So, if it's inconvenient, you get to pretend it doesn't exist because you're a "startup"?
That kind of mindset is what's wrong with the startup community. "Disrupt" isn't a synonym for "break any laws you don't like" and "startup" isn't a synonym for "I am above the law!"
I know the american legal system is pretty much fucked, but surely even you lot would have to accept that putting a folded wheelchair into the boot/trunk of a car is "reasonable accommodation".
Shouldn't there be an area for adding special requests such as accessibility? You filter to the vehicles that are able and willing to take this passenger's money.
I can only assume that, as contracted drivers, they have to worry about scratches that may be caused by loading and unloading wheelchairs? Am I overlooking some kind of personal discrimination expecting people to be better?
My own car is not wheelchair accessible. It is spacious, and could fit a collapsed wheelchair. But I don't have a lift. Even if I were to sign up as an Uber driver, I can't say that I'm a kind enough soul to add a wheelchair lift or other equipment to make my car wheelchair accessible.
I might be willing to do so for the right incentive. If Uber were to get me a discount on the modification, or promise to buy my car from me when I no longer want it, or give me a higher percentage of the fare when I pick somebody up, etc. But I, personally, wouldn't foot the bill for purely altruistic reasons.
But Uber is breaking the ADA.
Taxis are also independent contractors. Not every taxi cab must be wheelchair accessible to comply with the ADA. Therefore it stands to reason that Uber's drivers don't necessarily need to modify their cars to comply with the ADA. I will concede that Uber drivers have a requirement to make a reasonable accomodation for disabled passengers.
It still isn't established if Uber's drivers really are independent contractors. But if they are, I don't see how Uber is in violation of the ADA. Individual drivers may well be. And Uber will need to sort things out if it expects people to continue to sign up as drivers.
There's a lot of things that suggest Uber to be an employer, but the rides themselves seem very contractor-y.
Taking a percentage fee for putting driver and customer together leans away from employment, in my view. There are a lot of types of middlemen that are not employers.
I have a fun experiment. Let's ask the IRS if Uber's drivers truly are "independent contractors" as they argue, despite the regulations they impose on drivers which are surprisingly close to regulations you'd impose on an employee.
This has happened before, with costly consequences (Fedex Ground attempted to (illegally) label its drivers as independent contracts: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/10/23/h...
At least as far as federal tax is concerned, the IRS has some advice at http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employ... and http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employ... .
The IRS probably already knows about Uber. They probably haven't audited the company or asked for details, but they must be vaguely aware of how the company operates.
It kinda is. Hear me out.
Commerce is bound to be political. Offering up a product or service for sale isn't always going to be acceptable to everyone. So we pass laws to tell people what they can and can't do. So far, so good.
Except that if this continues, the business landscape changes due to the collective weight of all these laws. Existing organizations that understand the growing burden of the necessary law that has to be complied with are eventually the only entities that can do business.
There needs to be some mechanism to operate in the opposite direction, to deprecate laws and allow smaller companies, who don't have the operational capacity to obey every single law that's ever been passed, to do business.
Law is an imperfect instrument, it remains imperfect no matter how much social good it does, it never foresees all the different ways that society can evolve. The startup, the small, scrappy player that seeks out market opportunities and creates businesses out of them, has to be willing to break laws, has to be willing to believe in itself and its ability to help society evolve.
Small economic actors have always played this role in society, there's nothing magic about Silicon Valley-style startups in this regard.
If you're both an under-privileged minority and you live in a heavily-policed area, this may not apply to you. But everyone else can operate based on a pragmatic assessment of the likelihood of getting caught.
Start a business that violates the law, so long as it's not one that invites the cops to bust through your doors, (i.e. drugs) your ability to operate will rest on society's judgment.
"Should be allowed" is language that hinges on a belief that the law is an inviolate arbiter of right and wrong. It is not. Crowd-sourced judgment is that arbiter. The law is just that arbiter's proxy.
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.
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.
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.
Not hatred, disgust. There's a significant difference.
What good is a service attempting to "disrupt" regulation if it lowers the quality of life for the most in need? THAT is not progress.
Not in that they're both irrational.
There's a fundamental rule for living in the world: Don't be a dick. Uber is breaking that rule, through sociopathic sophistry.
mainly, though, none of these are actually rules because your subjective notion of what being a dick means isn't transferable outside of your head, even if it really, really feels like your opinions are right.
It isn't fair to real startups for giants like Uber to claim startup loopholes.
Point is, early on it is understandable that Uber would take this kind of stance. Now, it's unconscionable.
And since the founders have growth in mind anyway, they'll be sure to make it possible to implement the measures later on (or they'll pay the price in court, either way all is well).
(I'm not sure what my point is... I'm just thinking out loud.)
I don't care what stage of running your business you're in, you shouldn't get to ignore laws and regulations that apply just because you don't like them, or it would be too expensive right now.
It's a question - if your business is big enough to essentially buy off legislators or judiciary, is it your company's fiduciary duty to go into legally gray area for higher profits?
I do not buy the 'business must do everything inside and outside the law to make money,' schtick, but then again, I'm not willing to look at companies as more important or the most important part of society either.
1. http://hanselminutes.com/475/accessibility-a11y-with-opendir...
Presumably they should be saying "We will fix this issue regardless of whether we're obliged to by law or not."
> [Tim] Cook replied [...] that a return on investment (ROI) was not the primary consideration on such issues. “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind,” he said, “I don’t consider the bloody ROI.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/03/07/why-tim-...