Found in 2 comments on Hacker News
wpietri · 2019-09-30
· Original
thread
Exactly. Some of the regulations were due to corruption. But others we reasonable ways to create a situation fair to workers. Regulating the number of cabs allowed drivers to have some confident that they'd earn a reasonable wage. And the medallion system ended up being basically an investment/retirement plan for a lot of cab drivers.
Yes, the rise of the Internet meant it was time to change how we did cab dispatch. And it would have been great to see what else we could improve, including getting the cab companies to be less oligopolistic. But Uber was clearly after a monopoly [1] so Kalanick could jack rates up enough to justify the billions of investment they took. But national monopolies are way more harmful to both workers and customers than local, strongly regulated oligopolies. Uber was ultimately trying to make things worse, but with them skimming the monopoly rents.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Super-Pumped-Battle-Mike-Isaac/dp/039...
Only US media listed is WP. I guess this is because the file is about international (non-US) behavior of Uber and ICIJ might have asked for help in media in each country.
Uber's behavior in the US is well covered by this very popular book [1] and it is authored by an NYT reporter, based on his own reporting on NYT.
I won't argue about NYT's general trends, but it's not very fair to complain NYT not to cover Uber.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Super-Pumped-Battle-Mike-Isaac/dp/039...