I really wish things defaulted to "legal if not specifically prohibited", not "illegal unless specifically allowed" like this implies. (probably just a case of overly broad taxi legislation, though)
Uber isn't a registered company in Colombia, which means it's operating illegally.
What does seem clear to me though is that Colombia is being disproportionate and possibly somewhat arbitrary & capricious in their response. What sort of country tries to ban people for 25 years! This is the bad parenting brand of legislation ("oh, you ignored my exaggerated threat. Damn"). And I'm not saying this out of support for Uber (can't stand them, which is what makes these kinds of stand offs a good spectacle)
- Uber adds traffic to already choked up/bad infrastructure
- Uber does not pay their employees benefits etc. because of their "partnership" so this leads to poorer health outcomes which cost the state $ later on
- Uber "voluntarily" pays VAT etc. (only after taxis pushed for this) but almost certainly not commensurate with their income
so yes, the company is dumping their enormous externalities without much regard for the country at hand, and it's not useful to insert a tech-focused example into the situation.
Unless we lived in an omniscient surveillance state that automatically notified property owners, basic tort law really couldn't address this effectively because the benefits of dumping easily exceed the risk adjusted costs simply because the costs of detecting and suing for illegal dumping on a property owner by property owner basis are far too great.[1] Indeed, the more toxic the waste the more the situation favors dumpers.
[1] To be clear, that's not a comment on pricey lawyers and slow courts, but regards fundamental structural limitations to such a legal system.
But to be fair doing such a thing is invariably already illegal under basic rules of property and tort, it's just that the penalties aren't very much. Though even with steep statutory penalties and even criminal penalties it still happens--people still dump toxic waste into the deep woods everywhere. But I would presume that the steeper penalties are somewhat effective at the margins.
It would also be a nightmare to have to go through the court system for every infraction.
not necessarily. we have kneejerk reactions to statistically anomalous events all the time. Some things happen so infrequently that the regulation does far more harm than good. People have a desire to do something, anything, but never question if something should be done in the first place and establishing rational criteria to determine if they shouldn't act at all.
Yeah, I look forward to new forms of pollution just being dumped everywhere, new weapons that are automatically allowed.