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Thanks for the thought-provoking post. I don't think I share the perspective, but I'm curious to understand it more. On a personal level, I'm not happy to see a medallion-owning taxi driver lose their livelihood, in the same sense that I'm not happy to see anyone lose their livelihood, e.g., due to economic conditions, due to a company shutting down, or any other reason. At the same time, there will be winners and losers from any economic or technological shift, and it seems that in our capitalist society we value progress and competition, underpinned by some utilitarian calculus that the short-term thrash is worth it for the long-term prosperity. Inventing the telephone certainly would have harmed mail couriers, inventing the automobile would have harmed horse breeders, etc., but we don't typically reflect on those inventions as being ethically problematic. In short, what I'm wondering is whether you think there's something uniquely unethical about the "tech bro" style of disruption, or if your perspective is more broadly a critique of capitalism. |
The distinguishing characteristic is scale & speed.
The switch to electricity happened over half a century. The switch to the automobile took a similarly long time. There was crossfade. There was time to adjust. There were places (for socioeconomic values of 'places') for skilled professionals to go.
The switch to Uber (from taxi medallions) seems well underway at just the one-decade mark.
Differences in speed & scale yield differences in qualitative impact, in the same way that a nuclear bomb -- which increases speed & scale of destruction, over and against TNT -- produced a whole new circumstance for world powers.
Comparing what is coming to telephony replacing a courier is like comparing Nagasaki to dynamiteing an old tree stump on a farm.