Blog | Uber drivers shouldn’t need business license in ‘freedom-loving’ Myrtle Beach
Why can’t I simply catch a ride with someone and pay him or her a few bucks for the service without Myrtle Beach or South Carolina officials getting involved?
That’s the heart of the question surrounding the ever controversial Uber car service. In the latest development, an Uber driver was cited for the second time for the crime of ... giving someone a ride for a small, pre-arranged fee:
An officer asked one of the passengers about his relationship with the driver, and the passenger said he didn’t know the driver and that he used an Uber application to get a ride, police said.
When police told the driver what the passenger said, the driver said he was “getting ready” to tell police that he “lied” and didn’t really know the passengers, according to the report.
The driver was given a ticket for operating without a business license, and police called a taxi to pick up the passengers.
For that, Myrtle Beach police had to be dispatched, and the dastardly criminal initially lied to them about his actions before relenting and saying, “Why yes, I am that horrible person who wants to make a few bucks by taking a couple of people from the airport to their destination because they’d rather get in my vehicle than a taxi cab.”
This is the kind of issue that really illustrates who is and who isn’t for the free market. And in this case, count Myrtle Beach City Council against “freedom.”
I get the push for business licenses on a technical basis. But if we are really honest, this is primarily because taxi cab owners are demanding it.
Think about it. If I decide to get in your private car - for whatever reason, for a fee or not - you and I are assuming responsibility. If there is an accident and I’m hurt, that’s why we have insurance and health care plans. And if we don’t have those things, we will have to figure out what to do.
How is that different from stepping into an Uber car to hitch a ride to Walmart and back?
Over the years, there have been not a few times I’ve given a person a ride, and sometimes they paid me a few bucks, and sometimes I turned down their offer.
Why must the state or city get in the middle of that kind of transaction?
Uber, the business, should have a business license - because it is an actual business. Fine. But let’s not pretend that pursuing each individual Uber driver this way is necessary, or even right.
Newsflash: Industries evolve, and traditional business models are upended all the time. Case in point is this blog post. No longer do daily newspapers have a near monolopy in their area through a paper product alone, and The Sun News - and every other daily paper throughout the country, and world even - have to adjust to the new reality presented by the Internet in the same way video rental places and others had to as well, or die.
That’s reality. That’s free enterprise. Demanding that Uber operate like traditional taxi companies would be akin to forcing start-up Myrtle Beach area blogs to operate like traditional daily newspapers. That would be wrong. And so is this.
It’s time for cab companies to adjust, not squash a new way of doing business to protect them.
This story was originally published March 19, 2015 at 11:33 AM with the headline "Blog | Uber drivers shouldn’t need business license in ‘freedom-loving’ Myrtle Beach."