Should we complain about the price Uber sets for peak hours?

According to Forbes new, Indian’s Government recently enacted legislation that allows major cities to arbitrarily set limits how much ride service companies such as Uber can charge riders during peak times. As a customer of Uber, I experienced how high the price can be at peak time once it cost me eighty dollar just to take a 30 minutes drive from school to home. So Basically Indian Government is setting a price ceiling that make the customers don’t have to spend that much of money even at the peak hours. However Is this action made by indian government really a great thing to the whole economy?

According to the supply-demand economy, when the demand of uber goes up, the price should also go up to finally come to a equilibrium between the customer and producer. However, if the government set a price ceiling during the peak hours of the day that means the price will never come to a equilibrium but will result in demand surpasses the supply of the uber, which means that some people wouldn’t able to catch a ride during the peak hours. The only great thing about the peak hour price boost is that it keep the supply enough for the customers that require to take a uber at that time, when people who don’t really has to take a uber see the price, they will wait for the peak hour to pass away, but if the government set a price ceiling on that, many people who don’t really have to take a uber at that time will also call a uber, just to convenience them self which can be seen as a tragedy of commons where people take what they can take without regarding to other people’s need; However, as they take the uber those who really need to catch a uber will not be able to get one. According to the analyzation above we can conclude that with higher demand than supply of the uber it comes to a shortage, resulting in longer wait time and loss of those people that has to take a uber during that time.

However I think it’s not always a bad idea for the government to set a price ceiling to uber peak hour cost, the only problem to me is that the news says major cities can ARBITRARILY set limits, no matter where the government set the price ceiling as long as it’s lower than the equilibrium price it will always cause a shortage so if the government can set a price ceiling above the equilibrium, for example for a ride from school to home, make a fifty dollar price ceiling at peak hour, that will drive those people who don’t have to take the uber away but still make it affordable for people that has to take a uber. Wrong setting of a price ceiling could make a mess to the economy.

Voter registration or voter restriction?

Can your voice really be heard with all the obstacle in the registration progress?

 

Voter registration (or enrollment) is the requirement that a person otherwise eligible to vote register (or enroll) on an electoral roll before they will be entitled or permitted to vote. Such enrollment may be automatic or may require application being made by the eligible voter. Because the registration process actually set some limit to the citizens of United States of America, people started to question this process. “why you should have to register to vote. Can we make this easier?”

“why do we need those photo I.D. laws? Well, I was missing the point. The point was they wanted to restrict the right to vote,” said Rep. Keith Ellison. Voter ID laws in the United States requires a person to provide some form of official identification before they are permitted to register to vote. And some claim this to be obvious racist and intended to suppress minority voting. Basically using photo I.D. to determine weather if you can vote is nothing different than poll taxes, literacy tests fifty years ago. They are choosing those people they think to be able to vote, giving power to them only. the voting process suppose to emphasize the right of every single citizen in this country, giving them equal power to decide their own president. However, the photo I.D. law ripping the power of part of the voters away from them, restrict their right to vote, making this process unfair. Also not the photo I.D. law are restricting the voters, for those of who cannot read is also unable to vote simply because there is no way they can do the registration. Some might argue that those people aren’t suppose to vote because they can’t even read their vote would be irresponsible. However, although they are not able to read, but still they can hear the informations from the others and having discussion and great insight on the presidential election. shutting the down is also turning down a great proportion of voices in United States of America.

Normally, voter applications take 30 days to process once they have been received and approved. This is something that is clearly very complex and not convenience for the voters. Just like the college application needed three weeks to deliver your SAT and TOEFL scores, which does not even make sense, it truly limited some better test score to be able to be submitted. Some dates require to register for the voting in states, what if thirty days before the election day the person is still outstate doing work and other important things that not able to be back to register for it. It’s reducing some of the voice because of this inconvenience progress.

To sum up, the voter registration not only give us inconvenience on voting but restricting the power on part of the voters. I my opinion such bias process should be banished so we can have a better condition for voting.

Picture source:

http://news.hamlethub.com/swyonkers/politics/2159-st-day-for-votes-registration

http://officeofstrategicinfluence.com/issues.php?issue=voterids

https://tcf.org/content/commentary/voter-suppression-by-the-numbers/

 

Gun control? self control?

Insight on the gun control in America

Gun control has always been a critical argument in America, that it always has a deeply fraught relationship with violence. “Violence is out of control. Guns are a major cause.” With this long query in the existence of guns, the recent terrorism attack in Las Vegas that causes 58 people dead and 546 injured has intensify the issue with the gun control; some even argue that it’s time to repeal the second amendment. In my opinion Guns obviously have association with violence in United States of America, but the association between them does not implies the causation of death, therefore, banning guns won’t do any good to the situation we have now.

Handgun lying over a copy of the United States constitution and the American flag.

Firstly, Gun is way too widespread now in America, there are millions and millions of people that own a gun. Banning guns now will give a huge disadvantage to those people that do not have a gun yet. The action of banning guns won’t evaporate those that already exist, those criminal will still have the guns in their hands, and there will be no way those innocent people can protect themselves from the danger. Fear will spread all over America when people know they can’t protect themselves, and that’s defiantly going to cause critical problem to American society.

Are guns responsible for all the killing?

Also, Guns are never responsible for the killing, people do. They are never designed to represent violence, they are designed to maintain the peace. It is those violent people out there that are suppose to be controlled, even if they are restricted to use gun, there are still other ways they will do to express their anger to other people. Every criminal will choose the target that are weak. Banning the gun weaken those people which give the criminal a chance, instead of keeping the peace, this act will cause the true violence.

Last but not least, In my opinion guns have already became part of American culture. From the first settler to the wild west and now, Americans are bounded with guns. You will never see this wild and strong culture in China, this is something very unique for Americans. Like the food culture

One of Beijing local food even some Chinese can’t handle it’s flavor, made by beans that have gone mouldy.

 in China, some of them are very unhealthy, they might not even taste that good and we knew from the beginning, but we never banned them from our daily life, because that’s part of our culture. A country without it’s own culture is not a complete country. I think government should never take away something that is so meaningful to the history and culture of a country.

To sum up, the violence in America are clearly suppose to be controlled but not by restricting guns, this action will only unarmed those innocent people and leave them unprotected. Giving more violence education and giving more security regard to those public place will reduce the true problem that we are facing nowadays.

Is filter bubble the real problem

“Filter bubble” or “Self-satisfy bubble”

Recently, we watched Eli Parser’s TED talk about something he’d like to call the “filter bubble” in class. His aim was the irrationality of the existence of filter bubble on almost every social medias and searching engines (for example Google and Facebook). The automatic personalization of search and related technologies brings up the fact that users will only able to see those informations that supported their general viewpoints and rarely obtain any informations or ideas that contradicted theirs. After a while, users of these apps become isolated in their own cultural or ideological bubbles. Admittedly, the existence of the filter bubble might be real, but Eli Parser’s claim that indicates the “filter Bubble” the arch-criminal that narrows people’s mind is just different from the truth.

Google gives us different result though searching the same thing

 

There is a phenomenon similar to the “filter bubble” named “confirmation bias” reminded us by  Alexander Zwissler. This noun basically suggest that it is every human’s nature to seek those informations that confirms opinions we already believe to be true but dismissing any information that contradicts these “devotional” beliefs. Every human being tend to do so. With this tendency, one choose only those websites that please him while surfing on internet, make only the friends that shares the same idea as him, and go only the place that packed with the people on his side. These actions is also called the Self-selected personalization, in another word one choose how he want to think of his world. For example, a person who opposes immigration might want to avoid information that specifies how much a country has gained due to immigration, while paying a lot of attention to news stories about problems related to immigration.

The existence of filter bubble is actually based on the information that you are constantly searching. If you are the kind of people that are able to avoid this “potential confirmation bias” and listen, watch, talk about various sorts of things, the knowledge you obtain will be diversiform, and the search engine will not narrow your search result if you click at the websites that have entirely different idea. While admitting the existence of the “filter bubble”, Pre-selected personalization, we cannot ignore the fact about this “confirmation bias” as the self-selected personalization. Filter bubble might only exist on social media and searching engine. but the self-selected personalization exist in every human’s mind, and causing the filter bubble to reach the maximum disadvantage for them. You could say that filter bubble is removing and narrowing the information, but those are the information that people want to see, no matter if there is or is not a filter bubble, people will always tend to click on those website. In this way, filter bubble is not the thing that we should concern about, it can be consider as a program that is developed by people themselves. Even if you completely delete this program, there will always be new program coming out, with problem. If you can’t get rid of the true issue from the “programmer”, you will never get a good and clean program.

We only see those that favor our beliefs

 

To sum up, the existence of filter bubble is proved to be true by many experiments. Nonetheless, that shouldn’t be the problem to concern if we want to solve the problem of getting single sided information. One can only be clear when he step outside of his own bubble, look at every thing from the each sides with all sorts of information obtained. What we should avoid isn’t the little program called “filter bubble”, but the “Self-satisfy bubble” that created by the programer, ourself.