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Comment by manuelmoreale | Hacker News Reader

> In other words, I see this not a special greed of this particular company, but a logical conclusion of the economic system it operates in. (I'm not saying it is good either. Only that raging against the symptom is a bit misplaced, and instead you should focus attention at the causes).

I think this is conceptually sound take but at the same time it's way too kind towards the people who are on the field making these decisions. Accepting to behave like a despicable human being and justify it with "well this is the system I operate in" is not acceptable for me from a moral standpoint.

The economic system is awful, sure. But deciding to go along and play the same awful game and drag everybody else down with it is a personal choice.

There is no such thing as "corporations". It's people. From top to bottom. And people are responsible for their own actions.

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> But deciding to go along and play the same awful game and drag everybody else down with it is a personal choice.

True but misleading. If the system promotes being an asshole, then you'll have assholes at the top, no matter how much effort you put into moralizing everyone.

If the system promotes being an asshole, and you decide to play along, you’ll have to accept the fact that you are, in fact, an asshole. It’s not a matter of moralizing anyone. It’s just a matter of accepting consequences.

> it's way too kind towards the people who are on the field making these decisions.

So I guess, nicer taxi corporations existed, and got turfed out by Uber and Lyft who managed to reduce prices or increase convenience, and are reaping the fruit of their investment. Capitalism in motion.

I guess my fundamental point is, you can't fix this by putting pressure on companies to be nicer, because the ones being less nice will ultimately win due to better economics. If you want to fix it, change the law. Anything else is kind of shouting at clouds.

I remember people welcoming Uber not because of the app, but because the idea "you'll know exactly how much the ride will cost you before you take it" was revolutionary at the time. Over here, what used to happen was that you order the taxi, the guy says "yeah I'll take you there it'll cost you $10" and then the bill was $20 and there was nothing you could do about it except pay. It was completely normal for taxis to scam people. So when Uber came and started scamming drivers, everyone cheered.

The point is, you're essentially right. It's just that before Uber customers were most likely victims of scams, while with Uber it's the drivers. As in, in a capitalistic market the scamming is always present, the question is who scams who.

Scam is too generic of a word... its information asymmetry. Also for the most part everyone is trying to get some service/product for the lowest price while at the same time trying to earn as much as possible for some labor.

Taxi's were never nicer. They were very unpredictable if you would ever get one.

Outside of NYC (in the US), you may never see a taxi driving with the light on indicating you can hail it.

There was no such thing as a nice taxi before Uber. Not only did you have to schedule rides in advance, they were also incredibly unreliable. Prices were much higher and people routinely got scammed because you didn't know how much it would cost until you arrived.

Uber/lyft is miles better than the old taxis.

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