So many different views from so many different people on the issue of the taxi strike. Let me start with Athens News whose reporting is usually very good.
Occasionally Athens News comes out with an article that misses the point so completely I am complelled to take it apart piece by piece.
THE rolling strike by taxi drivers and the damage it is inflicting on the Greek economy is yet another example of how the country shoots itself in the foot when individual groups put their interests above the common good. – This is a statement that could have come direct from Papandreou himself. Individual groups put their interests ahead of the common good. Exactly how is the common good defined by the author and who judges as to whether the definition is correct and fair? As I have said consistently throughout the taxi driver strike it is what public opinion believes is right is what counts.
About putting your own interests above those of the common good. Is the author saying that treating taxi drivers fairly is against the common good? Personally I would say whenever the government treats a group of people unfairly they treat me unfairly. Whenever the government robs one of my fellow man of their rights they also rob me of my rights.
Images of furious cabbies clashing with riot police and tourists having to drag their luggage through the streets in the scorching heat to reach their ferry will do little to help Greece’s already tarnished image abroad. – Of course the author is right so why has the government put people in this position, during the peak holiday season? Is it incompetence or is the government actually deliberately trying to destroy the country?
Whether or not the cabbies are right, it really is irrelevant at this moment in time. Greece is in desperate need of revenue and tourism is a major earner, accounting for up to a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product. – I can not think of a more totalitarian/communist statement than this. It doesn’t matter if the taxi drivers are correct? It is the only thing that matters!
But it is okay to carry on normally cause the state needs the money. So where is the line drawn? Maybe people should work for free to help the state? Please, is this article about Greece or Red China?
Instead of attacking the taxi drivers you have to question the motives of the politicians to deregulate this industry at this time of the year. Is it so Greeks like the author can attack the cabbies in the name of the public good. Because the government expected a strike, so to get as much public favour as possible they used the timing to show taxi drivers “harming” Greeks by effecting tourists. Please. The state is capable of anything in Greece.
Like I have said in previous articles, the author should put himself in the shoes of the taxi drivers. For example, the author’s apartment. Say it cost 200,000Euro. Say the government built apartments in his area and made them available to the public for 100,000Euro so immediately devalued the price of his house by half. I wonder what his reaction would be?
Would it matter that the government had cost him 100,000Euro? Would he be bothered? At the end of the day the government actions are in the “public good”. Please, do me a favour.
By striking at the height of the tourist season and causing major disruptions at airports and seaports, taxi drivers are basically blackmailing the government – and society for that matter – that, if their demands are not met, they will bring the country to its knees. – Again are the government so stupid they could not see the potential consequences? Or if they could see the consequences then they have done it on purpose. To deregulate during the peak holiday season.
The taxi trade is not the only one that is suffering under the terms of Greece’s bailout. And, if anything, taxi drivers cannot expect the moral support of the rest of society when, for years, they have flouted rules and regulations while their union leaders turned a blind eye. So just because taxi drivers are not the only ones suffering it is okay for them to suffer. It is this kind of shallow, kindergarten level journalism that is completely out of it’s depth when real people’s livelihoods are at stake.
Let’s get past the slave mentality, please. Just because a hundred people have been shot by the state does not make it okay that the author is also shot by the state. Am I being redundant?
About flouting the rules. What rules? Given the monumental beaucracy that is alleged to exist in Greece and the IMF/EU/World Bank pressure to cut the beaucracy the actions of the taxi drivers “flouting” the rules should surely be held up as a beacon of what a true free society with minimal government intervention is about.
While in their defence the taxi drivers will say that liberalisation of the trade will render their licences – said to exchange for tens of thousands of euros on the market – worthless, there has been little evidence over the years of the profession seeking to protect their investment by enforcing minimum standards. And now the author wants to get into specifics. He says “protect their investment by enforing minimum standards” I am not sure what he is talking about here but I can tell you this, the taxi drivers, like any other proffession regulated by the state, is vulnerable to the whims of central government, regardless of their actions. And given the fact that the Greek government has decided to hand over control of the bail out plan to foreigners shows that is wouldn’t matter if Greece had the best taxi service in the world.
There have been far too many cases of tourists and locals being ripped off by taxi drivers, whose general attitude has earned them derogatory nicknames such as tarifes, in reference to their tariff antics, and the “yellow peril”. – Please, this happens all over the World. If people want to be sure they dont get ripped off, ask for the price in advance, and if they want, ask more than one cab so they can understand the market price.
Drivers routinely double up on passengers without passing on the benefit to passengers and those cabbies who smoke flagrantly disregard the ban. Unfortunately, physical assaults by cabbies on passengers are not unknown. Given the completely draconian road tax that is inflicted on the popualtion of Greece regardless of income, in the name of saving the environment, Greek taxi drivers should be paraded before the world as the most environmentally friendly form of public transport available anywhere. Not to mention the most comfortable. Again the author complains that taxi drivers are not obeying regulations, maybe he should be questioning why someone like Papandreou thinks he knows what is best for taxi industry. Surely the answer is for the government to stay out of it and let the customers decide which taxi they use. But, no, I forgot, the government has taken the choice away from people…..
The answer is less government, not more.
About the assault. I would like to see the statisitics before I make comment.
And the Pièce de résistance of the article The taxi union says it will not back down until it gets what it wants. It’s up to the government to stop them with all the power the law allows. The country’s fortunes cannot be at the mercy of disgruntled cab drivers, and it’s the government’s responsibility to ensure this is not the case.
If it doesn’t intervene soon, the Greek economy will have suffered yet another blow.
Cannot be at the mercy of disgruntled taxi drivers? In other words Greece cannot be at the mercy of Greek citizens. Okay, who can it be at the mercy of? The International Banking Cartel is maybe more preferable to the author?
And as for the “government’s responsibility”. I am sure the author has not got a clue about the workings of his own country. It is not the government’s responsibility, unless of course he is openly wanting to live in a totalitarian society. Only the courts are responsible for enforcing the law. And ultimately the people are the judge of what consititutes breaking the law. Like it or not. If the Greek public support the taxi drivers, which I believe they should 100%, the taxi drviers cannot be convicted.
Calling for government intervention is absurd and danegerous.
ekathimerini.com has reported that Supreme Court prosecutor Yiannis Tentes on Friday to order the on-the-spot arrest of taxi drivers who obstruct roads, ports or airports As I have said in other articles and many times in this article, “The State” is trying to ignore the reality of the situation. If the Greek people support the taxi drivers and their actions then they cannot be convicted and more than that, the taxpayers money should not be wasted by employing the time of these lawyers on a case that is against the public interest.
And I find it hard to believe that the state wants to take taxi drivers to a jury trail. Where the taxi drivers can spell out exactly what what the effects are of the government action. Could the state be so stupid to take it this far?
I suppose it is possible but you have to anticipate a massively expensive, taxpayer funded propaganda campaign against the taxi drivers before it would get this far.
Already apparently hysterical women are being allowed on state funded TV networks claiming that their husbands have been assualted by taxi drivers. How low can the government take the issue?
There is a golden oppurtunity on Tuesday for the indignants in Syntagma Square to show their solidarity with other victimised section of the Greek population, the taxi drivers. If the Indignants can see past their traditional prejudices this protest really could mark a sea change in interest of the Greek people.
Let us be honest here. Taxi drivers are not the most loved group of proffessionals in Greece. But if people can see past these superficial differences and understand that basically the cause of the indignants and the cause of the taxi drviers has the same root cause.
The incompetence of government, the destructiveness of government, the power greed of government and the utter contempt that the Greek government shows it citizens has brought Greece to the brink of bankruptcy. I think both parties can agree on the root cause and this is why I believe they should be united.
Ekathimerini carried another excellent article re the taxi strike. Well at least the first half of the article was excellent. The second half degenerated into communistic, centrally controlled solutions. It is ironic that socialists by their nature despise big business and believe the state needs to control businesses from getting to big.
Yet the very aspects of “capitalism” they claim to hate is nurtured by the very factors that they believe are correct. ie the centralisation of power. Without again wanting to sound redunant when you concentrate power you make it easier and more likely that the people in power will be corrupted and or initmadated. By putting power in the hands of the people, corruption becomes an impossibility. So the answer the journailst puts foroward of regulation of the taxi industry will perpetuate corruption because there will be people who exist who are in a position to manipulate the market.
I wonder if the journalist has the same feeling towards to the food retail market? Does he believe that the number of shops should be limited? Or how about TVs? Should the number of TV manufacturers be limited? The answer for the Greek taxi industry is 100% complete liberlisation, with unlimited licenses. But this cannot be brought in overnight like the PASOK government is trying to do. Like it or not, the Greek state has to acknolwedge that they have created a market for something which is extremely valuable. It is immoral for them to destroy this market over night. The taxi industry needs to be gradually deregulated over a period of years.
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