Oh engineers can do what ever they want. They are found in places like Facebook, Wall Street and the NSA doing pointless things with talent anyway. The problem isn't really the choices engineers make.
When the smartest people work for the richest people, to make the richest people so rich that hardly any of that wealth can ever get spent in even ridiculous ways, it automatically makes the system more unequal, less stable and secure for everyone involved.
A service which a billion and a half people use, and hundreds of millions every month/day is most definitely not pointless.
More importantly, how do rich people get rich? How does Uber make money?
Uber provides a service in over 300 cities which people can choose to use, and evidently a lot of people do use it. Over a million per day. Now, they are voluntarily paying for a service which people are voluntarily driving for. These people see value in the marketplace which Uber has established, likely due to it's cost and time efficiency. So, Uber makes money by saving people time and money, in comparison to the alternatives. If they do not provide a quality service they will not exist.
So, Uber makes money by saving people time and money, in comparison to the alternatives.
That doesn't mean what they're doing is necessarily a good thing. A lot of people argue that Uber saves people time and money by circumventing legislation designed to protect passengers and drivers. Uber's entire business lives or dies on whether or not they're a taxi business and whether or not their drivers are employees. If it's the case that they are a taxi company or their drivers are employees then Uber are definitely in the wrong at the moment. I don't have an opinion either way because I'm not qualified to say.
If they do not provide a quality service they will not exist.
Plenty of terrible businesses that provide shockingly poor quality products exist. I could save people time and money on their building needs by starting a construction business that ignored building regulations. There'd be plenty of trade because lots of people put cost before quality but that wouldn't be a good thing.
Legislation is designed to serve the people. It also gets outdated as times change. It's something that's never done and will always be in constant tension with how society and business transform.
Copyright/patent law and same-sex marriage are two quick examples of things that clearly need legal review as the world has changed. We wouldn't just say: "well that's how the law's written so that's how it should be and everything against it is wrong" would we?
Uber's success is an expression of the general public's desire for a different and better system. Taxi's aren't extinct, they're still around and they've even made lots of upgrades to try and win back customers, however it's pretty clear that ride sharing services just provide better quality and value. I personally believe there are some rules that should exist (disabled/wheelchair + underserved areas) but it doesn't need an entire encumbent taxi industry to remain solely through legal mandates. When there's such growing demand for a service, we should start looking at whether the legislation itself needs to change.
BTW: With all the self-driving cars stuff happening, both taxis and ride share drivers might be out of a job anyway, and our current auto laws will definitely have to change when that becomes a real thing.
The legislation may have been designed to protect drivers and passengers, but I’m hesitant to believe that that is what it has actually done. It has certainly protected the incumbents. From my personal experience I felt far safer using Uber than I did the taxi alternatives in my city, as well it it being 300% cheaper and arriving in 5 minutes as opposed to the 55 of the taxi alternative. I think people are mature enough to make decisions for themselves, I’d love to see comparable data of Uber vs. taxi in the cities. Any examples of successful products which are terrible? I don’t think that’s a fair analogy, you are assuming that by ignoring the regulations that the house will be worse of, that’s an untrue assumption in my opinion. In this particular case, and in my experience, I’d argue that Uber’s service is the most quality service in all senses of the word, it’s the cheapest, it arrives the quickest and it’s the safest.
I really dont get the point of arguing that other people's choices and what they choose to work on is "pointless". It takes all types of people in every imaginable field to make this world work and we have more than enough to keep everyone busy.
What exactly is the issue with wealth? The business owners are rich yes, but you don't get to that level without providing something of massive value to someone. In this case, Uber is helping millions of people every day. Also you don't die and leave with all your money, it always gets dispersed eventually, even if it's longer than a single generation.
Yeah, it was a tongue-in-cheek response to "What exactly is the issue with wealth?".
I don't think there's anything wrong with making some money, but the magnitude of the wealth gap is clearly a serious problem (and evidence against the idea that wealth trickles down in some useful way).
When the smartest people work for the richest people, to make the richest people so rich that hardly any of that wealth can ever get spent in even ridiculous ways, it automatically makes the system more unequal, less stable and secure for everyone involved.