Comment Re:I love getting into strangers' cars (Score 1) 273
If you want to be driven by above-average drivers only, you can request a higher-rated driver from Uber (and pay more per mile) or — if Uber's vetting process seems insufficiently rigorous to you — go for a different company altogether. But don't try to impose it on the rest of us.
This statement, I think, is the defining difference that the Internet will make on public policy. It used to be that if you wanted a higher quality, you had to find a quality brand you could trust, and if the market doesn't favor lots of competition for whatever reason, a quality brand just wouldn't exist without government intervention. After all, why would a rational profit-seeking corporation do anything right if it put them at a cost disadvantage against other corporations already doing quite well by doing it wrong? So we got ourselves lots of government regulation to force companies to provide a quality product.
But now with the Internet, a brand like Uber can effectively sell us the quality we're willing to pay. The taxi market is traditionally so monopolistic that the only way to make good quality available is to legally require it from everyone. But the Internet makes that obsolete. What follows is a "15 round fight" not just over Uber, but about every industry touched by the Internet. The worst part is that many people will fight for obsolete leftist/rightist ideologies in which they are already emotionally invested, even though the issues were never that simple anyway.