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Uber and AirBnb are essentially illegal taxi and illegal hotel services. Remember taxi medallions? Remember zoning laws? Being illegal is not a showstopper for
by failuser 2y ago
Uber and AirBnb are essentially illegal taxi and illegal hotel services. Remember taxi medallions? Remember zoning laws? Being illegal is not a showstopper for a startup because they are under a radar, being illegal is not a problem for a large business because they have enough power to not get prosecuted.
- Havoc 2y agoEric Schmidt echoed similar sentiment in his recent interview. Basically do it, if startup fails then it doesn’t matter. If it succeeds then lawyers can sort it out.
- santiagobasulto 2y agoWhich makes total sense for consumers as well. If the startup succeeds is because consumers are finding value in it. Uber is the best example. Uber is ilegal only in countries with deep corruption where taxi unions can make legislators ignore their constituents. Uber (and any other car sharing app) is the best solution for me as a consumer compared to the traditional old school taxi service.
- Havoc 2y ago> Which makes total sense for consumers as well. Kinda. Often this casual law breaking isn’t entirely victimless even if it benefits both consumer and the startup. I think Schmidt was talking about using content to train models. So artists getting short end of stick. Or Airbnb causing locals getting prices out or whatever. There is certainly some dodgy protectionism happening of the sort you describe but there are also externalities borne by society for this break laws startup style.
- warkdarrior 2y agoAs a user of GenAI, I get to create and save drawings in the style of any artist I like, without having to pay the artist $$$$. This is important to me because I like certain styles, but do not care for an original drawing nor have the money to pay for such. And the externalities introduced here are not borne by all of society, but only by a small number of people (How many important artists are there? 10,000? 100,000?). Just like horse-and-buggy drivers were affected by automobiles, while the vast majority of people benefited from automobiles.
- Havoc 2y agoRight so externalities are fine as long as they don’t hit you and it fucks over less than 100k people… That is…quite a stance. Not quite sure what to even say here.
- talldatethrow 2y agoTotally. I propose we start a brothelBnB next door to your home. Home owner wins, customer wins, worker wins, startup wins! Score! Market has spoken! I also recommend HoboSleepinCar Driveway as a service next to your home. The consumer has spoken!
- santiagobasulto 2y agoReally good argument, congrats
- consteval 2y agoUber is objectively worse for every single party involved. Driver makes less, customer pays more, Uber has to coordinate a huge system. Uber "won" because they cheated. They operated at a loss for almost 15 years, on the welfare of investors. Guess what, mom and pop running a taxi can't live on a negative wage.
- cellis 2y ago> Uber is objectively worse for every single party involved. Wrong on at least one count. I've never been refused service while black from Uber. The taxi industry was brought out of the dark ages of discrimination by Uber et al. Taxis (around the world) have tried to rip me off almost half the time I've used them, with no accountability.
- santiagobasulto 2y agoI prefer Uber everywhere I go. Even if I pay more, I know it upfront. I have their safety in place, etc.
- consteval 2y agoOkay. Objectively you're paying easily 2x more and, objectively, you're not safer in developed countries.
- SoftTalker 2y agoAlso in these "gig" type companies, the people who are actually breaking the laws are the workers, e.g. the drivers or the homeowners in the case of Uber and AirBnB. The startup is the enabler, yes, but they will try to throw their workers under the bus before they take responsibility themselves. They don't own the cars, they don't own the properties, and they are most likely in a far-away jurisdiction.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- arrosenberg 2y agoHe would know. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/04/24/306592297/tech-giants-settle-wage-fixing-lawsuit https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/04/24/306592297...
- lisnake 2y agoDidn't work for Elizabeth Holmes
- rodiger 2y agoThere's a difference between "doing an illegal thing as a product" and "lying to investors about your product"
- papercrane 2y agoThis is true, although it's also true that many startups lie to, or mislead, investors about the state of their products. If things work out, then the investors don't care, and if they don't its usually at scale and messy enough the government isn't going to prosecute.
- ath3nd 2y agoSBF and Elizabeth Holmes would like a word. And hopefully everyone else "successful" having the morals of a greedy chimpanzee follows the same fate as those swindlers. Whatever happened to doing good by people and society (or at least pretending to)?
- atq2119 2y agoShould inciting others to commit crimes be in itself a crime? Certainly, if somebody influential enough does it, it has the potential to destabilize our society with catastrophic results.
- yonran 2y agoIronically for a question about antitrust price fixing you just named two incumbent government-sanctioned cartels (zoning and taxi medallions) that restrict supply and keep prices high. They would be illegal if private companies made them.
- digging 2y ago> They would be illegal if private companies made them. Yes, that's kind of the main difference between government functions and private companies. Are you saying the very idea of zoning strikes you as a problem? Or are you trying to call out the bad implementations which strangle urban prosperity in the US?
- yonran 2y ago> Yes, that's kind of the main difference between government functions and private companies Perhaps that should change. Or at least it’s a reason to scrutinize and repeal laws that are used for price fixing. > Are you saying the very idea of zoning strikes you as a problem? Or are you trying to call out the bad implementations which strangle urban prosperity in the US? Zoning Rules! by William Fischel gives good a history of zoning. Zoning was originally for segregation within the city but to the question of prices, no it was not inherently problematic. It was not until the 1970s that zoning was used for growth control to make entire cities unaffordable.
- BeFlatXIII 2y agoUnless it's pollution-based zoning, I agree that the idea of zoning is a problem.
- fwip 2y agoMany things a government does would be illegal if private companies did them. For example, prison, the draft, and taxes. The government is allowed to do it because we (as a society) believe it's better for the government to do these things than private individuals or companies.
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- teraflop 2y agoAnybody else remember that time YC funded an international smuggling operation? https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/backpack https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/backpack https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8199286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8199286
- calgoo 2y agoLooks like they are still active!
- darby_nine 2y agoHell you could write off all of web3 with that sentence
- naikrovek 2y agobecause web3 was a smuggling/laundering operation and those are illegal. basically, all cryptocurrency activity is immediately a suspicious activity.
- bitcoin_anon 2y agoReminder that until recently, most cannabis patients relied on smugglers to treat their illnesses.
- tourmalinetaco 2y agoReminder that a minority of cases does not justify smuggling for recreational use.
- bitcoin_anon 2y agoI disagree. I’m fine with millions of recreational users supporting smugglers so that a single patient can get the medicine they need. It was the black market the safeguarded this plant for generations until we came to our senses again.
- whimsicalism 2y agouber: mostly not technically because the key thing is that they are not soliciting rides from the street, was my understanding. airbnb had a much more legally tenuous start
- failuser 2y agoUber even had a whole program to thwart law enforcement attempts to investigate them called “greyball”. They knew what they are doing. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-program-evade-authorities.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-...
- Manuel_D 2y agoTaxi medallions were (and AFAIK still are) required to respond to people hailing a taxi from the street. It is not required to book a ride via phone or internet. Uber and Lyft drivers never needed taxi medallions.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago> essentially illegal taxi and illegal hotel services I don't know about Uber, but Airbnb deflects this by saying they are not in fact a hotel service. Rather hosts are hotel services, and Airbnb is simply a discovery platform matching buyers and sellers. It's up to an individual host to make sure they are complying with local laws including whether their city or district allows an individual to rent out their house or a room in it without a hotel license (this varies from city to city). In this way Airbnb (fairly or unfairly) pushes the burden and liability onto the hosts. I believe this is also a huge reason why Uber doesn't want to classify drivers as employees because then it is the taxi service, whereas it could argue that the drivers are each operating their own taxi service and Uber is just a discovery and payment platform.
- failuser 2y agoI’m pretty sure an assassination marketplace would not fly under the same legal pretense. The platform won’t do the killing, right? If hotel or taxi lobby was more powerful or caught the threat early on AirBnB and Uber would have been destroyed.