While I happily read the BBC quite often, I feel this report is a bit misguided when it suggests that Macron was doing anything wrong.<p>Uber and his ministry were looking at creating a regulatory framework for ride-sharing. The BBC frames this as Macron ignoring illegal activity. I think from Macron's perspective Uber's activity was "unregulated" not "illegal". That's a healthy approach towards change. Otherwise we can't renew our laws.<p>The BBC's view of how politicians and innovators should interact seems to be too narrow. I think Macron can be a role model actually.<p>also yes Travis was a controversial figure, that seems beside the point. Stuff he did elsewhere don't seem to matter here.
Over here in NA, there is a mythological fantasy that Europe has gotten it so right and if only we could be like Europe. Their politics, parliamentary system, equality, social safety net and all of it.<p>The truth of the matter is, Europe is still in the hands of few aristocratic ruling class and those people are just as vulnerable and susceptible to corruption as revealed by these leaks frequently. In fact the endless bureaucracy are set up by the Eurocrats in a manner to satisfy this heirarcy and this small group of people who almost always are fed through chains of connections that are reachable through dark money and lobbying efforts.<p>The sense of equality there is just as abysmal. Just look at their housing market for example. It’s much worse than ours.
Why have traditional taxi companies when evidently just having some computers in the cloud can do the same thing for basically free and let the drivers take all the profit? I don't like Uber as a company, but I don't see why we can't have similar services around or why it is wrong to try to change laws to make such services legal?