5 ms·

Uber is an amazing customer experience (same with Lyft, etc) but I am really worried about the precedent being set here. Every step of Uber's success has been

by habosa 12y ago

Uber is an amazing customer experience (same with Lyft, etc) but I am really worried about the precedent being set here. Every step of Uber's success has been associated with some sort of law breaking. In each new market they ignore the established taxi/limo laws, and in some they ignore more serious laws (background checks, etc). The individual offenses are small and generally non-serious (unlicensed taxi driving, illegal fees) but when you zoom out you see that this is a company systematically encouraging thousands of small crimes every day. When you realize that the behavior comes from the top, you can aggregate the wrongdoing into something pretty serious. At first this was kind of 'cute'. We were all rooting for the little startup who said no to an old system and tried to create something better. Uber is now a huge company. They have secured over $2B in funding and probably intending to IPO with a market cap over $50B. Yet they have not slowed down with the law breaking and general disregard for "the rules". How can this be OK? When will we force them to be mature and obey the laws. I have to obey the law in my every day life. More importantly, I would be terrified if other companies with similar market caps (airlines, rental car companies, media companies) started ignoring the law left and right. If money and investors can make you above the law then there is no protection for the rest of us. I really want Uber as a service to exist, as I said. They provide a great convenience for me. However I don't think it's acceptable that they get to ignore the established rules. The laws are there for a reason. If they are bad laws, then we can work to change them. No amount of VC funding should make you immune to their reach.

efsavage 12y ago
The generally accepted way of changing or challenging a law you believe to be wrong and that provides more rent to it's beneficiaries than it costs to defend it, is to break it, repeatedly. (With apologies to those who fight against things far more onerous than taxi medallions)
murbard2 12y ago
"How can this be OK?" There is no moral duty to obey unjust laws.
- habosa 12y ago
  What happens when Uber decides it does not respect a more serious law, one that you believe should be upheld. Who will stop them then?
  - baddox 12y ago
    Who will stop you from using them, you mean? Obviously, the answer is that you will.
  - murbard2 12y ago
    I think your point is that some amount of unconditional respect for the law is desirable, because it works as an enforcement mechanism. Is that right? Even if it is desirable, it does not mean that there is a duty to obey unjust laws. After all, saving children from starvation is desirable, yet most people consider they have no duty to do so. Besides, I think that societies overwhelmingly err far on the side of too much respect for the law. Most people are content to form their opinions based on the status quo, which can make for some terrifying dystopian results.
- emodendroket 12y ago
  Forget a moral duty; how about the fact that inconsistent enforcement of laws is essentially handing market share to Uber for no good reason?
  - murbard2 12y ago
    There needs not be a good reason for a bad law not to be enforced.
    - emodendroket 12y ago
      Look, if it's a "bad law," it should be enforced against no one, not enforced against some companies but not others capriciously.
      - 12y ago
dexen 12y ago
> Every step of Uber's success has been associated with some sort of law breaking. How do we verify law as well-written and protecting interests of constituents first and foremost? If we assume breaking it was necessary to improve customer experience -- and there are some good indicators for that -- we should ask ourselves, does the law protect the entrenched service provider (here, taxis) more than the consumers? Should that be the case, it's failure of the law, and perhaps also law making process. > How can this be OK? It's a terrible stretch, but still: "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison" - Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"
- habosa 12y ago
  The basic idea of what you are saying is correct, but I think there are some important details we are missing. Look at how Uber is breaking the laws. They are doing it with the financial backing of enormously powerful people. So while now they are just breaking old crusty taxi laws, it scares me to think that a well-funded company could take this model and break some laws that actually protect me. What if what happened to the taxi drivers happens to an industry that I work in? I will have no moral leg to stand on if I don't oppose Uber's tactics now.
imgabe 12y ago
> I have to obey the law in my every day life. So you never drive over the speed limit? Jaywalk? Smoke pot? When will we force you to be mature and obey the law? Many millions of small crimes are committed every day by practically every person in the world. The reason nobody cares is because there's often no negative consequences to those "crimes".
- habosa 12y ago
  If I coordinated thousands of those small crimes every day as my business model, then we'd be comparing apples to apples. Additionally, there ARE negative consequences to what Uber does. They are just not negative to you or me. Taxi drivers are being hurt by the reduced number of customers and the de-valuing of their medallions. I don't like the taxi system at all, but I do feel bad for all of the drivers who tried to play fair and buy in and are now being muscled out by VC money.
  - imgabe 12y ago
    Taxis have a reduced number of customers because they have poor service and now they have competition. Taxis illegally refuse fares, skip safety inspections, take circuitous routes to rip their customers off, and on and on. They only seem to care about "the rules" when it comes to shutting down a competitor that's offering a superior service. The taxis in DC are night and day compared to before and after Uber. They wouldn't even accept credit cards because it was "too hard" to implement. Somehow about 6 months after Uber came to town, it suddenly became possible to do something most other major cities had managed years ago. Even still, credit card readers are often mysteriously "broken". By the "rules" the cab is not supposed to operate if the credit card reader isn't working, but since that rule isn't related to shutting down Uber, I guess it doesn't matter.
    - habosa 12y ago
      So the coin has two sides. I'd prefer if all parties had to follow the laws. I think taxis should be penalized for those offenses and Uber should be penalized for its offenses.
Yadi 12y ago
This is such a great comment! I really wanted to say this, but didn't know how to put it into words.
baddox 12y ago
> If they are bad laws, then we can work to change them. Uber and its competitors are, more than anyone else in decades as far as I can tell, working to change them.
e3xu 12y ago
I agree with you for the most part, but I want to comment on the last phrase you use: "If they are bad laws, then we can work to change them. No amount of VC funding should make you immune to their reach." I need to direct you to what happened to Aereo, whose business was destroyed by a Supreme Court ruling [0]. The legal system is one area where innovation is slow, and progress is reliant on inefficient mechanics like politics, bureaucracy, precedent, prosecutorial discretion, judicial opinion, and others. This is by design. Compare for a moment a courtroom of the 1950s and 2014, versus a computer of the 1950s and 2014. Our ability to update our regulatory mechanisms has not kept pace with our ability to create new ideas that need regulation. My biggest gripe is perhaps not even the inefficiency of the system, but its natural tendency towards systematic support of entrenched players, see the kind of regulatory capture performed by Comcast, or the article about the Chase Whistleblower from a few weeks back. You say that no amount of VC money should make an individual institution immune to the law, but this sort of immunity is conferred all the time by anyone with deep enough pockets, through mechanisms like lobbyists, regulatory capture and the various campaign finance loopholes exploited by Super-PACs. See any of Lawrence Lessig's writings of the past few years for more discussion. I'm reminded of an article that showed up on Hacker News about the downsides of an economy with a lot of entrenched players (permit me to suggest the "cartel" nomenclature) taking advantage of their favorable position in overly-bureaucratic systems: http://intellectual-detox.com/2013/04/14/rent-seeking-economy/ http://intellectual-detox.com/2013/04/14/rent-seeking-econom... I do agree that Uber's shady business practices are not laudable, and there are certain important regulatory functions that can only be performed by unbiased parties interested in the public good, of which the legal system/government ought to be the exemplary case. But I think your suggestion that we can simply work to change bad laws is perhaps dependent on a system that currently cannot consistently keep up with the pace of change, not just because of inefficiency but because of perverse incentives (here is where I could begin to talk about the influence of corporate money in politics). I suspect we will have to wait at least another half-generation before a critical mass of individuals with both a true understanding of the exponential pace of progress and well-credentialed clout can begin to make serious reforms and updates in that area. Until then, "move fast and break things" may, terrifyingly, be our best option. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7943976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7943976
- 12y ago

by habosa 12y ago

efsavage 12y ago

The generally accepted way of changing or challenging a law you believe to be wrong and that provides more rent to it's beneficiaries than it costs to defend it, is to break it, repeatedly. (With apologies to those who fight against things far more onerous than taxi medallions)

murbard2 12y ago

"How can this be OK?" There is no moral duty to obey unjust laws.

habosa 12y ago
What happens when Uber decides it does not respect a more serious law, one that you believe should be upheld. Who will stop them then?
- baddox 12y ago
  Who will stop you from using them, you mean? Obviously, the answer is that you will.
- murbard2 12y ago
  I think your point is that some amount of unconditional respect for the law is desirable, because it works as an enforcement mechanism. Is that right? Even if it is desirable, it does not mean that there is a duty to obey unjust laws. After all, saving children from starvation is desirable, yet most people consider they have no duty to do so. Besides, I think that societies overwhelmingly err far on the side of too much respect for the law. Most people are content to form their opinions based on the status quo, which can make for some terrifying dystopian results.
emodendroket 12y ago
Forget a moral duty; how about the fact that inconsistent enforcement of laws is essentially handing market share to Uber for no good reason?
- murbard2 12y ago
  There needs not be a good reason for a bad law not to be enforced.
  - emodendroket 12y ago
    Look, if it's a "bad law," it should be enforced against no one, not enforced against some companies but not others capriciously.
    - 12y ago

dexen 12y ago

> Every step of Uber's success has been associated with some sort of law breaking. How do we verify law as well-written and protecting interests of constituents first and foremost? If we assume breaking it was necessary to improve customer experience -- and there are some good indicators for that -- we should ask ourselves, does the law protect the entrenched service provider (here, taxis) more than the consumers? Should that be the case, it's failure of the law, and perhaps also law making process. > How can this be OK? It's a terrible stretch, but still: "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison" - Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"

habosa 12y ago
The basic idea of what you are saying is correct, but I think there are some important details we are missing. Look at how Uber is breaking the laws. They are doing it with the financial backing of enormously powerful people. So while now they are just breaking old crusty taxi laws, it scares me to think that a well-funded company could take this model and break some laws that actually protect me. What if what happened to the taxi drivers happens to an industry that I work in? I will have no moral leg to stand on if I don't oppose Uber's tactics now.

imgabe 12y ago

> I have to obey the law in my every day life. So you never drive over the speed limit? Jaywalk? Smoke pot? When will we force you to be mature and obey the law? Many millions of small crimes are committed every day by practically every person in the world. The reason nobody cares is because there's often no negative consequences to those "crimes".

habosa 12y ago
If I coordinated thousands of those small crimes every day as my business model, then we'd be comparing apples to apples. Additionally, there ARE negative consequences to what Uber does. They are just not negative to you or me. Taxi drivers are being hurt by the reduced number of customers and the de-valuing of their medallions. I don't like the taxi system at all, but I do feel bad for all of the drivers who tried to play fair and buy in and are now being muscled out by VC money.
- imgabe 12y ago
  Taxis have a reduced number of customers because they have poor service and now they have competition. Taxis illegally refuse fares, skip safety inspections, take circuitous routes to rip their customers off, and on and on. They only seem to care about "the rules" when it comes to shutting down a competitor that's offering a superior service. The taxis in DC are night and day compared to before and after Uber. They wouldn't even accept credit cards because it was "too hard" to implement. Somehow about 6 months after Uber came to town, it suddenly became possible to do something most other major cities had managed years ago. Even still, credit card readers are often mysteriously "broken". By the "rules" the cab is not supposed to operate if the credit card reader isn't working, but since that rule isn't related to shutting down Uber, I guess it doesn't matter.
  - habosa 12y ago
    So the coin has two sides. I'd prefer if all parties had to follow the laws. I think taxis should be penalized for those offenses and Uber should be penalized for its offenses.

Yadi 12y ago

This is such a great comment! I really wanted to say this, but didn't know how to put it into words.

baddox 12y ago

> If they are bad laws, then we can work to change them. Uber and its competitors are, more than anyone else in decades as far as I can tell, working to change them.

e3xu 12y ago

I agree with you for the most part, but I want to comment on the last phrase you use: "If they are bad laws, then we can work to change them. No amount of VC funding should make you immune to their reach." I need to direct you to what happened to Aereo, whose business was destroyed by a Supreme Court ruling [0]. The legal system is one area where innovation is slow, and progress is reliant on inefficient mechanics like politics, bureaucracy, precedent, prosecutorial discretion, judicial opinion, and others. This is by design. Compare for a moment a courtroom of the 1950s and 2014, versus a computer of the 1950s and 2014. Our ability to update our regulatory mechanisms has not kept pace with our ability to create new ideas that need regulation. My biggest gripe is perhaps not even the inefficiency of the system, but its natural tendency towards systematic support of entrenched players, see the kind of regulatory capture performed by Comcast, or the article about the Chase Whistleblower from a few weeks back. You say that no amount of VC money should make an individual institution immune to the law, but this sort of immunity is conferred all the time by anyone with deep enough pockets, through mechanisms like lobbyists, regulatory capture and the various campaign finance loopholes exploited by Super-PACs. See any of Lawrence Lessig's writings of the past few years for more discussion. I'm reminded of an article that showed up on Hacker News about the downsides of an economy with a lot of entrenched players (permit me to suggest the "cartel" nomenclature) taking advantage of their favorable position in overly-bureaucratic systems: http://intellectual-detox.com/2013/04/14/rent-seeking-economy/ http://intellectual-detox.com/2013/04/14/rent-seeking-econom... I do agree that Uber's shady business practices are not laudable, and there are certain important regulatory functions that can only be performed by unbiased parties interested in the public good, of which the legal system/government ought to be the exemplary case. But I think your suggestion that we can simply work to change bad laws is perhaps dependent on a system that currently cannot consistently keep up with the pace of change, not just because of inefficiency but because of perverse incentives (here is where I could begin to talk about the influence of corporate money in politics). I suspect we will have to wait at least another half-generation before a critical mass of individuals with both a true understanding of the exponential pace of progress and well-credentialed clout can begin to make serious reforms and updates in that area. Until then, "move fast and break things" may, terrifyingly, be our best option. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7943976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7943976

12y ago