If you don’t want a business built on financial extraction, change the rules by which they can legally operate. Otherwise, expect financial extraction. I love

If you don’t want a business built on financial extraction, change the rules by which they can legally operate. Otherwise, expect financial extraction. I love that Uber is taking the blame for being the most efficient extractor of resources from labor by capital. It’s literally like a case study in what to fix. Walk down the things they do: leverage contract labor to avoid the overhead, leverage real-time closed garden markets to create the illusion of greater value, extract tolls when the network is busy even if they have the capacity to serve the demand, use massive data advantages to attack incumbents in every market using the superior advantage of scale, leverage “free money” to operate below profitable market levels and crush competitors, etc. It’s a brilliant business, but it’s built on incentives. It’s honestly amazing how many people get mad at the creations of the system they create and support like the “race to the bottom” isn’t directly the result of the choices we make as a society and the inventive system we give our companies. Maybe I’m wrong — I often am — but it’s certainly interesting.