Bizcuits | Uberlicious Macau

Leanda Lee

Today is U-day: the day Uber, the app-based ride-sharing company, leaves Macau. As articulately presented by Gonçalo Maia in Wednesday’s opinion piece, Uber has long been hailed by Macau passengers as the answer to our taxi woes.
It is unfortunate that it ends this way; a business model deemed illegal and a police-force rigorously enforcing regulations such as interpreted by the authorities. The company ran afoul of the law, creating unwanted competition by highlighting weaknesses in our taxi industry and, probably the worst sin of them all, upsetting the status quo and threatening incumbent interests. Uber was the target of fines, reported driver and passenger harassment and a concerted process of expulsion. In the end, the MOP10 million bill spoke and the business model was ultimately made unfeasible through an institutional offensive.
While both sides argued over interpretation of the law to justify the (il)legality of the service, there had been little dialogue, until recently, about changing said law, as if these regulations were inviolate.
Most jurisdictions that Uber has entered have seen customers welcome it, the existing taxi industry threatened by the disruptive technology-driven model, and authorities placed in the unenviable position of navigating between the two.  On the day we were told that Uber was to leave Macau, my home state of Victoria announced that such services were to be legalised through a taxi licence buy-back scheme and new categories of licences for ride-sharing and hire cars. The playing field is to be levelled – that’s competition-
speak for looking after the customer.
Where the decision in Macau differs is in the choice of beneficiaries. This is why we are upset. The government chose the industry, the owners and other direct stakeholders of the taxi industry over the community and visitors. At this point some may see similarities with other not-so-successful foreign entrants: Viva Macau, Reolian, Macao Dragon, Jetstar Pacific, and a slew of SMEs squeezed by red tape, foreign-labour policy and landlord apologist inaction.
People spoke of common sense, logic and all other sensible reasons being ignored by this decision to maintain the status quo. This is not the first time our convenience and convictions have been affronted by bureaucratic decisions or apparent lack thereof. Neither is community action new. In 2006 I joined a concerned group of citizens who supported a presentation to the government of actual plans – trialled and proven in Leeds – to improve customer service within the tourism and taxi industries. It aimed to encourage drivers to have a sense of pride in Macau and their work, develop a professional persona and train them in key foreign languages. There were meetings with MGTO, but these foreign-based ideas for improvement fell on deaf ears. All this was when fishing was yet unheard of, aggressive driver behaviour rare, and passengers were genuinely thanked for the couple of patacas in change left as a tip. Our convenor shifted efforts to other ways of contributing to Macau and so we have Macau Trailhiker, even as the taxi industry has shifted from poor to appalling over the same 10 years.
Another reason we are upset is because just as Uber moves out, miraculously a new app moves in. Comparisons are meaningless. Uber worked because it is a system that encourages the transactional best in people. Borrowing from T.S. Eliot, Uber is the embodiment of “dreaming of systems so perfect so no one will need to be good.” Good behaviour can be designed.
Arguments for Uber have focused on those good behaviour outcomes. However, the Macau government will not be forced to defer to such demands from us little people. At best they may try to placate us with reference to compliance with the law but they will continue to move in their own way, in their own time. Uber challenged this authority. It needed to be put back in its box.
So, today we mourn the passing of another hope that Macau shows some normality, but the normal that it becomes is rarely the normal that we hope for or that our particular type of common sense suggests should prevail.