zlacker

I often wonder why tech people think so positively about companies they idolise who are Uber-ing their way through regulations. Where do they think it stops?

Why would people not want laws? The answer is so they can do the things that the laws prevent.

This is POSIWID territory [0]. "The purpose of a system is what it does". Not what it repeatedly fails to live up to.

What was the primary investment purpose of Uber? Not any of the things it will forever fail to turn a profit at. It was to destroy regulations preventing companies like Uber doing what they do. That is what it succeeded at.

The purpose of OpenAI is to minimise and denigrate the idea of individual human contributions.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

>>ecjhdn+(OP)
Nobody besides cab medallion owners really liked the regulations that Uber violated is probably a big part of it

>>ecjhdn+(OP)
> I often wonder why tech people think so positively about companies they idolise who are Uber-ing their way through regulations. Where do they think it stops?

Because they don't think about the consequences, and don't want to. Better to retreat into the emotional safety of techno-fantasy and feeling like you're on the cutting edge of something big and new (and might make some good money in the process). Same reason people got into NFTs.

>>ecjhdn+(OP)
But like, Uber gave us taxis on our phones. No taxi company was going to do that without a force like Uber making them to it.

>>rockem+I8
It also gave you cab drivers who don't earn enough to be able to replace their vehicles.

You can cheer on "forces" like Uber all you like but I would prefer it if progress happened without criminal deception:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/jul/10/uber-files-leak...

I don't see how anyone can read this and think the uber app is a net positive.

>>nerdpo+x7
> Same reason people got into NFTs.

Same people who got into NFTs.

>>ecjhdn+C9
Citation needed on the "drivers who can't replace their vehicles" part. Lots of cities in the US have passed laws about how much such workers must be paid and I generally think the government is the one that should be solving that problem.

I read that whole article. I didn't know about the intentional strategy to send Uber drivers into likely violent situations. That's fucked up.

Most of that article seemed to focus on Uber violating laws about operating taxi services though. Sounds good to me? Like there's nothing intrinsically morally correct about taxi service operation laws. This sort of proves my point too. Some company was going to have to fight through all that red tape to get app-based taxis working and maybe it's possible to do that without breaking the law, but if it's easier to just break the law and do it, then whatever. I can't emphasize how much I don't care about those particular laws being broken and maybe if I knew more about them I'd even be specifically happy that those laws were broken.

>>nerdpo+x7
> Because they don't think about the consequences, and don't want to.

This is a dangerous way of thinking about people who disagree with you, because once you decide somebody is stupid, it frees you from ever having to seriously weigh their positions again, which is a kind of stupidity all its own.

>>ecjhdn+(OP)
> POSIWID

You need to be honest about what it actually does then. Cherry picking the thing you don't like and ignoring the rest will bring you no closer to true understanding

>>ecjhdn+C9
There’s gotta be a middle ground. The registration system was shit and encouraged a ridiculous secondary market that kept a lot of people under someone else’s thumb too.

Why does everything keep getting worse? Why do people keep making less? We need to figure out the answers to these questions. And no, nobody here knows them.

>>mycolo+wn
> because once you decide somebody is stupid

You just have made up an argument. There is no stated nor implied stupidity.

You can't dismiss critique of carelessness like that.

>>dclowd+VF
Black cab regulation in London is not shit. It's simultaneously archaic and valuable; a cabbie can solve problems an Uber driver will never manage.

If there is a middle ground I'd like to think it involves not smashing through regulations that protect individual businesspeople (like cabbies) who have learned a difficult job.