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This is incredibly awful, but not particularly surprising. One of Paul Graham's most read essays is about the qualities that YC looks for in founders (http://p

by Fede_V 10y ago

This is incredibly awful, but not particularly surprising. One of Paul Graham's most read essays is about the qualities that YC looks for in founders (http://paulgraham.com/founders.html http://paulgraham.com/founders.html). In that essay, he specifically discusses 'Naughtiness' as a positive quality, and how it's one of the most important features of potential founders. The problem is that being clever and hacking around a system for curiosity is governed by a very different set of incentives than being clever and hacking for profit. Feynmann's safecracking at Los Alomos was done to complain about an absurd system and to play pranks on his colleagues, not to enrich himself. Being willing to break dumb rules to show how pointless they are is an excellent public service. Breaking rules that stand in the way of your profit is completely different, and it's important to call it out.

JoshTriplett 10y ago
> Being willing to break dumb rules to show how pointless they are is an excellent public service. Breaking rules that stand in the way of your profit is completely different, and it's important to call it out. Depends on whether you view this particular detail as part of providing a service people want (and thus want to pay for), or whether you view it as exclusively in the service of profit (whether it benefits people or not). Ignoring regulations so you can make money by hurting people would be evil. Ignoring regulations so you can help people by providing a service they want (whether you make money doing so or not) is entirely different, and far more reasonable. (It's still a dangerous road to go down, but not universally wrong.) I've seen what the attempts at "local", "authorized" alternatives look like; they're almost all terrible, and even the ones that work half as well as Lyft or Uber suffer from being non-universal (you need a different service for each location). Look at the various places actually fixing their broken taxi regulations; would they have even considered doing so if the far better alternatives had asked nicely before developing a huge base of interested customers who see how much better the alternative works? As you said, "break dumb rules to show how pointless they are" can serve as the first step in fixing them. (For the sake of clarity: Uber has done some truly and unambiguously awful things. This particular story just doesn't seem like one of them.)
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  This is one of the very important ways in which dumb rules get fixed. Like, the prohibition on cannabis wouldn't have the support it does if we were really good at enforcing it - people need the experience with not-X to decide on supporting that policy.
- artur_makly 10y ago
  "Ignoring regulations so you can help people by providing a service they want (whether you make money doing so or not) is entirely different, and far more reasonable. "thats what Pablo Escobar probably thought at some point too -:)
- matt4077 10y ago
  There's a system set up to determine what rules are necessary, and some VC-funded bro isn't in a position to second-guess them (beyond his power at the polling booth). Your standard seems to be that a service should be legal if two or more people agree on a contract("providing a service people want and thus want to pay for"). But by that standard, there isn't a single regulation that is necessary. Sell a car without seatbelts? Sure – all fine if you can find people to buy it. Migraine treatment with low-dose cyanide? Some people will try it. Regulations are attempts to (a) protect third parties from externalities or (b) to allow people to survive without doing an incredible amount of research into everything they consume. It's easy to dismiss them because we have no idea of all the things that aren't happening. But the fact that your money has been safe at banks for the last 70 years, or that deaths from fire, food-born illness or traffic accidents has been reduced dramatically – all that traces back primarily to government regulation.
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    > There's a system set up to determine what rules are necessary See "regulatory capture", and all the other ways that system can be broken or exploited. Also see the long history of how regulations written for yesterday's technologies work badly on today's and completely prevent tomorrow's from being created. I'm extremely skeptical that this particular issue could have been effectively fixed another way, because I've seen what the proposed "solutions" looked like that "played by the rules". > Your standard seems to be that a service should be legal if two or more people agree on a contract("providing a service people want and thus want to pay for"). No, that's not the completely general standard I'd advocate, though that would still come a lot closer to reasonable. A general standard would also internalize any externalities (and any parties affected by them) before evaluating that metric. (Though keep in mind that "reduces the demand for a competing service" is not an externality.) Overall, though, a world in which individual consent always wins would be better. (We'd be better off still with a world where one of the providers of those services wasn't also, unrelatedly, engaged in various unethical behaviors such as discrimination.) In any case, I'm not interested in turning this into a general evaluation of structures and approaches to regulation and government, not least of which because that would retread well-trodden conversational territory with little new to cover. I think it's worth focusing on the specific case of "is the world better or worse off" here, and then asking how, if you see the specific path taken as a problem, the same goal could have been achieved in another way. > to allow people to survive without doing an incredible amount of research into everything they consume You shouldn't have to do 100% of the research yourself, but I think you should have a choice of who you delegate that responsibility and trust to.
spinlock 10y ago
Do you remember how hard it used to be to hail a cab in SF? There was an entrenched system that was bad for drivers, bad for passengers and great for the 1% that owned the taxi medallions. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I'm sure the system made sense but it had been abused by entrenched interests to enrich themselves. Look at NYC, medallions used to go for $1M+ and are becoming worthless. If your entire industry crumbles when you face competition, you're not the "good guys."
stefek99 10y ago
Hacking reality. Magic. Genius. No wonder why they are $100B company.

by Fede_V 10y ago

JoshTriplett 10y ago

> Being willing to break dumb rules to show how pointless they are is an excellent public service. Breaking rules that stand in the way of your profit is completely different, and it's important to call it out. Depends on whether you view this particular detail as part of providing a service people want (and thus want to pay for), or whether you view it as exclusively in the service of profit (whether it benefits people or not). Ignoring regulations so you can make money by hurting people would be evil. Ignoring regulations so you can help people by providing a service they want (whether you make money doing so or not) is entirely different, and far more reasonable. (It's still a dangerous road to go down, but not universally wrong.) I've seen what the attempts at "local", "authorized" alternatives look like; they're almost all terrible, and even the ones that work half as well as Lyft or Uber suffer from being non-universal (you need a different service for each location). Look at the various places actually fixing their broken taxi regulations; would they have even considered doing so if the far better alternatives had asked nicely before developing a huge base of interested customers who see how much better the alternative works? As you said, "break dumb rules to show how pointless they are" can serve as the first step in fixing them. (For the sake of clarity: Uber has done some truly and unambiguously awful things. This particular story just doesn't seem like one of them.)

ThrustVectoring 10y ago
This is one of the very important ways in which dumb rules get fixed. Like, the prohibition on cannabis wouldn't have the support it does if we were really good at enforcing it - people need the experience with not-X to decide on supporting that policy.
artur_makly 10y ago
"Ignoring regulations so you can help people by providing a service they want (whether you make money doing so or not) is entirely different, and far more reasonable. "thats what Pablo Escobar probably thought at some point too -:)
matt4077 10y ago
There's a system set up to determine what rules are necessary, and some VC-funded bro isn't in a position to second-guess them (beyond his power at the polling booth). Your standard seems to be that a service should be legal if two or more people agree on a contract("providing a service people want and thus want to pay for"). But by that standard, there isn't a single regulation that is necessary. Sell a car without seatbelts? Sure – all fine if you can find people to buy it. Migraine treatment with low-dose cyanide? Some people will try it. Regulations are attempts to (a) protect third parties from externalities or (b) to allow people to survive without doing an incredible amount of research into everything they consume. It's easy to dismiss them because we have no idea of all the things that aren't happening. But the fact that your money has been safe at banks for the last 70 years, or that deaths from fire, food-born illness or traffic accidents has been reduced dramatically – all that traces back primarily to government regulation.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  > There's a system set up to determine what rules are necessary See "regulatory capture", and all the other ways that system can be broken or exploited. Also see the long history of how regulations written for yesterday's technologies work badly on today's and completely prevent tomorrow's from being created. I'm extremely skeptical that this particular issue could have been effectively fixed another way, because I've seen what the proposed "solutions" looked like that "played by the rules". > Your standard seems to be that a service should be legal if two or more people agree on a contract("providing a service people want and thus want to pay for"). No, that's not the completely general standard I'd advocate, though that would still come a lot closer to reasonable. A general standard would also internalize any externalities (and any parties affected by them) before evaluating that metric. (Though keep in mind that "reduces the demand for a competing service" is not an externality.) Overall, though, a world in which individual consent always wins would be better. (We'd be better off still with a world where one of the providers of those services wasn't also, unrelatedly, engaged in various unethical behaviors such as discrimination.) In any case, I'm not interested in turning this into a general evaluation of structures and approaches to regulation and government, not least of which because that would retread well-trodden conversational territory with little new to cover. I think it's worth focusing on the specific case of "is the world better or worse off" here, and then asking how, if you see the specific path taken as a problem, the same goal could have been achieved in another way. > to allow people to survive without doing an incredible amount of research into everything they consume You shouldn't have to do 100% of the research yourself, but I think you should have a choice of who you delegate that responsibility and trust to.

spinlock 10y ago

Do you remember how hard it used to be to hail a cab in SF? There was an entrenched system that was bad for drivers, bad for passengers and great for the 1% that owned the taxi medallions. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I'm sure the system made sense but it had been abused by entrenched interests to enrich themselves. Look at NYC, medallions used to go for $1M+ and are becoming worthless. If your entire industry crumbles when you face competition, you're not the "good guys."

stefek99 10y ago

Hacking reality. Magic. Genius. No wonder why they are $100B company.