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by craftkiller 3812 days ago
Alright, so I think you have 3 points here:

1. Uber has a track record of noncompliance

2. You don't want to invest in them because of #1

3. Enron also picked a fight with CPUC

So responding to each point:

1. True, and they probably should be fined for the late report, but as a public entity you can't go fining people exorbitant fees due to unrelated actions. For example, if I made some public bigoted remarks and then a police officer caught me littering they can't just go fining me 20x the normal fee because of what I said. CPUC should evaluate the fee solely on the basis of the infraction that caused the fine in the first place.

2. While I don't disagree with you, this is irrelevant to this discussion. Perhaps it belongs it its own comment thread?

3. This seems similarly irrelevant to this comment thread. A better comparison would be how much Enron got fined for a similar offense against the CPUC.

1 comments

1. I would agree but this doesn't reflect the reality and underlying political reasons for regulation and enforcement. I would imagine the large fine (lol jk, a $7mm fine is a joke) was to send a message that stonewalling a public regulator is not acceptable. Maybe "unrelated," but as this is a discussion, I do find it ironic that the tech community hates Comcast and wants the infrastructure to be treated like utilities, and then is okay with their own golden child (uber) running all over a public utility... When they were trying to enforce antidoscrimination measures. The reason Uber can do this is the same reason Comcast can hold everything hostage (yes I know that's very simplified, I'm on my phone). The fine is very trivial compared to the damage discrimination has done to this country - it must be known that that is totally unacceptable.

2. Fair

3. I disagree. I think looking at the ethics of companies who have historically picked fights with CPUC is quite telling, and cited an example.