[Avodah] Hasagat Gevul of a bus company
T613K at aol.com
T613K at aol.com
Tue Jan 8 06:35:30 PST 2013
From: Arie Folger <afolger at aishdas.org>
>> Dear Ovedim,
Pitchei Choshen Geneiva veOnaah pg. 269 wonders whether a cabbie may
solicit customers from a bus stop. Is it like recruiting customers from a
competitor's store, which is prohibited? One argument in favor of allowing
it - which, in my opinion, is unconvincing - is that bus stops are not like
store, but merely convenient place markers for customers to know where they
can flag a bus.
However, I can two other possible distinctions that might make the practice
permissible, though I am unsure.
1) the product taxi ride and the product bus ride are fundamentally
different services....<<
Kol tuv,
--
Arie Folger,
>>>>>
This reminds me of an old joke which may be relevant. A man comes home
from work all red-faced and out of breath and his wife says, "What
happened?!" He says, "I decided to save two dollars so instead of taking the bus, I
ran home behind the bus." "You idiot!" she replies. "You should have run
home behind a taxi, you could have saved TEN dollars!"
If someone came into a store and offered customers similar products for
much less money, he could be said to be undercutting the shopkeeper. But if
he offered a different product, and much more expensive at that, how is that
undercutting his competitor?
Related to this question of why taxis are so much more expensive than
buses, well, I don't know if buses in Israel are privately owned and operated
for profit, but here in Miami buses are run by the government and the fare
doesn't come close to paying for the cost of the transportation, which is
heavily subsidized by the taxpayers. Taxis, in contrast, are private
businesses. Perhaps someone here can tell me if hasagas gevul applies to
providing a for-profit alternative to a government service?
I remember the famous story of the Chofetz Chaim, who supposedly tore up a
postage stamp when he gave a letter to someone to deliver personally -- so
that the government wouldn't lose the money it was "owed." I never
understood that story because if you didn't use the government's service, why
should you have to pay the government anyway? Is sending a letter with a
friend some kind of hasagas gevul issue vis-a-vis the United States postal
service? I don't see it.
OK but then you will say the issue isn't using a taxi instead of a bus,
it's the taxi driver using the bus stop -- built and operated by the
government -- for his own private use. Well OK suppose I told my friend, "I have a
letter for you to take to Israel, meet me at the post office and I'll give
it to you." Hasagas gevul? Or suppose I went up and down the line of
people waiting at the post office and said to them, "I can deliver that letter
for you at five times the price the post office is charging, but it will
get there quicker." Hm I think I see...yes, it might be a problem.
But the question was framed as "whether a cabbie may solicit customers from
a bus stop. Is it like recruiting customers from a competitor's store,
which is prohibited?" Which implies that a private business (a taxi vs a bus
or UPS vs the post office) can in any sense be considered competition to a
public taxpayer-paid service. But can it?
If I am out walking and get tired, I can't trespass on someone else's
property and go sit on their lawn chair. But I can sit and rest at a bus stop.
Isn't the bus stop public property to be used however the public wants to
use it?
--Toby Katz
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