4 ms·

I don't think it's a matter of good or evil. It's that the decision making process for most executives is amoral. The question is not "is this good or evil?", i

by imgabe 11y ago

I don't think it's a matter of good or evil. It's that the decision making process for most executives is amoral. The question is not "is this good or evil?", it's "Does this help the company, or harm the company?". Executives have a duty to do things that help the company and avoid doing things that harm the company. Sometimes pursuing that leads to decisions that appear "evil" in the bigger picture, but when many people are depending on you for their livelihoods, letting the company fail and leaving them unemployed may also appear evil from that perspective. I doubt it's ever as black and white as the media likes to paint it.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
I will agree that the decision making process for most executives is pretty amoral - but not completely, they are human beings with conscience, after all. Of course, as the company gets bigger and its management structures grow both in people and in layers of abstraction separating them from the bottom line, decisions become dominated by non-human forces (i.e. incentive structures). But we're not talking about IBM or Oracle here. We're talking about (what was just recently) a taxi startup. Choosing their business model to be throwing VC money at lawyers to shield them from consequences of breaking the law around the world wasn't a decision made on a shareholder meeting on the top floor of a skyscraper. The pattern of behaviour, both at the business model level and more personal one stretches years back and suggests it's not the market pressures, but the company DNA itself that makes Uber act in the way they do. Keep in mind that not even a year ago, the media story was "Uber the knight in white armour against the old, evil goblins of the Taxi Mafia". The industry may in fact be goblins, but Uber turned out to be Sauron himself.
- imgabe 11y ago
  If you consider it a moral imperative to honor a regulatory monopoly granted to certain members of an industry, then I guess it would be immoral for Uber to do what they're doing. Personally, I consider laws and morals to be two separate things.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Consider that laws, be them right or wrong, are what keeps society together. Those particular laws seem to be outdated and it's good that someone challenged them. But there are many ways and motivations to do it, and Uber is doing it in a very bad way for very bad reasons. It worries me they're so loved, because the mindset they promote is "just fuck the law". It's not the example we want every new startup to follow - because as you point out, companies tend to grow amoral, and the law is the only thing that keeps them from hurting people for profit. Also, if you look outside the US, we had Uber-like companies in Europe for some years. The process of destroying taxi monopoly was way under way here. It was going slowly, but in a way that didn't threaten the social order.
    - imgabe 11y ago
      I think that's backwards. We had society first, then we had laws. Laws exist to serve society, not the other way around. When a law stops being useful to society, we get rid of it. There's absolutely no evidence to suggest that disregarding one law that's considered unjust implies someone is going to disregard ALL laws. Rosa Parks didn't immediately decide to start murdering and raping people after she sat in the front of the bus. Uber does not promote "fuck the law". They promote "fuck this one particular law that sucks for everybody except a few who benefit from it". Maybe we could have had a long, drawn out process where the taxi system was slowly dismantled over the course of several decades, but who benefits from that? Not the customers who are stuck paying for overpriced, inefficient taxi service. Not the many drivers who are able to get flexible part-time work.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        > We had society first, then we had laws. Laws exist to serve society, not the other way around. Laws are extensions of social customs that happen when society grows beyond a certain size (think few dozen - hundreds of people). The things Uber does break are against social customs as well. > When a law stops being useful to society, we get rid of it. Yes, but the way we usually do it is not by someone unilaterally deciding they don't like it and breaking it, while raising enough money to keep its enforcement at bay. > They promote "fuck this one particular law that sucks for everybody except a few who benefit from it". They break this particular law (and a set of others, like tax laws, insurance laws, etc., as well as ideas of being decent and not threatening people who disagree with you - ideas that are sort of important in a civilized society) because that's the area they're doing business in. But other companies enlightened by their example will be breaking other laws. Who knows, maybe next SV-backed startup decides to ignore FDA? Because who cares about those "clinical trials", they're only slowing progress down. And the next one after that will ignore biosafety. Would you like to live in that world? > Maybe we could have had a long, drawn out process where the taxi system was slowly dismantled over the course of several decades, but who benefits from that? Not the customers who are stuck paying for overpriced, inefficient taxi service. Not the many drivers who are able to get flexible part-time work. We had that in Europe before Uber, and it was going fine. As a customer, I benefited from local company that offered pay-for-distance drive-by-GPS service stirring up the taxi market. They had some legal battles, there was a law adjustment, and the local market improved (the company is still around, and I'm still their happy customer). Rinse and repeat. That's how you do the progress of civilization.

by imgabe 11y ago

TeMPOraL 11y ago

I will agree that the decision making process for most executives is pretty amoral - but not completely, they are human beings with conscience, after all. Of course, as the company gets bigger and its management structures grow both in people and in layers of abstraction separating them from the bottom line, decisions become dominated by non-human forces (i.e. incentive structures). But we're not talking about IBM or Oracle here. We're talking about (what was just recently) a taxi startup. Choosing their business model to be throwing VC money at lawyers to shield them from consequences of breaking the law around the world wasn't a decision made on a shareholder meeting on the top floor of a skyscraper. The pattern of behaviour, both at the business model level and more personal one stretches years back and suggests it's not the market pressures, but the company DNA itself that makes Uber act in the way they do. Keep in mind that not even a year ago, the media story was "Uber the knight in white armour against the old, evil goblins of the Taxi Mafia". The industry may in fact be goblins, but Uber turned out to be Sauron himself.

imgabe 11y ago
If you consider it a moral imperative to honor a regulatory monopoly granted to certain members of an industry, then I guess it would be immoral for Uber to do what they're doing. Personally, I consider laws and morals to be two separate things.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Consider that laws, be them right or wrong, are what keeps society together. Those particular laws seem to be outdated and it's good that someone challenged them. But there are many ways and motivations to do it, and Uber is doing it in a very bad way for very bad reasons. It worries me they're so loved, because the mindset they promote is "just fuck the law". It's not the example we want every new startup to follow - because as you point out, companies tend to grow amoral, and the law is the only thing that keeps them from hurting people for profit. Also, if you look outside the US, we had Uber-like companies in Europe for some years. The process of destroying taxi monopoly was way under way here. It was going slowly, but in a way that didn't threaten the social order.
  - imgabe 11y ago
    I think that's backwards. We had society first, then we had laws. Laws exist to serve society, not the other way around. When a law stops being useful to society, we get rid of it. There's absolutely no evidence to suggest that disregarding one law that's considered unjust implies someone is going to disregard ALL laws. Rosa Parks didn't immediately decide to start murdering and raping people after she sat in the front of the bus. Uber does not promote "fuck the law". They promote "fuck this one particular law that sucks for everybody except a few who benefit from it". Maybe we could have had a long, drawn out process where the taxi system was slowly dismantled over the course of several decades, but who benefits from that? Not the customers who are stuck paying for overpriced, inefficient taxi service. Not the many drivers who are able to get flexible part-time work.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      > We had society first, then we had laws. Laws exist to serve society, not the other way around. Laws are extensions of social customs that happen when society grows beyond a certain size (think few dozen - hundreds of people). The things Uber does break are against social customs as well. > When a law stops being useful to society, we get rid of it. Yes, but the way we usually do it is not by someone unilaterally deciding they don't like it and breaking it, while raising enough money to keep its enforcement at bay. > They promote "fuck this one particular law that sucks for everybody except a few who benefit from it". They break this particular law (and a set of others, like tax laws, insurance laws, etc., as well as ideas of being decent and not threatening people who disagree with you - ideas that are sort of important in a civilized society) because that's the area they're doing business in. But other companies enlightened by their example will be breaking other laws. Who knows, maybe next SV-backed startup decides to ignore FDA? Because who cares about those "clinical trials", they're only slowing progress down. And the next one after that will ignore biosafety. Would you like to live in that world? > Maybe we could have had a long, drawn out process where the taxi system was slowly dismantled over the course of several decades, but who benefits from that? Not the customers who are stuck paying for overpriced, inefficient taxi service. Not the many drivers who are able to get flexible part-time work. We had that in Europe before Uber, and it was going fine. As a customer, I benefited from local company that offered pay-for-distance drive-by-GPS service stirring up the taxi market. They had some legal battles, there was a law adjustment, and the local market improved (the company is still around, and I'm still their happy customer). Rinse and repeat. That's how you do the progress of civilization.