RANTING/VENTING MEGATHREAD 3.0

I'll be honest, about 90% of the taxi drivers I encounter have been decent to good. But I only take taxis about three or four times a month, so I don't have the biggest sample to go off. But the 10% bad ones that I've encountered - wow. The worst. People have already listed all the crappy things they do.

I get that they have a (ridiculously) strong lobby, somehow, and they want to fight things that may compete with their job, but like... that's not how the world works? Nobody's helping the people whose manufacturing jobs (clothing, electronics, metal stuff, etc) is getting outsourced to cheaper countries. Nobody's helping people whose jobs are being replaced by automated kiosks in restaurants. Job landscapes change. The fact that the taxi lobby expects such preferential treatment as to literally outlaw any competition blows my mind.

There's something else to consider- When you get a bad Uber, you blame the individual driver. When you get a bad taxi experience, people tend to blame all cabbies. I don't think that's really fair.

Anyways, not to get all Andrew Yang, but the tax drivers are really in a bad spot. And its not just competition from Uber, it's the looming specter of automation. For many, driving a cab might be the only thing keeping them from gathering cardboard. It also might be the only way they have any sense of purpose and general interaction. I'm not sure what requirements go to being in a cabbie, but if they have a medallion system like NYC, I can definitely see how that can be an issue.

The problem is that there really is no good solution. You could bring them to heel- Green Line 24-7, additional N-buses, bring in Uber. The problem is that could cause serious disruption. Like Yang talks about with truckers, these are people that might have nothing to lose and probably have gotten the short end of the stick, they might not react in a rational manner. I wonder how many are Vietnam vets too or crushed skulls for the police during the 1980s. I can see them totally blocking off traffic and causing serious disruptions. Who knows, if this issue lingers until self-driving delivery trucks get here, you might get the truckers joining in. 

Are some of their problems self-inflicted? Sure, but like I said, you can't collectively blame all taxi drivers for the actions of some (it IS more than a few). Can they be transitioned to Lyft or Uber? Maybe. But that's just a band-aid solution for when self-driving cars get used. I wonder how cost-effective it would be to get them on a seriously upped UBI and total re-scaling of public transport and going over to Uber? Yangism might be making its way to Korea soon.

Anyways, you can't take millions of elderly and unskilled (and now increasingly skilled and professional) workers, automate or globalize their jobs and tell them "Get some job training and move." That's not going to work. The success rates on job re-training are terrible. If you go to those people and say "Hey, this is it for the rest of your life", they're not going to take it well.

Also, AI might come for your job one day. It's important to not tempt fate with a flippant attitude (not you specifically BCS, all of us).

Anyways, this probably deserves its own thread...I get the rant about taxi service, but there's a lot more going on here and it's not so simple.

It was too much to ask, I realize.

Either last year, or early this year, one idiot taxi driver protested the new ride-sharing service by setting himself alight; the very pinnacle of a crybaby temper tantrum.

Uhm, there are many things I'd call self-immolation. Cry-baby temper tantrum is NOT one of them. That's a pretty awful way to go and not the kind of thing someone does spontaneously. It's been typically done by pacifists, most notably by Buddhist monks and seven Americans at various points in opposition to the Vietnam War. The Arab Spring was started because Mohamed Bouazizi self-immolated over his frustration with government corruption and economic situation.

Now, I may not agree with it and I've made my views on suicide very clear, but this isn't something that someone is doing just on a lark or childishly. They're doing this for what they think are deeply moral reasons.

All things considered, when you look at the way other people sometimes engage in political action, such as riot/bombing/guerrilla warfare/abductions/looting/lynchings/suicide bombs/etc. there's a lot worse someone can do than self-immolate.

If you think someone is self-immolating as a "cry-baby temper tantrum", then I would strongly recommend taking a deeper look at why they're are doing what they're doing. People don't just casually light themselves on fire. This is more often done when things are reaching a really drastic point and there is DEEP concern over an issue.

While there are some occasional nutjobs or fringe issues, a lot of these self-immolations deal with issues that turned into serious conflicts. Vietnam War, Tamil Independence, Tibetan Independence, Communism. 1-2 on an issue you might dismiss. If you start seeing a string of these, look out. Something deeper is going on.  This is the fourth. DO NOT TAKE THIS LIGHTLY.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_self-immolations

It was too much to ask, I realize.

Sorry, I'm making another cab thread. But I think the issue is pretty serious enough that it deserves a response.

It was too much to ask, I realize.

I just got a message saying the internet was full.... for some reason.... can't think why?

And so it came to pass that on the 13th day of the halving of the year, the mighty Martinius struck thunder and doom upon our beloved thread 3.0. Thereby ushering in the glory that would  come to be known as the RANTING/VENTING MEGATHREAD 4.0
The Tellings  of Martinius 3:1 Wayguk Book.

And so it came to pass that on the 13th day of the halving of the year, the mighty martinius struck thunder and doom upon our beloved thread 3.0. Thereby ushering the glory that would be come to be known as the RANTING/VENTING MEGATHREAD 4.0

Waygook.org user HappyPlanetAbuser, that's kind of a weird way to talk about a thread on a forum that you just joined two weeks ago.

Shhh.. we have to make DeMartino believe this thread is dead,,,

Shhh.. we have to make DeMartino believe this thread is dead,,,

Who?

You be giving me an Avec kind of flavour

I was actually thinking I missed the usual rantings of Dmart after the toxicity of that Netflix series thread, but after this I'm not so sure. 

DMart: Again, Where do they get it? They get it from the same place as many of you get YOUR sense of superiority.

I like how you said this three times as if its profundity was going to sink in and have some kind of impact. 

Our imagined sense of superiority comes directly from YOUR unimagined sense of inferiority that manifests itself on these pages on a day to day basis. 

Now, I'm sure.  I do prefer this silliness over the hate thread that popped open recently. 

Almost every day this happens.

Me: waiting to get on the subway, standing to the side to let people off

People behind me: instantly walk around me to push on first, don't let anyone off first, then stand in the doorway

After all these years I just...dont...get it

I was actually thinking I missed the usual rantings of Dmart after the toxicity of that Netflix series thread, but after this I'm not so sure. 

DMart: Again, Where do they get it? They get it from the same place as many of you get YOUR sense of superiority.

I like how you said this three times as if its profundity was going to sink in and have some kind of impact. 

Our imagined sense of superiority comes directly from YOUR unimagined sense of inferiority that manifests itself on these pages on a day to day basis. 

Now, I'm sure.  I do prefer this silliness over the hate thread that popped open recently. 

Which thread was that? I don't think I saw it. Or I don't remember it.

Shhh.. we have to make DeMartino believe this thread is dead,,,

Who?

waygook.org user, Dr. DeMartino

I was actually thinking I missed the usual rantings of Dmart after the toxicity of that Netflix series thread, but after this I'm not so sure. 

DMart: Again, Where do they get it? They get it from the same place as many of you get YOUR sense of superiority.

I like how you said this three times as if its profundity was going to sink in and have some kind of impact. 

Our imagined sense of superiority comes directly from YOUR unimagined sense of inferiority that manifests itself on these pages on a day to day basis. 

Now, I'm sure.  I do prefer this silliness over the hate thread that popped open recently. 

Which thread was that? I don't think I saw it. Or I don't remember it.

I was actually thinking I missed the usual rantings of Dmart after the toxicity of that Netflix series thread, but after this I'm not so sure. 

DMart: Again, Where do they get it? They get it from the same place as many of you get YOUR sense of superiority.

I like how you said this three times as if its profundity was going to sink in and have some kind of impact. 

Our imagined sense of superiority comes directly from YOUR unimagined sense of inferiority that manifests itself on these pages on a day to day basis. 

Now, I'm sure.  I do prefer this silliness over the hate thread that popped open recently. 

Which thread was that? I don't think I saw it. Or I don't remember it.

The one that got the angry at white people racist felloe all worked up and waygo0k jumping in on the action.  Much more in the truly angry behavior of the types that brought the café to a grinding halt in my opinion.  People who just wanted to attack and had no interest in any opposing thought.

DeMartino, more like D-minus. amirite?

Shhh.. we have to make DeMartino believe this thread is dead,,,

Who?

waygook.org user, Dr. DeMartino

                                                                                                                                                                
                                           

English class at my main school is in a smaller separate building and is undergoing renovations. Till the end of the year, I'm teaching in the main building. Good God, Almighty, how anyone can work in this building for more than a year is baffling.

You get rowdy students and then you get this school. I can pretty much hear the vocal-cords of the students splitting as they scream at ludicrous levels in the corridors. The teachers end up screaming louder than the students to keep it down and all this is cacophony is chorused by the sound of half the school practicing their recorder, in their classrooms. The jackhammers of the renovations are blasting away and during lunch, someone has the stupid idea of trying to relax the school by playing piano concertos over the intercom. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for listening to Fantasie Impromptu, but not through a speaker with so little headroom that anything above 2db ends up distorting and not at volumes loud enough to rattle windows.

Korea is one annoyingly loud ass country, fact!     

Shhh.. we have to make DeMartino believe this thread is dead,,,

Who?

waygook.org user, Dr. DeMartino

I thought he would be too busy polishing his extensive fictitious CV so he can apply for the Sarah Huck Sanders position.

I can not STAND riding the after school bus back home.

All the kids from the neighboring high school pile into this bus and are loud and rowdy as can be.

Not only that, the Korean lack of spatial awareness really kicks in. I have been hit in the face with a phone, and have had hair fly in my face on multiple occasions. Today alone, hair touched my face twice, a girl fell into me after losing balance (won't fault that one too much but still), and the kid behind me bumped my head while getting off the bus.

It's just 30 minutes of hell

DEEP SIGH