The generally accepted way of changing or challenging a law you believe to be wrong and that provides more rent to it's beneficiaries than it costs to defend it, is to break it, repeatedly.

(With apologies to those who fight against things far more onerous than taxi medallions)

"How can this be OK?"

There is no moral duty to obey unjust laws.

Forget a moral duty; how about the fact that inconsistent enforcement of laws is essentially handing market share to Uber for no good reason?

There needs not be a good reason for a bad law not to be enforced.

Look, if it's a "bad law," it should be enforced against no one, not enforced against some companies but not others capriciously.

Sure.

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.

That seems like a pretty poor example when no one would argue that it's morally wrong to require that some professions require licenses to operate (would you support an Uber for medical care as well?).

What happens when Uber decides it does not respect a more serious law, one that you believe should be upheld. Who will stop them then?

I think your point is that some amount of unconditional respect for the law is desirable, because it works as an enforcement mechanism. Is that right? Even if it is desirable, it does not mean that there is a duty to obey unjust laws. After all, saving children from starvation is desirable, yet most people consider they have no duty to do so.

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.

Who will stop you from using them, you mean? Obviously, the answer is that you will.

> If they are bad laws, then we can work to change them.

Uber and its competitors are, more than anyone else in decades as far as I can tell, working to change them.

This is such a great comment! I really wanted to say this, but didn't know how to put it into words.

The basic idea of what you are saying is correct, but I think there are some important details we are missing.

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.

I agree with you for the most part, but I want to comment on the last phrase you use: "If they are bad laws, then we can work to change them. No amount of VC funding should make you immune to their reach." I need to direct you to what happened to Aereo, whose business was destroyed by a Supreme Court ruling [0]. The legal system is one area where innovation is slow, and progress is reliant on inefficient mechanics like politics, bureaucracy, precedent, prosecutorial discretion, judicial opinion, and others. This is by design. Compare for a moment a courtroom of the 1950s and 2014, versus a computer of the 1950s and 2014. Our ability to update our regulatory mechanisms has not kept pace with our ability to create new ideas that need regulation.

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.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7943976

Nothing in your post is wrong, and I agree that my phrasing did not properly illustrate both sides of the picture.

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.

> I have to obey the law in my every day life.

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".

If I coordinated thousands of those small crimes every day as my business model, then we'd be comparing apples to apples.

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.

Taxis have a reduced number of customers because they have poor service and now they have competition. Taxis illegally refuse fares, skip safety inspections, take circuitous routes to rip their customers off, and on and on. They only seem to care about "the rules" when it comes to shutting down a competitor that's offering a superior service.

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.

So the coin has two sides. I'd prefer if all parties had to follow the laws. I think taxis should be penalized for those offenses and Uber should be penalized for its offenses.

It's not just taxi drivers and owners of taxi cab services who are hurt, since underinsured gypsy cabs are now congesting public roads and if you get into an accident you have to deal with their lackluster insurance policies.