The argument here is becoming tiring and beginning to feel like it doesn’t serve any purpose except to tire the reader and express exhaustion over a plausible concern that as far as I’ve observed is yet to have had an effect in proportion to how it’s being portrayed in blog posts like this.
> We consented to Uber’s terms and conditions. When did we consent to AI?
A lot of people were and are upset about Uber basically violating existing taxi regulations. But a lot more people used Uber enthusiastically anyway, because it provided a better experience than the existing taxi regulations.
> With that in mind, when ride-sharing apps first launched, they seemed to me an affront to capitalism. From the sidelines, I felt as if I were watching a hostile takeover of an entire industry cloaked in “Innovation” propaganda. The same was true of Airbnb: a nearly overnight heist of hospitality revenue. Neither was service innovation, but interface innovation. The interface was the key to making this shakedown possible; it was designed to deconstruct the physical constraints and overhead of industry and capture the profits.
I don't see how the thing described is an affront to capitalism. Capitalism has no problem with hostile takeovers of entire industries cloaked in innovation propaganda, or interface rather than service innovations.
Anyway, this article is making a weird argument. It's not actually illegal in general to sell eggs from your backyard chickens, and if it is technically illegal in some places, it probably shouldn't be. But precisely because it's a small-scale, distributed and individual business practice, it's also unlikely to get on anyone's radar. If someone did try to make an app that creates a marketplace for people selling produce from their own garden - well, actually, that sounds like it might be a good idea for a software platform (I also think there are existing software platforms already doing something pretty close to this). I don't actually think it should be illegal and I would oppose laws making it illegal.
> Well, that’s exactly what has been done. Uber pushed state legislatures to pass laws that preempted local authority over ride-hailing — by the mid-2010s, dozens of states had passed laws that limited cities’ ability to regulate prices, licensing, or worker standards. In San Francisco, Airbnb spent roughly $8 million to defeat Proposition F, a 2015 ballot measure that would have imposed stricter limits on short-term rentals. Both companies spent millions more on federal and state lobbying, litigation, and grassroots campaigns designed to blunt or eliminate regulations.
I don't think any of these things should be illegal either, in part because they make it illegal for businesses like Uber and AirBnB that offer a better product than what came previously to operate. I don't blame them for lobbying to repeal these laws and I'd support the repeal myself regardless.
> These so-called innovations left entire classes of workers behind, their livelihoods devalued overnight, their expertise suddenly worthless because an app made it easy for anyone to compete with them without training, licensing, or insurance. The theft was abstract enough to be deniable. The Ubers and Airbnbs could claim they didn’t really take anything — they simply offered a better way to connect people. The fact that entire industries collapsed and workers were displaced was just the invisible hand of the market doing its work.
One person's labor is another person's cost. Even if you think that it's bad for Airbnb and Uber to have disrupted several industries - which is isomorphic to supporting protective tariffs, incidentally - I don't think it's correct to characterize what they did as theft.
> You could argue that when we installed the Uber app, we consented to its terms and conditions in full: not just to the conveniences it offered us in the moment but the consequences it introduced to people and communities. But when did we consent to AI? It’s been added to our lives without our request or permission. It’s read our email, listened to our phone calls, and scraped our webpages — for years — without us really knowing it. Then we were given silly new AI toys and told “go make memes”; it show...
Uber's abusive terms are interesting to me. 10+ years ago I refused to use it because it wanted access to all my contacts on my phone and wouldn't run in my browser (android).
I revisited years later and it worked well in a browser an the downloadable app didn't need so many crazy permissions
4 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 23.4 ms ] threadA lot of people were and are upset about Uber basically violating existing taxi regulations. But a lot more people used Uber enthusiastically anyway, because it provided a better experience than the existing taxi regulations.
> With that in mind, when ride-sharing apps first launched, they seemed to me an affront to capitalism. From the sidelines, I felt as if I were watching a hostile takeover of an entire industry cloaked in “Innovation” propaganda. The same was true of Airbnb: a nearly overnight heist of hospitality revenue. Neither was service innovation, but interface innovation. The interface was the key to making this shakedown possible; it was designed to deconstruct the physical constraints and overhead of industry and capture the profits.
I don't see how the thing described is an affront to capitalism. Capitalism has no problem with hostile takeovers of entire industries cloaked in innovation propaganda, or interface rather than service innovations.
Anyway, this article is making a weird argument. It's not actually illegal in general to sell eggs from your backyard chickens, and if it is technically illegal in some places, it probably shouldn't be. But precisely because it's a small-scale, distributed and individual business practice, it's also unlikely to get on anyone's radar. If someone did try to make an app that creates a marketplace for people selling produce from their own garden - well, actually, that sounds like it might be a good idea for a software platform (I also think there are existing software platforms already doing something pretty close to this). I don't actually think it should be illegal and I would oppose laws making it illegal.
> Well, that’s exactly what has been done. Uber pushed state legislatures to pass laws that preempted local authority over ride-hailing — by the mid-2010s, dozens of states had passed laws that limited cities’ ability to regulate prices, licensing, or worker standards. In San Francisco, Airbnb spent roughly $8 million to defeat Proposition F, a 2015 ballot measure that would have imposed stricter limits on short-term rentals. Both companies spent millions more on federal and state lobbying, litigation, and grassroots campaigns designed to blunt or eliminate regulations.
I don't think any of these things should be illegal either, in part because they make it illegal for businesses like Uber and AirBnB that offer a better product than what came previously to operate. I don't blame them for lobbying to repeal these laws and I'd support the repeal myself regardless.
> These so-called innovations left entire classes of workers behind, their livelihoods devalued overnight, their expertise suddenly worthless because an app made it easy for anyone to compete with them without training, licensing, or insurance. The theft was abstract enough to be deniable. The Ubers and Airbnbs could claim they didn’t really take anything — they simply offered a better way to connect people. The fact that entire industries collapsed and workers were displaced was just the invisible hand of the market doing its work.
One person's labor is another person's cost. Even if you think that it's bad for Airbnb and Uber to have disrupted several industries - which is isomorphic to supporting protective tariffs, incidentally - I don't think it's correct to characterize what they did as theft.
> You could argue that when we installed the Uber app, we consented to its terms and conditions in full: not just to the conveniences it offered us in the moment but the consequences it introduced to people and communities. But when did we consent to AI? It’s been added to our lives without our request or permission. It’s read our email, listened to our phone calls, and scraped our webpages — for years — without us really knowing it. Then we were given silly new AI toys and told “go make memes”; it show...
I revisited years later and it worked well in a browser an the downloadable app didn't need so many crazy permissions