4 ms·

That's not going to happen. This schadenfreude is sad and hard to understand. You're comparing companies that were criminal enterprises that produced no value t

by ucha 8y ago

That's not going to happen. This schadenfreude is sad and hard to understand. You're comparing companies that were criminal enterprises that produced no value to a real company that has millions of happy and real customers. Their app has a 4.9 rating on the app store...

braythwayt 8y ago
If you want to cheer for them, carry on. They have already been revealed as a company that flouts employment law and every standard of decency. If you find my attitude towards such an enterprise "sad," well, carry on with that as well. I am not here to cheer for the amoral "It doesn't matter how we get there, as long as the result looks good according to the metrics people use to decide whether to give us money."
- ucha 8y ago
  That's not at all the point I'm making. Who said anything about employment law or decency? They simply have nothing in common with a pharmaceutical company that committed fraud and delivered fake medical reports to patients or a festival that scammed hundreds of people out of their money... If anything they could be compared to Uber. We can hate them for how they treat their employees or how they break some laws but they will not end up like Theranos or Fyre festival.
  - braythwayt 8y ago
    Let's wait and see, shall we?
SolaceQuantum 8y ago
Given that the top post is someone who is unable to cancel their account, and is now considering sending a GDPR complaint due to their difficulties in canceling service, I would argue this company is swiftly heading into criminal behavior (if not already there with the money laundering)
thomasjudge 8y ago
This kind of exemplifies the classic startup tension between playing by the rules and ignoring the rules for the sake of moving fast, breaking things, and capturing market share. Paul Carr on Uber: " Laws don't exist merely to frustrate the business ambitions of coastal hipsters: They also exist to protect the more vulnerable members of society." https://pando.com/2012/10/24/travis-shrugged/ https://pando.com/2012/10/24/travis-shrugged/
- umeshunni 8y ago
  Or more accurately, they exist to preserve existing monopolies that have lobbied for regulatory barriers to market entry.
  - rossdavidh 8y ago
    Unfortunately, they exist for both reasons, one of which we want and one of which we don't, and I have thus far not found a good way to disentangle the two.
  - braythwayt 8y ago
    This is where we have to say, "It depends." Laws that throw up barriers to selling drugs without expensive testing and jumping through regulatory hoops are not there just to protect the profits of Big Pharma. But some laws definitely exist to perpetuate crony capitalism. See the rules that make it nearly impossible to start a new bank in Canada. And some laws exist to protect consumers from entrepreneurs that move fast and break the lives of people who trust them. See the history of banking before there were laws restricting banks. Note that these are the same laws, performing different purposes at different times. This touches on Chesterton's Fence: It might be a good idea to remove a lot of the regulation around banking in Canada, but not without understanding all of the problems that those laws were designed to fix, and making sure that whatever replaces those laws serves the same purpose. All-too-often, we hear "We no longer need that protection, circumstances have changed." This is often naïve, as the reason circumstances have changed is the presence of those outdated laws. Remove them, and we revert back to the circumstances that led us to create the laws in the first place.

by ucha 8y ago

braythwayt 8y ago

If you want to cheer for them, carry on. They have already been revealed as a company that flouts employment law and every standard of decency. If you find my attitude towards such an enterprise "sad," well, carry on with that as well. I am not here to cheer for the amoral "It doesn't matter how we get there, as long as the result looks good according to the metrics people use to decide whether to give us money."

ucha 8y ago
That's not at all the point I'm making. Who said anything about employment law or decency? They simply have nothing in common with a pharmaceutical company that committed fraud and delivered fake medical reports to patients or a festival that scammed hundreds of people out of their money... If anything they could be compared to Uber. We can hate them for how they treat their employees or how they break some laws but they will not end up like Theranos or Fyre festival.
- braythwayt 8y ago
  Let's wait and see, shall we?

SolaceQuantum 8y ago

Given that the top post is someone who is unable to cancel their account, and is now considering sending a GDPR complaint due to their difficulties in canceling service, I would argue this company is swiftly heading into criminal behavior (if not already there with the money laundering)

thomasjudge 8y ago

This kind of exemplifies the classic startup tension between playing by the rules and ignoring the rules for the sake of moving fast, breaking things, and capturing market share. Paul Carr on Uber: " Laws don't exist merely to frustrate the business ambitions of coastal hipsters: They also exist to protect the more vulnerable members of society." https://pando.com/2012/10/24/travis-shrugged/ https://pando.com/2012/10/24/travis-shrugged/

umeshunni 8y ago
Or more accurately, they exist to preserve existing monopolies that have lobbied for regulatory barriers to market entry.
- rossdavidh 8y ago
  Unfortunately, they exist for both reasons, one of which we want and one of which we don't, and I have thus far not found a good way to disentangle the two.
- braythwayt 8y ago
  This is where we have to say, "It depends." Laws that throw up barriers to selling drugs without expensive testing and jumping through regulatory hoops are not there just to protect the profits of Big Pharma. But some laws definitely exist to perpetuate crony capitalism. See the rules that make it nearly impossible to start a new bank in Canada. And some laws exist to protect consumers from entrepreneurs that move fast and break the lives of people who trust them. See the history of banking before there were laws restricting banks. Note that these are the same laws, performing different purposes at different times. This touches on Chesterton's Fence: It might be a good idea to remove a lot of the regulation around banking in Canada, but not without understanding all of the problems that those laws were designed to fix, and making sure that whatever replaces those laws serves the same purpose. All-too-often, we hear "We no longer need that protection, circumstances have changed." This is often naïve, as the reason circumstances have changed is the presence of those outdated laws. Remove them, and we revert back to the circumstances that led us to create the laws in the first place.