[msmith10101]

Two points:

1. You write as if Uber has solved the transportation problem sustainably. The end state of an Uber job is that it will pay less than minimum wage. Why? Because the barrier to entry is the same as most minimum wage jobs (assuming you have a car made in the last 10 years) and it is more desirable than minimum wage jobs (flexible hours, no boss). The pay may look better on paper, but when all the hidden costs are accounted for it will be less than minimum wage. Uber is operating in an unsustainable bubble. Sequoia and Softbank are subsidizing your trips.

2. My guess is that if your mom was raped in an Uber and one of Travis' lieutenants got (somehow, possibly by stealing/bribing - not by asking her permission) your mom's medical records to prove to himself that she really was raped (to determine Uber liability and that it wasn't staged by a competitor), then you might feel differently in your respect and admiration for Travis Kalanick.

[dang]

We've seen many HN commenters lose their manners if not their minds when posting about Uber—this very thread is full of it. But "if your mom was raped in an Uber" is off the charts: uncivil and utterly gratuitous.

Had you posted other uncivil comments I'd ban you, but since you haven't, we'll treat it as an isolated lapse. Please don't do it again though. If you can't remain scrupulously respectful of the person you're replying to, please don't post.

If you'd read the HN guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site to heart, we'd appreciate it. That spirit is intellectual curiosity: considering things for the pleasure of considering them. That doesn't fit with flamewars and is incompatible with personal attack.

[sushid]

Wow, you do realize that you can mention the Uber rape case without trying to make it so personal to the OP, right? he's not defending him in that regard at all.

All he's saying is that he brought about the concept of ride sharing (debatable since there was, for instance, Sidecar before the advent of UberX) to the public and that he understands the pain of being ousted by your own company.

[msmith10101]

The saddest thing about Travis Kalanick's story is that he was ousted because his greedy investors were afraid they wouldn't see a 20x return on their investment, and not because of the ponzi-scheme fundamentals or ethical compromises that appear in tech rags every week. He was ousted by Benchmark, not by law enforcement. He's walking away with over a billion, rather than a go-to-jail card.