431–440 of 805 posts
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How far does your scofflaw streak go? Is this different from adding law enforcement blocking controls to any illegal tech product? Should everyone get to decide what laws to follow? I think you are describing anarcho-capitalism, not libertarianism.
Should everyone get to decide what laws to follow? You act as if they don't already. Society works pretty well anyways.
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I agree with your statements at large, but considering Uber was not aware of any active investigations, they're under no obligation to assist police in enacting a sting. I'm not suggesting that it is, as there are semantically many problems with it, but an argument could be made that this is more of an extension of one's fifth amendment rights to remain silent than it is evading the law. Starting a company to drive p…
> an argument could be made that this is more of an extension of one's fifth amendment rights to remain silent than it is evading the law Not to mention freedom of association.
So I ask this mostly out of horrified curiosity -- is there any negative press or revelation that could actually sink Uber at this point? What would it take for the company to fail? We've seen: * Systematic flouting of laws in public * Even further hidden avoiding of laws * Sexism complaints across the board * What appears to be a pervasive toxic culture, inspired (if not explicitly encouraged) straight from the CEO'…
The gist is that scandalous behavior doesn't matter until it does. All the negative stuff everyone already knows about a protagonist is discounted, for a time. And then a switch is flipped and everyone piles on.
One example given was Clinton's sexual indiscretions. It was an open secret. It only became a "scandal" when opinion shifted. (For whatever reason.) Then it's unshakeable.
TLDR: Uber's time at the wood shed will come.
I wonder what rate of false negatives is, in terms of assigning Greyball status to someone who is not in fact a local official conducting a sting operation. Picture a 19-year-old woman in college whose dad convinced her to put Uber on her phone so she'd have a way to get home safely at night -- and linked her account up to his credit card so she wouldn't worry about having to afford the ride. Now picture her leaving…
Lots of people are scared to use Uber/Lyft at first and need to be convinced to ride.
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> [the US] requires income tax to be paid on foreign earnings Which is a common reason to wish to renounce US citizenship. But there is a trap which prevents renunciation because you don't like to be unfairly taxed: "If the Department of Homeland Security determines that the renunciation is motivated by tax avoidance purposes, the individual will be found inadmissible to the United States under Section 212(a)(10)(E)…
That doesn't prevent renunciation to avoid taxes, it just prevents you from coming back.and enjoying the benefits Americans taxes pay for after you decide you don't want to be an American because that means paying taxes. Which seems perfectly fair to me.
Or to the aging of the infrastructure?
When I go on holiday, am I obligated to leave my water turned on? My power? My cable service? Or can I turn it off, and come back?
Fun fact, for many immigration classes, a US citizen is required to sign a security document saying that even though you are paying SS and other taxes, that the government, for ten years, may come after them for every dollar of benefits you may claim.
So an eighteen year old who has yet to pay taxes can claim these benefits, but a thirty year old immigrant has to pay taxes without access to services for ten years (well, with access but with the government reserving a right of recovery for any use).
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I seem to be the minority here, but I don't see how any entity (including Uber) has an obligation to make it easy for the law to ticket them. Anyone who uses e.g. the Waze app to evade speedtraps is similarly guilty of "systematically avoiding the law." Lastly, let me just disclaim that I think Uber is run by assholes and so is the police.
> I don't see how any entity (including Uber) has an obligation to make it easy for the law to ticket them. Corporate citizens have an obligation to obey the laws of the jurisdictions in which they operate. If they find the laws unacceptable, they should lobby to have them changed.
See: racism and discrimination broadly, segregation, refugees, illegal immigration, unions / union strikes, marijuana, political corruption, cartels, government protected monopolies and so on. There are a vast number of topics that cause people at businesses to be willing to disregard the laws of a given jurisdiction at various points in time (regardless of whether one views the position as being on the moral side or not). It'd be hard to claim that it never makes sense to disobey the law for a business, given just the last century of history in just the developed world, with the plentiful display of wildly irrational or immoral laws that have existed.
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Sure, if we stick with Uber and transportation topic. Labor laws, minimum wage, vehicle inspections, registration. systems and rules that were put in place as a response to what citizens felt were "wrongs" that needed to be addressed. When a organization ignores those laws then they are going against the will of the people.
When given a choice, drivers stampeded from yellow cabs to Uber. Riders stampeded from yellow cabs to Uber. It's clear which one most parties prefer. And that suggests that all those government "services" around the provision of taxi service are valued at or below 0 by most people.
I cannot speak to the motivation of those that chose Uber as a customer or employer. Perhaps customers chose them because of the cost and convenient app. Perhaps employees chose them because of the low barrier to entry and flexible hours.
Just because something different came along and grabbed everyone's attention does not mean that the gov services are valued at zero. There was a time when those yellow cabs had little to no rules or oversight. And that changed for a good reason - or at least a reason that people thought were good at a time.
The rules for Uber are going to change too - there will be laws and rules designed to correct wrongs (either real or perceived).
If the rules need to be different then people need to stand up and try to make the rules what they think they should be. My argument is that Uber should not decide on its own not to respect the will of the people.
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> If I don't like Uber, I can... stop using Uber. You can, but if that decision is not sufficiently common in your area, and you don't have sufficient resources to relocate before the problem becomes acute, you may find your practical choices constrained in such a way that you are left with no realistic choice for necessary functions but to use Uber. > What can I do if I don't like the service a state provides - can…
Uber isn't a monopoly. For all the scummy things that Uber has done, they have avoided the most scummy thing they could do to become a monopoly: driver lock-in, making their drivers commit to only drive for them and not for Lyft. Susan Fowler's post has me pretty fed up with Uber, but for some reason greyballing doesn't bother me at all.
Like every startup (and most companies), it aims to be; a moat is pricing power is an absence of substitute is monopoly.
"we need to permanently track your location on the app to better serve you. unless you are a possible government official, in which case we will track your location to block you from the service" yes definitely not scary at all that they're tracking open/close of the app by location...
Where users open the app is just as legitimate a marketing tool as traffic counts or parking lot counts in retail, or musicians knowing where Spotify users are streaming their songs to inform concert tour plans, etc. If you give me location access permission, it seems reasonable to expect that I'm going to use that location access.
and also i don't expect them to continue using my location once i leave the app in the name of "user safety" _especially_ given the above info.
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Both things can be correct if you believe the law in question is bad. The Jefferson quote comes to mind: "If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so."
You'd think they would mention that the law was bad if that was their justification here.
In this case, the drivers were already breaking the law (opinions on the righteousness of the law notwithstanding), and law enforcement was seeking to apprehend, not entrap.