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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

Uber massively empowered the underclass by destroying the taxi cartels. Lyft exists because of Uber. Even if one argues that Uber deserves to be punished for its various sins, the revolution they helped spark will improve transportation over time. Just demolishing the medallion racket alone is a vast improvement for the underclass, of which pretty much all taxi drivers belonged. Pre-Uber, Taxi drivers were more like indentured workers, with between little and zero hope of ever owning or controlling anything. Medallion prices in New York City reached $1+ million before Uber tanked the scheme.

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Not sure why this comment was voted down, it's actually quite true, as I was a NYC resident for 25 years and my dad drove a cab there as well.

Uber the company may have been egregious in many ways, but along with Lyft and the iPhone and their interpretation of the TLC laws they were able to bring competition to a much needed market and displace the old monopoly that taxi owners had. Which by the way, were much worse on their employees than Uber ever was.

It's also important to note that the experience of using Uber/Lyft is much better than a taxi: 1. You can get back lost items 2. You have some idea that the driver picking you up is professional 3. You have recourse against a bad ride 4. Likewise, it's a two way street, as a rider the driver now also knows that you are going to act appropriately 5. Convenience of being picked up where you are 6. Convenience of not having to explain how to get a to place that isn't often frequented by taxis 7. Convenience of never having to take your wallet out 8. Overall better quality cars, both in terms of comfort and safety since they are newer and more well maintained

Huh? Part of your comments is wrong. Lyft existed before Uber as zimrides. Not only that Lyft and another competitor Sidecar pioneered ride sharing - Uber started out as a black car service and borrowed it's current business model from those two. Even more, Lyft was the first to take on city regulators, when Uber was still a black car service and Uber initially opposed the move to make ride sharing legal and only jumped on the bandwagon when it looked like Lyft was going to succeed and eat Uber for lunch. It's actually the other way around- Uber exists because of Lyft (source of all this - the Upstarts by Brad Stone which I'm currently reading). But everything else you said I agree with: Taxis were just plain awful.

Stop repeating this, it is wrong. Uber copied Lyft, Uber was initially another high end black car/limo service, the whole history was documented on TechCrunch articles, here is one to start: https://techcrunch.com/2012/05/22/zimrides-lyft-is-going-to-...

App based rideshare brokering would have happened one way or another. If it hadn't been Uber or Lyft it would have been someone else, or possibly many others. Nobody in particular deserves special credit for coming up with the idea. Although Uber was quite exceptional in their aggressive growth and willingness to challenge the law. I think without Uber and specifically Kalanik, it wouldn't have happened as fast.

Depends on where, really. Some places had real taxi mafias, other had taxi market that got stuck in the 80s, yet others had well-functioning taxi services.

But "destroying the taxi cartels" wasn't a good thing, because it replaced an imaginary taxi mafia (that supposedly spanned cities) with a single taxi mafioso that's a global corporation. Uber tried to paint itself as an underdog fighting the establishment, but the truth is that in this battle, it's Uber who was the only large player. That's how they won, too - they could strategically allocate funds to beat taxi networks on a city-by-city basis.

I'm not going to defend all taxis. I happen to live in a place with nice cabs, but I've heard plenty of horror stories from elsewhere. But - ironically, as I warned years ago, back before Uber was a frequent guest of newspaper headlines, but right about time when their rotten-to-the-core culture became visible in their dishonest and unethical behavior - this is a story of unleashing a monster. We should have slain it long time ago, before it got the chance to grow. Alas, here we are.

> But "destroying the taxi cartels" wasn't a good thing, because it replaced an imaginary taxi mafia (that supposedly spanned cities) with a single taxi mafioso that's a global corporation.

This is simply bullshit, through and through. Uber, at best, is just a middleman that provides billing services. Those performing the service are local corporations that are free to pick whichever billing service they want. In fact, after Uber started to cover my region the local cab companies were quick to setup a competing service. With them, other multinational ridesharing services started covering my region as well. In two occasions I took a ride whose driver stated he also worked through two Uber competitors.

This is a huge improvement over the old cartel system.

> Uber, at best, is just a middleman that provides billing services.

That's the bullshit they try to sell to the taxmen. It isn't how it works in reality, though.

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