> how will any amount of fascism successfully prevent someone from getting into someone else's car?
I'm not sure how guidance - not even a ruling - that a company's classification should change from one that provide "digital services" to one that provides transportation is fascism.
To borrow a well-trod expression, I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Firstly, I updated my comment to the word "regulation". Secondly, I am referring to the end-game: many places want Uber to be illegal, period. (Usually this is due to the taxi lobby.) It is completely impractical to make it illegal, since it would require the state to be able to prevent you from giving your friends a ride.
So that's why I say no amount of state intervention will successfully stifle it. It's ridiculous that the state has chosen to do so in many markets.
someone will just make a distributed version (like a torrent, or Tor, or bitcoin-operated one) that someone will end up operating like a fugitive, and people will end up using it. You can't prevent people from getting into each other's cars.
wherever you hear of Uber suffering a regulation set-back, those regulators and the lobbies that support them are on the wrong end of history. they will never succeed and crush all Uber-like apps. but they can hurt their constituents as they try. (Hence the original fascism comparison.)
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EDIT: Temporal wrote:
>Nobody is trying to micromanage people getting into other peoples' cars.
But this is a false statement. the taxi lobby is trying to, yes.
Nobody is trying to micromanage people getting into other peoples' cars. The issue is with one company that bends and breaks laws as they like, spending shit ton of VC money on getting away with it.
If the Uber story makes me angry at governments in any way, it's because how inefficient they are - Uber should have been kicked out of Europe within months of showing up. That they're still able to operate here is a disgrace to the rule of law.
> Secondly, I am referring to the end-game: many places want Uber to be illegal, period.
Nobody wants Uber to be illegal. Everybody wants Uber to compete on a level playing field and "win" through genuine cost-lowering innovation -- y'know, like capitalism is supposed to work. But most if not all of Uber's price advantage has not actually come from innovation, but from VC-enabled price dumping, pushing costs from companies onto drivers, and being incorrectly classified.
If Uber still can't win once they're actually classified correctly, then they don't deserve to be a continuing business
You have to be more specific. In some places maybe that's true. Meanwhile in other places, we've had private hire services with apps long before Uber that were not faced with the same type of attacks from the taxi lobby.
I'm not sure how guidance - not even a ruling - that a company's classification should change from one that provide "digital services" to one that provides transportation is fascism.
To borrow a well-trod expression, I do not think that word means what you think it means.