(With apologies to those who fight against things far more onerous than taxi medallions)
There is no moral duty to obey unjust laws.
Say there's a bad law, for instance a law requiring that every toddler must be taken to a police station before the age of 3 to have one eye gouged out with a red hot steel bar.
Suddenly, the government decide to apply this law capriciously, and starts exempting left-handed boys from the eye gouging.
Would you complain that it's unfair that left-handed boys don't have their eyes gouged out? Would you say that two eyed people grow up to have an unfair advantage in the work place by being able to be more productive and earn more? Would that "fairness" be your concern? Would you feel better if the government reverted its policy and decided to apply the policy uniformly and resumed gouging the eyes of left-handed boy toddlers:
No! You would just want to make sure no one gets their eyes gouged out! Well there you go, focus your concern on the victims of the law, not on the lucky ones who manage to escape it.
Besides, I think that societies overwhelmingly err far on the side of too much respect for the law. Most people are content to form their opinions based on the status quo, which can make for some terrifying dystopian results.
Uber and its competitors are, more than anyone else in decades as far as I can tell, working to change them.
How do we verify law as well-written and protecting interests of constituents first and foremost?
If we assume breaking it was necessary to improve customer experience -- and there are some good indicators for that -- we should ask ourselves, does the law protect the entrenched service provider (here, taxis) more than the consumers?
Should that be the case, it's failure of the law, and perhaps also law making process.
> How can this be OK?
It's a terrible stretch, but still: "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison" - Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"
Look at how Uber is breaking the laws. They are doing it with the financial backing of enormously powerful people. So while now they are just breaking old crusty taxi laws, it scares me to think that a well-funded company could take this model and break some laws that actually protect me. What if what happened to the taxi drivers happens to an industry that I work in? I will have no moral leg to stand on if I don't oppose Uber's tactics now.
My biggest gripe is perhaps not even the inefficiency of the system, but its natural tendency towards systematic support of entrenched players, see the kind of regulatory capture performed by Comcast, or the article about the Chase Whistleblower from a few weeks back. You say that no amount of VC money should make an individual institution immune to the law, but this sort of immunity is conferred all the time by anyone with deep enough pockets, through mechanisms like lobbyists, regulatory capture and the various campaign finance loopholes exploited by Super-PACs. See any of Lawrence Lessig's writings of the past few years for more discussion. I'm reminded of an article that showed up on Hacker News about the downsides of an economy with a lot of entrenched players (permit me to suggest the "cartel" nomenclature) taking advantage of their favorable position in overly-bureaucratic systems: http://intellectual-detox.com/2013/04/14/rent-seeking-econom...
I do agree that Uber's shady business practices are not laudable, and there are certain important regulatory functions that can only be performed by unbiased parties interested in the public good, of which the legal system/government ought to be the exemplary case. But I think your suggestion that we can simply work to change bad laws is perhaps dependent on a system that currently cannot consistently keep up with the pace of change, not just because of inefficiency but because of perverse incentives (here is where I could begin to talk about the influence of corporate money in politics). I suspect we will have to wait at least another half-generation before a critical mass of individuals with both a true understanding of the exponential pace of progress and well-credentialed clout can begin to make serious reforms and updates in that area.
Until then, "move fast and break things" may, terrifyingly, be our best option.
The people holding Uber back are also empowered by wealth and influence. I'd prefer that our country not work this way. It's very unfortunate. I'm worried that encouraging companies like Uber may seem to upset this system but it really enforces it. It further sidelines the average person, and the 'nice' rich people get to battle the 'evil' rich people.
So I instead have the idealist view that we can all vote our way out of this mess. That we can eventually put candidates in place that will create sensible laws around technology and markets. And that these laws will benefit the consumer.
The reality is that it's f*ed on both sides. I can avoid using Uber and the entrenched taxi cab lobby will win. I can use Uber and validate a startup that has systematically broken the law. I can use neither and never get where I am going on time.
So instead I'll just sit here and spout my thoughts on HN. Makes me feel a little better in the meantime.
So you never drive over the speed limit? Jaywalk? Smoke pot? When will we force you to be mature and obey the law? Many millions of small crimes are committed every day by practically every person in the world. The reason nobody cares is because there's often no negative consequences to those "crimes".
Additionally, there ARE negative consequences to what Uber does. They are just not negative to you or me. Taxi drivers are being hurt by the reduced number of customers and the de-valuing of their medallions. I don't like the taxi system at all, but I do feel bad for all of the drivers who tried to play fair and buy in and are now being muscled out by VC money.
The taxis in DC are night and day compared to before and after Uber. They wouldn't even accept credit cards because it was "too hard" to implement. Somehow about 6 months after Uber came to town, it suddenly became possible to do something most other major cities had managed years ago. Even still, credit card readers are often mysteriously "broken". By the "rules" the cab is not supposed to operate if the credit card reader isn't working, but since that rule isn't related to shutting down Uber, I guess it doesn't matter.
Every step of Uber's success has been associated with some sort of law breaking. In each new market they ignore the established taxi/limo laws, and in some they ignore more serious laws (background checks, etc). The individual offenses are small and generally non-serious (unlicensed taxi driving, illegal fees) but when you zoom out you see that this is a company systematically encouraging thousands of small crimes every day. When you realize that the behavior comes from the top, you can aggregate the wrongdoing into something pretty serious.
At first this was kind of 'cute'. We were all rooting for the little startup who said no to an old system and tried to create something better. Uber is now a huge company. They have secured over $2B in funding and probably intending to IPO with a market cap over $50B. Yet they have not slowed down with the law breaking and general disregard for "the rules".
How can this be OK? When will we force them to be mature and obey the laws. I have to obey the law in my every day life. More importantly, I would be terrified if other companies with similar market caps (airlines, rental car companies, media companies) started ignoring the law left and right. If money and investors can make you above the law then there is no protection for the rest of us.
I really want Uber as a service to exist, as I said. They provide a great convenience for me. However I don't think it's acceptable that they get to ignore the established rules. The laws are there for a reason. If they are bad laws, then we can work to change them. No amount of VC funding should make you immune to their reach.