The premise of Uber is that there were tremendous and ill-gotten gains being nefariously produced by taxi cartels. By busting them up, they could provide people with better service at an equal or lower price - all while ridding cities of a nasty bunch of operators in the process. Behold the righteous cleansing power of creative destruction!
Turns out that their case was a bit overstated (to put it politely). Sure, this was a problem with the medallion model, and Uber is providing a breakthrough solution. But they're not stopping there. To achieve the growth that will justify their valuation, they've got to undermine perfectly reasonable labor laws as well. So maybe not so socially beneficial after all.
Sociopathic tendencies of the leadership aside, one has to wonder if the real problem isn't the VCs who poured their funds' money into a business that could only win by undermining clear, reasonable, historically necessary, and broadly popular legislation. Had they limited their investment to an amount that could be returned simply by attacking cartels, that would be one thing. But insisting that Uber illegally strip-mine their work force may have flipped a once-good thing into the extractive menace column occupied by outfits like...well, taxi cartels.
>Sociopathic tendencies of the leadership aside, one has to wonder if the real problem isn't the VCs who poured their funds' money into a business that could only win by undermining clear, reasonable, historically necessary, and broadly popular legislation.
Well many of those VCs are ideologically opposed to the very concept of legislation being passed to regulate business in the first place, so they effectively got a double return on their investment in Uber:
* First return: actual financial gains when the business takes off
* Second return: a few more paid mercenaries elbowing their way through the rule of law
Turns out that their case was a bit overstated (to put it politely). Sure, this was a problem with the medallion model, and Uber is providing a breakthrough solution. But they're not stopping there. To achieve the growth that will justify their valuation, they've got to undermine perfectly reasonable labor laws as well. So maybe not so socially beneficial after all.
Sociopathic tendencies of the leadership aside, one has to wonder if the real problem isn't the VCs who poured their funds' money into a business that could only win by undermining clear, reasonable, historically necessary, and broadly popular legislation. Had they limited their investment to an amount that could be returned simply by attacking cartels, that would be one thing. But insisting that Uber illegally strip-mine their work force may have flipped a once-good thing into the extractive menace column occupied by outfits like...well, taxi cartels.