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Comment by BobbyJo | Hacker News Reader

"No one knows the rules." What? The US legal system is incredibly strictly codified. It's literally the main draw for foreign investment. If you ask any investor on the planet what the largest difference between the US and China is for investments, it's regulatory risk.

This is one of the most wildly off base things I've seen people say with regard to US vs China.

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Lots of startup business models have been based around breaking the rules and then asking for forgiveness. See Uber etc

What rules did Uber break? I was under the impression that the startup model was to do things there are no rules for yet, and grow fast enough that you get to influence them when they're made.

> What rules did Uber break?

Many and there's a long list.

Almost every city had strict rules about passenger transportation, Uber obviously knew this and ignore them all. That's another reason they raised $25.2B in funding over 30 rounds, to become so big even big cities became small compared to them and they could use the "See you in court" tactic, by that point yeah they lose many cases, so what? They are so big cities and governments were pressured to change the laws to suit Uber.

Nothing is black and white, before Uber the business wasn't exactly fair and clean but Uber applied the scumbag business tactic to a whole new level and it was amplified by the billions of dollars in funding.

Uber took advantage of a grey area in the rules. They knew passenger transport was regulated, but didn’t physically transport any passengers. They didn’t break the rules as much as they had a (then) untested interpretation.

Any citations on the laws they broke?

Edit: I'll take the down as a 'No' :P

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=laws+uber+broke

"Uber’s business model is predicated on lawbreaking" [0]

"That Uber regularly broke laws to cement its frontrunner status is not a controversial statement, it’s a fact." [1]

[0] https://hbr.org/2017/06/uber-cant-be-fixed-its-time-for-regu...

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xwxyv/uber-became-big-by-ig...

"LMGT(FY)" is a disrespectful, counter-productive, and weaselly response. Please don't use it. If you make a claim, it's your responsibility to provide evidence (including links) to back it up, and anyone who has actually used Google extensively knows that (1) search results vary per user due to search bubbling and (2) search result quality (and precision) can vary wildly depending on the exact query used.

Normally I'd agree, but in this case, BobbyJo absolutely asked for it. It would have taken ten seconds to find a huge amount of material on Uber's law-breaking, and to pretend that one never even heard of such a thing and that Uber is totally law-abiding? Bullshit; it's like asking for citations that water is wet. BobbyJo even came back to snark about downvotes. BobbyJo chose to be a passive-aggressive dickhead, and deserved to get exactly the same back.

You'll note I did actually then provide some actual references.

In conclusion, BobbyJo deserved it and it was a right thing to do. Disrespectful? Yes, that's the point.

> In conclusion, BobbyJo deserved it and it was a right thing to do. Disrespectful? Yes, that's the point.

This is absolutely against HN guidelines, general common decency, and just pure logic. You do not get to decide who "deserves it" and who doesn't.

Even in cases where the information is easily found, there are polite ways to say that, and you appear to have intentionally chosen an impolite manner.

you appear to have intentionally chosen an impolite manner.

Yes, EXACTLY so. Choosing to be polite or not is part of expression. Active choice of politeness (or not) adds layers to meaning and communication. In this case, part of choosing to be impolite is expressing that BobbyJo didn't deserve politeness here. Conversely, sometimes being polite is itself brutally insulting. In this case, it would have been passive-aggressively treating BobbyJo like a child; far more insulting.

You do not get to decide who "deserves it" and who doesn't.

Of course I can make that decision. Just did. You might subscribe to a set of rules in which I don't get to make that decision; I clearly do not subscribe to that. I note that I certainly won't be telling you who you should and should not be polite to, though.

HNs rules aren't tailored toward maximizing expression. They are tailored toward maximizing discussion and information exchange. Impoliteness, while certainly a form of expression, is detrimental to discussion, hence it being frowned upon here. If your goal is simply self expression for its own sake, visual arts likely would provide a better medium than internet discussion boards.

Asking for a citation is asking for bad manners? Normally, if you posit something, it's on you to back it up, or admit it's pure anecdote or impression. I don't see how asking for a piece of information that's claimed to exist somewhere in the world is disrespectful.

Also, I did look it up. None of the articles I saw specifically called out laws Uber was guilty of breaking as a corporate entity, instead they all reference grey area behavior and use words like 'skirting' or 'undermining.'

I looked over both of those linked posts as well as the the links provided by a Google search and still couldn't find a single statute that Uber was unambiguously violating.

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