"I don't know where the TVs come from"

I've said before that lack of regulation invites corruption and here it is. Good for you and your plausible deniability but if you're selling something it is concerning that you don't know where they come from.

So what you're saying is, we don't trust the government. Totally acceptable. Doesn't mean I want to start allowing businesses to run afoul of the law in the name of not trusting the government. When corporations can also do whatever they want, things will be much much worse I assure you.

I don't have to do anything but expect and wait for laws to be enforced. I'm happy the way things are. I'm fine with regulations to protect the food chain, drug manufacturing, farming.. I pay extra for all these things. Perhaps we pay a little extra for Taxis but we get benefits from that as well. To agree with Uber is to basically announce everyone's right to civil disobedience to almost everything.

Reinventing themselves to be as competitive as Uber would require them to break laws, so no law abiding companies are not going to be able to do that.

Voting with your wallet has nothing to do with democracy. That's economics, not democracy. Democracy is what realized the need for regulation in the first place and put it there.

Now you are just poking holes in my analogy because YOU don't feel that stores are being unfair. Just the same way many people are saying taxi's are not being unfair. I feel that it is unfair for me to have to pay the costs that the store currently have, so while I am clad stores work for you with all their regulations I have decided that they don't work for me. I feel stores and regulations are more oppressive then the taxi industry.

Regulations do exist that make it more difficult for me to buy that chocolate bar. The store has to follow certain health and safety regulations, they have to pay their employees a certain amount, they have to keep their entrance free of snow and ice and basically spend time and money making themselves a safe place to do business. They may have to provide a certain number of parking spots. So what you are saying is that I can fight for my rights and take that chocolate bar.

Can you tell me if this same rule applies to jewelry stores?

If I go to the convenience store and take a chocolate bar and I get away with it, am I fighting for my right to have chocolate bars for free?

I'm not really understanding. What does this Facebook solotion do that couldn't be done on a piece of paper? The problem is the work involved in developing each lesson, not in the tracking of each lesson once it is developed. Does this Facebook plan eliminate the work involved in coming up with separate plans?

I always get jumped on for this, but to me the whole 'menu at the top' thing in OSX seems like a beta quirk that never went away. I just can't get used to the fact that they don't even attempt to put all the features I need right next to where the pointer is on the screen (ie. context menu). Mousing to the top of the screen to control a window that is at the bottom of the screen kills me and is probably the main reason why I would never want OSX as my primary OS.

Not to mention all the taxi drivers out there who have been out there working their asses off to own their own car one day. Allowing Uber to exist is a big 'screw you' to all of them.

I agree with you. I think a lot of the problem here is that many people feel they are out of touch with the legal system and that the government and system of laws don't really represent them. But that has nothing to do with Uber, and it doesn't give them the right to ignore said laws. It is a completely different issue. It should be discussed in some forum, yes. But let's not forget there are people doing this as a money making venture NOT as a philanthropic venture and that makes a huge difference.

If we're going to all of a sudden say Uber gets to ignore the rules but Napster, Bittorrent, Grooveshark etc etc do not then that's bullshit as well.

You could say the same for a lot of taxi companies; take away their dispatch center and they own nothing.

You know people can buy good ratings anywhere on the internet, right?

Oh yes and we all know reviews can be trusted. Recently in another article a slashdot user mentioned that the driver of the car that came for him wasn't even matching the picture in the Uber profile.