Hacker News Reader

Comment by hmd_imputer | Hacker News Reader

the lack of strict regulations is one of the reasons start-up businesses flourish in the US. Although I am pro-regulation in some issues, I think that European style pain-in-the-ass regulations only hinder technological advancement. Would UBER ever be successful in Europe? Nope.

View on HN

...uber is successful in Europe. There are cities that banned it, but there are as many that didn't.

Conversely, Uber is not very successful in South-East Asia, but not for the abundance of regulation but for the lack of it - Grab, a local copy-paste of Uber, has become so dominant that Uber had to leave most of the markets there

yeap, the ones who didn't ban are the ones who didn't apply all these useless strict regulations.

In Germany, it is still not possible to take an Uber ride, for example. Besides, if it started in Europe as a small start-up it would be killed right away with tons of regulations anyways. So the only reason that you have Uber in Europe is that it has become a giant company in the US, due fertile environment, and thus could afford all these legal battles to enter the market.

South-East Asia is a different story. It has nothing to do with regulations at all. It is just a completely different mindset there. The fact is though, businesses in those countries can easily flourish as well.

And they make a lot of direct lobbying toward local government to make sure they don't enforce existing taxi laws.

which they should, don't you think? sometimes being disruptive is the only way to go.

No, because they're just trying to get an exemption for themselves. If they were advocating for a change for all, that'd be better.

you cannot advocate for a change for all if you are the only company in that field. Uber was literally a revolution of transportation. However, as a side effect, the changes you advocate sets a precedence, thus also affects everyone, which was the case in the US. There were a few other companies who also benefited from the changes, such as Lift.

"you cannot advocate for a change for all if you are the only company in that field."

But they're not. They're a taxi company. There are tons of those around.

And indeed Uber has been a catalyst in several EU countries for taxi deregulation. They had to leave Finland because it was illegal to be an Uber driver without having a ”traditional” taxi license; a legislation change will come into effect this summer that greatly deregulates the taxi industry. So I guess they succeeded in being disruptive, but I agree with the other commenter that Uber is probably not the best example from corporate ethics point of view.

> uber is successful in Europe.

But Europe was an expansion market for them, after they spent a while working out early kinks in the US. I think the post you are commenting on meant success as a startup, which is very different from successfully expanding there.

Here is a nice vlog on how Europe lost its tech companies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSU5MFPn6Zk

I'm not really convinced by his arguments, a lot of European countries have a higher free market index than the US and US taxes are more complex than a good half of European countries.

I think he overestimates the impact of regulation & "culture" (what does that even mean in a place as diverse as Europe?) and underestimates the effect of having a large market in the US where everyone speaks the same language and have more or less the same culture.

I don't think that Uber was a good example of a good company hindered by regulations...

The pain-in-the-ass regulations also save a lot of people's time and money (Theranos-style startups are much less likely to pop-up over this side of the Atlantic also).

It's a trade-off, like most things in life.

For every Theranos, there are 25 Stripes, Dropboxes, and Mixpanels.

It’s not a good trade off at all.

Unless you're one of the little people whose health was harmed in the Theranos fiasco. Or are those people acceptable sacrifices?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-patients-hurt-by-theranos-1...

I highly doubt that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com