It's not unique to Silicon Valley. The company behind automated elevators with buttons did not have a plan for the elevator operators, and Henry Ford did not have a plan for horse stable operators.
how so?
Ford declared: "My ambition is to employ still more men, to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and their homes. To do this we are putting the greatest share of our profits back in the business."
Now, how much of that was genuine belief and how much was him trying to win a lawsuit is anyone's guess. Nonetheless, he had a public message that offered people a path forward, a better path, even as his technology closed other paths.
Kalanick declared: "In 2015 alone, Uber will generate over 1mm jobs in cities around the world and with that millions of people may decide that they no longer need to own a car because using Uber will be cheaper than owning one. Parking could become less strained in our biggest cities, and city congestion may actually start to ease due to uberPOOL’s expansion and success."
Now, how much of that was genuine belief and how much was him trying to win public favor with regulators is anyone's guess. Nonetheless, he had a public message that offered people a path forward, a better path, even as his technology closed other paths.
;-)
I get your point though, and I don't think you're entirely wrong. I just don't think Ford was really any different from Kalanick. They're both capitalist looking to make themselves rich and powerful. They just lived in different times with different technological and social forces at work. Ford marshaled whatever rhetoric he could to combat those who were against him. Kalanick is doing the same.
Whatever problems with inequality the world faces aren't, in my opinion, due to a relatively small number of people in Silicon Valley but due to global forces trends that have been at work for decades.
Ford's process allowed him to reduce the headcount, and gain competitive advantage even with the added expense of specialized training and higher wages to retain the specialized labor. Therefore the total value of human labor should include the workers who would've been previously hired but were no longer needed under new process.
Which is not that much different from Silicon Valley's "do more with less" mentality.
1) Silicon Valley may envision a future where human labor is not needed and society adapts. But ordinary people aren't futurists. They don't envision that coming about particularly soon. Neither the technology not the social change to deal with it. All they see is the short-term effect of automation driving down wages.
2) Silicon Valley has adopted this world view that embraces futurism and automation, but that future doesn't have a well-defined place for unskilled and moderately skilled people nor have its proponents elucidated how those people will be more prosperous in that future than in the present. People in Silicon Valley talk about "bullshit jobs" but have no answers for what those secretaries or HR staffers are going to do when those jobs cease to exist.
And Silicon Valley can't hide behind the "we just make the technology, we don't give you answers to social problems" trope because there is a strong social and political component to the current Silicon Valley mindset. Uber isn't just building logistics technology. It's disrupting an outdated industry and breaking down obsolete regulations. They're not just building technologies for the world we live in, they're trying to change the social and political rules that govern that world.