The caveat with disruption: Sometimes an industry which is very tightly regulated, or which has a lot of middlemen, has these obstructions for a reason. A taxi

The caveat with disruption: Sometimes an industry which is very tightly regulated, or which has a lot of middlemen, has these obstructions for a reason. A taxi service holds enormous opportunities for kidnappers or rapists. I'm a man, which basically disappears the rape risk, but there are many Central and South American countries where getting in a taxi could be quite risky for me, and could involve me disappearing. even some parts of Mexico. Recent related stories make Uber look really bad: http://boingboing.net/2014/11/19/uber-can-track-your-one-night.html http://boingboing.net/2014/11/19/uber-can-track-your-one-nig... http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/uber-executive-suggests-digging-up-dirt-on-journalists http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/uber-executive-suggests-dig... http://www.buzzfeed.com/anitabadejo/uber-but-for-real-estate-disputes#.yiVDk2w15 http://www.buzzfeed.com/anitabadejo/uber-but-for-real-estate... Also, just to state the obvious, both Uber drivers and regular taxi drivers have logical incentives for driving unsafely. In this context, I have no problem with governments wanting to regulate Uber literally to death, at least outside of California. I understand cabs are completely unacceptable garbage in California, and the HN audience definitely skews Californian, but cabs are gold in Chicago, London, and New York, and probably quite a few other places too. Maybe Germany is one of those places. Also, although I'm sympathetic to libertarians, disruption doesn't always fix things. The Internet crippled the music industry, but introduced stacks of new middlemen in the process. Ask Zoe Keating how that "democratization" turned out. http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/108898194009/what-should-i-do-about-youtube http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/108898194009/what-should-i... In music, the corporate middlemen are this pernicious infestation, which just reappears after you thought you'd wiped it out. Artists have to sacrifice a lot to develop their art to a serious level, and a lot of music performance takes place in situations where people are celebrating (i.e., drunk or high, late at night). So somebody has to provide security, as well as business sense. There's a lot of opportunities for middlemen to get their middle on, and disrupting a market, under those conditions, just means shuffling in a new deck of middlemen. It doesn't change the game. In the same way, my guess is that disrupting a market which is inherently full of criminality risks - incentives to drive unsafely, opportunities for kidnapping and rape - means you just shuffle the deck of regulations. Yet another criminality risk: taxi services of any kind, whether Uber or not, hold terrific opportunities for armed robbery. In some cities, being a cab driver is very dangerous, for this reason. So, if Uber kills the entire taxi industry, then governments will have to scrap their taxi regulations and re-build a similarly gigantic regulatory infrastructure around Uber instead. I think Uber is a really good lesson for entrepreneurs in how a market can look awesome but actually suck.