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> Most people never really stopped to think about the implications You seem to suggest that Uber's toxic culture gave them a business advantage. Like, riders g

by arebop 10y ago

> Most people never really stopped to think about the implications You seem to suggest that Uber's toxic culture gave them a business advantage. Like, riders got some benefit that a conscientious person ought to have guessed was derived from the suffering of others. I think what really happened is that Uber successfully assailed a bunch of stodgy monopolies just by taking a modern approach to dispatching. Then others saw the opportunity and there was a goldrush. Today Uber and everyone else are squeezing the drivers (same is true for all the "Uber of X" sharing economy variants). But the crappy backoffice culture surely didn't make it more convenient or cheap to get a ride.

paulcole 10y ago
>You seem to suggest that Uber's toxic culture gave them a business advantage It did. Unethical miserable people broke laws and cleaned up. And people loved them for it. Until they didn't.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
It's not the "crappy backoffice culture" that made them win on the market[0]. It's their decision to just ignore local regulations that made them win. Not the "modern approach to dispatching", because - maybe except the US - that wasn't really innovative (taxis in Europe have been doing apps for years now, crappy as they are). Uber could simply afford to be cheaper because they sidestepped or broke every regulation they could. Taxis can't compete if the other guy is not playing by the rules. -- [0] - I really, really don't get why people only started caring after information about back-office sexism came to light, like if this was the worst thing Uber is doing; it isn't even remotely.
- arebop 10y ago
  For my part, I still don't care if they broke laws protecting taxi monopolies in some places. They haven't as far as I know broken any laws in my neighborhood so my opinion is somewhat abstract. But if we did have laws here to draw a special distinction between giving someone a ride and giving someone a ride in exchange for money, then I would be annoyed with the legislators rather than the civil disobedients. I do think it's stupid we had and continue to have laws that say it's illegal to offer someone a paid ride if you notice that they need one with your own senses ("hailing"), as opposed to via a phone call or app notification. Maybe many people share this view, and that solves the mystery: people haven't only started caring recently about the local regulations; they started caring about the completely different issues that only recently came to light: backoffice culture problems, reckless administration of the self-driving car project, worsening conditions for unskilled freelancers generally, etc. That explains how it could be that suddenly lots more people are averse to Uber, and yet no more people care about taxi businesses or their legal moats than before.

by arebop 10y ago

paulcole 10y ago

>You seem to suggest that Uber's toxic culture gave them a business advantage It did. Unethical miserable people broke laws and cleaned up. And people loved them for it. Until they didn't.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

It's not the "crappy backoffice culture" that made them win on the market[0]. It's their decision to just ignore local regulations that made them win. Not the "modern approach to dispatching", because - maybe except the US - that wasn't really innovative (taxis in Europe have been doing apps for years now, crappy as they are). Uber could simply afford to be cheaper because they sidestepped or broke every regulation they could. Taxis can't compete if the other guy is not playing by the rules. -- [0] - I really, really don't get why people only started caring after information about back-office sexism came to light, like if this was the worst thing Uber is doing; it isn't even remotely.

arebop 10y ago
For my part, I still don't care if they broke laws protecting taxi monopolies in some places. They haven't as far as I know broken any laws in my neighborhood so my opinion is somewhat abstract. But if we did have laws here to draw a special distinction between giving someone a ride and giving someone a ride in exchange for money, then I would be annoyed with the legislators rather than the civil disobedients. I do think it's stupid we had and continue to have laws that say it's illegal to offer someone a paid ride if you notice that they need one with your own senses ("hailing"), as opposed to via a phone call or app notification. Maybe many people share this view, and that solves the mystery: people haven't only started caring recently about the local regulations; they started caring about the completely different issues that only recently came to light: backoffice culture problems, reckless administration of the self-driving car project, worsening conditions for unskilled freelancers generally, etc. That explains how it could be that suddenly lots more people are averse to Uber, and yet no more people care about taxi businesses or their legal moats than before.