Also, why was no mention made of the "avoid discovery issues" discussion?

I'm sure plenty of people would like to "avoid discovery". Few would be stupid enough to commit those words to text.

I wondered that at first when I came to these comments, but then it dawned on me that anyone with a strong opinion on that (read, has personal experience) is unlikely to post comments about it.

I was going to type a reply about how I'll never take another Uber (not only due to this, but everything else associated with that brand too), but I realized I'd be lying. It's too convenient and available in locations lacking alternatives. My moral outrage won't stop me drunk and wanting to get home to give them more money.

I deleted Uber off of my phone a long time ago. Everywhere that I've traveled to since then has had perfectly decent Lyft coverage. I'm under no illusion that Lyft is a saint of a company, but they're a hell of a lot better than Uber.

Try Lyft. The drivers make more money too!

I'll step in an Uber in exceptional cases (basically only when someone else is ordering and I don't want to start a scene), but that's about it. Otherwise, I'll use Lyft or whatever local alternatives might be available, if at all possible.

If it makes you feel any better, most taxi companies are even more reprehensible than Uber. They just operate at much smaller scale, so nobody notices.

The reprehensibility of taxi companies is a big reason why Uber was invented. That said, as with their drivers and corporate practices, Uber and taxi companies are converging on a mean behavior level that in my case has rendered Uber expendable.

How did this meme come about that the only possible penalty for any kind of offence is jail? There are so many more ways to influence human behaviour, all of them much less violent.

Because for several years now there has been a much stronger meme in place in the business community -- particularly among "disruptive" technology startups -- that you don't really have to pay attention to pesky things like laws and ordinances.

And not only that -- if you can just eat the petty civil fine they slap on you, you're actually doing a positive moral good in presenting a middle finger to law if it enables you to bring your desperately needed innovations to a wider audiences.

So that's when people start to say -- "OK then - if they won't get the message, it's time to start locking a few of 'em up."

Just like you'd do with any other criminal gang.

Meh. I can think of better uses for my tax money than using it to lock up people for running an unauthorized ride-sharing service.

The original article refers to harassment of opponents in a civil litigation case -- not running a grey-market service, per se.

I think the same about drug dealers, although I disagree that rich tech boys breaking the law isn't a big problem.

(Shrug) Given the set of "big problems" in the world, I'm having trouble agreeing with you that this is one of them. But I don't own any taxi medallions, so I may be biased.