Uber and Travis Kalanick don't seem to be failing. They may have some negative publicity, but their growth is strong. Uber is probably worth more than any single yc company including Airbnb.
I think displacing the resident population of SF is pretty mean, as is creating a monoculture there.
Apathy matters.
"Criminals" are also good at being mistaken as mean people when they are really good.
Is that really someone that you'd want to emulate though?
You could make the case that Freeway Rick Ross is a really nice guy because he never had to use violence, but he still sold crack to people.
Good point. Is he "mean" or not? More curiously, is he "successful" or not?
(1) Legal.
Nevada just outlawed Uber. More generally, Uber stands to encounter a lot of legal push-back.
(2) Competition.
In e-mail of Sat 11/22/2014 12:20 PM, CBinsights reported that Uber has "27 alternatives".
(3) Localism.
Yes, maybe in each city, something like Uber, if successful, could have a network effect that would let it have a barrier to entry: That is, since all the drivers use Uber, all the riders do; and since all the riders do, all the drivers do.
But, the taxi business is geographically local so that success by, say, Uber in Boston does next to nothing to help Uber compete in NYC, Atlanta, Chicago, SF, LA, etc. So, in each city, Uber can be attacked by local competitors.
There's tons of state-controlled monopolies out there if you look hard enough.