The author has a very perverse mode of thinking, at least to me personally. He praises the fact that medallions and price controls cause artificial shortages and blames Uber for devaluing the medallions through their competition. That's the most bass-ackwards thing I've read in a while. Yes, taxi companies can't compete, because they're a state cartel. The author complains about Uber becoming a monopoly, but laments the poor state-protected taxicab monopolists because their artificially fixed hundred-thousand dollar medallions are depreciating!<p>Apparently we are at whim of a "single private company" controlling our transportation, but somehow being at the whim of state governments is not an issue at all.<p>Circumventing local regulations makes you a greedy monopolist, but instituting outrageous item and price controls doesn't.<p>And of course, the ultimate irony: complaining about monopolization and cartelization while praising unions. I'm not opposed to unions, but they are demand-side bargaining cartels and to be in denial over this makes you look disingenuous.<p>If this is "capitalism at its worst," I can only be horrified at imagining what the author thinks "capitalism at its best" will be. Food rationing, I presume.<p>Terrible article. Only gives more ammunition against left-leaning commentators and nothing else.
Given that Uber is going to replace each and everyone of their drivers with automatic cars it's really just pure capitalism. Not good, not evil.<p>Calling it "capitalism at it's worst" is putting a lot of noise into the discussion as it assume that it can be solved with better morals or ethics.<p>But even if Uber paid it's drivers as actual employers instead of this absurd freelance status they have it wouldn't change the fact that uber is going to replace it's drivers because technology allows it.<p>And so the real discussion is not what do we do with bad actors in capitalism (we have rules for that), it's not even are uber bad actors.<p>No the real discussion is what we do with the fact that technology is slowly but surely replacing workers with machines and leaving an increasing number of people unemployable because they don't have good enough skills.<p>This is no ones fault, it's just what technology does and the sooner we start to accept the premise of technology the sooner we will be able to discuss the real issues without calling people names.<p>But this wont happen until the economic models start factoring technology in and not treat it as an externality. Cause not until then the politicians will start to be able to see the real impact of technology (both the good and the bad) in a more balanced view.
So, Uber:<p>>Provides the same service at lower costs<p>>Pays more to drivers who drive at peak hours, by charging more at those times<p>>Is (gasp!) not charging its drivers hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privelige of having someone barf on their seats<p>Okay, the accusations of driver-poaching and underhanded tactics are bad...but then again, the driver poaching could just be drivers going where the better money is.<p>In fact, I'd say this is capitalism at its best. It's providing a service where the service is needed at a fraction of the cost, and without having to wait for anyone else's say-so.
As Peter Thiel also said, Uber is an ethically challenged company. It's means are not proper, but it's super convenient for commuters, and that's what capitalism cares about.
tl;dr very Marxist piece about greedy capitalists using hi-tech to devalue taxi medallions, breaking some minor laws by the way (which isn't great, though not the pure evil at all).<p>Though there's an interesting link about LaZooz, a decentralized community alternative to Uber: <a href="https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/lazooz-the-decentralized-crypto-alternative-to-uber/2015/03/01" rel="nofollow">https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/lazooz-the-decentralized-cryp...</a>