a couple in San Francisco who don't own a car and I think it's fair to say that they would not have been able to manage this 10 to 20 years ago--at least without making a lot more compromises.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, the linchpin for me there is living in an area with high population density and a diverse transportation infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If ETAs are too high and prices are too expensive, then more people will get cars again. I don't really see a problem. This is like saying "If email works, you might be less happy with your communication options" because 'no one will write letters anymore'.

</comment><comment><USER9> >The better Uber gets, the more people can do without cars

Perhaps, but fares would have to drop by about half.

My daily commute is 18-25 minutes each way. Current Uber rate is about $20-25 to get me between home and work (midwest metropolitan city). That works out to 249 * $ 20 * 2=$9960 / year to take Uber currently. True cost to own for my current vehicle is between $4000-5000/year.

My wife has a car as well and needs one during the day. If Uber became close to cost effective with owning, I'd drop my car, take Uber, and we could use my wife's car for all our other transportation needs.

<comment><USER10> > Perhaps, but fares would have to drop by about half.

But the opposite is going to happen when they stop subsidizing fares. At the moment, they are ripping off their drivers and still making a loss on each ride they sell. Their strategy is predatory pricing and that won't go on forever.

I'd be willing to share rides (with other passengers that is) as long as it gets me from where I want to my destination with a single hop and pay a reasonable price for that. At the moment I'm taking two buses to work and I can beat that with a bicycle (14 km or 8 miles in 40 minutes at best, 70 minutes at worst).

That time should be beatable using smart routing of small vechiles (I have 5-20 min of waiting for my connection typically), using "maximum flow" rather than "shortest path" algorithm. There is such a bus service available here but only in the urban areas so it won't take me to work from where I live.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well, my boss is travelling for business next month, and one of my coworkers was trying to talk him into taking Uber over renting a car (don't know whether or not he succeeded), so I can totally buy that Uber is eating into rental cars.

Honestly, I'm fine with it. I don't have a car, and the all my transportations needs are met by a combination of Lyft and public transit (ultimately, it's cheaper and probably faster to take the train downtown). I'm fine with everything else going away.

<comment><USER7> I suppose that UberX specifically drops the price point a bit but my personal rent a car vs. get a ride calculus for trips doesn't really change with Uber and I don't think it would for most people. If I'm flying to an airport and just need to head into a city like San Francisco where a car would just be parked until my return, I'll get a cab/Uber or, if there's a good option like BART, public transportation. If I'm going somewhere that's more spread out like the South Bay and can't easily get between hotel, restaurants, work sites without a car, I'll typically rent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a badly reasoned article. If the total stock of vehicles is decreasing it creates a lot of savings (as the article admits). How are these savings captured? In cheaper Ubers. The total cost of all the cars on the road is already being paid for out of our transportation costs. As each vehicle gets shared between more people the cost to each person goes down. Obviously there will be an equilibrium between lower prices from fewer vehicles and higher convenience from having extra capacity. But, using resources more efficiently won't cause harm. Even if the total vehicle stock were to decrease as much as the article suggests the price of an uber would drop much faster than the convenience.

Now this all assumes an efficient market. If Uber were to start abusing its monopoly powers, that would be something to be legitimately concerned about...

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure I agree that Tyler's point is of major significance, but yours seems even more wrong.

I think Tyler's point is, there is a stock of underutilized cars that gets converted to Ubers. Hypothetically, I needed a car for work, and I decide to drive it for Uber on weekends.

In the long run, I decide I don't need a car because Ubers are so available. The supply of Ubers then goes down, while demand goes up, since I don't have the option to drive myself.

I don't think there is any mechanism here that would drive the cost of an Uber ride down. Total transportation cost goes down because the total of Uber plus self-driven cars go down, but the mix goes to more Uber, less self-driven cars.

I think as Uber over time ceases to benefit from an 'arb' where it piggy-backs on sunk-cost cars and personal insurance, the cost of Uber-ing goes up, but overall transport cost goes down because people don't have to pay for underutilized cars.

It's possible that over time the mix of cars goes to utilitarian electric models, and a 'fun' car becomes a specialty item like a high-end sports car is today, and some people don't love their new options.

But if you believe in free markets, you would have to say that the market has spoken and arrived at a revealed preference for paying less for transport in a utilitarian vehicle that is not underutilized.

<comment><USER5> It feels like Uber's use case is still quite a middle/upper-middle class urban thing, and that the market hasn't decided to hand itself over to microservice taxis just yet.

<comment><USER7> That's because, when you get right down to it, Ubers are taxis which have always been primarily a middle/upper-class, urban-ish thing. It increases the pool of available drivers/cars and it simplifies the whole process, especially in areas that didn't have a well-established set of taxi services. But the economics are still basically the economics of hired cars (whether taxis, limos, or whatever).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This discussion doesn't take into account shared ride services (like uberpool). They're the thing that might enable the shift from private cars, and without considering them, this discussion don't teach us much.</comment>


How good software makes us stupid - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11263559 <comment><USER2> I am bloody sick of that troll Nicholas Carr.

Exactly the same things were said of printing - conservatives said that we would lose the ability to remember things when all knowledge could be looked up in a book.

Exactly the same things were said of slide rules and calculators - that we would lose the ability to reason as our ability to calculate atrophied.

The obvious debunking of Carr's argument is the incredible level of skill so many computer users exhibit. Obviously we HNers are all aware of how bloody difficult programming is, but we forget just how complex a lot of very ordinary software is. Watch a skilled Photoshop operator or a really good Starcraft player in action and you'll see Carr's hypothesis go down in flames. Something as mundane as Excel is easily more complex than any system in the world just a few decades ago.

Carr is at the bottom of a very long line of dreary, reactionary trolls, cursing that the young people today don't know how easy they've got it, that they're going soft with their newfangled tools.

<comment><USER3> _I am bloody sick of that troll Nicholas Carr._

Couldn't have put it better myself. He really thinks he's good at being reductive.

 _cursing that the young people today don't know how easy they've got it_

Every generation is sure that these young kids today, with their hair and their clothes, just don't appreciate how hard things used to be. Every generation is wrong about that, of course.

<comment><USER4> _Every generation is wrong about that, of course._

Actually, they're right -- it's just that in the grand scheme of things, how much easier we have it today than the last generation, is insignificant compared to how hard life is in general. We do have it better, but it doesn't make us dumber because the world still needs smart people to keep it going.

<comment><USER3> Meh. I'm old enough to have been aware of what things were difficult for the previous generation and how they're easier now. And: there are new things that we have to deal with that the previous generation could never have conceived. In my experience, life never gets easier; it just changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle--they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments. "

Alfred North Whitehead, <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead>

</comment><comment><USER6> > _"Months later - the people who had the unhelpful software actually could > remember how to do the puzzle, and the people with the helpful software > couldn't."_

In the real world people with helpful software can take advantage of their time saved by tackling even harder classes of problems that people with unhelpful software never even had the time to get to.

</comment><comment><USER7> Socrates was grumbling that writing things down was impairing our ability to learn things by heart.

As far as I am concerned, the more rote memorization that things machines can take off my brain's to-do list, the more time+space I can devote to higher- level thinking.

<comment><USER8> > As far as I am concerned, the more rote memorization that things machines > can take off my brain's to-do list, the more time+space I can devote to > higher-level thinking.

I agree up to a point, but someone who understands lots of grammar but has no vocabulary is just as poor a communicator as someone with lots of vocabulary but no grammar, or perhaps even worse. I am concerned that modern trends in education could create a generation with lots of ideas but no practical experience or background information to put anything in context. They can't look _everything_ up every time, and they are going to need a certain level of knowledge to appreciate the significance of the ideas they are learning.

<comment><USER9> This is why I don't use editors with IntelliSense-like capabilities, or if they have it I disable it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> All of these dire predictions of better technology dumbing us down are getting tiresome.

People who are lazy, and wouldn't bother memorizing a route anyway, will be helped by something like SatNav or Google Maps -- and yes, probably use them as a crutch. But it's better than them _not being able to get anywhere_. Me? Having instant access to a birds-eye view of every road in my city (Los Angeles) has given me the tools I need to memorize many routes, and is one of the reasons I can drive around this city so effectively.

Technology is a tool. Use it how you will.

</comment><comment><USER11> But they've missed the true comparison.

The question isn't: "Would a London cabby using satnav software without having learned the city do better than a London cabby who learned the city?"

The question is: "Would a London cabby using satnav software do better than one without - both having learned the city?"

In other words: Assuming good satnav software that knew current traffic conditions and historic average speeds of the roads, with an easy interface to offer multiple routing options that are easily changeable (for instance) - wouldn't that be _helpful_ to a cabby vs. a cabby that didn't have that extra tool?

I don't think it's fair to compare human+tech vs. human-only performance with no tech. Better to compare them _with_ tech, since the whole point is that technology is available and used.

</comment><comment><USER12> We're heading towards a mental man-machine symbiosis. Think of all your gadgetry as a co-processor.

<comment><USER6> We're already there. Man has always existed in that symbiosis since he's been man. Man is defined by his exceptional tool use, so I will claim man has never not existed in symbiosis with machine and been just "man".

A ship that can carry a settler across the ocean is a prosthetic foot that extends his powers of travel. Eye-glasses are prosthetic eyes that extend your power of vision.

With the internet we are basically building improved books with better lookup features, they both are still prosthetic memory storage communicating information visually.

<comment><USER12> True, but I think we're crossing one of those historical barriers where a quantitative difference becomes so large that it becomes a qualitative difference. The kind of symbiosis you achieve with devices that connect you instantly to every other person on the planet and to which you can offload all kinds of calculation and information gathering is truly new.

I'm not a triumphalist about it either. Technology gives but also takes.

<comment><USER6> Well "instantly" here probably means a response time of ~ 100-3000ms depending on the amount of processing being offloaded for an internet service.

I agree it's new to be measuring this in milliseconds and discussing fiber optics rather than hours and the transatlantic-cable (or days and the pony express).

If we're in the long view and talking about evolution, I disagree that the underlying process driving this has changed.

I guess it's just a discussion of the merits between looking at the position of a car vs. one of its derivatives such as acceleration. You need to know all of them to predict its future position and there are possibly an infinite number of derivatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The Knowledge is a very hard test. It can take 3 years to pass, and you need to learn 320 set routes within 6 miles of Charing Cross. My aunt did The Knowledge anf now drives a black cab by day, and a rather expensive Mercedes sports car the rest of the time.

<comment><USER14> Despite the trade protection their firm gets, the money is low, particularly considering outlay, hours and conditions. Yet the quality of the experience is consistently good in a city where service is often poor.

I'm interested to know what causes this: whether it's due to the discipline (the thrill of navigating a puzzle, like a unix operator gets), or the institution (feeling like you're part of something important).

I had a freaky conversation with a driver last winter about messaging systems. He knew all the right questions after I told him what I did, and made comments about the particular technologies. It came out that we were working on the opposite ends of a big integration between firms. He was unhappy with that life and very comfortable at the prospect of spending the rest of his days driving a cab around.

<comment><USER13> The money is actually pretty good. You can earn way above the national average, you're your own boss and can work the hours that suit you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Give me studies, not arguments. Using tools - and "good software" are just tools - that free us from having to use intelligence for a task allows us to direct that intelligence to _other_ tasks.

Yes, I'm not as good at arithmetic as a technical person from 50 or even 30 years ago. But I'm freed from having to do all of that myself so I can focus energy to what I actually care about.

</comment><comment><USER16> This article makes no real sense, does the author (of the book) have any scientific evidence for any of his claims?

</comment><comment><USER17> Perhaps an alternative view: Good software makes the lazy lazier?</comment>


Chinese Province Larger Than Texas Just Ran for a Week on Only Renewable Energy - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/qinghai-china-renewables-week_us_5954d053e4b02734df3020c7?ncid=edlinkushpmg00000313 <comment><USER2> Not scalable to other Chinese provinces, as most Chinese provinces have WAY MORE than 5.8 million people...

"These renewable energy sources reportedly provided Qinghai and its population of 5.8 million with 1.1 billion kilowatt hours of electricity — equal to about 535,000 tons of coal."

</comment><comment> King-Aaron I recall there used to be an argument around base-load generation not being fully suitable to be provided by renewables... That argument seems to have subsided however with reports like this. Can someone ELI5 what's changed?

<comment><USER3> They have enough dammed water to do it with hydroelectric for a week to win a record.</comment></comment>