for SF Mayor
The public's welfare deserves a dependable, safe option when it comes to taxi services and temporary access to the occasional spare room in San Franciscans' homes.
Leon Phat will offer a substantial bounty--say $30,000--for the creation of an Uber, Lyft, or similar type platform by which the public can connect with small business taxi entrepreneurs. It might be called SF Go, and because it would operate without the profit motive, but instead operate as a regulated public utility, it could charge customers less than Uber or Lyft for the same service, while at the same time using its charges to
1) maintain the system, 2) document drivers and riders, ensuring greater security for both parties, and 3) allow drivers to bump their wages higher than Uber or Lyft permit!
The same principle could be applied in connecting short-term rental parties. A public-service platform operating like AirBnB, but functioning without the profit motive could, by lowering the user fee, 1) maintain the system, 2) document rentiers and renters to provide security, and 3) permit rentiers to receive a slightly higher net rent because of a lower user fee than AirBnB assesses.
Of course, were the full Community Benefit District mechanism Leon Phat proposes be implemented, gone to public revenue would be most of the phat that encourages master lease holders to sublet their space to cash in on San Francisco's high land values!
In fact, see how socializing land rent would compel land owners to optimize the use of their land, meaning not hold land underused/underbuilt on. After all, if the land owner doesn't keep any of San Francisco's phat land values, he'll not keep space poorly put-to-purpose.
Copyright 2010 Leion Phat for SF Supervisor. All rights reserved.