> I don't see how any entity (including Uber) has an obligation to make it easy for the law to ticket them.
Corporate citizens have an obligation to obey the laws of the jurisdictions in which they operate. If they find the laws unacceptable, they should lobby to have them changed.
You'll find that the same argument gets thrown entirely out the window conveniently depending on a person's specific beliefs on any given issue. It's barely even built on sand as a premise.
See: racism and discrimination broadly, segregation, refugees, illegal immigration, unions / union strikes, marijuana, political corruption, cartels, government protected monopolies and so on. There are a vast number of topics that cause people at businesses to be willing to disregard the laws of a given jurisdiction at various points in time (regardless of whether one views the position as being on the moral side or not). It'd be hard to claim that it never makes sense to disobey the law for a business, given just the last century of history in just the developed world, with the plentiful display of wildly irrational or immoral laws that have existed.
We are all better off because uber willfully disregarded these laws and regulations. These laws once had a good reason, but are now still on the books only because incumbents have regulators in their pockets.
As for lobbying to have the laws changed, if you expect startups to be able to lobby in every jurisdiction to get the law changed against incumbents when the regulators often come from the industry the startup is disrupting, then I got a bridge to sell you.
> We are all better off because uber willfully disregarded these laws and regulations.
The thing is, we're not. What we've got is a cab company that can offer better and cheaper service than everyone else because it's breaking the law, and it's good at throwing VC money at lawyers to avoid the consequences. What we've got is further damage to the respect for the rule of law and thus to the fabric of civilization, as people see how Uber gets away with illegal activities. Hell, there are many people who are inspired by their antisocial behaviour, and see Uber as an example to follow.
Consider a hypothetical business in a historical era that provides great service by employing colored people to serve white customers. Imagine said business becomes successful, and even pushes some jurisdictions to change their laws against this practice.
I'd argue that this business is great - it's helping consumers and fixing the world.
One might argue that we are not better off because of this:
The thing is, we're not. What we've got is a business that can offer better and cheaper service than everyone else because it's breaking the law, and it's good at throwing money at lawyers to avoid the consequences. What we've got is further damage to the respect for the rule of law and thus to the fabric of civilization, as people see how this company gets away with illegal activities. Hell, there are many people who are inspired by their antisocial behaviour, and see Uber as an example to follow.
Your argument seems to apply equally well to this case - after all, your argument is not dependent on the law being just or unjust. It completely ignores that point.
Are you willing to follow your argument where it leads? Or do you recognize the flaw in it?
It's about the defaults. I believe laws should be obeyed by default, and only opposed in special circumstances. The burden of proving that the circumstances warrant disobedience should be on the disobedient party. And most importantly, breaking the law should be expensive, so that it never becomes a viable business strategy.
I'd even cut Uber some slack if they weren't so smug about what they're doing. This is just as much about breaking arbitrary laws as it is about how they keep showing that they don't give a shit about society.
> your argument is not dependent on the law being just or unjust. It completely ignores that point.
It does, because in real world, regulations are not uniformly distributed throughout the possibility space. In any working society you can - and should - assume that most laws are there for a reason, and that this reason is just. When that assumption doesn't hold, your country pretty much disintegrates. Hence, going against the law is a special case.
The way I see it, none of Uber's "innovations" actually required illegal actions. They simply don't care, because this way is faster and brings in more money.
As a proof of that I want to point out that many places in Europe managed to implement all those Uber "innovations" some time ago, and it didn't require breaking laws in the way Uber does. Sure, old cab companies were pissed, but things got settled in courts and regulations were updated - just like it should happen in any civilized society.
Ultimately, if Americans want to run their society this way, it's none of my business. I would be happy though, if they stopped exporting their "innovative" methods to countries with working regulatory frameworks.
I think Uber has proven that their disobedience is beneficial. In the US and India they have made the transit sector vastly better than it was before. Even ignoring the benefits of the app over hailing a cab, the drastic reduction in racial discrimination is an amazing improvement.
Note that India also had apps/SMS driven taxi hails - autowale.in started in Pune (my city). But Uber fixed transport and the political situation, whereas autowale.in is just a footnote in history.
In any working society you can - and should - assume that most laws are there for a reason, and that this reason is just. When that assumption doesn't hold, your country pretty much disintegrates. Hence, going against the law is a special case.
Then by your standard, the US and India are not working societies.
Then again, by your standard, it's pretty clear that not all of Europe is working. For example, witness how often French unions and others engage in violent and illegal actions (both assaulting Uber drivers/passengers and others) on a regular basis.
In any case, you seem to be backing away from your original claim and accepting that some laws are unjust and breaking them is ok. Do you argue that American or Indian taxi protectionism laws are just?
You are arbitrarily assigning Uber's disruption a positive social outcome, which appears to be the lynchpin of your argument. Your argument could be applied to many outcomes that would appear on the surface to be negative. A few (admittedly exaggerated) examples:
"ArmzDealR is providing a great service by eliminating government bureaucracy and providing access to arms that citizens should have. It's good that they help people avoid those onerous registration requirements."
"TraffiKR makes it easy to find cheap labor. There's no paperwork and the workers never complain!"
Are you willing to follow your argument where it leads? Should businesses be allowed to push against any rule at all? Are all laws 'unjust' or are there some laws that are in place to protect public good?
I'm simply pointing out that Temporal's argument that breaking the law is always wrong is simply incorrect.
I'm not saying all laws should be broken. I'm saying one must decide whether or not the law is just, and support those who break unjust laws. I see no one even attempting to make the argument that taxi protectionism laws are just. Do you have an argument that they are?
I haven't researched the rationales behind taxi protectionism laws, so I can only offer conjecture. Two two reasons I can imagine we have such laws are traffic congestion control and accident liability.
On the surface congestion control seems far easier to implement (especially in a pre-mobile phone context) via restriction of medallions. I don't have arguments one way or the other as to the necessity of congestion control because I've only rarely experienced large cities (NYC, Chicago, London). I believe they are popular for various reasons, but I am not familiar with the arguments for or against.
Determination of liability seems like another obvious reason for a medallion monopoly. Presumably taxis are a higher risk pool for insurance claims, due to the presence of multiple parties. It's unclear to me where the liability falls if an Uber driver is in an accident that mortally wounds a passenger; will their standard insurance (that presumes a certain risk profile) cover the claim? I'm simply not familiar enough to definitely comment, unfortunately.
The latter argument holds more weight with me, but I'm sympathetic to arguments against it.
You do see the problem with encouraging the erosion of mutual social trust? If "following the law" collapses as a percieved social expectation it would impoverish everyone.
That being said, it is clear that abusive and overwraught law and regulation invites this impovrishment.
Breaking the law always erodes the fabric of society. Normalizing it is worse.
Certainly, there can be laws that are worth breaking. You should be extremely careful before assuming that's the case in any given scenario, and I don't think taxi rules are it, no matter how dysfunctional the USA might be.
Really though we are. Even if Uber goes out of business, taxi companies are going to get wise that customers want the Uber experience and all of a sudden they'll all have to get apps to compete.
Uber broke a status quo in the state of the transportation industry and we should all be grateful for that. They also became a champion for a certain type of activism that I think a lot of us would like to see more of.
Think carefully before you deny Uber the activist label. Using ethically shady methods to push through social agendas is precisely what activism is. Not everyone falls on the same side of the line, but you can't not call it activism. Labor strikes were considered extremely problematic to many.
I have a perspective of an European. Here on the Old Continent, we've already had that "Uber experience", and it didn't require companies to blatantly ignore the law and burn money to keep regulators at bay (not to say there weren't regulatory tensions, but they quickly got resolved in courts and regulations were updated; that's how a civilized society is supposed to work). So excuse me if I don't see Uber as innovative.
As for their activism, this is the flavour we know from dystopian movies about evil corporations disregarding the laws to eke out some profits. In a way, I can't wait for an Uber in biotech sector - maybe a small engineered pandemic is what people need to understand that regulations should not be ignored on a whim by companies seeking profits.
We're all better off? That's an incredibly broad statement.
The laws on the books still exist for a good reason. Even if you feel that Uber is somehow exempt/makes good choices with the people it chooses to employ via the platform, does that apply to any other "uber-esque" groups with more lax enforcement?
"The laws on the books still exist for a good reason."
That's... optimistic. Many laws were put in place to benefit other (incumbent) businesses, or in reaction to conditions that no longer hold, or due to ideas proven false or at least no longer fashionable.
That's not necessarily good reason to break the law (though sometimes it is), but anyone shold feel free to lobby for removal or change of a law.
Let's also acknowledge that it's not just Uber the company skirting the law, it's also the millions of people who use their service. The people have spoken with their dollars instead of their votes.
lets also acknowledge that there are billions of people who are using their dollars to vote against uber by taking taxis, use lyft, take public transportation, purchae cars, walk, or ride their bike.
in other words, thats a terrible argument in support of uber.
> Corporate citizens have an obligation to obey the laws of the jurisdictions in which they operate.
To some extent. If the fine is $50 for each infraction, and you have $10bn in the bank, you really don't have to obey the law.
You can lobby to have the law changed and not obey the law (if you are willing to pay any and all fines, while you are lobbying). Uber's use case didn't exist 10+ years ago, and as such, most laws weren't made for that not set up to account for that.
I personally find that to be a valid example of where it's acceptable not to follow the law.
Do regular citizens, such as Rosa Parks, not have the same obligation?
Personally I consider civil disobedience of unjust laws to be acceptable, for either a single person or for an organized group of people (such as Uber).
Civil disobedience implies actions in the open and being willing to suffer the consequences of your actions. If Uber had made a public statement that they were instituting a policy to refuse service to city and law enforcement officials and were willing to take their lumps, you might have a point.
And uber does things in the open. They openly violate the law and reveal to citizens how much corrupt politicians are hurting them by taking away their transportation choices.
This works only if it happens on a massive scale. If Uber didn't use this program, it's likely that their civil disobedience would end before it's large enough to get their message out.
It appears that other ridesharing apps have managed to "get the message out" without devising nefarious plots to confuse law enforcement. And for that matter despite various covert Uber-run attempts to sabotage their business and take away the public's transportation choices.
The idea that Uber is some civil liberties campaign for improved transportation options rather than a corporation with an unusually aggressive disregard for anyone that gets in their way is rather exploded by the most cursory examination of their actions.
Which other ridesharing apps have fixed broken political systems? From what I can see, most of them wait for Uber to fix politics and then just swoop in after the fact to make money.
I don't think any ridesharing apps have "fixed broken political systems", least of all Uber. But there are many ridesharing apps which operated in local territories before Uber, and many of them managed to do it without writing software to deceive law enforcement, coordinating personal attacks on journalists who criticised them or trying to kill startup competitors with fake bookings.
Before Uber, SF, NYC and Mumbai and many other political systems prevented competitors from providing better service than yellow cabs. Uber's political activism has fixed this.
coordinating personal attacks on journalists who criticised them
This was an ethical hypothetical, not a thing that actually happened.
Uber made real bookings and then gave the driver a sales pitch during the ride. All they did was pay their competitors for the right to offer drivers a better deal.
Kind of the opposite of Google/Apple/etc colluding NOT to offer each other's employees a better deal.
To be honest, the fact that an executive is prepared to publicly advocate harassment of journalists as an "ethical hypothetical" thing is a pretty good indication of what they actually are prepared to do in private. Sorry but the "I'm a good friend who overheard part of the conversation and don't think he said the things he's already apologised for saying" defence isn't the most convincing, especially given the company's well-publicised use of comparable tactics in other areas, including hiring private investigators to go after employees that had reported sexual harassment. Your insistence that Uber made real bookings (and just happened to cancel most of them) is a lie, period.
You don't have to think taxi medallion laws are particularly rational to find Uber's behaviour in many, many areas indefensible.
Yeah, Rosa Parks civil disobedience was a for profit operation! Please stop insulting her. Uber is the embodiment of corporate evil, these people think they are above the law.
I didn't say she made a profit. I said she broke a law she felt was unjust, same as Uber, and that according to ForHackernews' reasoning she should not have done this. My point is that his reasoning is wrong, and merely a post-hoc rationalization for general dislike of Uber.
I did not make the comparison you seem to be arguing against, namely that Rosa Parks and Uber are equivalent in all possible ways.
They're making the important point that what people really mean is "laws I agree or don't agree with" not "laws". Hopefully not only on HN do people have reflective capacity to see this.
I disagree that they should lobby to change it. I understand that realistically that is what they will do, but I don't think it's the ethically correct thing.
Laws are in place to benefit all of society, they shouldn't be changed on behalf of specific corporations, regardless of how much money the "donate".
Laws are in place to benefit those in power not "all of society," as anyone who does not benefit from them can attest to. And I agree, corporations cannot be allowed to change the laws to suit them.
Laws are passed by a tiny percentage of the population, alleged (not necessarily de facto) representatives of the interests of majority. So not confuse republic with a direct democracy.
No but I am for Google and Apple investors holding the management to their fiduciary duty to turn a profit. Lobbying for gay rights seems very loosely connected to that goal.
Edit: There is not a fiduciary duty to turn a profit, but there is a fiduciary duty to put the corporation's interests above your personal interests.
You are right - thanks for the correction. However, there is certainly a fiduciary duty to put the interests of the corporation above your personal interests as a high-level manager.
Yes, I'm against corporate lobbying in all cases, even when they're lobbying for causes that I believe in like LGBT rights and net neutrality. I would be quite a hypocrite if I only supported corporate lobbying when it was for causes that I agreed with. Ideally corporations would have no place in politics.
And please don't conflate "doesn't support lobbying for XXX" with "doesn't support XXX". They're really orthogonal concepts.
Corporate citizens have an obligation to obey the laws of the jurisdictions in which they operate. If they find the laws unacceptable, they should lobby to have them changed.