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Comment by inversionOf | Hacker News Reader

Yes, both have large legal and political staff now. They entered markets and gained a foothold by completely ignoring established law and regulations. There is nothing, whatsoever, false about what I claimed, and your comment is extraordinarily silly.

allowing consumers to use better alternatives and challenging local authorities on their backwards ways

This is a profoundly naive way of viewing what they're doing.

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>This is a profoundly naive way of viewing what they're doing.

Please, explain.

>They entered markets and gained a foothold

By providing a better product at a better price.

By completely ignoring existing rules and regulations that restrict everyone else from providing a "better product at a better price". In virtually every market you can conceive scenarioes where a startup can provide a "better product at a better price" simply by ignoring all of the extra costs and limitations that constrain the existing players, usually at the behest of the government. As much as everyone holds Uber and AirBnB as disrupting cab and hotel businesses, they're really disrupting the cab regulation and hotel regulation businesses, without much consideration to the real impact.

People like eating at the park. There are no current food options there. I can "disrupt" the park food business by wheeling my bbq down there and selling burgers (ignore the countless food safety, tax and regulatory issues, or the zoning/garbage/park use policies that led to the park not having food options). Disruption!

EDIT: Actually, why bother having the capital costs of BBQs, fuel logistics and safety liability, etc. Instead I'll just make an app ("Ubbq") and allow providers to register as park hamburger sellers, taking my skim off the top. Disruption!

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