[pptr1]

I would love to believe what pg is saying. However there are strong counter points to his arguments.

Uber and Travis Kalanick don't seem to be failing. They may have some negative publicity, but their growth is strong. Uber is probably worth more than any single yc company including Airbnb.

[busterarm]

There's also a tendency for people to think they're good people and not realize how they're being mean. Criminals are good at this.

I think displacing the resident population of SF is pretty mean, as is creating a monoculture there.

Apathy matters.

[hnnewguy]

>There's also a tendency for people to think they're good people and not realize how they're being mean. Criminals are good at this.

"Criminals" are also good at being mistaken as mean people when they are really good.

[busterarm]

I don't disagree with this. Organized crime actually serves a legitimate community function in its early stages usually. They always get their hands dirty.

Is that really someone that you'd want to emulate though?

You could make the case that Freeway Rick Ross is a really nice guy because he never had to use violence, but he still sold crack to people.

[hnnewguy]

>You could make the case that Freeway Rick Ross is a really nice guy

Good point. Is he "mean" or not? More curiously, is he "successful" or not?

[graycat]

Uber:

(1) Legal.

Nevada just outlawed Uber. More generally, Uber stands to encounter a lot of legal push-back.

(2) Competition.

In e-mail of Sat 11/22/2014 12:20 PM, CBinsights reported that Uber has "27 alternatives".

(3) Localism.

Yes, maybe in each city, something like Uber, if successful, could have a network effect that would let it have a barrier to entry: That is, since all the drivers use Uber, all the riders do; and since all the riders do, all the drivers do.

But, the taxi business is geographically local so that success by, say, Uber in Boston does next to nothing to help Uber compete in NYC, Atlanta, Chicago, SF, LA, etc. So, in each city, Uber can be attacked by local competitors.

[tomjen3]

I think that to run something like Uber you have to be Travis. There is a lot of money in destroying the taxa monopoly so that would override the cost of being mean.

[busterarm]

The taxi monopoly is really more of a government monopoly than a business one. This is especially true in NYC. Sure, big companies own groups of medallions and single owners hadn't been able to get one (until this year) for 20+ years, but medallions are very illiquid assets. The resale value on them is much less than what the city gets for new ones issued at auction.

There's tons of state-controlled monopolies out there if you look hard enough.