There are so many stories in circulation this week detailing the sins of the presumptive disruptor of the the hired car industry, that I would feel more than redundant summarizing all of it here. Read this story by founder and Editor-in-Chief of PandoDaily, Sarah Lacy who was singled out as a journalist whom Uber executive Emil Michael stated publicly he would smear for her criticisms of the company. You can also read about the company’s chauvinistic ad campaign, its tactics to undermine competitors, CEO Travis Kalanick’s boasting about how the company gets him laid, or you can read anecdotes involving some very acute dangers passengers have experienced like a near abduction, or just the data collection being done with all riders. Or, for a laugh, you can read about Uber investor and movie star Ashton Kutcher wondering on Twitter “What is so wrong about digging up dirt on shady journalists?” Oh, Ashton, just sit there and look pretty and try not to say things.
The overarching theme from many journalists commenting about the too-aptly named Uber — even Sarah Lacy despite her feeling threatened — is not that the company needs to go away but that its executives need to grow up. “…the very values at the core of start-up culture — the move fast, break things, us-against-the-world spirit of experimentation — are inconsistent with the kinds of responsibilities that come with being an economically important company that touches millions of customers,” writes Neil Irwin for The New York Times. He’s right, of course, but I am skeptical that growing up is in the cards for these executivettes. As the father of sons and a former boy myself, I often generalize that males are pretty immature by nature until they’re at least in their mid twenties, and one way to really stifle potential growth in nearly any male is to value his start-up company at eighteen billion dollars and tell him he’s a genius.
The problem with incubating the kind of permissionless culture that fuels Silicon Valley is that a “boy genius” with too much money in his pockets really cannot distinguish between breaking one set of rules, like a business paradigm in need of change, and breaking all other rules like social responsibility, liability, and personal behaviors that denigrate others. To show how far the dementia goes, read about Standford Law Graduate and co-founder of RapGenius, Mahobod Moghadam, smugly defending his proposal to steal from Whole Foods. Why? Because he wants to. This is what passes for “thought” when the thought leaders all drink the Silicon Valley Kool-Aid.
While we could enumerate sundry flaws with traditional taxi and limousine regulations in particular cities, it should be noted that these problems associated with Uber have manifest in a very short time since the company’s launch, and that these ills are the reason state-imposed regulations exist in the first place — because human nature simply isn’t good enough in a permission-free society. Boys simply do not grow up unless adults force them to do so against their will.
Create an unregulated taxi service, and of course, women are going to be less safe than if they’re being driven by a cabbie who had to pay a fortune for a medallion. No that system isn’t perfect either, but it’s fundamentally safer, includes oversight and a liability chain backed by insurance; and it never involves a private company collecting data on your comings and goings. Moreover, I don’t think consumers who see Uber as a real game changer right now have considered the potential for unprecedented price-gouging if traditional T&L services are “disrupted” out of competitive existence. And drivers are beginning to realize that being an Uber “partner” means having a job without any of the benefits or security of actually being employed. No rules means no rules. No rules means the owner of the ball always wins. So, we’ll see where this goes, but for now, if you had to put your teenage daughter in a hired car tonight, would Uber be your first choice?
