That's not the right question to ask. The right question is whether we think Uber is innovative enough to change the laws for.
You've got your thinking backwards. It's not us that has to conform to the law, it's the law that has to conform to us. The right thing to do, IMO, is to make Uber conform to disability law, and do away with the other laws that seem to be doing nothing at this point besides protecting rents, like the taxi medallion system.
There are also other questions like whether we should consider Uber drivers to be employees or contractors. Any decently innovative startup will raise lots of these questions. Uber does just that.
Of course, it would require too much political capital to just do away with the taxi medallion system at this point. So we have to tolerate the grey state of affairs until the legal and political issues are wrangled.
Uber deserves to be rightly rich for being pioneers in this space.
> Uber deserves to be rightly rich for being pioneers in this space.
I have never been more disgusted by an answer on Hacker News. My apologies for that.
Uber's "wealth" is merely an artifact of VC money rushing into a space with an unjustifiable valuation predicated on the violation of transportation and disability laws.
Uber will be the Web Van of the mobility space. Cool idea, replaced by self-driving vehicles owned and operated by organizations willing to follow laws of the jurisdictions they operate in.
> predicated on the violation of transportation and disability laws.
You forgot labor laws.
I'm sorry you feel that way. I've attempted to lay out a rationale from as close to first principles as I can reasonably approach for the right relationship startups should have with the law and society and you've ignored it out of disgust.
No alternatives given for fixing the problems that legislation engenders for commerce, just irrational hatred.
