Hacker News Reader

Comment by cocktailpeanuts | Hacker News Reader

Good for him. This is probably an unpopular opinion here, but I feel bad for this guy. Could have built a really great empire, and he probably would have if it was ten years ago.

But things are changing so fast nowadays and the masses have a lot of power (maybe too much than they deserve) and Uber unfortunately was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

When I talk to real people in the real world (not Twitter trolls and social justice warriors), most people appreciate how Uber changed the world for the better. He deserves every cent of his billions of dollars.

View on HN

Uber was not "at the wrong place at the wrong time." They did a whole bunch of shitty things.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/uber-trav...

All happened under Travis's watch. One or two isolated incidents could be the fault of a few bad apples. But for this much bad stuff to happen, the CEO is asleep at the wheel. If he couldn't handle that responsibility, he should have bowed out sooner.

Boy, where to even begin... "wrong place at the wrong time"? Are you actually aware of the circumstances under which he was forced out?

Did Uber change the world or did ubiquitous smartphones with GPS capability change the world?

While it seems obvious that Uber may have hastened the process is it really arguable that people would still be using their phone to call taxi dispatchers in 2018?

Seems to me he capably profited from a trend. Which is great. But did it unethically. Which is, obviously, not ethical. It's not clear the world really needs more ethically compromised multinational companies.

Every great entrepreneur profited from a trend and an opportunity.

How does he deserves every cent of 1.4 billion dollars? He didn't do $1.4 billion worth of labour. His drivers, carmakers, road builders, telecom providers, smartphone makers and software engineers did $1.4 billion worth of labour. Kalanick found himself in a position where he could extract $1.4 billion worth of rent. He's just one fucking guy. It took a solid chunk of western civilization to make Uber possible. It was literally millions of years in the making.

If you wish to make an apple pie from search, you must first invent the universe.

https://youtu.be/7s664NsLeFM

We can apply this logic to (almost?) any extremely wealthy person.

Does Musk deserve his coin? What about Gates? The Koch brothers? Mostly other people have done the work for them.

I do apply that logic to any extremely wealthy person. I mean, I don't lose sleep at night worrying about the billionaires of the world, I just think it's ridiculous to suggest that they deserve it, or that they earned it somehow.

> He deserves every cent of his billions of dollars.

He deserves the money he made by making a company that was competitive by knowingly skirting laws? That seems like a bad precedent to set.

Yes and no. Was it operating in a gray area, yes.

However, that gray area wasn't the equivalent of dumping toxic waste into a river to build some product. The gray area was around how taxis were regulated in markets.

As a frequent Uber/Lyft/Taxi user in NYC I can say that the experience for the consumer has been fantastic. I never want to use a taxi again for many reasons.

1. There's very little recourse for lost items 2. You can't get one on-demand (now you can with apps but not before) 3. There's no recourse for having a bad driver or ensuring a good pleasant ride

So while it operated in the gray it was around archaic laws, it wasn't like it was destroying the environment.

> gray area

It's not gray; it was black and white. Companies need to follow the law.

> archaic laws

The laws Uber is accused of violating, including their attempts to deceive law enforcement, are not archaic.

> Yes and no. Was it operating in a gray area, yes.

Why is it a grey area? I don't think those laws are good but they exist. I don't believe a company's willingness to ignore laws should give them a competitive advantage because that just creates an incentive to do so.

Also, companies should not be in the business of deciding what laws are okay or not okay to disobey.

> As a frequent Uber/Lyft/Taxi user in NYC I can say that the experience for the consumer has been fantastic.

I like Lyft a lot, but I don't believe the end justifies the means. The proper way to do this would have been to change the laws first and then make the business second.

> proper way to do this would have been to change the laws first and then make the business second.

Unfortunately, businesses tend to heavily influence the creation of the laws that give them an unfair advantage. Businesses get started, they get big, and then use their money to buy lobbying power. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was true in the taxi industry.

I don’t care for laws which exist to favor industry leaders.

> companies should not be in the business of deciding what laws are okay or not okay to disobey.

Why not? We do this everyday as individuals. A company a coherent group of people acting collectively.

Laws are a high-latency side chain of authority, not the Word Of God.

> Why not? We do this everyday as individuals. A company a coherent group of people acting collectively.

Because companies are concerned with profits. Even individuals should not be skirting laws for the sake of profit as that would be immoral.

What about a scenario where a company decides a law about censorship or a gagging order is not okay?

I think there's usually a lot of gray areas with regard to morality.

That's what I'm referring to, if the laws exist but there isn't a specific common good that they are addressing that the new entrant is destroying or hurting, then the laws should be adapted over time. Certainly they could have went the direct route to get the law changed, but as time has shown having power and then getting changes is usually a simpler process.

So they are operating in a gray area but not hurting the common good, so adapting the laws would make sense.

Not the same as producing something toxic as a by product of your product and then releasing that into the environment.

Don't forget that the company isn't profitable yet.

I like Uber as a service. But you shouldn't make the argument of 10 years ago. They started in 2009, depends on smartphones to use the app. If it started 10 years beforehand it would be 1999, they wouldn't even be able to really start.

Perhaps the 'real people in the real world' would be offended and stop using Uber if they knew of Kalanick and his team's doings, not the least of which has been the intimidation and attempt to discredit a rape victim.

EDIT: I appear to be mis-remembering Uber's actions - they did not initially share their denial of the victim's experiences with her, per the accounts I've found. In this setting, 'intimidation' may be too strong a word.

+1 to this, most people have no idea of the laundry list of terrible things Uber did.

This keeps coming up. Uber did not intimidate the rape victim.

We know they obtained her medical records in an attempt to discredit her, and Travis knew.

https://www.recode.net/2017/6/7/15754316/uber-executive-indi...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/07/uber-exec...

That alone should disqualify Kalanick from serving as CEO. Instead of firing the executive who took the records immediately, he gave his implicit approval by considering the records.

>Perhaps the 'real people in the real world' would be offended and stop using Uber if they knew of Kalanick and his team's doings

I haven't stopped using them. But then, I buy Apple products manufactured with suicidal slave labor, use fossil fuels in my car, eat meat, etc. I suspect you probably do plenty of things that are someone else's pet issue too. WRT Uber I have some minimal faith left in "the system" that whatever legal issues need to be taken care of will. In the meantime, I will continue to use products and services that provide a good value in my life.

There weren't smartphones with GPS and 3G 10 years ago. Uber couldn't work.

He plans to buy XRP & TRX :P

Reply on news.ycombinator.com