It's Complicated

Taxis in every city are regulated. How then did Uber enter and disrupt the market, in city after city, country after country? The Uber Files leak has the answer – but you knew the gist of it anyway. Evasive practices, favours from politicians, a global expansion that was “rife with violations of local transportation laws”. Uber Files just confirms what everyone always suspected:

“The investigation is based on a leak of sensitive texts, emails, invoices, briefing notes, presentations and other documents exchanged by top Uber executives, government bureaucrats and world leaders in nearly 30 countries.”

 

On the one hand, of course, this is nothing new. Doesn’t every big company have lobbyists? Don’t all such companies have access – and thus influence – on politicians and thus policies? Yes, indeed. The Uber Files just provides a detailed glimpse of how one such company operated, how easy it is to get access to top politicians – in short, the system is built and operated for such interactions.

 

In Uber’s case though, as Ben Evans points out, it’s also true that it satisfied a genuine need – the need to get a cab quickly and easily. After all, it’s not as if the existing cab systems worked well or met demand. And those benefiting from the old system had always lobbied with the same politicians to ensure the status quo would not change. So one can almost empathize with Uber’s policy:

“Uber’s public, avowed strategy was to launch where the service was probably illegal and bully politicians into approving it, rather than lobbying first and waiting for the law to be changed, on the theory that the lobbying would fail unless you’d already shown people the service.”

Of course, there was money to be made. And being the first entrant was always key. Nobody is arguing that Uber was in it for charity or out of the goodness of their hearts.

 

Did society as a whole benefit from Uber? It depends on who you ask: the layman obviously did. The drivers got a pittance. And existing cab systems got wiped out.

 

What then should you make of a service like Uber?

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