The emporer still has no clothes. But as is the tech startup way, the investment round ponzi scheme has worked brilliantly. Pre-IPO investors got their profit

The emporer still has no clothes. But as is the tech startup way, the investment round ponzi scheme has worked brilliantly. Pre-IPO investors got their profits and then passed the black hole to foolish stock market investors. There are a lot of Uber defenders on HN. I suspect they are current or former employees or are people involved in other startups which play the same ponzi game. Uber did do one thing well, and that was to create a modern and usually effective way for riders to get taxis on demand. Presumably (can't know as I'm not a driver) they also provided a good way for any driver to get riders. But they've done so much so wrong... starting with willfully ignoring local regulations (which allowed them to charge less than legal taxis) and continuing with poor driver vetting and monitoring which has resulted in some terrible events occurring with drivers and passengers. Uber should be held up as an example of how twisted capitalism has become and why regulation is often necessary and should have teeth when it exists. The problem is that US politics is so dependent on and addicted to corporate finance that there is no incentive to fix this. It's more of the "as long as I cash out, I'll do things that are bad for the public". This is especially true when the people who write the laws are shareholders.