On the way to work this morning, I listened to The Daily, The New York Times podcast hosted by Michael Barbara. This is a typical day for me, and I generally find the podcast really balanced. I'm an Independent voter, for the record, and I've voted for as many Democrats as I have Republicans, just to establish that upfront as you continue to read this. As I mentioned at the beginning of this year, I take in a wide range of content to be on a continuous learning journey (you can read that post here).
Today's episode of The Daily really struck me. It was about another New York City taxi driver committing suicide, apparently because of the dramatic decline in their taxi-medallion appreciation. This is due to the invention of Uber, Lyft, and other ride-sharing apps and specifically due to New York City's response to them. You should listen to it and then ask yourself these questions:
- Should New York City have done more upfront to compensate these drivers as their taxi-medallions declined in value? Where do you personally come out on this? I generally believe in the power of free markets and as little regulation as possible, but it really got me thinking.
- With the absence of regulation (or compensation), should Uber and Lyft have stepped in to help these guys out? Yes, former taxi drivers are making more as a result of switching to Uber and Lyft, but for those that owned medallions (versus renting them from an owner), they have seen a dramatic decline in their value. Instead of spend as much on lobbying, was their a role for these multibillion-dollar-funded startups to play? I'm not sure what I would have done in their situation had I been their CEO. But we've seen a lot of regulation not go the way of these new-age companies as a result of taxi driver protests, lobbying, and sometimes even rioting. You've read the stories, so I won't elaborate on those details. But if you had been CEO, would you have done more? Would you do more now? As a Certified B Corporation and Public Benefit Corporation CEO at data.world, I find myself thinking about all stakeholders - even the potentially "disrupted" ones - more and more.
- Wasn't there a thread of electing President Trump that voters were expressing related to the constant drumbeat of Internet-and-technology enabled disruption and the related disruption in traditional lines of work? Remember, where are the coal jobs? But we are all better off with these new-age services, right? We've already seen this in the shift of jobs from farming to industrial-age jobs (and now information-technology jobs), haven't we? Who would like to turn back the clock where we are all farming most of the time just to stay alive? No customer wants to go back to pre Uber and Lyft times, do they? These are fantastic inventions that have raised our quality of life, right? And allowed younger people to avoid car ownership altogether, right? Although now we are talking about disruption in another area that is clearly coming - automobile manufacturing. As these new-age services inevitably grow in prominence (they still only carry a tiny fraction of rides that people take across the world and have absolutely tremendous upside and TAM, or Total Available Market, in front of them), the automobile manufacturers will certainly be disrupted, won't they? It will be the medallion situation all over again, right? Isn't this true of vacation home ownership as well? Why buy when you can HomeAway or Airbnb? Yet another medallion situation, right? But quality of life and accessibility for all continue to go up, right? As a customer, I personally love HomeAway and Airbnb too (as well as Uber and Lyft for that matter). Where do you net out on this "balance"? How do we bring disrupted people along for the journey to be more inclusive and show real empathy? Aren't there many business (and maybe even regulation-or-compensation-based) opportunities in helping the disrupted?
These are huge questions for our society to grapple with as we continue our pace up the exponential technology curve that Ray Kurzweil so famously talks and writes about. And here I am as a techno-utopist in asking these questions. I'm a huge believer in the power of technology to increase our standard of living. I've literally banked my entire career on it. Our business at data.world is based on the brilliant book Exponential Organizations. I've given a lot of speeches and written a lot of blog posts on this future. Here is a commencement speech I gave, which planted a seed for me living my own message embedded in it by stepping back into the arena to start data.world (you can read fully about why I stepped back into the arena as a founder-CEO for the sixth time here). Here is a three-part blog post series I've written in the vein of the amazing entrepreneurial opportunities, with a presumable increase in our standard of living, available to us that is even more relevant today than it was back then.
Where do you net out on all of this? Please listen to the podcast episode before asking yourself these questions. It is important to marinate in it for just 20 minutes before you jump in. But then please jump back in for the comments section and let's get a real discussion going about this.
Note: in full disclosure, I'm a proud investor in Uber through the Lead Edge Capital funds. I think Dara Khosrowshahi is doing an exceptional job in leading the company. I recommend you listen to his cameo interview with Reid Hoffman on Masters of Scale (my favorite startup podcast), and it is fun to hear what Barry Diller thinks about him as well.
