Heetch-trial in France: Liberty at the Crossroads

Today, the trial against the founders of Heetch will start in Paris. Heetch is a french startup that proposes a ride-share system, available only between 8PM and 6AM. Unlike taxis, the drivers are private persons, not professionals, and they may not earn more than 6000€, maintenance included, per year. Heetch’s founders will now be tried for illegally exercising the taxi profession. 

Let’s not lose time. Urban night transport between consenting adults will be legalized. The explanation is simple: customs precede legislation. Heetch exists because students have massively accepted to start going home in the cars of others. Legislation may confirm, invalidate, extend, suppress or replace this practice, but the practice pre-exists the legislation. What is at stake in this trial is knowing whether or not French law will finally adapt to the 21st century economy.

The passive consumer no longer exists. His consumption being more and more informed, the customer can favor products which match his lifestyle and ethics. This selection process is not necessarily conscious. Essentially, without restrictions, the free market allows for citizens, through their consumption, to build a common future. The uprising of a service depends therefore on creativity, innovation, and the interactions it creates in society.

Today, most people are a lot closer to brands to which they are attached than to institutions. This is true for Apple, whose CEO’s are welcomed as kings at their own product launches. It’s also true for the anonymous contributor to Wikipedia, who knows that he’s participating in a global collaboration. It’s astonishing with partygoers making “#TouchePasAMonHeetch” (“Hands off Heetch” a hashtag used to show support for Heetch) a national trend whenever their community is under attack.

Companies as well as customers benefit from this new, more participative relation. The former can improve their services rapidly and in conformity with the needs of their customers. The latter win the esteem of their community and the feeling that they have helped.

What’s the use of Heetch? Heetch is a French start-up that provides people with a service to bring them to their parties and bring them back home at night, in exchange for a participation fee. The fee is therefore exclusively used to finance the maintenance of the vehicle up to €6 000 per year, as well as insurance and Heetch in itself.

Heetch started from a simple observation: going home is an uphill battle for young night owls. While taxis don’t come, Uber tends to boost its fares, and UberPop has been banned, young people are left without many choices. Essentially, Uber focuses on passengers taking rides within city centres and taxis, or on dealing with their very own lawsuits. (Broke) night-clubbers and pub-crawlers who wish to go home therefore only have one solution: Heetch!

If, in spite of this extraordinary community and the cry for liberty of an entire generation, the legislator and the courts remain indifferent to this movement, there are other options for Heetch to be authorized:

• A utilitarian approach: legalizing Heetch can help French politicians make their poll numbers rise and/or portray themselves as being connected to young people.
• A safety first approach: the more students use Heetch to get home, the more likely it is for rates of night violence to drop. A few months before a presidential election and considering part of the French conservative movement’s obsession with security questions, this should be an issue.
• An urban approach: Heetch users live in the outskirts of cities in 70% of cases. The application equalizes access to the Parisian nightlife. After the state failed to expand Paris by incorporating its suburbs, we have transformed Paris into a suburb. Parties take place further and further away from the city centre which has become much too calm. Heetch is, in this perspective, lightyears ahead of the Parisian administration.

There are as many reasons to legalize Heetch as there are users. This generation only asks to rid itself of rules and practices inherited from another time. If the French legislator fails to understand this, then this generation will also be the first in history that will look for its freedom elsewhere. Indeed, the amount of French people living abroad has risen from 3% of the population to 4% of the population over the last 10 years.

Heetch is one of the many applications serving global communities in which ideals and new practices align. These start-ups search for a balance, and the law naturally has a role to structure them, but banning these new applications from existing leads to excluding France from what is becoming the new normal in the rest of the world.

Long live Heetch, and long live Liberty !

Thomas Rockenstrocly is the co-founder of the Free Startup Project and a Local Coordinator for European Students for Liberty. This is an edited version of an article that was originally published on Challenges.fr. It was translated by Victor Goury-Laffont, president of the classical liberal think tank “Think Libéral” at the University Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas.

This piece solely expresses the opinion of the author and not necessarily the organization as a whole. European Students For Liberty is committed to facilitating a broad dialogue for liberty, representing a variety of opinions. If you’re a student interested in presenting your perspective on this blog, please contact [email protected] for more information.