In the most polite and urbane way possible, he's calling them toxic; in a world full of pretty toxic people and practices, he's calling them out.
Until this moment I wasn't sold on the idea that Uber was going to actually die from this, now...
Until this moment I wasn't sold on the idea that Uber was going to actually die from this, now...
In the 2008 financial crisis, people from the bottom to the top committed outright fraud; swallowing up other banks whole (PNC bought National City for $5 billion; then got a $5 billion tax credit .. they bought National City for free .. NC wasn't allowed to apply for TARP).
Ford sold tank treads to Germany. IBM made punch cards for the SS. BP got the UK and US to remove the democratically elected leader of Iran and install a dictator. United Fruit and everything they did in South America
Wal-Mart is still around, and Amazon has turned into the new Wal-Mart. Uber could die tomorrow or last another 50 years. I don't think any of this is make or break.
Zenefits seems to have cleaned up with the departure of the former CEO. I'm not sure what their bankruptcy prospects were. Departure or not, I think Uber has challenges beyond their need to create self-driving cars (which the CEO claimed was existential for them).
In literally the second sentence of his response: "We've seen worse companies last longer."
Now, Uber's current combination of all its troubles does not paint a pretty picture, but a resignation of a top exec and a PR nightmare simultaneously aren't really things that would definitively sink a multi-billion dollar company.
...And the danger is...?
Nobody is suggesting that you'll get bumped off by the Uber PR squad, just that you'll be caught making uninformed definitive statemnts about an uncertain situation.
It's more than a bit like a tipping point for the moral soul of market capitalism (to the extent that's not already an oxymoron).
Basically Uber will continue to dominate so long as being a complete, total monster is MORE important than any other consideration. That's what's propping them up: their continued existence is an indication that, to global capital as it exists today, the various considerations of business all boil down to one single Darwinian consideration: what will make the most money, all else aside.
Uber is a vote for 'all else aside'. They're a vote for literally capital crushing everything else before it, for the belief that abstracted power (in the form of money) can always do anything it wants. In a sense it's a vote of confidence in the freest of free markets: as long as everybody continues to believe, logically Uber can never fail because they can always out-scumbag everybody else and if you're certain that's the key to success it's illogical to break faith with 'em. That doesn't mean 'liking' it: you can hate it and still believe that's the only way to success.
The one crack in the support beam: this literally requires everyone to agree, because the ONLY thing holding Uber up is the collective confidence in their valuation. They can only burn infinitely if they represent something vitally important to capital as a whole. This is why they're still Uber, and it's pretty revealing.
But it requires just about unanimous agreement that Uber is the way of the future. It doesn't take many defectors before Uber stops making the rules for being a unicorn darling trend-setter: and people do have a sense of what's at stake here. If Uber is NOT the future… then they lose a LOT of money.
Uber is the Enron model. They are incapable of crumbling, or dwindling. They can only be the way of the future and the one model for everyone going forward… or explode, very suddenly and catastrophically.
(well, they also have a giant pile of cash. But their ability to raise that cash is obviously dependent on what investors think of their brand)
I myself was a die hard supporter of uber and its behavior of breaking corrupt laws.... up until the last month or so with the recent controversies.
Toxic is toxic I guess.