I’ve tried explaining this story so many times, but Mandeep does it perfectly here. Ride-hailing apps ignoring the law caused countless immigrant families to lose their investment in intergenerational wealth. There’s no accountability or recourse. Whole communities undermined.
To answer the common questions: there’s nothing about enabling innovation in taxi apps that required rewarding VCs funding the breaking of laws. Yes, the medallion system was often broken & sometimes corrupt; replacing that with no laws at all is not going to *improve* that.
Yes, the first wave of apps may have helped with “hailing while black” & other exclusion issues, but antiblackness in the South Asian community isn’t a problem tech can solve. Now ride hailing apps do *no* reporting on who gets picked up — do you trust Uber to do the right thing?
If we’re going to reward widespread lawbreaking with cities handing out multi-billion-dollar subsidies, then let’s do it for people convicted of low-level drug crimes, not for billionaire VCs. Enough fake markets. medium.com/humane-tech/te…
