| > Trust, morality and legality are not the same thing. Sure, Uber was operating illegally in many places, but millions of people used these illegal services and saw nothing wrong with it. They didn’t see using an unlicensed cab company as anything bad. People baited into purchasing new cars and screwed over car insurance sure did. But more importantly, everyone saw that the legal system in cities around the world isn't powerful enough to deal with direct offense. We saw you can build a multi-billion dollar megacorp not on just regulatory arbitrage, but plainly illegal business - and nobody got hold accountable (except for an off driver caught without proper insurance). All of this fundamentally erodes the trust in the rule of law - the trust on which modern society stands. > Just because something is illegal doesn’t make it morally wrong It doesn't, but it was illegal and greedy and exploitative, and dragged people into gig economy which arguably is itself morally questionable. > If you want to argue that Uber destroyed trust, you can’t simply say it broke the law and call it a day, you need also to argue that the law they broke was good and desirable. Taxi laws differ by the city. "Taxi mafia" was mostly a phenomenon of some places in the US; in many cities, taxis worked just well. Uber violated law almost everywhere they got, without any care for whether the law was useful or justifiable. It wasn't some act of civil disobedience - they did it for pure profit, to undercut competition and dominate the local markets they entered. > So, what was the evil and socially destructive thing that Uber actually did? Now, that's actually a topic much bigger than what I outlined above. The mischief of Uber's sociopathic management has been well publicized and well documented over the past 5+ years. It was a recurring topic on HN for a long time, too. I suggest starting with these two links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber#Controversies (Though they do seem to downplay the insurance issues and threats against journalists.) |
It's not that it wasn't powerful enough. The governments could fight Uber just fine, and they in fact did in many places. What actually happened was instead the government in most places have figured that the customers liked the illegal service so much, that if they do fight it, they will actually reduce, instead of increasing their legitimacy. Imagine the government tomorrow decides to ban shaking hands. Would prosecuting the hand-shakers increase the trust in government and its legitimacy? No: people would rightly conclude that it's the government that's wrong, and it doesn't deserve trust or charity here. This is the case with many aspects of the regulatory state: its legitimacy depends on people being unaware of how crippling and authoritarian it is in many situations. Making stupid laws and keeping people unaware of their stupidity is no way to build trust.
> It doesn't, but it was illegal and greedy and exploitative, and dragged people into gig economy which arguably is itself morally questionable.
Taxis have always been "gig economy". Even before Uber, few taxi drivers were salaried employees. Most of them were independent operators, or working on commission.
> Taxi laws differ by the city. "Taxi mafia" was mostly a phenomenon of some places in the US; in many cities, taxis worked just well.
Which cities were these? In every city I am aware off, on both sides of the pond, traditional taxis have not been able to compete very well with Uber. Sure, in some places the taxis were less bad than in others, but almost everywhere they were overpriced and untrustworthy. Have you tried paying with card in a taxi in Poland before Uber came up? Somehow, despite MasterCard sticker on the window, the payment terminal always happened to be broken... Also, try taking a non-Uber cab from the airport in Warsaw or Krakow.