Fighting against the abilities of cities to regulate them is only the start. Uber and Lyft stand very strongly against the oversight of free markets by democratic government. When voters in the city of Austin voted for stronger controls over Uber and Lyft, both companies left town in a tantrum, then successfully lobbied the State of Texas to overthrow local control, and with it, the will of the voters.
And that's not the only time. Uber and Lyft did the same thing in California, when they evaded regulation by cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, and instead worked out a cozy relationship with the state Public Utilities Corporation. It's called "seeing like a corporation:" corporations prefer to deal with a smaller number of more powerful governing bodies, than with a large number of small, local governments, so they push to centralize power at higher levels of government, taking power away from local communities.
By taking away this power, Uber and Lyft undermine the democratic governance of local transportation. One early casualty has been mobility provision to people with disabilities. Uber and Lyft's track record serving the disabled community has been abysmal, as made clear by a plethora of lawsuits; this is just part and parcel of their anti-regulatory, anti-democratic, anti-progressive business model.
Uber and Lyft also take data away from cities. Before Uber and Lyft came along, many cities were using taxi data to learn about traffic flows and how to plan better. Now that the vast majority of taxi rides are controlled by Uber and Lyft, Uber and Lyft control the data. Per their MO, they have fought tooth and nail against letting regulators or the public gain access to any of this data (To add insult to injury, Uber responded by making a fraction of the requested data available on a pretty website, as if this was all out of the kindness of Uber's heart).
When public goods, created by everybody, come to be the private property of a corporation, this is called the enclosure of the commons. Uber and Lyft don't want to share that data because they plan on selling it--to cities, researchers, and to other corporations. This is all part of a struggle over just who will be in charge in our increasingly connected, data-driven cities: local democratic governments? Or corporations like Uber and Lyft?
It's hard to see how anyone with progressive values could support Uber and Lyft's privatized vision of future urban governance.
(To be continued: Uber and Lyft Exemplify the New Post-Truth Capitalism)
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