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Comment by WillPostForFood | Hacker News Reader

I'm totally open to punishing the execs and investors, but shutting down the company hurts the employees, drivers, and users more, so not a great outcome. A financial judgement/penalty against Uber large enough to force it into a bankruptcy and sale, force execs out, force a loss on investors, but keep it operating seems better then a shutdown.

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So what? The market will fill the gap (and Uber already has credible competitors like Lyft). If that was good enough for the incumbent taxi monopolies to be disrupted despite the difficult consequences for some individuals who participated in good faith, then it is good enough for those who were misfortunate enough to get mixed up with a company that appears to have repeatedly operated in bad faith.

Corporations abuse the public and individual persons because corporate charters are hardly ever revoked. Why is there so much horror over killing off a brand that has become a byword for mendacity? Why should we glorify corporations that sweep all before them, but treat them like helpless infants when they march deliberately towards a tragic end?

I'm sure your concern for the people that work there is sincere, but realistically, they can get other jobs, although having worked for Uber might involve answering awkward questions about what they did there. Good.

There's something wrong with society where human life is considered disposable for a wide variety of reasons but the dissolution of an organization is greeted with horror. If the allegations against Uber are true, kill it.

Sure killing it would make you feel better, but once you come down from that emotional high, you realize that the "organization" didn't do anything, it's just an abstract legal concept. People at Uber did bad things, and they should be accountable. The vast majority at Uber are normal people.

So were vast majority of Wehrmacht.

Point being, organizations are not just meaningless legal abstractions. They coordinate people. An evil organization will make "normal people" do evil things, or morally-neutral things that add up to evil. In that case you absolutely want to destroy the organization itself.

This how bad act by companies get rewarded. Also, people who were not cool with Uber culture and behavior left. They would go on to work for less to brag about cool company and maybe lesser salary. If you dont punish Uber as a company, other companies will have to act more like Uber to be competitive and thus people not cool with it will have less places to be employed at.

People who leave companies like Uber due to moral considerations deserve more regard then those who stayed.

What if the market can't efficiently fill the gap because of a monopoly on some resource (whether that be physical or IP through patents)? Do we give companies that have monopolies a pass? Finding some other way to punish them might be simpler in the end.

Then we should weigh the opportunity cost against the cost of the allegedly illegal externalities.

Of course that's a bit hard to do, but would it be a great tragedy if the less efficient outcome was that for the next 10 years your ride arrived in 6 minutes rather than 5? Across a few billion rides that's a loss of efficiency, but efficiency maximization isn't the only good in life.

I agree. Indeed, it's arguable that corporate charters ought necessarily to be public-interest.

Uber is active in 80+ countries and 600+ cities worldwide. That's a really big gap to fill.

Meh. Two years ago, Uber and Lyft threw a tantrum about being forced to play fair and left Austin. Several competitors sprung up and filled the gap within a matter of weeks.

It was a year ago and we've hardly missed them.

That's the funny thing about the gig economy. You're instantly replaced.

Rumor has it that there are other large corporations whose operations span the globe, and whose employees know the arcane formulae to command the performance of mighty forces that can summon chariots at will.

I know nothing of such worldly matters; I am but a humble priest of Eris.

I heard Chariot got bought by Ford

Sure, the technology has a low barrier of entry but that ignores network effects (necessitating lots of cash burn) and the willpower to oppose entrenched interests such as governments and taxi groups.

Network effects are mostly local. You can be rideshare for a major city and the residents will use you even if it isn't worth it for others.

That's 600+ cities where suddenly there's a huge incentive to fill it fast.

Do advocates of free markets as engines of creation and disruption really have so little faith?

Except the taxi industry in many cities is not a free market, my city in particular being #1 on both the world crony capitalist index and the world economic freedom index (Hong Kong). Uber stuck their middle finger at our regulators in a way that no other company had dared to before, at the benefit of consumers.

Going forward, I don't think we'll ever see another taxi company with the balls and cash that Uber has (or had).

Then it should be hoped that locals will be inspired by Uber's example and launch a native version.

If we're going to put our faith in markets and free enterprise, then we need to believe that the market will find a way to deal with the gap of Uber. To do otherwise is to view the organization as indispensable, which is even worse than laissez-faire market worship; it's the objectivist veneration of a producer (vs. looters), and bowing to Uber's will because we think we cannot live if it shrugs.

There are plenty of other people in this world with balls and cash.

The drivers don't vanish into thin air if the mobile phone app dies

> I'm totally open to punishing the execs and investors, but shutting down the company hurts the employees, drivers, and users more, so not a great outcome.

So?

Uber and Lyft throwing a hissy fit and leaving Austin shows that replacing them isn't actually as traumatic as you think.

And stomping the investors flat would send a nice signal that maybe you shouldn't invest in companies whose primary competitive advantage is that they break the law.

At the end of the day, however, this is all part of negotiating tactics between Uber and Google.

Thew whole point of the gig economy is that drivers can work for anyone. If Uber's bubble gets burst, they'll just shift to Lyft or whichever mushrooms pop up locally. "Won't anybody think of the drivers?" has no weight.

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