Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Uber Conflation

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 143 posts

Re: The Uber Conflation

#51

Post by ghaff »

wrsh07 wrote: post #41
trimbo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UPS and Fedex pay New York millions in parking fines as a cost of doing business[1]. How come we don't really think of them as scofflaws, but we do with Uber? (I include myself when asking this question) [1] - http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20130526/ECONOMY/305269...

That's an interesting thing: in basketball, fouls are part of the game and used in the last minutes to get the ball back In most other sports, doing that would be "breaking the rules." Not sure how such a division arises. (Maybe if the authorities make no attempt to "close" said loophole?)

In general, in sports there's something of a distinction between fouls that are simply a violation of a game's rules and fouls that also cause or at least risk injuries. The former are generally regarded to be just part of the game and, presumably, penalties are commensurate with the foul. It's not uncommon for "dirty" play to have consequences in addition to the foul called at the time.

The basketball example is an interesting one. One assumes that if the league wanted to eliminate that type of play they'd change the rules to increase the penalty in some way by docking points or whatever.

Re: The Uber Conflation

#52

Post by Tycho »

I'm getting the sense that there's some kind of orchestrated effort to take down Uber. The whole "Kalanick must step down" talking point is ridiculous. There was an HR problem he wasn't personally connected to, so now he must be removed despite being an incredibly effective CEO? Because SJWs now rule Silicon Valley and investors bow to them? Um, no, they don't.

The fake "I'm an Uber survivor" anonymous blog post and the leaked cab video seem like they're possibly the work of anti-Uber conspirators. And then you have other bloggers cashing in on the situation by writing these kinds of posts to get page views.

Re: The Uber Conflation

#53

Post by ghaff »

mikeash wrote: post #17
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a loophole! If the fines incurred are less than margins, then you have a profitable strategy.

Yeah, I don't think that's too bad. If you know you're breaking the law and accept the fines and pay them willingly because it's worth the cost, I don't see a big problem with that. Where I start having trouble is when they try to hide their lawbreaking, or fight against enforcement. For a similar example, UPS and FedEx both rack up an unbelievable amount of parking tickets in major cities for stopping their delivery…

I assume that you have a couple of things going on.

On the one hand, cities recognize that it's more or less impossible to make deliveries in a city without violating the law a decent portion of the time. But people want to get packages delivered.

On the other hand, they want to provide incentives to at least try to obey the law. (And they're almost certainly not averse to having the revenue stream either.)

Re: The Uber Conflation

#54

Post by st3v3r »

padobson wrote: post #33
orcdork wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're advocating for wealth being over the law. I don't see how you can feel that this is not a big problem.

That's now what this is. They're breaking the law and willingly serving the penalty. You can argue that the penalty isn't strong enough, but then your issue is with the legislature, not the criminal. What you're saying is tantamount to saying a thief who likes prison food is also above the law, because he actually enjoys the penalty for the laws he breaks.

That's exactly what that is. Basically, if you're rich enough to where the fine doesn't matter, you don't have to follow the law.

Re: The Uber Conflation

#55

Post by st3v3r »

jamornh wrote: post #36
_jal wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So those with the money to do so should be free to break them, while those who can't need to obey, and that's just right and proper?

No, but then that's an issue with the way fines and punishments for said crimes are structured, not the fault of those who takes advantage of the loophole. There are 2 types of fines: fines that are meant to stop things from happening and fines that are there to basically make the city money. Most traffic fines seem to be structured for the latter.

Wrong. It is an issue with the idea that the rich are above the law.

Re: The Uber Conflation

#56

Post by ariwilson »

jimmywanger wrote: post #45
ariwilson wrote: post #42

Moreover, one of Uber’s other “scandals” — the fact that Kalanick asked Amit Singhal to step down as Senior Vice President of Engineering after not disclosing a sexual harassment claim at Google — reflected far worse on Google than Uber: if Singhal committed a fireable offense the search giant should have fired the man who rewrote their search engine; instead someone in the know dribbled out allegations that happened…

> Google at least pushed Amit out as soon as the allegations were substantiated. We don't have any evidence that the allegations were substantiated. We have some internal, anonymous leaks that claim that Google found the allegations were "credible".

You're right, thanks.

Re: The Uber Conflation

#57

Post by mikeash »

orcdork wrote: post #44
mikeash wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you're in a really big hurry for something, and you park illegally knowing that it's illegal and accepting the chance that you'll get a ticket. When you do in fact get a ticket, you pay it willingly. Is that morally wrong, in your eyes?

Sure, let's say that. Let's say I have, for all practical purposes, infinite money. And every single day I park outside your house, in a way that it blocks your parking garage. And I do that illegally, knowing it's illegal, and accepting the chance that I'll get fined, knowing that any fine has absolutely no consequence. Is that morally wrong, in your eyes? Uber has been consistently breaking the law (or parking into…

The act of breaking parking law wouldn't be wrong. The act of harassing me would be. I believe the state would agree with me on that, and would escalate beyond simple fines before too long.

Re: The Uber Conflation

#58

Post by st3v3r »

Tycho wrote: post #52

I'm getting the sense that there's some kind of orchestrated effort to take down Uber. The whole "Kalanick must step down" talking point is ridiculous. There was an HR problem he wasn't personally connected to, so now he must be removed despite being an incredibly effective CEO? Because SJWs now rule Silicon Valley and investors bow to them? Um, no, they don't. The fake "I'm an Uber survivor" anonymous blog post and…

"I'm getting the sense that there's some kind of orchestrated effort to take down Uber."

If there is, it's from Uber itself. Everything that has come out are things that Uber has done by itself. No one else's fault but Uber and it's leadership.

"The whole "Kalanick must step down" talking point is ridiculous. There was an HR problem he wasn't personally connected to, so now he must be removed despite being an incredibly effective CEO? "

The buck stops there. He is completely, 100% responsible for the culture of his company.

"Because SJWs now rule Silicon Valley and investors bow to them? Um, no, they don't."

No one who uses the phrase "SJWs" should be taken seriously.

"The fake "I'm an Uber survivor" anonymous blog post and the leaked cab video seem like they're possibly the work of anti-Uber conspirators."

Because there's no way they actually happened. They hired an actor to defame Kalanick. And no one had ever experienced sexual harassment and hostile workplace environments at Uber before.

Re: The Uber Conflation

#59

Post by jamornh »

st3v3r wrote: post #55
jamornh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but then that's an issue with the way fines and punishments for said crimes are structured, not the fault of those who takes advantage of the loophole. There are 2 types of fines: fines that are meant to stop things from happening and fines that are there to basically make the city money. Most traffic fines seem to be structured for the latter.

Wrong. It is an issue with the idea that the rich are above the law.

If you want the rich to not be above the law then the punishment for breaking said law should not be financial in nature. Any punishment that is financial in nature will ALWAYS be less impactful to the rich than to the poor.

An improvement to this would be to structure fine based on networth rather than a fixed amount. Yet even then, a millionaire paying $900,000 in fines is still not as devastating as a poor person paying $900. So I would say that the issue is still the structure of the punishment.

Re: The Uber Conflation

#60

Post by jamornh »

orcdork wrote: post #46
jamornh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but then that's an issue with the way fines and punishments for said crimes are structured, not the fault of those who takes advantage of the loophole. There are 2 types of fines: fines that are meant to stop things from happening and fines that are there to basically make the city money. Most traffic fines seem to be structured for the latter.

Good to know it's up to you to pick and choose which laws inconvenience you, I mean which laws are there to make those fat cats at the city office the big bucks.

I don't think that was the point of my argument. I don't agree that rich people should be above the law, but that doesn't mean I can't disagree with the way the punishments are structured. I'm all for punishing all equally under the law whether you are rich or not. With that said, that also means that I think financial punishments for laws should be redesigned. A good start would be to fine people based on their networth instead of a fixed sum. Even then, the impact of a $900,000 fine on a wealthy person is likely less than a $900 fine for a poor person.
Post reply on HN