A New York Times story frames the continuing debate about Uber as platform versus service. “In Europe, Is Uber a Transportation Service or a Digital Platform?”
The short answer is that Uber is asking to be considered as digital service, and thus not subject to regulations, instead of taxi service, which would.
That Uber is not a taxi service seems an absurd position, although it may prevail legally. Its drivers are also plausibly employees, and its business structure should be subject to the same tax®ulatory regime as any other.
But the larger question (I can’t resist calling it the uber question), is why don’t we regulate platforms in the first place? at least platforms that are companies too. And as a company, their incentives are not necessarily in the public interest, or in the interests of those of its workers or customers. It exists to make money. That’s reasonable, but Uber’s a company, and why not regulate it as such–and in all of its businesses? Does its technical product entitle it to some fuzzy emotional “feel good” hipster exemption from the norms. If it starts selling insurance, for example, should it be exempt from the rules concerning insurance markets?
Why this should come off as a heretical position perhaps has to do with the low esteem collectivism and regulation have had over the last decades. But if the digital sphere is where we live our lives, and there are signs that at least some of it has sort of been a degenerating sphere (whether Uber contributes to that or is agnostic), do we have no standing to ask governments to say wait a minute? Platforms are not outside the pale of general activity, and are not agnostic with respect to their effects on the commonweal.
I grant, it’s not going to be an easy calculus, but not doing it seems foolish not even to ask the question.
And for enjoyable foolishness of another sort, here’s stand-up about spreadsheets.
(I do play with spreadsheets for fun, and I knew what he was up to with 255! Yikes)
A Few Reasonable Words 