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Comment by vasco | Hacker News Reader

There's several examples where this is true even in other industries, like Uber. That being said that is the wrong take away. Upon seing some unfair cases of crime not being put to justice, the response shouldn't be "everyone does it, let me do it too". In fact the idea that "everyone does" whatever crime you're considering is the first and foremost rationalization people make before committing crimes like tax evasion and so on.

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Uber is really interesting example, since they started as a legit upscale taxi service, got mad Lyft flaunted the rules and regulations. They finally pivoted to the success story they are now after seeing how toothless the check and balances actually were.

It's really interesting how much Uber was trying to do things the right way, only to then over-correct into being the most devious and underhanded app-taxi company.

But the other company that Uber reacted to was Wingz, Inc, not Lyft.

I am being pedantic and never worked for Uber but I always assumed it was sidecar, I vividly remember them all over the city with their side mirror covers--don't ever recall seeing Wingz, though I am sure the existed.

I would argue it was not even so much that they were doing "things the right way", they were optimizing black car service and pivoted because it was not as lucrative.

What they pivoted to wasn’t lucrative either. I ubered all the time when it came out because pricing was like $4-7 for most trips that would be $30ish or more now. It was fueled on vc money to prime a generation of people going to bars to use uber and it worked perfectly. Now people just reflexively call that uber even when its surging to $60.

I agree with your sentiment one hundred percent. However, I am just stating that this is how the world works.

Cryptocurrency is another horrific example, where the value-add is avoiding KYC = tax and sanctions evasion! I knew this over a decade ago, and decided to sit it out for moral reasons. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

edit: to be honest, not just moral reasons. I just could not imagine that in a just world, this illegality would be allowed to continue. So little did I know.

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