I kinda blame the Police. If I park my personal car, bike, bicycle, whatever, I will receive a ticket.
Let’s just say its not impossible to crack the firmware on many of these.
hey, at least there was an attempt to keep them out of the middle of the sidewalk. (Don’t get me wrong, people leaving these things all over the place makes me crazy. We’ve got the damn electric scooters strewn around, too.)
I never really hear people say that the free market will solve everything. Market failures are a thing and a dominant part of welfare economics.
It’s the libertarians and retails investors, who root for the ruthless billionaire-owned businesses they invested in, who say that.
100 people took an e-scooter or e-bike somewhere, and will probably take them back homeward ince the even is over, what’s the problem? Should there be another parking lot instead?
What’s the problem? There was an event, people didn’t use a car. Should they have bought their own Trottinet?
Edit: just so you know: this is a public renting service and the devices are tracked and picked up by employees.
Living in a city- i see this (and what makes this a funny meme) is that it shows the “free market” “solving” a problem by making private profit from a public space. The lime scooters are left all over the place, and these companies do not pick them up every day. They clog side walks, roads, bike racks, etc.
Its so bad that some cities (like the one im in) is negotiating contracts with providers to make them develop some infrastructure to keep their private property that they are profiting off of out of spaces that are public use.
I get its better to use less cars, i ride a bicycle, but there’s a reason people dont leave their personal bikes in the middle of the sidewalk, that motivation isnt there for the scooters. So it creates a “unique form of corporate litter” as I’ve heard others say.
Its a free market solution that companies profit off of by externalizing the cost of storing their shit in public spaces for free - such as what is shown in the meme photo. If you did that with something else then your car would get a ticket or someone would fuck with your bike for being an asshole.
I’m always amused when people get enraged by scooters or bikes on the sidewalk but see nothing wrong in giving over the vast majority of public spaces to cars. Maybe your priorities might be ever so slightly askew here, brother/sister/other kind of sibling.
Here’s the thing, sidewalks have a speed limit to ensure the safety of everyone on them. Scooters or bikes can go faster, yet get to share that space. Me being mad at these things on sidewalks is me being mad at the city planers not giving them their own lane. Take it from the cars, give them a portal and make it in another dimension, idgaf, get them to a safe speed or away from people walking at 5kmh.
i agree but its worth it to take a car off the road. but yeah we should have speed limits and also the kids who go the wrong way on these things down one way streets should get fined or something
The free market will solve this problem and introduce three new problems that the free market will solve, contributing to the economy and growth. Forever.
Until someone unlocks the enshittification meta, in which we package worse problems as solutions to be sold.
Stock goes brrrrrr
I see this at events and festivals in our town all the time and I think it’s a massive win. Every scooter you see is likely one less car clogging up our streets or taking up a parking spot. Plus, a lot of these riders are out-of-towners bringing business to our local shops and helping the economy. It’s a shame there are so many NIMBYs hating on them when the trade-off is clearly better for the town’s bottom line. I’ll take a sidewalk with a few scooters over a gridlocked street any day. Plus they are super fun to ride.
The scooters that clog up the sidewalks so people can’t use them?
I ride a motorcycle, and the amount of times I’ve had some fucking moron on a scooter do something erratic and almost cause a crash is way more than cars.
These things take up common spaces for people.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE CARS?!? WON’T ANYBODY THINK OF THE POOR CARS?!?
I’ll bet it’s possible to “borrow” one, gut the electronics, and repurpose it.
In YouTube, Berm Peak channel folks bought an e-bike from a bankrupt app company, and went on to replace the control unit (plus sensors and the panel). Doable but not painless. Folks in the comments pointed out that a lot of the control units are reprogrammable, though - swap the SIM card and send new settings over SMS.
Edit: Here’s the video
That’s a good point. Is it even possible to vandalize or steal something That’s been dumped/abandoned on public grounds?
I suppose it depends on the local laws.
In Germany this went reaaaallly awesome. First, some years back we had this with the shit bikes and it turned out to be a burden on all and there are massive bike dumps in China.
Then a while later we allow the same with scooters.
And as usual, some people with shit asshole behavior messing it up for everyone.
The other thing I do not get in my head is using public space for business. If I can’t just do that companies should be forbidden too.
In theory they get a city license and so could you… In theory.
I’m surprised there hasn’t been an initiative to get all the DHL/Amazon/etc. pick-up boxes to all share one station.
I think that’s just the Post Office, with extra steps.
That would mean prioritising the public interest over the profits of large corporations. We don’t do that here. And if you think that better organisation would benefit everybody, including the corporations, you’re a filthy communist.
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Agree with your point, but cars are far worse…
False dichotomy. We can invest in public transit or even public bike/scooter rentals without allowing free reign for a private company to make profits. So we can all say “fuck cars” while simultaneously criticizing this e-waste as well.
True
We can invest in public transit or even public bike/scooter rentals without allowing free reign for a private company to make profits
can we though?
We could, if not capitalism and free market
Agreed that cars are worse. If they were used primarily in bike lanes or on roads, I might believe they’re displacing cars. As it is, they’re primarily operated on sidewalks, effectively displacing pedestrian traffic and public transportation.
They’re still displacing cars though? Most times I’ve used one, the alternative would have been taking my car, or a ride hailing app. I’m not taking one instead of a leisurely stroll, I’m taking one to get somewhere in a reasonable amount of time. Which walking was never going to accomplish.
Yeah thats so true
Thanks for your business. We’ll just leave these externalities here for you to enjoy.
Unless they’re parked legally I just push them over, away from the sidewalk. And someone else has started as well! They do a decent job of coming to get them and put them somewhere allowed, all in a row. But the app requires you to take geostamped photos so they have proof their riders are just putting them in the middle of the sidewalk and walking away, and they don’t care.
Flipside, they’re hella nice to grab to work if my car is down or if it’s just nice, and you could techically get across my entire city on them (stopping to swap I assume) so there’s a bit of democratization about them, but you’d be dumb to try that.
They should be free if they’re going to be letting them leave tomorrow’s e-waste on our sidewalks. Maybe we could all pay for them together somehow idk
they find so many of these in our river
