Uber’s Complicit Board
mondaynote.com
mondaynote.com
Their business model is based on abuse employee protection laws, and ignore professional drivers regulations and fighting against them in tribunals when caught.
Years later they continue calling themselves "car sharing" company, even that it has professional drivers which only income comes from them. All their business model is based in lies, legal trickery, abuse of power, etc.
So, why people is surprised by this? I call this effect "Digital Stupidity". e.g. Opening a letter or listening to a phone call are illegal without a warrant. But, oh wait!, we are opening digital mails and listening to digital phone calls: No problem. e.g. Paying below minimum wage and breaking employment laws is wrong. But, oh wait!, we are using an app to hire our employees on a digital contract, so no problem.
Breaking employee and customer protection laws is not a good business model, even in an App. The rest of the behavior can be explained by their business model lack of any morality.
* http://www.timesunion.com/allwcm/article/Judge-finds-NYC-Ube... * https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/19/uber-appe... * https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/28/uber-to-s... * https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/14/uber-appe...
If you mean the contractor vs employee, they followed the same model as the existing taxi companies. There was no employee protection. If anything, Uber may (inadvertently, for sure) increase the employee protections that have been lacking for decades.
This article from 1995 (a bit early to be a submarine for Uber) shows well the "employee protection" that cab drivers had: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/09/nyregion/driving-a-taxi-di...
When I first used Uber it was black cars only. This was great - I'd learnt in the Bay Area that using black cars was cheaper than taxis, but finding a reliable company and getting it on demand was a PITA. Then Uber came along, awesome. Cheaper than what I was paying before, cheaper than a taxi, and on demand, with no tipping.
Then Lyft came along and Uber (AFAIK) copied them with Uber-X.
"Pirate taxis"? What are you talking about?
"Now, an important clarification: Unlike Lyft and Sidecar, the so-called ridesharing companies that were at that very moment making their debuts in San Francisco, the original UberX accommodated only professional drivers who held taxi licenses. Kalanick envisioned a fleet of black Toyota Priuses to be driven by the same types of licensed chauffeurs who were behind the wheels of other Uber vehicles."[1]
Also worth noting, black car drivers Uber used were licensed, just different from cab drivers.
[1] The Upstarts by Brad Stone http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29905580-the-upstarts
I refer to them running an illegal taxi operation.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_taxicab_operation
* http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/19/uber-declared-an-...
* http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-ubertech-court-idUS...
* https://www.dailysabah.com/technology/2016/12/28/uber-to-be-...
Uber built their business on utter disregard for the rule of law. In the process, they highlighted just how poor - or unwilling - local governments are at enforcing their own rules. This needs to get fixed, hopefully before the next wave of "laws are for losers" "entrepreneurs" hits.
I've put these stats on here before, but even though I called a taxi every day to go to work -- stats are in an xlx not on this laptop, so this is approximate -- the 80% wait time was approximately an hour, for someone who lived at 22/valencia and wanted to go to soma. And they regularly just didn't show up ever. Or threw tantrums if I didn't shoot down two flights of stairs, but it was totally cool for them to come an hour after being called. And the card readers 'broke' all the time -- but when you refuse to go to an atm and tell them their choice is to take a card or take $0, lo it's a miracle! The card machine starts working! I had more than one driver get pissy they weren't tipped after they tried to make me crutch over to an atm to pay them. Or one who didn't start the meter and tried to charge me $30-ish for a ride that normally cost $16.
Oh, and try getting a cab Thurs or Fri night to go home.
It's particularly amazing that a government sponsored monopoly would treat the handicapped this way.
In conclusion, fuck yellow cab in particular, but also fuck green cab and arrow. This is why no-one cared that uber ran a taxi service. Because it was ludicrously better.
I stuck with Uber for a long time because they made my life work for the second half of the injury, but finally switched to lyft 6 months ago.
But at some point, Uber expanded overseas, and took their laissez-faire attitude to regulations to places where taxis were kind of OK, and the laws were reasonable. That behaviour is much less forgivable there - because there isn't even a fig leaf of civil disobedience to hide behind, it's obvious money grab through anticompetitive behaviour.
Part of why local governments were unwilling to enforce the law against Uber was because the citizenry wanted the Uber product, and wanted it badly. The pace at which Uber grew is not just indicative of the absurd funding they had, but also how broken the status quo was in the taxi industry.
Local governments were largely unable to enforce the rule of law in this area because the law-abiding option had become utterly and completely indefensible.
In Seattle there were popular protests in favor of Uber, that's how badly the product was wanted.
I think there's a larger lesson here about poor governance being corrosive to the rule of law - at the end of the day, if things get bad enough, the law becomes words on a page rather than the rule of the land. That's a scary thought.
The taxi industry pre-Uber was universally reviled. Many comments here illustrate it, and they're not wrong. Strict supply limits created a market where competition was all but unnecessary, while would-be competitors had no legal ability to operate.
My (admittedly simplified) take is this: years of complete regulatory and governance failure around for-hire cabs created fertile ground for companies cavalier or dismissive about transport law. Companies cavalier or dismissive about transport law turn out to be cavalier or dismissive about other areas of law, to no particular surprise. While Uber can and should be held to account for all of its abuses, another Uber (or worse) will simply reoccur unless the underlying governance failure is fixed.
> I think there's a larger lesson here about poor governance being corrosive to the rule of law - at the end of the day, if things get bad enough, the law becomes words on a page rather than the rule of the land. That's a scary thought.
Yeah, and that's why I blame local governments for a lot in this debacle. It's their job to make sure a) laws make sense, and b) laws get enforced. Uber should be held responsible for a lot of things, but that's orthogonal to the fact that so far they really haven't been, and allowing that is damaging to the very perception of the rule of law.
They showed that from their very early days. If you supported the company until last year, then you supported their behavior as a whole. You cannot have your pie and eat it too.
To be specific: I am okay with them skirting regulatory procedures. I consider this an extension of "move fast and break things". I am not okay with their purportedly rampant sexual misconduct. It is morally reprehensible and has no business value.
Roping both types of conduct under "their behavior" is a step too far, IMO.
If there were any statement that is a good summation of tech culture hubris, it's "move fast and break things." You can not and, more appropriately, should not apply that to law as a basis for your business. If you are doing something illegal in your resident locale, then you are doing something illegal and reprehensible. Full stop.
If you feel that law is unjust, then fight it in a court of law. However, intentionally breaking that law with no intention of fighting it on its merits of being just but rather on the merits of preferred business operation is a pretty clear violation of ethics. Regardless, the court's decision is ultimately what governs the upholding of a law. Being in violation of that is still illegal.
However, intentionally breaking that law with no intention of fighting it on its merits of being just but rather on the merits of preferred business operation is a pretty clear violation of ethics.
The two are not incompatible.
Regardless, the court's decision is ultimately what governs the upholding of a law. Being in violation of that is still illegal.
"Violating the law is illegal", says Captain Obvious.
>Regardless, the court's decision is ultimately what governs the upholding of a law. Being in violation of that is still illegal.
This is just a tautology.
Anyone who intentionally breaks the law has to meet a heavy burden of justification. The circumstances under which it's morally ok to do so are rare, and usually involve emergencies or deliberate protest (in which case the perpetrator has to be prepared to accept the consequences). You cannot just go around breaking whatever law happens to be impacting your bank balance at the present moment and then justify that behaviour merely by intoning the phrase "legality is not morality".
In any case, I think you meant "conflating", not "conflicting".
This is bad advice for companies like Uber. The laws were changed far, far quicker with them simply disregarding them than they would have been with them politely asking for them to be changed with the entire global taxi industry against them.
It's also a fallacy that breaking the law is always morally reprehensible. Some laws are just stupid.
Does Uber pick the laws to break by their apparent stupidity? Or just by them being inconvenient for their money-making scheme?
> The laws were changed far, far quicker with them simply disregarding them than they would have been with them politely asking for them to be changed with the entire global taxi industry against them.
Well, sure, just how like I could resolve a conflict with my associate by killing him much faster than it would take me to go through courts. But the very reason for laws to exist is to safeguard the needs of the whole. Just because a law is invonvenient to an individual or an organization, doesn't mean the law is stupid or obsolete.
> with them politely asking for them to be changed with the entire global taxi industry against them.
The funny thing is, there is no global taxi industry. There never was. It's only a collection of mostly unrelated city-wide operations. The only truly global player on the scene is Uber - and they use the fact they're the only global presence to their advantage, by raising absurd amounts of money from VCs and using it to conquer local markets, one by one.
I don't think there was any other way to break the system without a competitor coming in and breaking the law and showing people how much better taxis could be.
If that were the only law they broke, I'd be fine with it.
Encouraging citizens to break the law and then pay their legal fees and fines when they get in trouble is a little bit more than "skirting regulatory procedures"
Frankly, we're talking about Uber hurting the livelihood of and exploiting lots of people worldwide, all for the sake of profits (the whole talk about "disrupting entrenched legacy industry" was always a PR bullshit, as evidenced e.g. by them breaking any law they didn't like, and not just those helping "taxi mafias") - and comparing that to them hurting the feelings of a few employees.
Frankly, this pile-up on Uber because of Susan Fowler story feels like a case of "arson, murder, jaywalking"[0] to me. I do appreciate it nonetheless, because maybe this will be enough to reach critical mass and finally kill off their business.
--
[0] - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArsonMurderAndJay...
Not all jurisdictions limited the number of taxis (via "medallions"/etc). Arizona had a limited number of regulations to protect people from blatant dishonesty (inaccurate meters, background screening for drivers, etc). Large taxi companies were trusted to regulate themselves, or the department of weights & measures helped single-car companies certify their meter's accuracy & verify vehicle safety, etc.
I drove for a large company because they'd spent decades building a brand that people trusted. They took care of the regulations, provided a clean well-maintained vehicle, and made a little off my efforts. I considered it an acceptable arrangement.
The company changed its leasing operation to unmarked vehicles that drivers can use with any of the apps. Their contracts (Medicaid patients to/from appointments, etc) pay better than non-surge uber fares, and their app is cheaper for riders than the upstarts'.
When uber cab is dead and gone, no one in Arizona will care.