Every time we take an Uber were spreading its social poison

[FrodosNewPet]

Every time we take an Uber we’re spreading its social poison

CEO Travis Kalanick’s treatment of one of his drivers shows Uber’s institutional sleazebaggery, seeing social responsibility as an outdated piece of apparatus

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/03/uber-spreading-social-poison-travis-kalanick

Laurie Penny | Friday 3 March 2017 13.24 EST

There are very few things that $5bn can’t buy, but one of them is manners. This week video emerged of Travis Kalanick, the CEO and founder of ride-share app Uber, patronising and swearing at one of his own drivers, who complained that harsh company policies had forced him into bankruptcy. “Some people don’t like to take responsibility for their own shit,” sneered Kalanick. Truer words were never spoken by a tycoon: for Uber, along with many other aggressive corporations, not taking responsibility for your own shit isn’t just a philosophy, it’s a business model.

Uber has barely been out of the news this year, with a succession of scandals cementing the company’s reputation as a byword for cod-libertarian douchebaggery. Accusations of strike-breaking during protests against Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban” sparked a viral campaign to get customers to delete the app. A week later, a former employee went public with accusations of sexual harassment and institutional misogyny. Kalanick, who was pressured to withdraw from a position as a business adviser to Trump, is now facing legal suits across the world from drivers who insist that they would be better able to “take responsibility” for their lives if they could earn a living wage.

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That entitlement is key. Charges of sexism against Uber are not just incidental to the way the company operates. They are symptomatic. An organisation’s attitude to women is a good predictor of how it will treat its workers. There is clearly an outfit that regards at least one half of the human race as rather less than sentient. One of its executives threatened to expose the personal details of a female journalist who questioned the way the business was being run. Kalanick has joked, if you can call it a joke, that he should have named his company “Boob-er”, because of the amount of action he gets out of it. The corporation offered French riders the perk of being driven about by attractive women.

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Here’s the awful truth: we have entrusted the reorganisation of our social infrastructure to the sort of people who shout at their subordinates and drivers and view women as a collection of parts. We do not owe these people our money or our admiration.

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[heaven05]

1. title of OP...TRUE!!!!!!!!!!

this frat boy is a piece of shit.

[tblue37]

2. K&R for visibility! nt