Trip Refusal

Why do most taxi drivers try to pick and chose their jobs/fares/trips?

• Situation 1:
  

  You are walking down the street and find a 5 dollar bill, right beside this is a 50 dollar bill. You are allowed to pick up only one bill. Upon picking up a 5 dollar bill you walk at least 2 blocks, upon picking up a 50 dollar bill you leave town and return in 40 minutes. Which bill do you pick up?

  In a capitalistic society, you pick up the 50 dollar bill when there are very few bills around, and the 5 dollar bill when they hugely outnumber the 50 dollar bills (Situation 3).

  Everyone does it, not just the taxi driver.

• Situation 2:
  

  You are walking down the street and come across a stack of bills, you are only allowed to take the first bill, there are others behind you that also know of this rule and await their turn. You could try and jostle the bills if there was no line behind you, and the bills were accomodating. But once everyone knows the rules, this may become hard to do.

  This situation is a controlled lineup of customers and taxis. There maybe some unfairness in this system to the taxi driver, which we will address presently.

• Situation 3:
  

  Now consider a situation where you have a stack of bills just like in Situation 2, only that there are way more 5 dollar bills than 50 dollar bills. 50 dollar bills can be conterfiet.

  • One tends to try and pick up as many 5 dollar bills as possible.
  • One tends to make up strange excuses not to pick up 50 dollar bills, as this is not profitable at the moment.

  As things turn out, it is more profitable to pick up 5 dollar bills, at certain times of the day! (or night)

• Situation 4:
  This is the worst case. Upon picking up some bills the return time is indefinite. So one may pick up a 20 dollar bill that has a return time of 1 1/2 hour. One may pick up a 10 dollar bill that has a return time of 6 hours.

Situation 1 is a free for all. Something like a barbaric society. The bills are scattered because they have not been organized. They are not organized, because they are trying to get ahead of each other without regard to civic sense. How does one expect organization in the bill picker when the bills itself are not united.

Situation 2 is ideal, fair to all. But only when bill pickers are more than bills (bill-pickers > bills).

Situation 3 can and does happen. The 50 dollar bill knows the odds, and should be prepared to pay more for service, as is the case in most Cities. There is no point being a communist in trying to curtail the bill picker with unfair regulations.

Situation 4 is the unexpected case which from past experience spells danger. No taxi driver with any sense wants to get into this willingly.