<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>mikeyouse</author><text>&amp;gt; They&amp;#x27;re operating against the law in many cities (mine included, not that I&amp;#x27;m complaining), and could be fined or forced to close at any moment.&lt;p&gt;This plays into their &amp;quot;Uber vs. The Taxi Cartel&amp;quot; trope perfectly. In reality, Taxi regulations vary by city, state, and country. Uber is now operating in over 90 cities in the US and in 44 other countries. They couldn&amp;#x27;t possibly be &amp;quot;forced to close at any moment&amp;quot; since their business is legal or at least &amp;#x27;not illegal&amp;#x27; in the vast majority of those territories.&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;Taxi Cartel&amp;quot; is really several hundred independent locally granted monopolies that exist to attempt to ensure requirements that Uber is going to ignore. The highly profitable airport routes exist to subsidize the requirement that taxis are handicap-accessible and can&amp;#x27;t discriminate against customers. Medallions were created to ensure that cars were properly maintained, drivers could earn decent wages, and that there wouldn&amp;#x27;t be reoccurrences of the crime waves against taxis and customers that led to medallions in the first place.&lt;p&gt;Obviously the number of medallions has been restricted to an unreasonably small number in most places causing the terrible service that many are used to. Also fairly obviously, the advent of the smartphone with personal profiles has reduced the crime potential facing the typical cabbie as well as the issues hailing cabs in outer boroughs or less populated neighborhoods. All of that said, it&amp;#x27;s not like cab companies or taxi drivers are widely profitable. The only public Medallion company (NASDAQ: TAXI) only makes $35M in revenue&amp;#x2F;year and about 1&amp;#x2F;3 of that in net income. If the claims surrounding Uber are true, they&amp;#x27;re projecting close to &lt;i&gt;$2 Billion&lt;/i&gt; in net revenue in the very near future.&lt;p&gt;If Uber does indeed take all of the profitable routes, Taxi companies will close their doors. Some might consider that a net win, but consider the Uber app and the demographics of Smartphone owners (&lt;a href=&quot;http://i.imgur.com/T5JpmQE.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;i.imgur.com&amp;#x2F;T5JpmQE.png&lt;/a&gt;) and then try and estimate how many Ubers are handicap-accessible. This would only be a net win for the wealthy, young, and non-handicapped, which was the entire point of taxi regulation in the first place.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t mean to argue that Uber = Bad and Taxis = Good, and there are other options to solve these problems rather than local monopolies and route protection, but the simplistic &amp;quot;Uber vs. Taxis&amp;quot; analysis usually ignores all of the externalities that would accompany a taxi-less world.</text><parent_chain><item><author>freehunter</author><text>What it boils down to, though, is it doesn&amp;#x27;t matter how much investment money you have if you&amp;#x27;re declared to be operating an illegal business and ordered to shut down. At this point, Uber and other ride-share companies are still in that danger zone. They&amp;#x27;re operating against the law in many cities (mine included, not that I&amp;#x27;m complaining), and could be fined or forced to close at any moment.&lt;p&gt;Think it won&amp;#x27;t happen? It happened to Aereo. Sure, they didn&amp;#x27;t have as much money and weren&amp;#x27;t in as many locations, but its a similar vibe: if they closed their doors tomorrow, nothing would change. They might be in the process of disrupting the market, but they haven&amp;#x27;t won yet. They could lose everything overnight.</text></item><item><author>mikeyouse</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been mystified how Uber&amp;#x27;s kept up their &amp;quot;Underdog&amp;quot; mantle for as long as they have. They&amp;#x27;ve raised over $1.5B in investment from some of the biggest companies, private equity firms, and VCs on earth. I think you stop being an underdog as soon as Goldman Sachs, Blackrock, TPG, KPCB, Google, and Jeff Bezos are invested in your success.&lt;p&gt;They likely have more cash-on-hand than the cumulative Taxi base they are &amp;#x27;disrupting&amp;#x27;, they&amp;#x27;ve been caught multiple times sabotaging competitors, they&amp;#x27;ve been outed for dishonest advertising, and have been repeatedly accused of hostile actions toward their drivers. They ignore sensible regulations like maximum hourly workweeks and insurance minimums (do you want your driver working 90hrs&amp;#x2F;week without liability insurance?) under the guise of fighting the taxi cartel.&lt;p&gt;It often takes a &amp;#x27;push&amp;#x27; to get bad laws changed, and Uber&amp;#x27;s provided much of that push, but not all laws that restrain business are bad and not all companies that break bad laws are good.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Uber&apos;s playbook for sabotaging Lyft</title><url>http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6067663/this-is-ubers-playbook-for-sabotaging-lyft</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>dnautics</author><text>&lt;i&gt;nothing would change&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Well, in my market (San Diego), anyways, I am certain the number of drunk drivers would go up, and the bar industry would see a hit in their clientele.  I rarely even drink myself, but I don&amp;#x27;t think twice about calling a Lyft to go out or come back after drinking.</text><parent_chain><item><author>freehunter</author><text>What it boils down to, though, is it doesn&amp;#x27;t matter how much investment money you have if you&amp;#x27;re declared to be operating an illegal business and ordered to shut down. At this point, Uber and other ride-share companies are still in that danger zone. They&amp;#x27;re operating against the law in many cities (mine included, not that I&amp;#x27;m complaining), and could be fined or forced to close at any moment.&lt;p&gt;Think it won&amp;#x27;t happen? It happened to Aereo. Sure, they didn&amp;#x27;t have as much money and weren&amp;#x27;t in as many locations, but its a similar vibe: if they closed their doors tomorrow, nothing would change. They might be in the process of disrupting the market, but they haven&amp;#x27;t won yet. They could lose everything overnight.</text></item><item><author>mikeyouse</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been mystified how Uber&amp;#x27;s kept up their &amp;quot;Underdog&amp;quot; mantle for as long as they have. They&amp;#x27;ve raised over $1.5B in investment from some of the biggest companies, private equity firms, and VCs on earth. I think you stop being an underdog as soon as Goldman Sachs, Blackrock, TPG, KPCB, Google, and Jeff Bezos are invested in your success.&lt;p&gt;They likely have more cash-on-hand than the cumulative Taxi base they are &amp;#x27;disrupting&amp;#x27;, they&amp;#x27;ve been caught multiple times sabotaging competitors, they&amp;#x27;ve been outed for dishonest advertising, and have been repeatedly accused of hostile actions toward their drivers. They ignore sensible regulations like maximum hourly workweeks and insurance minimums (do you want your driver working 90hrs&amp;#x2F;week without liability insurance?) under the guise of fighting the taxi cartel.&lt;p&gt;It often takes a &amp;#x27;push&amp;#x27; to get bad laws changed, and Uber&amp;#x27;s provided much of that push, but not all laws that restrain business are bad and not all companies that break bad laws are good.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Uber&apos;s playbook for sabotaging Lyft</title><url>http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6067663/this-is-ubers-playbook-for-sabotaging-lyft</url></story>