I guess it all depends on how you're cheating. Are you defrauding others in your cheating? Or are you just bypassing bureaucracy like not having a Taxi service license?
Potato/potatoe. Existing taxi medallion holders were absolutely harmed by Uber. Existing licensed hotel operators were absolutely harmed by AirBnB. And we all celebrated that to great effect here. But it was breaking the rules. We just think THOSE rules were bad but THESE rules are good.
Well, it's not our call to make, it's the prosecutors'. And you (yes, you personally) aren't nearly as insulated from this kind of risk as you think.
> Existing taxi medallion holders were absolutely harmed by Uber. Existing licensed hotel operators were absolutely harmed by AirBnB.
Then they should have sued and sought a judgment if they had a claim.
This is the NIMBY argument in a different market: Can't let anyone else build anything because it might reduce the value of what I have, thereby harming me.
It's not the same as materially misrepresenting a financial investment.
No, your logic doesn't hold. The distinction being drawn here is between civil and criminal liability. Operating an unlicensed taxi service in most municipalities (maybe all of them) is a civil infraction, not a crime.
The founder in the linked article thought that she was on the right side of the line. She wasn't. You personally might think you're too smart to[1] fall afoul of this kind of thing and that all your cheating[2] will be non-prosecutable.
But quite frankly most "criminally liable" misrepresentations to investors aren't prosecuted (basically none of them are), so the fact that this one was is more a statement about the influence of JP Morgan and the mind of this one prosecutor. And blanket statements that absolutely none of Uber's shenanigans were prosecutable seem laughable. Crimes abound.
The point wasn't to nitpick about crimes and penalties. It was that this crime happened in the context of a culture that structurally encouraged it, and we would all do well to recognize that instead of nitpicking fake reasons why it would never happen to us.
[1] The ironic analogy to hubris in security analysis isn't lost on me
[2] Because again in this world All Founders Cheat a Little Bit. We all know it.
> We just think THOSE rules were bad but THESE rules are good
That's kind of how society evolves isn't it? Rules are always changing and that's generally a good thing. Some rules are pretty set in stone throughout history - eg. murder and fraud are generally bad. Other rules around free speech, slavery, energy usage/production, social safety nets, etc., have changed for the better.
You could argue that Uber and Airbnb are worse but I think the fact that they've stuck around despite allegedly breaking rules means that most people prefer the new state of affairs that they resulted in. If something else comes up that breaks rules set by Uber and results in something better (eg. autonomous vehicles?) then I'm sure people will gravitate to that new thing as well.
What was the fraud? Limo services were always allowed in NYC, and didn't have to abide by the medallion system. All Uber did was make it more efficient to find and book a Limo.
