Does anyone know what sort of restrictions he could have on his stake? Is he allowed to do this?
I would assume a CEO of a private company couldn't sell this much without being removed, but since he has already been removed, I wonder what incentives he would have to keep it.
Even if he had restrictions, I would expect the current board / management to waive such restrictions to entice him to sell in the tender, particularly since there was a floor to Softbank's tender offer. Travis' stake filled a lot of that floor. Removing some of his voting power to replace it with an active investor is a nice bonus, too.
Personally, I really hope Uber does well. The leadership is new, they have more capital, and can do really well if they execute properly. No other company has that sort of a global reach in the on demand transport business right now. It's incredible that I can use the same app to hail a ride in so many cities and countries.
Sounds more like the former captain absconding with the largest life raft and much of the passengers' riches after being fired. Whether he sabotaged the ship as well remains to be seen, but bystanders have noted it appears to be listing a bit to one side...
I’m not close enough to that action to know but I understand (from rumours) that he pretended to support a problematic successor who proved to be a dud to get the attention far from Dara, the person he actually wanted to take over.
I don't like his company, nor him, but he knows about money.
I know is sacreligous to call out a bubble, but this current economy just feels like one.
And yes--I know about the glorious unemployment rate. I also know about the other rate ("able bodied, but aren't working"). Plus--no inflation. Plus--no increase of wages. Plus--a bunch of companies I can't figure out what they actually do.
I wouldn't be suprised if he cashed out of everything.
While poor guys/idiots, like myself, are thinking about putting money back in the market.
I'm not going to put my last few thousand in, but I'm envious of the gains. Whenever I feel like this, the market tanks.
To be fair, he's the one who stuffed the ships with morality-free sailors, booze, drugs and prostitutes and then acted surprised when his investors questioned his ability to captain.
Of course those questions were only raised after it all went public, and Uber became a bad word in some circles. It’s possible the investors were so due diligence free that they had no clue, but I really doubt it.
You know the saying "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Well it can just as well apply here. He could just be at full tilt.
Hard to determine if he lost confidence in "his vision" vs "current + future vision".
In his place, having lost direct control, I'd be tempted to cash out early solely because my influence was so diminished. Not because I was 100% sure the new direction wasn't right.
So I can't tell if this is an admission that Uber is over valued, or just a risk management decision around losing more direct control.
True. But by cashing out the maximum possible amount, this is far more than a hedge. In your scenario, I would cash out some but would have confidence in the strength of the business that I created... unless I didn't.
In reality, I'm at a loss as to why anyone would join Uber right now. They cannot be still attracting the best talent, especially in the autonomous vehicle space. And I've seen no evidence that the current ride sharing business is defensible, particularly once you account for the equity infusions that subsidize that business.
Perhaps someone well versed in these matters could chime in but the somewhat bigger question is whether its a good indicator even for the economy at large, since Uber's reach is quite global.
Just today:
One of the biggest surprises of the U.S. stock market’s
relentless rally is how many individual investors have
run away from it.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 25000 for
the first time on Thursday, punctuating a record-setting
period nearly unmatched in U.S. history. Yet throughout
the nearly nine-year surge in share prices, individual
investors have continued to yank money out of funds that
own U.S. stocks.
Nearly $1 trillion has been pulled from retail-investor
mutual funds that target U.S. stocks since the start of
2012, according to EPFR Global, a fund-tracking firm.
Over that same period through Wednesday, the S&P 500
soared 116% and, along with the Dow Industrials and Nasdaq
Composite Index, rose to 190 all-time highs.[1]
[1]
As Dow Tops 25000, Individual Investors Sit It Out
Since 2012, $1 trillion has been pulled from retail-
investor mutual funds that target U.S. stocks
The value has already been cut in half from the peak raise, however him selling shares isn't a bad outlook for company.
He's no longer CEO, part of the deal is he won't be chairman, he will be for all intents and purposes not involved with the business and at arms length so why not cash out $1B dollars and go live your life instead of stewing waiting for something to happen.
Is there more value to be created? Perhaps and very likely. But I think Travis just wants to close this chapter as quickly as possible and move on.
Certainly to have $1-2B in the bank changes your life completely and he will go figure out what all of this means for him now.
According to the article, the limit is not because Softbank and others were not willing to buy more but because Softbank and others could not buy more.
Presumably because other investors didn't want Softbank to buy too much shares and gain too much control over Uber.
In other words, Softbank bought as much as they possibly could.
The reason doesn't change the fact that it's too early to say that Kalanick is the next Jobs. His current and past actions can resemble Steve Jobs and Apple, but that says nothing about how the future will occur for Kalanick and Uber. Given the state of Uber with the Waymo lawsuit, their moonshot long-term investment I'm guessing you're referencing, I think things are very different between the two futures.
The "sexual harassment" claim was for an employee (or employees), it wasn't him who sexually harassed someone.
There is sexual harassment everywhere. Probably at your company too, it's just that people wanted to see Uber fail, and that's why he's become the sacred cow.
I'm not saying he did a great job dealing with these issues. I'm saying a lot of the things Uber was accused of was something that EVERY other company does. You just aren't aware of it.
And in this particular case, this was used as a weapon to bring down Uber. The narrative you're following is really just a result of politics and media manipulation by some parties which benefited from this result.
> it's just that people wanted to see Uber fail, and that's why he's become the sacred cow.
The sexual harassment did not come out because people wanted to see Uber fail. People want Uber to fail because it came out, and the extent of it.
Extent is a very important factor. This was not "a person was sexually harassed once at a company", which does indeed happen at many places. This was a larger pattern and intrinsic problem. You're downplaying that by insinuating that all of this is because there was a target on Uber's back. There are good reasons people want to see them fail.
> I'm saying a lot of the things Uber was accused of was something that EVERY other company does. You just aren't aware of it.
Um, no. There are some more common than others, sure, but few companies were as bad as Uber was. Every company does not steal IP from other companies. Every company does not create software to evade law enforcement. Every company does not pay hackers to delete data. Every company does not hire psychologists in an attempt to manipulate drivers. The list goes on.
You can argue that Kalanick deserves credit for his idea and perhaps even the overall effects in a utilitarian argument, but sweeping under the rug the bad reveals your bias very quickly. All of your posts on this thread are basically trying to defend him directly or indirectly while adding in a clause basically saying "well he wasn't perfect". Let's not erase the bad because he may have done something good, just as we shouldn't erase the good.
If you think Uber is uniquely evil, you are too naive my friend.
Again, i'm not trying to say Uber was ethical, so don't try to tell me I'm some Uber fanboy.
I'm just pointing out among all evil corporations Uber was the one to fall and there are plenty of disgusting reasons behind it which most people who criticize Uber have no idea of. And I'm talking about this point. The world thinks they've won because they've punished Uber, but what they've done is just play into hidden politics that made some shady people behind the scenes more money.
Actually, the world is all run by 3 dogs making decisions in Japan. Trust me, Uber is just their pawn. Nothing else matters, every other ethical fault is meaningless.
You're going to have to actually provide some examples and/or evidence before I believe most companies do all of this regularly. I'd argue most terrible ethical actions of companies are out in the open and more socially accepted.
> "The world thinks they've won because they've punished Uber, but what they've done is just play into hidden politics that made some shady people behind the scenes more money."
This is one small thing, but I'll take it over nothing.
I'm not blind to the larger power struggle of the world all mostly hidden from view. But, if this didn't happen, a different group of shady people wins on the other side of the hidden politics. Last I checked there aren't big differences in the shady hidden political system's parties.
Jobs wasn't fired for serially violating the law, risking his company's survival, damaging its reputation (EDIT: and mistreating everyone from female employees to rape victims).
thats pretty much what he was fired for. Mistreating employees, damaging the company, it's reputation and he was caught later in his career in the wage setting scandal. So yeah, they are pretty similar.
Not sure I have heard anything about TK going after rape victims specifically, thats a new one for me.
Only the words are similar, but the facts were not: Uber had a culture of sexual harassment, which is illegal; Jobs was a jerk to employees. Uber willfully violated many laws in many jurisdictions, as a policy and strategy, and even wrote and deployed software to obstruct justice; executives resigned rather than be associated with the illegality. Apple/Jobs violated the law once, colluding to not hire employees of certain competitors. These aren't really comparable.
If they raise the prices, does the market go away?
If they are able to outlast and go to self-driving cars, how profitable is that business when factoring in competition, possible regulation, or it even becoming a public utility?
You’re underestimating the current oligarchy that exists. That’s why net neutrality is dead. You’re right, it’s not intrinsically true, but it’s pretty damn close to it...
Side note: big companies generally die because they don’t take a real threat seriously, and by the time they do, it’s too late.
Can you elaborate? Uber especially engaged in massive expenses on self driving cars, market share grabs, etc. But take those out and what remains seems to be a solid ride hailing business that should be able to generate stable profit.
It needs to be less expensive than a taxi to generate a lot of demand, but this seems to be a pretty low bar.
Yes. Perhaps even moreso. With Uber, at least in the beginning and still a little now, there was a contingent of both professional drivers and customers willing to use a sustainable service.
Uber made total sense in big cities when minimums were $15, the average ride was $40+, and all cars were staffed by professional drivers looking for extra income and hours between clients. It was win-win, complied with the law and really didn’t even have that big of an impact on the taxi industry because it wasn’t a race to the bottom.
None of these services make any sense with $7 rides and random people with a drivers license trying to make a living off of driving all day long.
Good for him. This is probably an unpopular opinion here, but I feel bad for this guy. Could have built a really great empire, and he probably would have if it was ten years ago.
But things are changing so fast nowadays and the masses have a lot of power (maybe too much than they deserve) and Uber unfortunately was at the wrong place at the wrong time.
When I talk to real people in the real world (not Twitter trolls and social justice warriors), most people appreciate how Uber changed the world for the better. He deserves every cent of his billions of dollars.
Perhaps the 'real people in the real world' would be offended and stop using Uber if they knew of Kalanick and his team's doings, not the least of which has been the intimidation and attempt to discredit a rape victim.
EDIT:
I appear to be mis-remembering Uber's actions - they did not initially share their denial of the victim's experiences with her, per the accounts I've found. In this setting, 'intimidation' may be too strong a word.
That alone should disqualify Kalanick from serving as CEO. Instead of firing the executive who took the records immediately, he gave his implicit approval by considering the records.
>Perhaps the 'real people in the real world' would be offended and stop using Uber if they knew of Kalanick and his team's doings
I haven't stopped using them. But then, I buy Apple products manufactured with suicidal slave labor, use fossil fuels in my car, eat meat, etc. I suspect you probably do plenty of things that are someone else's pet issue too. WRT Uber I have some minimal faith left in "the system" that whatever legal issues need to be taken care of will. In the meantime, I will continue to use products and services that provide a good value in my life.
I like Uber as a service. But you shouldn't make the argument of 10 years ago. They started in 2009, depends on smartphones to use the app. If it started 10 years beforehand it would be 1999, they wouldn't even be able to really start.
All happened under Travis's watch. One or two isolated incidents could be the fault of a few bad apples. But for this much bad stuff to happen, the CEO is asleep at the wheel. If he couldn't handle that responsibility, he should have bowed out sooner.
Did Uber change the world or did ubiquitous smartphones with GPS capability change the world?
While it seems obvious that Uber may have hastened the process is it really arguable that people would still be using their phone to call taxi dispatchers in 2018?
Seems to me he capably profited from a trend. Which is great. But did it unethically. Which is, obviously, not ethical. It's not clear the world really needs more ethically compromised multinational companies.
However, that gray area wasn't the equivalent of dumping toxic waste into a river to build some product. The gray area was around how taxis were regulated in markets.
As a frequent Uber/Lyft/Taxi user in NYC I can say that the experience for the consumer has been fantastic. I never want to use a taxi again for many reasons.
1. There's very little recourse for lost items
2. You can't get one on-demand (now you can with apps but not before)
3. There's no recourse for having a bad driver or ensuring a good pleasant ride
So while it operated in the gray it was around archaic laws, it wasn't like it was destroying the environment.
> Yes and no. Was it operating in a gray area, yes.
Why is it a grey area? I don't think those laws are good but they exist. I don't believe a company's willingness to ignore laws should give them a competitive advantage because that just creates an incentive to do so.
Also, companies should not be in the business of deciding what laws are okay or not okay to disobey.
> As a frequent Uber/Lyft/Taxi user in NYC I can say that the experience for the consumer has been fantastic.
I like Lyft a lot, but I don't believe the end justifies the means. The proper way to do this would have been to change the laws first and then make the business second.
> proper way to do this would have been to change the laws first and then make the business second.
Unfortunately, businesses tend to heavily influence the creation of the laws that give them an unfair advantage. Businesses get started, they get big, and then use their money to buy lobbying power. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was true in the taxi industry.
I don’t care for laws which exist to favor industry leaders.
That's what I'm referring to, if the laws exist but there isn't a specific common good that they are addressing that the new entrant is destroying or hurting, then the laws should be adapted over time. Certainly they could have went the direct route to get the law changed, but as time has shown having power and then getting changes is usually a simpler process.
So they are operating in a gray area but not hurting the common good, so adapting the laws would make sense.
Not the same as producing something toxic as a by product of your product and then releasing that into the environment.
How does he deserves every cent of 1.4 billion dollars? He didn't do $1.4 billion worth of labour. His drivers, carmakers, road builders, telecom providers, smartphone makers and software engineers did $1.4 billion worth of labour. Kalanick found himself in a position where he could extract $1.4 billion worth of rent. He's just one fucking guy. It took a solid chunk of western civilization to make Uber possible. It was literally millions of years in the making.
If you wish to make an apple pie from search, you must first invent the universe.
I do apply that logic to any extremely wealthy person. I mean, I don't lose sleep at night worrying about the billionaires of the world, I just think it's ridiculous to suggest that they deserve it, or that they earned it somehow.
Happy for him. I can only imagine how much being ousted from a company he created and raised to its current level must have hurt.
I do not look fondly at what a pain local transport was in cities without public transport (and even those with), and it is Travis (yes, Travis first, Uber second) that led this paradigm shift.
We can debate about Uber's business practices until the cows come home, but this is undeniable. And yes, other so-called 'nicer' / 'ethical' rideshare companies who didn't have to get their hands dirty because they profited from the ecosystem that Uber created exist precisely because of that.
>We can debate about Uber's business practices until the cows come home, but this is undeniable.
This is really strangely dismissive. Does the "paradigm shift" justify any and all of Uber's unethical actions? If so, why do you think breaking the law and harassing rape victims is either acceptable or laudable? If not, why bring it up, unless you're perpetuating some kind of entrepeneur business-worship over basic moral decency?
Steve Jobs was, on balance, likely a horrible person and needlessly cruel. I’m still very happy he did what he did. These people are human, and are not without sin. Entrepreneur worship is weird, I agree, however I wouldn’t dismiss the additive things otherwise miserable people did for society.
Jobs is a great point, for the other argument. Jobs didn't break the law, but he disrupted multiple industries from computers to phones to music to retail.
You’re absolutely right. And Travis needs to be criticized for that (and he is). If the question, though, is about judging a company’s contribution to society based on how morally upstanding the founder is I think the point I’m trying to make still stands.
I think it’s too early to judge Uber’s “contribution to society” when the investors are basically footing the bill for all of Uber’s customers. Let’s see Uber make a profit and it still be less costly/better service to what consumers get now and then we can talk about their contribution to society.
Making a profit isn’t a fair standard in this case. I left LA recently, but uber made social interactions in that city I’d otherwise pass on totally possible. It honestly opened up moving around LA County in a way that public transit never could. So, no, it’s not too early to judge. We’re already seeing the benefits.
I personally tend to think that I'd value ride sharing services even if prices increase to parity with traditional taxis. After all, just getting a cab in many cities is a real pain point. I also think that ride sharing services are here to stay, and that both individual consumers and society as a whole are better off for it.
However, the parents point is more general and I think you're talking past it. You can't evaluate Uber's societal contributions based on short term and possibly ephemeral benefits. For example, if ride sharing services suddenly disintegrate once VC funding dries up then they can't be said to have made a meaningful impact. Sustainability is actually crucial.
> If the question, though, is about judging a company’s contribution to society based on how morally upstanding the founder is ...
Far more than Kalanick's behavior, it is the company's practices that are the problem. They willfully broke the law and they also mistreated many people from employees to drivers to rape victims.
> This is an unpopular opinion, but if it weren't for Jobs, Woz would have remained an unknown HP engineer
I completely agree. I also think Steve Jobs was a great man. Part of his greatness was knowing which rules he could bend, which rules he could break, and deftly negotiating the aftermath.
Thank you for providing a balanced view that’s so often missing on anything Uber related on HN. There is no denying that Travis threw ethics out of the window and took his paranoia way too far and never matured into a peacetime CEO. But every time a HN user takes an Uber, Lyft, Via, Grab, Ola etc etc you can thank Travis for his ruthlessness in fighting some of the most powerfully entrenched politicians (DeBlasio of NYC as an example) to get you a product type that’s loved by millions.
Just because Lyft entered some cities before Uber did does not mean they eventually paved the path for legalization. Most of the battles that occurred once local governments realized the magnitude of ridesharing were led by Uber.
Yes! there was an a16z podcast which interviewed someone from Lyft. They commented that they were very conservative in their decisions, leaving other companies to push the legalization issues.
There's no evidence that the unethical behavior was necessary or even helped.
> powerfully entrenched politicians (DeBlasio of NYC as an example)
DeBlasio is entrenched because he was elected by a majority of his constituents. The people get to write the rules, called laws. Who voted for Kalanick? What gave him the right?
You could say it, but that's not how democracy or legitimate government and lawmaking works. And in Uber's case, the wallets voting are a few investors who subsidized the customers.
Although I guess a government doesn't need the support of the people to maintain legitimacy, it just needs to be able to maintain a monopoly on violence. And if Uber had a monopoly on the taxi industry maybe it wouldn't need the people's support either.
For better or worse, thats how it should work. Failure of centrally planned economies all across the globe says something.
Markets don't have elections and most politicians/bureaucrats don't exactly have the competency to decide what should be good for everyone. Letting people vote with their wallets has largely worked.
Of course no system is perfect, but this is as fair as it gets.
Well, this isn’t my point of view but the US largely subsidizes the medicine and research for the rest of the world when it comes to health. Just look at the number of medical innovations year coming the rest of the world COMBINED vs the US. Clearly there’s some free riding happening by the rest.
Furthermore, don’t ever say “excellent Cuban” anything. There’s a reason why people try to cross shark infested waters on dingy rafts from Cuba to Key West, Florida. People vote with their feet and wallets.
We can discuss the efficiency of a market-based health care system when such a thing exists. The current system is as artificial and corrupted as the taxi medallion situation.
If only I could walk into a health care facility and see the prices posted on the wall for various procedures, or get an estimate upfront, the way I can at any auto garage...
> For better or worse, thats how it should work. Failure of centrally planned economies all across the globe says something.
This issue has nothing to do with central planning. Free market theory does not support legal anarchy. It really should work that businesses can do whatever they want, irrespective of the law? Can they murder? Steal? Damage your property and life? It's absurd.
>>Who voted for Kalanick? What gave him the right?
>You could say people voted with their wallets.
Money should never overwhelm the will of the people. I say this even though I hated the way taxis used to work, with the artificial limitation, and I love a chance to take a much more convenient app based ride, I really despise how they got away with violating at least any standard of reasonable behavior, but also they were apparently violating the law literally - one example being paying the hackers not to hack and not telling anyone.
Everything you say is true, but the vested rent-seeking interests of the medallion holders that for years caused untold costs to people who needed transportation, and to the economy as a whole, was also despicable. Money was already overwhelming the will of everyone who couldn’t get a cab, who had to buy a car they didn’t want to own, and who had to put up with a higher percentage of drunk drivers. Just because it was that way for decades and few imagined it could be different, it didn’t make it right.
It’s like the quote from the Chronicles of Riddick, “sometimes the only way to stop evil is not with good. You must confront it with another kind of evil”.
This really turns taxi service into some great horror. Uber didn't cure cancer or even invent the Internet (nor is it cheaper than cabs in cities I've been in); they just made a marginal improvement in one form of transportation, partly by using massive wealth to take on losses and by imposing externalities on others: The cost of cars on the drivers, safety on the passengers, traffic on the rest of the city (a big reason for medallions, afaik, was to avoid the traffic jams that Uber creates in cities). Cabs worked fine for many years, and still do.
> It’s like the quote from the Chronicles of Riddick, “sometimes the only way to stop evil is not with good. You must confront it with another kind of evil”.
Evil? Cabs are evil? If we're getting our philosophy from the Chronicles of Riddick, it suddenly all makes sense. The better sources of philosophy would disagree.
So should anyone who wants be able to break laws and abuse people? If the only justification you need is that cab service isn't great, what good are laws?
I can understand people arguing for the rule of law. Yes, we have laws, and they should be followed. Breaking them carries the risk of punishment.
What I can't understand is the moral grandstanding, e.g. "What gave him the right?" Are taxicab medallions worth it? I never take it seriously when someone starts talking like this about the marriage between taxis and local governments, like it was some holy industry that didn't deserve to be disrupted.
Imagine how long it would have taken for local governments to "fix" something like that. Can you explain to me what it would take for a city council to (1) identify a problem (and in a timely manner, instead of twenty years of "if it ain't broke don't fix it"), (2) come up with a solution, and (3) somehow prioritize this ahead of all of the other important things they work on?
You are correct, no one handed Travis Kalanick the "right" to change something, but I'm okay with the fact that he took it upon himself.
What, exactly, has been fixed? What leads you to believe that the supply of Uber driver's will exceed zero once Uber can no longer lose over a billion dollars a quarter in subsidizing trips to pay these drivers more than minimum wage? Uber spun up self driving cars because it realized that it does not have a product or a business model.
I'm in favor of the rule of law. If I was in favor of the rule of law when it did good things and not when it did bad things (and I ready admit that the medallion system is one of the bad things), and wanted outside companies with private capital to ignore the rule of law to fix the bad things... I wouldn't be in favor of the rule of law at all.
The ultimate question is who we choose to decide whether things are good or bad. If you support the rule of law in a democracy, you have the democratic process. If you support companies outspending and outmaneuvering local governments, you're entrusting capital with making these decisions, and they probably won't reflect the will of the people. It is, to be clear, an entirely legitimate political perspective to believe that we'll get a better society by letting the holder of the most capital make decisions instead of letting the people each have one vote. But that's a very strong claim that should be made clearly, and those who believe in democracy even when democracy happens to produce occasional bad outcomes are not particularly grandstanding, just believing in democracy.
Except medallions are goverened by rules and regulations, not so much law. Violating the medallion rule isn't breaking a law. You pay a fine. If you're good with that, then go ahead; we all pay fines of convenience from time to time (late payments, overstaying in a parking space etc).
So I'm fine with rule of law, and fine with getting fined for violations of medallion regulations.
It doesn't have to be black and white. The purpose of democracy is to reflect the will of the people, but it's not efficient. If more people agree with Uber than some antiquated laws, I have no problem with supporting Uber. Tesla also broke laws by selling their cars without going through a dealership, but I don't think anyone has a problem with that.
> If more people agree with Uber than some antiquated laws, I have no problem with supporting Uber.
How do you know if "more people agree"? Has there been a public debate and a vote?
If there was a vote, it would be direct democracy, which has some serious drawbacks. One is that most people have very little time to become informed on these issues; that's why they elect representatives to deal with them.
Finally, straight majority rule is just mob rule. Someone said, 'democracy must be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner'. What if the majority wanted to take your house away? Take your business away? Stop someone from speaking? Stop the minority party from accepting donations? That's why we have the rule of law, not the rule of the majority.
> The majority of New Yorkers did not appear to support his views in respect of taxis.
Under the law, which is how every modern society is governed, the mayor makes these decisions irrespective of majorities (if they exists) on particular issues; that's on purpose.
> EFF
The EFF does not violate laws and claims no right to do so. It does claim a right to organize people and speak about issues; Uber has that right too. Uber does not have the right to break laws it doesn't like.
In Australia, after the local regulator/government started fining UberX drivers for illegally operating a taxi service (rightfully so IMHO), Uber told the drivers not to worry, continue driving and they’ll pay their fines for them.
Fines are not for breaking laws, but for torts. Violating rules. People do it all the time, and its not unethical? Like paying a fee for filing taxes late. Folks in a bind do that all the time. Getting a parking ticket because you have to be by your spouse while the baby is being born. Renewing your driver's license late because you forgot/got busy.
This seems to be the relevant law for New York, as an example, found under 19-506 of the New York City Administrative Code, which was passed by the city legislature, which was given its power by the Constitution of the State of New York:
Any person, other than a person holding a driver's license issued pursuant to section 19-505 and a New York state class A, B, C or E license, neither of which is revoked or suspended, who drives or operates for hire a licensed vehicle in the city except a commuter van, shall be guilty of a violation, and upon conviction in the criminal court, shall be punished by a fine of not less than five hundred dollars nor more than one thousand dollars or imprisonment for a term not exceeding thirty days, or both such fine and imprisonment.
Obviously courts can impose fines - do you honestly think the only thing a court can do is throw someone in jail? Fines are not for torts - penalties are, and there's very strict rules around penalties (they can't be punitive and can only be used to recover costs incurred by failure to perform a contract). You have no idea what you're on about.
The process of fining you is literally a court procedure. The city official doesn't have any authority to fine you - they bring a prosecution against you in court, and provide you with the details by which you can either plead guilty in front of that court (possibly via mail or an online form) and take the sentence that the court gives you (which is most likely to be a fine unless the judge has more information), or plead not guilty and make a defense. Anything else would be a violation of due process.
In which cities? Is it part of a contract you agree to when you get your driver's license? If so, what happens when you have a driver's license from out of state?
In London Uber has lost their license to operate, and that decision will come into effect this year.
They cite passenger safety concerns, but there's been not-too-subtle protests by Black Cab drivers who simply refuse to change their archaic business model and a very stark lack of actual Uber users concerned about safety. Not only is it far less convenient than Uber, calling a Black Cab means you need to venture onto the street and if you're not in central London you're basically stuffed. There's also the matter of cabbies being many times more expensive than Uber - a £20 Uber would be £50, at least.
The Black Cab drivers are being petulant children about it. I'm sorry their livelihoods are under threat but they either need to evolve or die. They literally blocked off a major London road right outside my offices in protest against Uber a few months ago; right off Blackfriars Bridge they parked horizontally in the middle of the road, causing absolute mayhem. Usually I'm fine with people striking, but there was no legitimate grievance here - a better competitor came along and instead of embracing change (and progress) they simply threw their toys out of the pram and demanded the politicians (who are in their union's pocket) simply get rid of their competition.
The politicians didn't take much persuading, and just like that we rolled back to Black Cabs (which half of Uber users were priced out of in the first place). Unions are generally a force for good, but this was just a shameless attempt by the Black Cab union to have the competition erased, where previously they operated in what could easily have been described as a monopoly - previously they only faced competition from minicabs and Addison Lee, which largely had an entirely different customer base.
They lost their license for not being 'fit and proper'. The regulator also cited corporate responsibility and Uber's use of Greyball. It wasn't just about public safety.
There's always been competition in London though. It's not like your only choice is uber or a black cab.
The fact is that Uber came in, heavy handed, and used it's usual "fuck the rules, we're here" attitude towards running its service. It's hardly surprising that it fails to get license renewals when it's not only shown scant regard for the rules and regs, but open contempt about changing so that they fit them.
You can't really change the world if you're always coloring inside the lines. There is such a thing as creative destruction; when structures get ossified and corrupt, they've got to be burned down and swept away.
Craigslist and zimride (lyft) started carpool rides. Uber then launched the black car service. And then sidecar launched a service where people used their own car to drive customers. Uber did not invent the space on its own.
The question is if this paradigm shift was more valuable than all of the negative things he did. If he didn't come up with it, how do we know someone wouldn't have done it a year later? We shouldn't rewrite history, but I don't think he deserves all that much credit for thinking up an app for cabs with drivers not needing a permit and using their own car.
As an Uber employee who has seen the company fight one battle over another for the last 4 years, he absolutely deserves most of the credit (and conversely all the blame from the fallouts). Uber formulated the following approach to get ridesharing in the hands of everyone:
1. Operate in legal grey areas to get a product infront of consumers. Build a large enough network of riders and drivers to prove the product market fit.
2. By the time, politicians and the connected taxi cartels realize the magnitude of the change and seek to outlaw it, rally their own voters to back Uber.
3. Under pressure, have politicians clear the path for legalization. This has played out in more cities than I can remember.
Step #1 before #2 is what made TK and Uber different. The level of ruthlessness it requires, I’d have a hard time substituting others in his position.
You may be confusing taxi drivers with taxi companies owning and selling medallions for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Taxi drivers have traditionally been thoroughly exploited from having to either put all their wealth at risk from buying an overpriced medallion, or through having to work the first x hours a day simply to break even from mandatory fees. Ask a former yellow cab driver in NYC who converted to Uber to understand which company treats them better.
> You may be confusing taxi drivers with taxi companies owning and selling medallions
No, I'm not. In cities I know, they are politically weak. Also, when I talk to drivers, they all would rather drive taxis where they make more money, but have little choice when Uber is taking all the business. They almost universally say Uber pays less, treats them poorly (e.g., they have to supply their own car), and leaves them powerless (Uber can change rates and increase the supply of drivers any time it wants).
> for hundreds of thousands of dollars
Is this big number supposed to be impressive? Let's not forget Uber's 40 billion dollars and lobbyists who used to advise Presidents, if we want to talk about political power. It's laughable to compare taxi companies with Uber.
> The picture of taxi owners as powerful doesn't at all match what I know. It's a shibboleth promoted by Uber.
the city where i live (a 12 million people city) taxi cartels are so powerful, the leader of one of those has dinner with the governor. he has meetings with senators. there is recording of him calling for taxi drivers within his "association" to violently attack uber drivers and nothing was done.
also, taxi medallions are so damn expensive (with some coming to the price of a house) that the owners become powerful.
> the city where i live (a 12 million people city) taxi cartels are so powerful, the leader of one of those has dinner with the governor. he has meetings with senators
> Many businesses have 'disrupted' industries, and almost all without behaving like Uber and Kalanick. Airbnb is a simple example.
That’s actually a bad example. Airbnb has tons of legal troubles just as Uber. In many cities it operates illegally. I have traveled around world and used Airbnb a lot and in about half the places I was told it is a grey area or straight out illegal.
Hotel lobby has been busy pushing governments to legislate against Airbnb. It’s just that sharing economy company like that is hard to fight as there is not a bunch of hotel buildings you can go and close down / inspect. It’s hundreds or thousands of either normal folk trying to make extra buck from their unused rooms or speculators buying flats just to rent them via Airbnb.
A very good parallel can be made between Uber vs entrenched taxi industry & Airbnb vs hotel industry. Both companies disrupting old industries using any gray area or straight illegality if it’s hard to enforce.
Exactly this. People sit comfortably in their morals while enjoy the huge benefits brought about by Uber. Things are comfortable because people like Travis were willing to take the blame on the wrong side of history and forge ahead anyways.
We all sit comfortably in the Bay Area because our ancestors murdered and stole lands from Native Americans. They also build an entire ecosystem that gained wealth from exploiting laborers and immigrants. History is messy, but they did these things so their children can sit around in comfortable homes enjoying these highly philosophical debates without any physical danger
I've heard people justify war crimes this craven way, saying the survival of their nation was at stake, and those people usually and rightfully go to jail. I've never heard fraudulent business practices that someone cashed in on justified this way.
Murdering people and stealing land turned out great for the murderer's ancestors so it's all ok? Not from the point of view of those who were murdered.
Using that logic - if space aliens came and murdered all the technologically inferior humans and took Earth for themselves, it would be all ok. After all, they are building a more technologically advanced and superior society on Earth for their children.
>"Things are comfortable because people like Travis were willing to take the blame on the wrong side of history and forge ahead anyways."
Wait what? What did he take the blame for exactly? Were the sexist comment making, the berating of his own Uber driver, or Greyball things that were necessary for ride sharing to become successful? I think most people are quite capable of being able to separate ride sharing the technology from a ride sharing technology company's CEO. Ill feelings for the latter do not imply ill feelings for the former.
>"We all sit comfortably in the Bay Area because our ancestors murdered and stole lands from Native Americans."
"We all?" Wow. You live in quite a bubble if you really believe that everyone who reads HN lives in the Bay Area or is an American. Or has ancestors that killed native Americans. What an incredibly outrageous statement and comparison. Speak for yourself.
It doesn't matter if your ancestors were Americans. The prosperity and safety of the Bay Area, which you enjoy, was made possible by people who murdered and stole land. You enjoy that privilege everyday without taking any of the blame.
The fact that you're outraged speaks to your privilege because you've no understanding of what a bloody mess history is, and the amount of indencency it took to get the U.S. to the prosperous nation it is today.
> I do not look fondly at what a pain local transport was in cities without public transport (and even those with), and it is Travis (yes, Travis first, Uber second) that led this paradigm shift.
How about we improve public transport? I know it’s unpopular to propose “socialist” ideas, but public transport works elsewhere in the world, why does it have to be so horrible here? Why does someone have to profit for something that you agree is a “pain?”
Over the last 50 years American exceptionalism has morphed from: "We are the greatest country on earth, unique in our ability to achieve." to "We are the most special snowflake country in the world, unique in our inability to improve healthcare, public infrastructure, or reduce deaths by firearms." It's really quite sad, I hope you guys get our of your rut soon.
Considering actual firearm violence has actually shrunk a lot in recent decades, I feel you have just a hint of bias based on a political agenda there.
It's shrunk a lot relative to the US peak [1]. Relative to other western powers it's still in a league of its own [2]. I think your comment is more indicative of a political agenda than mine.
And for the record, if the United States as a society decides that gun ownership is important enough to let the mass shootings continue that's OK with me. What bugs me more is the perennial argument that gun control wouldn't solve anything or that it's impossible for the US to address its gun violence problem even if it wanted to.
There is no USA (only Zuul). The USA is a country of states each with various characters, economic sizes and problems (Miami and Minneapolis are vastly different environments).
No one holds Germany responsible for EU partner Croatia's outcomes, yet USA wide outcomes are - despite massive local variations. In a lot of areas of US policy (excluding defence) local budgets will dictate results much more than federal ones.
That's the real challenge for the USA, how to cope with inequality that is as much a factor of geography as politics.
As someone who has grown up in the South, and who has visited San Francisco, Philadelphia, DC, NYC, Boston and other places, I agree public transport is amazing, and I wish cities in the South could pull it off. I also recognize it's incredibly difficult, and expensive, to do so. And even if we had the money and ability to build rail along freeway lines, and build stops at popular social and residential hubs, how do people get to the rail station? Vehicle. And for many people, the question will then be, "Why drive to the station, wait 15 minutes, take a train with multiple stops, etc. when I can just drive?"
At which point you talk about incentives against driving, at which point you piss off millions of people, and potentially punish those who legitimately couldn't use rail due to work or scheduling circumstances.
You're really blowing off something incredibly difficult, more difficult (politically and financially) than putting someone on the moon. And your snark isn't even conceptually consistent; we thought we were a snowflake in the 60s, we just really were one of the greatest countries in the world. Firearm issues are there but over hyped/more complex than you want to admit, and if anything, we really should let states take the reins at healthcare, because it'd be a lot easier for regional governments to pull something off and get the ball rolling than to constantly fight at our crippled-by-two-national-parties Congress.
> And even if we had the money and ability to build rail along freeway lines, and build stops at popular social and residential hubs, how do people get to the rail station?
In places that have good rail systems, most people get to the rail station by walking. In the other places, it is usually because they have disallowed dense construction near transit stations through zoning.
> You're really blowing off something incredibly difficult, more difficult (politically and financially) than putting someone on the moon.
You're probably right, but I also think that the main roadblocks are political, not financial. The US has one of the highest GDP/capita in the world but consistently fails to apply this economic power to helping its own citizens or does so in extremely wasteful ways like creating jobs through military spending.
Edit: Also public infrastructure isn't just transport. There are cities in the US that do not have safe drinking water. It's shocking.
Isn't part of the problem that the appeal of the south is different to the north? SF and NYC are very different climates to New Orleans, with very different amounts of living space per person. You can either have a lot of living space, or a lot of good public transit options, but not really both.
I would say that public transportation doesn't always work, here or elsewhere.
Subways and buses usually have schedules that don't always line up with when you happen to need it.
Also, there is a mental tax in having to navigate it.
For instance, I really have a hard time reading subway/train maps and schedules, and God forbid I need to connect to a different line during the route.
Sure, plenty of people are totally comfortable navigating it, but you could make the same case to advocate the Imperial system over metric.
In those cases, Uber and the like not only provide an option that is cheaper than traditional taxis, but also a way to travel that doesn't involve wasting hours because you're visiting somewhere and ended up taking the wrong train.
I like the idea of public transport, but even the best ones are not necessarily the best option in every context.
> Subways and buses usually have schedules that don't always line up with when you happen to need it. Also, there is a mental tax in having to navigate it.
There's no need for any difference between navigating by car in Google Maps or navigating by public transport in Google Maps.
Meaning, in Netherlands Google Maps show the estimated arrival times of everything, transfers, etc. It'll take into account delays, cancellations, service announcements, etc. All easily within Google Maps (plus a few other apps; the information is publicly available).
Traveling by bike/car/foot/public transport is all the same complexity.
Am from Amsterdam, have lived in the States, will second this: the Netherlands has a great public transport system and 90% of the time the only consideration when choosing between driving/cycling (predictable/personal transport) and PT is the cost.
Sometimes there are routes that take significantly longer with PT, and in those scenarios it's just another argument for taking my bike.
There are a few scenarios in which I take taxis, but they're rare and usually when it's the only reasonable option (caused by time or availability of PT like at night).
I found Berlin even better. Very cheap, great service (and they speak German and English), great connections, easy app (Google Maps shows it all as well), tourist friendly tickets, and the best of all: no mandatory NFC card!!
It also depends on where you live in NL. Every 10 min a train to Ehv is neat, and I got a bus from Ams to my home city every few minutes whole day long, but the rural areas don't have such luxury. The joke for the trains goes, that "they don't drive on time, they drive on rails."
I agree. Also some public transport companies have their own application/web portal able to provide the same kind of service that Google Maps.
But I disagree with "bike/car/foot/public transport is all the same complexity": public transport add a factor you can't control.
I would say there is one difference, which is that you may or may not have data access. I've been traveling internationally for over 10 years now, and never had cellular data when I would travel (thanks ATT), and most airports would have wifi, but different subways/trains etc don't. And I've been in a situation of relying only on GPS and hoping the app doesn't shut down while I'm walking somewhere far too many times.
Google has improved here with their offline maps, but even then, it's not 100%.
I'm not saying that PT is worthless or that we shouldn't improve it, but IMHO, Uber and the like fill a very critical "last mile" kind of problem that I think pairs nicely in cities with public transportation.
Working is a relative term here in France for public transport. This week a tree fell on a railway deserving the St-Lazare train station in Paris, reducing the service to three train one a line used by tens of thousands of people daily. Still I appreciate having a good network here in Paris (and in most of France).
1. You write as if Uber has solved the transportation problem sustainably. The end state of an Uber job is that it will pay less than minimum wage. Why? Because the barrier to entry is the same as most minimum wage jobs (assuming you have a car made in the last 10 years) and it is more desirable than minimum wage jobs (flexible hours, no boss). The pay may look better on paper, but when all the hidden costs are accounted for it will be less than minimum wage. Uber is operating in an unsustainable bubble. Sequoia and Softbank are subsidizing your trips.
2. My guess is that if your mom was raped in an Uber and one of Travis' lieutenants got (somehow, possibly by stealing/bribing - not by asking her permission) your mom's medical records to prove to himself that she really was raped (to determine Uber liability and that it wasn't staged by a competitor), then you might feel differently in your respect and admiration for Travis Kalanick.
Wow, you do realize that you can mention the Uber rape case without trying to make it so personal to the OP, right? he's not defending him in that regard at all.
All he's saying is that he brought about the concept of ride sharing (debatable since there was, for instance, Sidecar before the advent of UberX) to the public and that he understands the pain of being ousted by your own company.
The saddest thing about Travis Kalanick's story is that he was ousted because his greedy investors were afraid they wouldn't see a 20x return on their investment, and not because of the ponzi-scheme fundamentals or ethical compromises that appear in tech rags every week. He was ousted by Benchmark, not by law enforcement. He's walking away with over a billion, rather than a go-to-jail card.
We've seen many HN commenters lose their manners if not their minds when posting about Uber—this very thread is full of it. But "if your mom was raped in an Uber" is off the charts: uncivil and utterly gratuitous.
Had you posted other uncivil comments I'd ban you, but since you haven't, we'll treat it as an isolated lapse. Please don't do it again though. If you can't remain scrupulously respectful of the person you're replying to, please don't post.
If you'd read the HN guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site to heart, we'd appreciate it. That spirit is intellectual curiosity: considering things for the pleasure of considering them. That doesn't fit with flamewars and is incompatible with personal attack.
I love how you completely gloss over Kalanick’s pivotal role in building one of the worst company cultures in SV, and how the tech culture at large suffered for it both in terms of PR and furthering the spread of douchebag ideology.
You imply that being ousted from the company he created is not a direct consequence of his actions.
You imply that unethical behavior was helpful to Uber defeat awful local transport lobbies in some cities and improve transportation for the people.
I strongly disagree with both assumptions. I believe he was ousted for legitimate reasons that he is 100% individually responsible for and I believe that unethical behavior at Uber did nothing to help them win the battle against local lobbies (only to win against competitors).
I don't see that the GP implied his ousting wasn't a direct consequence of his actions.
Anyway, it's not hard to imagine that Travis, despite being aware of how his actions resulted in consequences, may feel hurt, and maybe even remorseful.
It would be a mistake to believe that people who act poorly all lack empathy.
Yeah, actually you are right. GP did not implied it and my disagreement on this point is wrongly stated.
It would be more properly stated that I do not personally feel bad for Travis being ousted (because is, IMO, a deserved consequence of his acts). And in this case it is not actually a disagreement, just a difference of our reactions.
Great point, Bad things happened under his leadership, which lead to his exit. Uber was his baby and his actions has created doubt about Uber in the hearts of many. He probably feels really bad about his actions. He probably feels like selling his share might help. Lets cut the guy some slack he's only human.
he's responsible for his actions, but the way you word that makes it sound like he's the only person responsible for the morally reprehensible things Uber has done, which is not true.
He's was the CEO!!! He oversaw all the morally reprehensible things Uber did and did little to stop it.
If he is not responsible, then who is? I'm sorry but CEOs can't have it both ways. If you want to be paid at the (insane) current levels you have to take responsibility for the outcomes of your actions. The only other entity that might have some responsibility is the board for not getting rid of Kalanick sooner.
Uber has fired enough leadership that clearly he wasn’t the only one. But he was CEO, and he could have removed bad actors. It’s true that each of them is responsible for their own choices, but if he’s a bad actor and allowed or encouraged other bad actors, I think it’s fair for him to share some of their burden.
That's a pretty high bar. So then every single thing that pretty much every single monopolist has done is totally fine since, you know, it wasn't genocide?
Uber did lots of, if not ethically grey, completely unethical (and unlawful) things. Least of which includes tracking regulators and government inspectors, and also surveillance on their users and celebrities based on the rides they'd take. That's not even counting all the bro culture and sexual harassment that seems to have been rampant.
It does come from the top. A lot of those people that were fired, were hired by Kalanick.
Nobody's shedding a tear for a jerk like Kalanick, especially not after his multi-billion dollar payout. He'll be just fine. In fact, by any stretch of it, he's being HANDSOMELY rewarded for his behavior.
> So then every single thing that pretty much every single monopolist has done is totally fine since, you know, it wasn't genocide?
What? I didn't say that it was "fine". I'm just trying to get a handle on the scope here. When I think of things that are morally reprehensible, I think of the things I mentioned in my post.
Clearly, I don't think Uber is there, so I disagree with the notion that they acted in a "morally reprehensible" way.
Do I think that they behaved unethically, even criminally so? Yes, I think that you can make a strong case for that.
Maybe I'm making a semantic argument? If so, I think I'm getting weary of our constant 24/7 media stream of outrage, and for that I apologize since that's neither here nor there...
In today’s politically correct environment, the masses are wont to instantly discredit and discard the entire career of anyone whose personal failings happen to become public. Travis spent a tiny fraction of his time being a jerk. The rest of it was spent creating one of the most impactful companies that the world has ever seen. Give credit where credit is due.
”Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done” - Bryan Stevenson
Edit: I should have used the word valuable instead of impactful. I’m leaving it in because the Uber critics responding below have all jumped on my use of the term, and those replies would no longer make sense if I change it. That said, I do believe Uber has been a very impactful company and will continue to be.
I disagree. The video of him talking down to a driver seemed to be the catalyst. Once that came out, everyone that disliked Travis, stood to benefit from his dismissal, or just hated Uber, piled on with story after story. As an executive, he was aggressive and didn’t play nice with competitors or politicians seeking to limit his business and/or put their hands in its pockets. Show me someone that has built a $40+ billion business out of thin air that isn’t constantly pushing the limits like he did.
Airbnb was born out of Craigslist spam. Facebook only grew because of a contact spammer that is still in use to this day. In Facebook’s early days, Hotmail temporarily blocked Facebook invite spam and their growth instantly dropped by 90%. Uber used Greyball to avoid giving rides to those in violation of its terms of service, some of whom were undercover law enforcement personnel looking to disrupt its business.
These big businesses don’t come to fruition by accident, and the one thing they seem
to have in common is that most of them broke the rules to get where they are. It may not be pleasant or politically correct, but it’s a fact of life.
Or regulate Uber the same as any other taxi service in their community.
Look, I'm a fan of Lyft and Uber. They shook up an ossified taxi industry. But let's not sugarcoat what Uber did - they broke laws and constructed systems to aid breaking those laws.
The rest of it was spent creating one of the most impactful companies that the world has ever seen.
Are you talking about Uber? More convenient, cheaper taxis? Sure, I like that as much as the next person, but it's hardly one of the most impactful companies in history.
We’ve entered an unquantifiable mish-mash of superlatives but I’d reckon that uber, as a mainstream pioneer of the contemporary sharing economy, has had more of an impact than you’re willing to admit.
To compare it with the most impactful companies that the world has ever seen, I compare it to companies that did things like, for example, pioneer electricity distribution across the US (and other countries), or turn antibiotics from an exotic, expensive lab experiment into something that could be economically manufactured in quantity. They had top tier impact. By comparison, Uber is basically invisible.
'The rest of it was spent creating one of the most impactful companies that the world has ever seen.'
I don't think Uber is this, even if 'impact' is purely taken as a morally neutral statement. It's just clearly not the case. Train companies, underground, shipping, airlines, have all had a much bigger impact and that's just looking at transport.
It’s worth what people are willing to pay for it. In this latest transaction, people are willing to invest billions at a $48 billion valuation. This money isn’t even flowing to the company, but rather to individual shareholders. That means it is currently worth $48 billion.
That worth is the worth paid by people who don't know all the information, sold
by people who didn't give all the information.
Uber also wasn't worth $70B in the last round, investors didn't know that sexism was
rampant and the culture horrible, which would have surely made them not invest if they had talked to female
employees at uber.
However, they didn't know that the culture is horrible and not able to grow another 10x under these conditions and conquer the autonomous driving market.
They also didn't know that Uber had all these patent problem, but they did.
Now, investors have invested at a $48B valuation, but they still overpaid, because they don't know all the information. Maybe they didn't care, because Uber told them, they will definitely be able to bloat up the company to $100, so that SoftBank makes their 2x. Surely they also have liquidation preference.
So, they actual valuation of Uber, including all the bad that no one knows, is probably only at $10B.
It could also only be $1B, since Uber probably won't compete in the autonomous car market and can only make $50M profit per year after stripping away all its overhead. But most people don't know this.
He built a company with a culture of theft, harassment, graft, hubris...
He spent his time building THAT place I just described
Besides, ride shares isn’t that novel. The math exists. The market itself already exists! It’s just poorly managed
He found rich people to invest in “doing it at scale in the cloud.”
I don’t really give credit for outcomes that anyone with a bachelors in math, and web dev skills could come up with conceptually if not scale
The trickiest bit is getting money and navigating the administrative shitshow that is our society. But that’s easy when you just bribe ...pay... sycophants to do it
He even said himself he has a lot of growing up to do. No need to defend him as simply misunderstood
I don’t really give props for his accomplishments. He lived a contemporary life and got handouts from vultures who saw $$$ while looking at Travis
The use of Uber and services like it has dramatically changed the lives of some people. Go ask a blind person if Uber has had an impact on their life. Even in the case of normal day-to-day users, I think it’s disingenuous to say that it’s a “marginal improvement on taxis”. Your bias, likely based on your dislike of Travis or the company, is showing through.
Uber's true innovation was creating a very effective model for monetizing the exploitation of a labor force. They've convinced their drivers (labor) that using their own inventory and capital to generate large amounts of revenue for Uber in exchange for a nominal fee is worth it because "flexibility" and "side hustle".
> I can only imagine how much being ousted from a company he created and raised to its current level must have hurt.
The market doesn't care about the feelings of executives. He was a net liability for Uber by the end, and if he couldn't mamage to keep himself valued by the market, that's on him.
Uber has it's faults, but the degree they had to fight tooth and nail in every municipality over something that was so demonstrably better than what was there before is absurd and should be a lesson for every other industry.
And yes, voting with one's wallet is often the most effective form of voting we have.
Why? He was sitting on a goldmine and fucked it all up due to his own arrogance.
And all the unethical, getting-their-hands-dirty shit you mentioned seems of dubious value and certainly moreso now that he's been fired from his company; seems like all the same could've been achieved without hiring a team of assholes and without being one himself.
I think I know the kind of world Travis comes from. He was in a fraternity, and he treated it like a business like I did. When he owned a real business he applied those lessons far too liberally.
Fraternities are ruthlessly competitive, going as far as planting fake pledges and building internal dossiers on all the other frats on campus. Very valuable was your loyal man with a generic young face that could walk their way into other houses unsuspected.
Fraternities are also bound strongly by shared goals and lifetime membership, something that doesn't translate to a company where you can leave anyday. They're both a company and a political structure within the university. A strange 501c3 title 9 exempt chimera that forever walks the line.
I'm not defending what he's done, just saying that ruthless counterintelligence is normal for Greek houses trying to get an edge, just like politics. We did much of the same, going as far as putting together wifi sniffers with long range dish antennas pointed at other houses to figure out how many people connected to their WiFi during parties.
We never did any harm, but we watched as closely as our abilities (and the law) allowed. It was opposition research, as bad as politics, and often intertwined. At one point I was fraternity president and my roommate was president of the Student House of Representatives, in charge of the school's 'activity fee', which was close to 50 million a year. We both hated politics and left them forever after graduation, but seeing into the void was a hell of an eye opener for both of us.
I have a strong feeling Travis tried the fraternity formula on a unicorn. A fraternity is much different primarily because you're elected. If you own it, you don't have to pander to anyone or spend half your time watching your back. I think the shadier and secretive projects are a reflection that Travis didn't understand that.
They compete over things that seem absolutely critical in your early twenties, somewhat impressive in your late twenties, and foolish at best by your mid thirties.
Eh, I joined one when I was 25 so I have to disagree. One of my fraternity friends followed me across the country and let me live on his couch for about two years. Another was my best man. Best friends I've ever had, easily.
Yeah the competition doesn't mean as much when you get older but you still get fired up years later on homecoming when you hear your old rival got more members or a bigger house or whatever.
I'm in my early thirties now and I still think it was worth it, competition and everything.
Who throws the best parties is just a small piece, an effect rather than the cause. Its who hangs out with the best sororities, who has the most power on campus, who's the biggest, who wins the most sports (which really is a meathead metric IMO)
But its not all pompous crap, they also compete for the best grades and the most successful alumni.
Fraternities are very elitist which is both good and bad, they try to find the best members, the most powerful attractive and smart guys on campus. If you have nothing to offer you probably won't be allowed in. What's offerable is anything that would help the fraternity reputation or finances.
He was forced out for doing a bad job, not because of a power struggle simply for power. If I'm a cashier at my grocer and pay every customer a dollar too much in change, I'm going to be fired no matter how much I "watch my back". The only difference is the employee doing a bad job was the CEO, so other measures were needed to fire him.
Did you ever consider what a tremendous waste of time this competition with other frats was? Trying to determine how many people were at their parties? Are we supposed to take this seriously?
Compared to what the average college student was doing? No. It was a great use of time. We had a team, a goal, and a purpose. No stupider than being on mock trial or chess team.
It's all pointless if you think about it too much, but that competition drove a ton of benefits to the school. IFC (Interfraternity counsil) ran most of the school events. Our attendance at official school functions like football games or president speeches was about 30% of attendees, even though 'greek life' was only 4% of the student population.
Over 50% of alumni endowment/donation money was from sorority/fraternity members even though they made up a single digits percentage of graduates since the 60s.
I don't understand why Greek life is attacked so judiciously on HN when it's clearly a net positive to schools and the students that join. Of course it's not for everyone but that's not a reason to vilify it.
> Of course it's not for everyone but that's not a reason to vilify it.
Knitting is not for everyone, but by choosing not to be a knitter, I'm generally not missing out on social/career advancement opportunities (e.g. I apply for a job but I'm not in a frat, I'm more qualified than the next guy, but the next guy was a frat brother of the hiring manager, so guess who wins?).
Even if I do choose to be a knitter, I'm generally not putting myself at higher risk of death, such as by being forced to drink toxic amounts of alcohol and then having my supposed "brothers" abandon me after I fall down the stairs and lie there bleeding to death.
There's a huge logical gap inside the statement, "not everyone has to like thing XYZ, q.e.d. there can be no criticism of thing XYZ".
I’d be very interested to learn more from your experience. i see great potential in Greek orgs, a training ground that is systematically undervalued. if you’d be game for an interview, my email is: sirspacey.hn at the Gmail
I too was in a fraternity and literally nothing you describe resembles anything like anyone I've ever known in one has done, or would be bored or frankly, creepy enough to do.
Sorry to say this but I sometimes wonder if most members of fraternities who talk about them realize that literally everything they say makes fraternities sound like an absolutely terrible concept.
I don't see anything wrong with it. What don't you like?
The basic concept is to throw 40 twenty year old college guys (hopefully well chosen) into a 10000 sq ft house worth a mil, and they sink or swim.
You learn a ton. Keeping it afloat is a huge challenge, and the competition with other houses demands constant attention and good decision making.
I was president about two years after joining as a random guy in undergrad, and suddenly in charge of 300,000 a year budget. Our alumni pledges plus assets were almost a million and that's normal. Keep in mind I was just a guy elected by 23 of my 40 peers voting for me.
It was one of the best learning experiences in my life. If you know of something equivalent that's accessible for a random guy in college and not in the Greek system it would surprise me.
Hahaha. Look it up, having a blood relative or longtime friend of a member in your house pledge another house is a pretty common tactic. You can find out if they haze, how much money and members they have, their secret rituals. You can even snipe other pledges from their incoming class sometimes.
The activity fee thing is true too. Many universities have a student government of sorts, and some of them allow the student government to decide what happens with a significant amount of the school's budget. At my school it was 5% ish. At the school with 20k students that's a ton of money for 40 elected students to slosh around.
The Greek system would commonly ally as voting blocks to make sure their candidates were elected, so student government is frequently run by Greeks.
Watching other houses parties was really important too. You need to see how far other houses go in breaking the inevitably unenforcable rules for parties. If you stray from the pack the school will shut you down. Finding out how many people went to social events at other houses was probably the most accurate gauge of a house popularity and reputation.
I came from a school with a very competitive Greek system, so I'm sure a lot of this doesn't apply everywhere
Netflix also does that to an extent, but just with "the web", like we're in the 2000s or somthing. The Canadian government just waived applying sales taxes to the subscriptions. wtf.
At least for government, that wasn't a smartphone he was waving. It was a stack of something with drawings of U.S. Presidents on it, sort of greenish.
> waving a smartphone in the face ... the public was the next best thing to a Jedi mind trick.
In that case, the smartphones were the ones in the public's hands: Uber ran an effective media campaign, including paid-for editorials in major newspapers (and I'm guessing elsewhere) about how great it is to be an Uber driver, and, AFAICT, astroturfing in online forums and social media. Uber was a darling of the business world, a paragon of SV and American innovation. Not so long ago, you couldn't say anything negative about Uber on HN without being voted down to oblivion, and the talking points were repeated in every discussion.
It feels like a lot of people are saying, through distorted lenses, that it is understandable that he didn't become the next big tech leader because this or that reason. (Almost as if they "knew all along that this would happen".) Why not be honest with ourselves instead? Let's just admit that our predictor functions got this one totally wrong, and that we should probably each individually, and maybe as a community, learn from this lesson and somehow correct whatever the bug in the function was.
Like, if your kids run off and stomp all over the neighbor's petunias, that's on you, the parent. Similarly, if your platoon drives a tank over and wrecks some civilian's lawn, that's on you, the lieutenant. Also, if you are a CEO/manager/whatever and your employees are just the worst to other employees, that's on you, the manager/CEO person.
Did you wreck the neighbor's petunias yourself? No. But you were the responsible person in charge.
So, did T-dawg grope without restraint? I don't know, likely not. But he let it happen, repeatedly, for months.
There's always going to be a large element of chance and random error though. And he was pretty damn successful for awhile anyway, until the misdeeds caught up with him; who else that's emerged on the tech scene in the past decade was as successful?
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 254 ms ] threadI would assume a CEO of a private company couldn't sell this much without being removed, but since he has already been removed, I wonder what incentives he would have to keep it.
I think he realizes he’s not going back and what’s the difference between 1.4 or 3B really? Especially given he’ll still have 71% retained.
All this fake fighting for control over company. He certainly had me fooled.
I know is sacreligous to call out a bubble, but this current economy just feels like one.
And yes--I know about the glorious unemployment rate. I also know about the other rate ("able bodied, but aren't working"). Plus--no inflation. Plus--no increase of wages. Plus--a bunch of companies I can't figure out what they actually do.
I wouldn't be suprised if he cashed out of everything.
While poor guys/idiots, like myself, are thinking about putting money back in the market.
I'm not going to put my last few thousand in, but I'm envious of the gains. Whenever I feel like this, the market tanks.
In his place, having lost direct control, I'd be tempted to cash out early solely because my influence was so diminished. Not because I was 100% sure the new direction wasn't right.
So I can't tell if this is an admission that Uber is over valued, or just a risk management decision around losing more direct control.
In reality, I'm at a loss as to why anyone would join Uber right now. They cannot be still attracting the best talent, especially in the autonomous vehicle space. And I've seen no evidence that the current ride sharing business is defensible, particularly once you account for the equity infusions that subsidize that business.
Personally, I think his next move is more telling. If he holds 2 thirds, that's an endorsement. If he keeps selling, then, yeah...it's a signal.
Just today:
[1]As Dow Tops 25000, Individual Investors Sit It Out
Since 2012, $1 trillion has been pulled from retail- investor mutual funds that target U.S. stocks
https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-dow-tops-25000-individual-in...
He's no longer CEO, part of the deal is he won't be chairman, he will be for all intents and purposes not involved with the business and at arms length so why not cash out $1B dollars and go live your life instead of stewing waiting for something to happen.
Is there more value to be created? Perhaps and very likely. But I think Travis just wants to close this chapter as quickly as possible and move on.
Certainly to have $1-2B in the bank changes your life completely and he will go figure out what all of this means for him now.
[1] https://twitter.com/EricNewcomer/status/949095493052768256
Still, a 1.4B cash out is $437,363 per day return for Kalanick. Wow!
Presumably because other investors didn't want Softbank to buy too much shares and gain too much control over Uber.
In other words, Softbank bought as much as they possibly could.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Concordia_disaster
And they would have been absolutely correct. Exactly what happened to Steve Jobs.
The "sexual harassment" claim was for an employee (or employees), it wasn't him who sexually harassed someone.
There is sexual harassment everywhere. Probably at your company too, it's just that people wanted to see Uber fail, and that's why he's become the sacred cow.
I'm not saying he did a great job dealing with these issues. I'm saying a lot of the things Uber was accused of was something that EVERY other company does. You just aren't aware of it.
And in this particular case, this was used as a weapon to bring down Uber. The narrative you're following is really just a result of politics and media manipulation by some parties which benefited from this result.
The sexual harassment did not come out because people wanted to see Uber fail. People want Uber to fail because it came out, and the extent of it.
Extent is a very important factor. This was not "a person was sexually harassed once at a company", which does indeed happen at many places. This was a larger pattern and intrinsic problem. You're downplaying that by insinuating that all of this is because there was a target on Uber's back. There are good reasons people want to see them fail.
> I'm saying a lot of the things Uber was accused of was something that EVERY other company does. You just aren't aware of it.
Um, no. There are some more common than others, sure, but few companies were as bad as Uber was. Every company does not steal IP from other companies. Every company does not create software to evade law enforcement. Every company does not pay hackers to delete data. Every company does not hire psychologists in an attempt to manipulate drivers. The list goes on.
You can argue that Kalanick deserves credit for his idea and perhaps even the overall effects in a utilitarian argument, but sweeping under the rug the bad reveals your bias very quickly. All of your posts on this thread are basically trying to defend him directly or indirectly while adding in a clause basically saying "well he wasn't perfect". Let's not erase the bad because he may have done something good, just as we shouldn't erase the good.
Again, i'm not trying to say Uber was ethical, so don't try to tell me I'm some Uber fanboy.
I'm just pointing out among all evil corporations Uber was the one to fall and there are plenty of disgusting reasons behind it which most people who criticize Uber have no idea of. And I'm talking about this point. The world thinks they've won because they've punished Uber, but what they've done is just play into hidden politics that made some shady people behind the scenes more money.
You're going to have to actually provide some examples and/or evidence before I believe most companies do all of this regularly. I'd argue most terrible ethical actions of companies are out in the open and more socially accepted.
> "The world thinks they've won because they've punished Uber, but what they've done is just play into hidden politics that made some shady people behind the scenes more money."
This is one small thing, but I'll take it over nothing.
I'm not blind to the larger power struggle of the world all mostly hidden from view. But, if this didn't happen, a different group of shady people wins on the other side of the hidden politics. Last I checked there aren't big differences in the shady hidden political system's parties.
I didn't say the claims were against him specifically. But he was facing the allegations that it was happening at Uber.
There was no parallel situation with Steve.
I must have missed that part when I saw "Jobs" in the theater.
Jobs wasn't fired for serially violating the law, risking his company's survival, damaging its reputation (EDIT: and mistreating everyone from female employees to rape victims).
Not sure I have heard anything about TK going after rape victims specifically, thats a new one for me.
[1] http://horanaviation.com/Uber.html
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0D_Q8xvosM
I'll leave it up to you to conclude whether or not trading $0.60 for a $1 can last forever.
If they raise the prices, does the market go away?
If they are able to outlast and go to self-driving cars, how profitable is that business when factoring in competition, possible regulation, or it even becoming a public utility?
Side note: big companies generally die because they don’t take a real threat seriously, and by the time they do, it’s too late.
It needs to be less expensive than a taxi to generate a lot of demand, but this seems to be a pretty low bar.
Uber made total sense in big cities when minimums were $15, the average ride was $40+, and all cars were staffed by professional drivers looking for extra income and hours between clients. It was win-win, complied with the law and really didn’t even have that big of an impact on the taxi industry because it wasn’t a race to the bottom.
None of these services make any sense with $7 rides and random people with a drivers license trying to make a living off of driving all day long.
But things are changing so fast nowadays and the masses have a lot of power (maybe too much than they deserve) and Uber unfortunately was at the wrong place at the wrong time.
When I talk to real people in the real world (not Twitter trolls and social justice warriors), most people appreciate how Uber changed the world for the better. He deserves every cent of his billions of dollars.
EDIT: I appear to be mis-remembering Uber's actions - they did not initially share their denial of the victim's experiences with her, per the accounts I've found. In this setting, 'intimidation' may be too strong a word.
https://www.recode.net/2017/6/7/15754316/uber-executive-indi...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/07/uber-exec...
That alone should disqualify Kalanick from serving as CEO. Instead of firing the executive who took the records immediately, he gave his implicit approval by considering the records.
I haven't stopped using them. But then, I buy Apple products manufactured with suicidal slave labor, use fossil fuels in my car, eat meat, etc. I suspect you probably do plenty of things that are someone else's pet issue too. WRT Uber I have some minimal faith left in "the system" that whatever legal issues need to be taken care of will. In the meantime, I will continue to use products and services that provide a good value in my life.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/uber-trav...
All happened under Travis's watch. One or two isolated incidents could be the fault of a few bad apples. But for this much bad stuff to happen, the CEO is asleep at the wheel. If he couldn't handle that responsibility, he should have bowed out sooner.
While it seems obvious that Uber may have hastened the process is it really arguable that people would still be using their phone to call taxi dispatchers in 2018?
Seems to me he capably profited from a trend. Which is great. But did it unethically. Which is, obviously, not ethical. It's not clear the world really needs more ethically compromised multinational companies.
You should just go back to jacking off over pictures of Milo and Travis.
He deserves the money he made by making a company that was competitive by knowingly skirting laws? That seems like a bad precedent to set.
However, that gray area wasn't the equivalent of dumping toxic waste into a river to build some product. The gray area was around how taxis were regulated in markets.
As a frequent Uber/Lyft/Taxi user in NYC I can say that the experience for the consumer has been fantastic. I never want to use a taxi again for many reasons.
1. There's very little recourse for lost items 2. You can't get one on-demand (now you can with apps but not before) 3. There's no recourse for having a bad driver or ensuring a good pleasant ride
So while it operated in the gray it was around archaic laws, it wasn't like it was destroying the environment.
It's not gray; it was black and white. Companies need to follow the law.
> archaic laws
The laws Uber is accused of violating, including their attempts to deceive law enforcement, are not archaic.
Why is it a grey area? I don't think those laws are good but they exist. I don't believe a company's willingness to ignore laws should give them a competitive advantage because that just creates an incentive to do so.
Also, companies should not be in the business of deciding what laws are okay or not okay to disobey.
> As a frequent Uber/Lyft/Taxi user in NYC I can say that the experience for the consumer has been fantastic.
I like Lyft a lot, but I don't believe the end justifies the means. The proper way to do this would have been to change the laws first and then make the business second.
Unfortunately, businesses tend to heavily influence the creation of the laws that give them an unfair advantage. Businesses get started, they get big, and then use their money to buy lobbying power. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was true in the taxi industry.
I don’t care for laws which exist to favor industry leaders.
Why not? We do this everyday as individuals. A company a coherent group of people acting collectively.
Laws are a high-latency side chain of authority, not the Word Of God.
Because companies are concerned with profits. Even individuals should not be skirting laws for the sake of profit as that would be immoral.
I think there's usually a lot of gray areas with regard to morality.
So they are operating in a gray area but not hurting the common good, so adapting the laws would make sense.
Not the same as producing something toxic as a by product of your product and then releasing that into the environment.
If you wish to make an apple pie from search, you must first invent the universe.
https://youtu.be/7s664NsLeFM
Does Musk deserve his coin? What about Gates? The Koch brothers? Mostly other people have done the work for them.
I do not look fondly at what a pain local transport was in cities without public transport (and even those with), and it is Travis (yes, Travis first, Uber second) that led this paradigm shift.
We can debate about Uber's business practices until the cows come home, but this is undeniable. And yes, other so-called 'nicer' / 'ethical' rideshare companies who didn't have to get their hands dirty because they profited from the ecosystem that Uber created exist precisely because of that.
This is really strangely dismissive. Does the "paradigm shift" justify any and all of Uber's unethical actions? If so, why do you think breaking the law and harassing rape victims is either acceptable or laudable? If not, why bring it up, unless you're perpetuating some kind of entrepeneur business-worship over basic moral decency?
I think it’s too early to judge Uber’s “contribution to society” when the investors are basically footing the bill for all of Uber’s customers. Let’s see Uber make a profit and it still be less costly/better service to what consumers get now and then we can talk about their contribution to society.
However, the parents point is more general and I think you're talking past it. You can't evaluate Uber's societal contributions based on short term and possibly ephemeral benefits. For example, if ride sharing services suddenly disintegrate once VC funding dries up then they can't be said to have made a meaningful impact. Sustainability is actually crucial.
Far more than Kalanick's behavior, it is the company's practices that are the problem. They willfully broke the law and they also mistreated many people from employees to drivers to rape victims.
Jobs often took an “ask for forgivenss” approach. Copying Xerox [1], screwing Wozniak [2], the naming schtick with the Beatles, et cetera.
[1] http://www.mac-history.net/computer-history/2012-03-22/apple...
[2] http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/steve-wozniak-cried-jobs-kept-atari...
This is an unpopular opinion, but if it weren't for Jobs, Woz would have remained an unknown HP engineer.
I completely agree. I also think Steve Jobs was a great man. Part of his greatness was knowing which rules he could bend, which rules he could break, and deftly negotiating the aftermath.
Greatness isn't hurting other people, but finding ways to get things done that benefit all stakeholders, including society and community.
> Jobs often took an “ask for forgivenss” approach.
So we agree: He didn't break the law. Being a jerk to his co-founder is not at all comparable.
But I think it is important to recognize both the bad and the good stuff that happened.
> powerfully entrenched politicians (DeBlasio of NYC as an example)
DeBlasio is entrenched because he was elected by a majority of his constituents. The people get to write the rules, called laws. Who voted for Kalanick? What gave him the right?
You could say people voted with their wallets.
You could say it, but that's not how democracy or legitimate government and lawmaking works. And in Uber's case, the wallets voting are a few investors who subsidized the customers.
What makes Uber legit? People support it.
Although I guess a government doesn't need the support of the people to maintain legitimacy, it just needs to be able to maintain a monopoly on violence. And if Uber had a monopoly on the taxi industry maybe it wouldn't need the people's support either.
> What makes Uber legit? People support it.
Really? Uber has the legitimacy of government? Wow.
Markets don't have elections and most politicians/bureaucrats don't exactly have the competency to decide what should be good for everyone. Letting people vote with their wallets has largely worked.
Of course no system is perfect, but this is as fair as it gets.
The excellent Cuban health system achieves the same for roughly 1/10th the cost.
Which part of "double the price same product" counts largely "worked" and why do you want me to give up my cheaper system for yours?
Furthermore, don’t ever say “excellent Cuban” anything. There’s a reason why people try to cross shark infested waters on dingy rafts from Cuba to Key West, Florida. People vote with their feet and wallets.
If only I could walk into a health care facility and see the prices posted on the wall for various procedures, or get an estimate upfront, the way I can at any auto garage...
This issue has nothing to do with central planning. Free market theory does not support legal anarchy. It really should work that businesses can do whatever they want, irrespective of the law? Can they murder? Steal? Damage your property and life? It's absurd.
Money should never overwhelm the will of the people. I say this even though I hated the way taxis used to work, with the artificial limitation, and I love a chance to take a much more convenient app based ride, I really despise how they got away with violating at least any standard of reasonable behavior, but also they were apparently violating the law literally - one example being paying the hackers not to hack and not telling anyone.
It’s like the quote from the Chronicles of Riddick, “sometimes the only way to stop evil is not with good. You must confront it with another kind of evil”.
So the identity of the rent seekers at the top hasn't even changed. But you use an app now... so, yay?
I think anybody who takes a rent seekers' side over even the most despicable politician doesn't deserve to live in a Democracy.
This really turns taxi service into some great horror. Uber didn't cure cancer or even invent the Internet (nor is it cheaper than cabs in cities I've been in); they just made a marginal improvement in one form of transportation, partly by using massive wealth to take on losses and by imposing externalities on others: The cost of cars on the drivers, safety on the passengers, traffic on the rest of the city (a big reason for medallions, afaik, was to avoid the traffic jams that Uber creates in cities). Cabs worked fine for many years, and still do.
> It’s like the quote from the Chronicles of Riddick, “sometimes the only way to stop evil is not with good. You must confront it with another kind of evil”.
Evil? Cabs are evil? If we're getting our philosophy from the Chronicles of Riddick, it suddenly all makes sense. The better sources of philosophy would disagree.
So should anyone who wants be able to break laws and abuse people? If the only justification you need is that cab service isn't great, what good are laws?
Problem is some wallets are empty and some are full, whereas in a democracy every vote has the same weight.
What I can't understand is the moral grandstanding, e.g. "What gave him the right?" Are taxicab medallions worth it? I never take it seriously when someone starts talking like this about the marriage between taxis and local governments, like it was some holy industry that didn't deserve to be disrupted.
Imagine how long it would have taken for local governments to "fix" something like that. Can you explain to me what it would take for a city council to (1) identify a problem (and in a timely manner, instead of twenty years of "if it ain't broke don't fix it"), (2) come up with a solution, and (3) somehow prioritize this ahead of all of the other important things they work on?
You are correct, no one handed Travis Kalanick the "right" to change something, but I'm okay with the fact that he took it upon himself.
Which ever way it goes, its fine and fair.
I'm in favor of the rule of law. If I was in favor of the rule of law when it did good things and not when it did bad things (and I ready admit that the medallion system is one of the bad things), and wanted outside companies with private capital to ignore the rule of law to fix the bad things... I wouldn't be in favor of the rule of law at all.
The ultimate question is who we choose to decide whether things are good or bad. If you support the rule of law in a democracy, you have the democratic process. If you support companies outspending and outmaneuvering local governments, you're entrusting capital with making these decisions, and they probably won't reflect the will of the people. It is, to be clear, an entirely legitimate political perspective to believe that we'll get a better society by letting the holder of the most capital make decisions instead of letting the people each have one vote. But that's a very strong claim that should be made clearly, and those who believe in democracy even when democracy happens to produce occasional bad outcomes are not particularly grandstanding, just believing in democracy.
So I'm fine with rule of law, and fine with getting fined for violations of medallion regulations.
I agree that not every law is just, but some are less just than others.
How do you know if "more people agree"? Has there been a public debate and a vote?
If there was a vote, it would be direct democracy, which has some serious drawbacks. One is that most people have very little time to become informed on these issues; that's why they elect representatives to deal with them.
Finally, straight majority rule is just mob rule. Someone said, 'democracy must be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner'. What if the majority wanted to take your house away? Take your business away? Stop someone from speaking? Stop the minority party from accepting donations? That's why we have the rule of law, not the rule of the majority.
The majority of New Yorkers did not appear to support his views in respect of taxis. That is why Uber was able to organise a grassroots opposition.
> What gave him the right?
The Constitution and culture of civil society that gives the EFF “the right” to organise constituencies of grassroots support.
Under the law, which is how every modern society is governed, the mayor makes these decisions irrespective of majorities (if they exists) on particular issues; that's on purpose.
> EFF
The EFF does not violate laws and claims no right to do so. It does claim a right to organize people and speak about issues; Uber has that right too. Uber does not have the right to break laws it doesn't like.
In Australia, after the local regulator/government started fining UberX drivers for illegally operating a taxi service (rightfully so IMHO), Uber told the drivers not to worry, continue driving and they’ll pay their fines for them.
Any person, other than a person holding a driver's license issued pursuant to section 19-505 and a New York state class A, B, C or E license, neither of which is revoked or suspended, who drives or operates for hire a licensed vehicle in the city except a commuter van, shall be guilty of a violation, and upon conviction in the criminal court, shall be punished by a fine of not less than five hundred dollars nor more than one thousand dollars or imprisonment for a term not exceeding thirty days, or both such fine and imprisonment.
Obviously courts can impose fines - do you honestly think the only thing a court can do is throw someone in jail? Fines are not for torts - penalties are, and there's very strict rules around penalties (they can't be punitive and can only be used to recover costs incurred by failure to perform a contract). You have no idea what you're on about.
The process of fining you is literally a court procedure. The city official doesn't have any authority to fine you - they bring a prosecution against you in court, and provide you with the details by which you can either plead guilty in front of that court (possibly via mail or an online form) and take the sentence that the court gives you (which is most likely to be a fine unless the judge has more information), or plead not guilty and make a defense. Anything else would be a violation of due process.
Again, try looking outside your bubble of the US. This is certainly not the case in countries outside the US.
They cite passenger safety concerns, but there's been not-too-subtle protests by Black Cab drivers who simply refuse to change their archaic business model and a very stark lack of actual Uber users concerned about safety. Not only is it far less convenient than Uber, calling a Black Cab means you need to venture onto the street and if you're not in central London you're basically stuffed. There's also the matter of cabbies being many times more expensive than Uber - a £20 Uber would be £50, at least.
The Black Cab drivers are being petulant children about it. I'm sorry their livelihoods are under threat but they either need to evolve or die. They literally blocked off a major London road right outside my offices in protest against Uber a few months ago; right off Blackfriars Bridge they parked horizontally in the middle of the road, causing absolute mayhem. Usually I'm fine with people striking, but there was no legitimate grievance here - a better competitor came along and instead of embracing change (and progress) they simply threw their toys out of the pram and demanded the politicians (who are in their union's pocket) simply get rid of their competition.
The politicians didn't take much persuading, and just like that we rolled back to Black Cabs (which half of Uber users were priced out of in the first place). Unions are generally a force for good, but this was just a shameless attempt by the Black Cab union to have the competition erased, where previously they operated in what could easily have been described as a monopoly - previously they only faced competition from minicabs and Addison Lee, which largely had an entirely different customer base.
The fact is that Uber came in, heavy handed, and used it's usual "fuck the rules, we're here" attitude towards running its service. It's hardly surprising that it fails to get license renewals when it's not only shown scant regard for the rules and regs, but open contempt about changing so that they fit them.
1. Operate in legal grey areas to get a product infront of consumers. Build a large enough network of riders and drivers to prove the product market fit.
2. By the time, politicians and the connected taxi cartels realize the magnitude of the change and seek to outlaw it, rally their own voters to back Uber.
3. Under pressure, have politicians clear the path for legalization. This has played out in more cities than I can remember.
Step #1 before #2 is what made TK and Uber different. The level of ruthlessness it requires, I’d have a hard time substituting others in his position.
Your description left out buying off politicians and breaking the law.
> taxi cartels
The picture of taxi owners as powerful doesn't at all match what I know. It's a shibboleth promoted by Uber.
You should read this then - https://priceonomics.com/post/47636506327/the-tyranny-of-the....
You may be confusing taxi drivers with taxi companies owning and selling medallions for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Taxi drivers have traditionally been thoroughly exploited from having to either put all their wealth at risk from buying an overpriced medallion, or through having to work the first x hours a day simply to break even from mandatory fees. Ask a former yellow cab driver in NYC who converted to Uber to understand which company treats them better.
No, I'm not. In cities I know, they are politically weak. Also, when I talk to drivers, they all would rather drive taxis where they make more money, but have little choice when Uber is taking all the business. They almost universally say Uber pays less, treats them poorly (e.g., they have to supply their own car), and leaves them powerless (Uber can change rates and increase the supply of drivers any time it wants).
> for hundreds of thousands of dollars
Is this big number supposed to be impressive? Let's not forget Uber's 40 billion dollars and lobbyists who used to advise Presidents, if we want to talk about political power. It's laughable to compare taxi companies with Uber.
the city where i live (a 12 million people city) taxi cartels are so powerful, the leader of one of those has dinner with the governor. he has meetings with senators. there is recording of him calling for taxi drivers within his "association" to violently attack uber drivers and nothing was done.
also, taxi medallions are so damn expensive (with some coming to the price of a house) that the owners become powerful.
Do you think Uber's leaders might do the same?
That’s actually a bad example. Airbnb has tons of legal troubles just as Uber. In many cities it operates illegally. I have traveled around world and used Airbnb a lot and in about half the places I was told it is a grey area or straight out illegal.
Hotel lobby has been busy pushing governments to legislate against Airbnb. It’s just that sharing economy company like that is hard to fight as there is not a bunch of hotel buildings you can go and close down / inspect. It’s hundreds or thousands of either normal folk trying to make extra buck from their unused rooms or speculators buying flats just to rent them via Airbnb.
A very good parallel can be made between Uber vs entrenched taxi industry & Airbnb vs hotel industry. Both companies disrupting old industries using any gray area or straight illegality if it’s hard to enforce.
We all sit comfortably in the Bay Area because our ancestors murdered and stole lands from Native Americans. They also build an entire ecosystem that gained wealth from exploiting laborers and immigrants. History is messy, but they did these things so their children can sit around in comfortable homes enjoying these highly philosophical debates without any physical danger
Exactly my point. They got punished for it, but their children lived to enjoy the fruits of their labor, without any blame or punishment.
Murdering people and stealing land turned out great for the murderer's ancestors so it's all ok? Not from the point of view of those who were murdered.
Using that logic - if space aliens came and murdered all the technologically inferior humans and took Earth for themselves, it would be all ok. After all, they are building a more technologically advanced and superior society on Earth for their children.
I'm saying they did something NOT OK, and their children get to enjoy all the fruits of their immorality without any of the blames.
Wait what? What did he take the blame for exactly? Were the sexist comment making, the berating of his own Uber driver, or Greyball things that were necessary for ride sharing to become successful? I think most people are quite capable of being able to separate ride sharing the technology from a ride sharing technology company's CEO. Ill feelings for the latter do not imply ill feelings for the former.
>"We all sit comfortably in the Bay Area because our ancestors murdered and stole lands from Native Americans."
"We all?" Wow. You live in quite a bubble if you really believe that everyone who reads HN lives in the Bay Area or is an American. Or has ancestors that killed native Americans. What an incredibly outrageous statement and comparison. Speak for yourself.
It doesn't matter if your ancestors were Americans. The prosperity and safety of the Bay Area, which you enjoy, was made possible by people who murdered and stole land. You enjoy that privilege everyday without taking any of the blame.
The fact that you're outraged speaks to your privilege because you've no understanding of what a bloody mess history is, and the amount of indencency it took to get the U.S. to the prosperous nation it is today.
How about we improve public transport? I know it’s unpopular to propose “socialist” ideas, but public transport works elsewhere in the world, why does it have to be so horrible here? Why does someone have to profit for something that you agree is a “pain?”
And for the record, if the United States as a society decides that gun ownership is important enough to let the mass shootings continue that's OK with me. What bugs me more is the perennial argument that gun control wouldn't solve anything or that it's impossible for the US to address its gun violence problem even if it wanted to.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/upshot/compare-these-gun-...
No one holds Germany responsible for EU partner Croatia's outcomes, yet USA wide outcomes are - despite massive local variations. In a lot of areas of US policy (excluding defence) local budgets will dictate results much more than federal ones.
That's the real challenge for the USA, how to cope with inequality that is as much a factor of geography as politics.
At which point you talk about incentives against driving, at which point you piss off millions of people, and potentially punish those who legitimately couldn't use rail due to work or scheduling circumstances.
You're really blowing off something incredibly difficult, more difficult (politically and financially) than putting someone on the moon. And your snark isn't even conceptually consistent; we thought we were a snowflake in the 60s, we just really were one of the greatest countries in the world. Firearm issues are there but over hyped/more complex than you want to admit, and if anything, we really should let states take the reins at healthcare, because it'd be a lot easier for regional governments to pull something off and get the ball rolling than to constantly fight at our crippled-by-two-national-parties Congress.
In places that have good rail systems, most people get to the rail station by walking. In the other places, it is usually because they have disallowed dense construction near transit stations through zoning.
You're probably right, but I also think that the main roadblocks are political, not financial. The US has one of the highest GDP/capita in the world but consistently fails to apply this economic power to helping its own citizens or does so in extremely wasteful ways like creating jobs through military spending.
Edit: Also public infrastructure isn't just transport. There are cities in the US that do not have safe drinking water. It's shocking.
That’s actually a pretty great point. They also weren’t devised for internet, flight, or dna sequencing. Time to roll those back as well.
Subways and buses usually have schedules that don't always line up with when you happen to need it. Also, there is a mental tax in having to navigate it.
For instance, I really have a hard time reading subway/train maps and schedules, and God forbid I need to connect to a different line during the route.
Sure, plenty of people are totally comfortable navigating it, but you could make the same case to advocate the Imperial system over metric.
In those cases, Uber and the like not only provide an option that is cheaper than traditional taxis, but also a way to travel that doesn't involve wasting hours because you're visiting somewhere and ended up taking the wrong train.
I like the idea of public transport, but even the best ones are not necessarily the best option in every context.
There's no need for any difference between navigating by car in Google Maps or navigating by public transport in Google Maps.
Meaning, in Netherlands Google Maps show the estimated arrival times of everything, transfers, etc. It'll take into account delays, cancellations, service announcements, etc. All easily within Google Maps (plus a few other apps; the information is publicly available).
Traveling by bike/car/foot/public transport is all the same complexity.
Sometimes there are routes that take significantly longer with PT, and in those scenarios it's just another argument for taking my bike.
There are a few scenarios in which I take taxis, but they're rare and usually when it's the only reasonable option (caused by time or availability of PT like at night).
It also depends on where you live in NL. Every 10 min a train to Ehv is neat, and I got a bus from Ams to my home city every few minutes whole day long, but the rural areas don't have such luxury. The joke for the trains goes, that "they don't drive on time, they drive on rails."
Google has improved here with their offline maps, but even then, it's not 100%.
I'm not saying that PT is worthless or that we shouldn't improve it, but IMHO, Uber and the like fill a very critical "last mile" kind of problem that I think pairs nicely in cities with public transportation.
That sort of costs money, hence taxes. Which no one can agree upon, as everyone has their own list of what's important for them.
>>Why does someone have to profit for something that you agree is a “pain?”
Because people have to get paid, infrastructure and operations have to be expanded and world needs to run.
Indeed. And Uber is no different. The cost of our cheap rides is still paid by the wealthy, in this case VCs and other investors.
If You think Taxi's are a mafia, the public transport (bus) system in Mexico is ten times as dirty and corrupt. It is a real shame.
1. You write as if Uber has solved the transportation problem sustainably. The end state of an Uber job is that it will pay less than minimum wage. Why? Because the barrier to entry is the same as most minimum wage jobs (assuming you have a car made in the last 10 years) and it is more desirable than minimum wage jobs (flexible hours, no boss). The pay may look better on paper, but when all the hidden costs are accounted for it will be less than minimum wage. Uber is operating in an unsustainable bubble. Sequoia and Softbank are subsidizing your trips.
2. My guess is that if your mom was raped in an Uber and one of Travis' lieutenants got (somehow, possibly by stealing/bribing - not by asking her permission) your mom's medical records to prove to himself that she really was raped (to determine Uber liability and that it wasn't staged by a competitor), then you might feel differently in your respect and admiration for Travis Kalanick.
All he's saying is that he brought about the concept of ride sharing (debatable since there was, for instance, Sidecar before the advent of UberX) to the public and that he understands the pain of being ousted by your own company.
Had you posted other uncivil comments I'd ban you, but since you haven't, we'll treat it as an isolated lapse. Please don't do it again though. If you can't remain scrupulously respectful of the person you're replying to, please don't post.
If you'd read the HN guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site to heart, we'd appreciate it. That spirit is intellectual curiosity: considering things for the pleasure of considering them. That doesn't fit with flamewars and is incompatible with personal attack.
You imply that unethical behavior was helpful to Uber defeat awful local transport lobbies in some cities and improve transportation for the people.
I strongly disagree with both assumptions. I believe he was ousted for legitimate reasons that he is 100% individually responsible for and I believe that unethical behavior at Uber did nothing to help them win the battle against local lobbies (only to win against competitors).
Anyway, it's not hard to imagine that Travis, despite being aware of how his actions resulted in consequences, may feel hurt, and maybe even remorseful.
It would be a mistake to believe that people who act poorly all lack empathy.
It would be more properly stated that I do not personally feel bad for Travis being ousted (because is, IMO, a deserved consequence of his acts). And in this case it is not actually a disagreement, just a difference of our reactions.
Yeah, I don't feel bad for the guy either. I hope he feels discomfort for the wrongs his enacted. That would, at least, make him human.
If he is not responsible, then who is? I'm sorry but CEOs can't have it both ways. If you want to be paid at the (insane) current levels you have to take responsibility for the outcomes of your actions. The only other entity that might have some responsibility is the board for not getting rid of Kalanick sooner.
Befehl ist Befehl.
"I was only following orders."
The person following the orders certainly shares some of the responsibility, but the person giving the orders bears even more of the responsibility.
To me "morally reprehensible" implies something quite extreme, like, say, genocide, callous violent crime, rape, etc.
Uber did lots of, if not ethically grey, completely unethical (and unlawful) things. Least of which includes tracking regulators and government inspectors, and also surveillance on their users and celebrities based on the rides they'd take. That's not even counting all the bro culture and sexual harassment that seems to have been rampant.
It does come from the top. A lot of those people that were fired, were hired by Kalanick.
Nobody's shedding a tear for a jerk like Kalanick, especially not after his multi-billion dollar payout. He'll be just fine. In fact, by any stretch of it, he's being HANDSOMELY rewarded for his behavior.
He has simply no reason to change.
What? I didn't say that it was "fine". I'm just trying to get a handle on the scope here. When I think of things that are morally reprehensible, I think of the things I mentioned in my post.
Clearly, I don't think Uber is there, so I disagree with the notion that they acted in a "morally reprehensible" way.
Do I think that they behaved unethically, even criminally so? Yes, I think that you can make a strong case for that.
Maybe I'm making a semantic argument? If so, I think I'm getting weary of our constant 24/7 media stream of outrage, and for that I apologize since that's neither here nor there...
”Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done” - Bryan Stevenson
Edit: I should have used the word valuable instead of impactful. I’m leaving it in because the Uber critics responding below have all jumped on my use of the term, and those replies would no longer make sense if I change it. That said, I do believe Uber has been a very impactful company and will continue to be.
Airbnb was born out of Craigslist spam. Facebook only grew because of a contact spammer that is still in use to this day. In Facebook’s early days, Hotmail temporarily blocked Facebook invite spam and their growth instantly dropped by 90%. Uber used Greyball to avoid giving rides to those in violation of its terms of service, some of whom were undercover law enforcement personnel looking to disrupt its business.
These big businesses don’t come to fruition by accident, and the one thing they seem to have in common is that most of them broke the rules to get where they are. It may not be pleasant or politically correct, but it’s a fact of life.
Uber used Greyball to evade municipal laws.
Look, I'm a fan of Lyft and Uber. They shook up an ossified taxi industry. But let's not sugarcoat what Uber did - they broke laws and constructed systems to aid breaking those laws.
Are you talking about Uber? More convenient, cheaper taxis? Sure, I like that as much as the next person, but it's hardly one of the most impactful companies in history.
I don't think Uber is this, even if 'impact' is purely taken as a morally neutral statement. It's just clearly not the case. Train companies, underground, shipping, airlines, have all had a much bigger impact and that's just looking at transport.
Uber also wasn't worth $70B in the last round, investors didn't know that sexism was rampant and the culture horrible, which would have surely made them not invest if they had talked to female employees at uber.
However, they didn't know that the culture is horrible and not able to grow another 10x under these conditions and conquer the autonomous driving market.
They also didn't know that Uber had all these patent problem, but they did.
Now, investors have invested at a $48B valuation, but they still overpaid, because they don't know all the information. Maybe they didn't care, because Uber told them, they will definitely be able to bloat up the company to $100, so that SoftBank makes their 2x. Surely they also have liquidation preference.
So, they actual valuation of Uber, including all the bad that no one knows, is probably only at $10B.
It could also only be $1B, since Uber probably won't compete in the autonomous car market and can only make $50M profit per year after stripping away all its overhead. But most people don't know this.
He spent his time building THAT place I just described
Besides, ride shares isn’t that novel. The math exists. The market itself already exists! It’s just poorly managed
He found rich people to invest in “doing it at scale in the cloud.”
I don’t really give credit for outcomes that anyone with a bachelors in math, and web dev skills could come up with conceptually if not scale
The trickiest bit is getting money and navigating the administrative shitshow that is our society. But that’s easy when you just bribe ...pay... sycophants to do it
He even said himself he has a lot of growing up to do. No need to defend him as simply misunderstood
I don’t really give props for his accomplishments. He lived a contemporary life and got handouts from vultures who saw $$$ while looking at Travis
I really don't think a marginal improvement on taxis qualifies for that title.
The market doesn't care about the feelings of executives. He was a net liability for Uber by the end, and if he couldn't mamage to keep himself valued by the market, that's on him.
Knowing you messed up doesn't necessarily make it any less painful.
And yes, voting with one's wallet is often the most effective form of voting we have.
Life has an interesting sense of humor.
And all the unethical, getting-their-hands-dirty shit you mentioned seems of dubious value and certainly moreso now that he's been fired from his company; seems like all the same could've been achieved without hiring a team of assholes and without being one himself.
I think I know the kind of world Travis comes from. He was in a fraternity, and he treated it like a business like I did. When he owned a real business he applied those lessons far too liberally.
Fraternities are ruthlessly competitive, going as far as planting fake pledges and building internal dossiers on all the other frats on campus. Very valuable was your loyal man with a generic young face that could walk their way into other houses unsuspected.
Fraternities are also bound strongly by shared goals and lifetime membership, something that doesn't translate to a company where you can leave anyday. They're both a company and a political structure within the university. A strange 501c3 title 9 exempt chimera that forever walks the line.
I'm not defending what he's done, just saying that ruthless counterintelligence is normal for Greek houses trying to get an edge, just like politics. We did much of the same, going as far as putting together wifi sniffers with long range dish antennas pointed at other houses to figure out how many people connected to their WiFi during parties.
We never did any harm, but we watched as closely as our abilities (and the law) allowed. It was opposition research, as bad as politics, and often intertwined. At one point I was fraternity president and my roommate was president of the Student House of Representatives, in charge of the school's 'activity fee', which was close to 50 million a year. We both hated politics and left them forever after graduation, but seeing into the void was a hell of an eye opener for both of us.
I have a strong feeling Travis tried the fraternity formula on a unicorn. A fraternity is much different primarily because you're elected. If you own it, you don't have to pander to anyone or spend half your time watching your back. I think the shadier and secretive projects are a reflection that Travis didn't understand that.
Yeah the competition doesn't mean as much when you get older but you still get fired up years later on homecoming when you hear your old rival got more members or a bigger house or whatever.
I'm in my early thirties now and I still think it was worth it, competition and everything.
Who throws the best parties is just a small piece, an effect rather than the cause. Its who hangs out with the best sororities, who has the most power on campus, who's the biggest, who wins the most sports (which really is a meathead metric IMO)
But its not all pompous crap, they also compete for the best grades and the most successful alumni.
Fraternities are very elitist which is both good and bad, they try to find the best members, the most powerful attractive and smart guys on campus. If you have nothing to offer you probably won't be allowed in. What's offerable is anything that would help the fraternity reputation or finances.
It's all pointless if you think about it too much, but that competition drove a ton of benefits to the school. IFC (Interfraternity counsil) ran most of the school events. Our attendance at official school functions like football games or president speeches was about 30% of attendees, even though 'greek life' was only 4% of the student population.
Over 50% of alumni endowment/donation money was from sorority/fraternity members even though they made up a single digits percentage of graduates since the 60s.
I don't understand why Greek life is attacked so judiciously on HN when it's clearly a net positive to schools and the students that join. Of course it's not for everyone but that's not a reason to vilify it.
Knitting is not for everyone, but by choosing not to be a knitter, I'm generally not missing out on social/career advancement opportunities (e.g. I apply for a job but I'm not in a frat, I'm more qualified than the next guy, but the next guy was a frat brother of the hiring manager, so guess who wins?).
Even if I do choose to be a knitter, I'm generally not putting myself at higher risk of death, such as by being forced to drink toxic amounts of alcohol and then having my supposed "brothers" abandon me after I fall down the stairs and lie there bleeding to death.
There's a huge logical gap inside the statement, "not everyone has to like thing XYZ, q.e.d. there can be no criticism of thing XYZ".
The basic concept is to throw 40 twenty year old college guys (hopefully well chosen) into a 10000 sq ft house worth a mil, and they sink or swim.
You learn a ton. Keeping it afloat is a huge challenge, and the competition with other houses demands constant attention and good decision making.
I was president about two years after joining as a random guy in undergrad, and suddenly in charge of 300,000 a year budget. Our alumni pledges plus assets were almost a million and that's normal. Keep in mind I was just a guy elected by 23 of my 40 peers voting for me.
It was one of the best learning experiences in my life. If you know of something equivalent that's accessible for a random guy in college and not in the Greek system it would surprise me.
The activity fee thing is true too. Many universities have a student government of sorts, and some of them allow the student government to decide what happens with a significant amount of the school's budget. At my school it was 5% ish. At the school with 20k students that's a ton of money for 40 elected students to slosh around.
The Greek system would commonly ally as voting blocks to make sure their candidates were elected, so student government is frequently run by Greeks.
Watching other houses parties was really important too. You need to see how far other houses go in breaking the inevitably unenforcable rules for parties. If you stray from the pack the school will shut you down. Finding out how many people went to social events at other houses was probably the most accurate gauge of a house popularity and reputation.
I came from a school with a very competitive Greek system, so I'm sure a lot of this doesn't apply everywhere
waves smartphone "Uber is not a taxi service." -"Uber isn't a taxi service"
waves smartphone "There is no need to regulate us as a taxi service." -"There's no need to regulate them like a taxi service."
waves smartphone "Uber drivers are not employees." -"These drivers are not employees."
At least for government, that wasn't a smartphone he was waving. It was a stack of something with drawings of U.S. Presidents on it, sort of greenish.
> waving a smartphone in the face ... the public was the next best thing to a Jedi mind trick.
In that case, the smartphones were the ones in the public's hands: Uber ran an effective media campaign, including paid-for editorials in major newspapers (and I'm guessing elsewhere) about how great it is to be an Uber driver, and, AFAICT, astroturfing in online forums and social media. Uber was a darling of the business world, a paragon of SV and American innovation. Not so long ago, you couldn't say anything negative about Uber on HN without being voted down to oblivion, and the talking points were repeated in every discussion.
My question is: Why do we need separate this two "faces"? And if we need, even when they want the same thing, should we have both?
You mean the egregious sexual harassing and blatant attempts to obstruct justice?
Or do you mean the ability of people on the HN forums to predict the future?
Did you wreck the neighbor's petunias yourself? No. But you were the responsible person in charge.
So, did T-dawg grope without restraint? I don't know, likely not. But he let it happen, repeatedly, for months.
Also, that whole 'grey-ball' thing.
https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/29/handcuffed-to-uber/
Both made a practical business innovation but crossed a sensitive line and so they were attacked/penalized for it.
But the cat is already out of the bag; the idea and technology to fulfill their goals cannot be stopped.
In that sense, attacking an individual innovator is futile; at best it's a short term setback for the market they are trying to serve.
The planned sale is of 29% of his stake ie 3% of Uber. I guess 3% doesn't have the same flourish.
That's a solid psychological finish line for some entrepreneurs.
The liquid Billion club gets a pretty cool Amex card with personal concierge.