The London black cab has a meter that prices the journey. Other taxis in London do not have a price meter.
Uber needs to obey the regulatory rules of the industry. Either they don't have a pricing meter (and thus journey price is agreed before hand) or they do have a price meter and all Uber drivers are regulated like any other black cab driver.
They can't ignore laws just because those laws are inconvenient to them.
"They can't ignore laws just because those laws are inconvenient to them."
I completely agree with you, but at the same time, for whatever reason companies (Uber / Airbnb) have been able to completely ignore rules & laws to the tune of tens of billions of dollars (in valuations).
It's almost "might makes right": ignore rules and grow as fast as possible, with the hope that you'll grow faster than the legal system can take you down. By the time the legal system could do anything, you're big enough to change the rules.
Big enough to change the rules, or big enough to absorb whatever fine they wreck you with. $1 billion in fines for making $10 billion you shouldn't've been able to make in the first place? Good deal!
Yep. The AirBNB folks engaged in flagrant spam, sending out fake unsolicited emails from fake identities, and refusing to remove anybody who wanted to stop receiving them.
But now Chesky is rich, so he gives away money and pretends that he's something other than an enormous fucking asshole.
Between Uber and AirBnB, and the large valuations they're getting despite being in flagrant violation of various local ordinances, it seems to be a gamble that they'll be able to lobby their way out of the problem, or expand into territories with no such legal framework.
Uber needs to obey the regulatory rules of the industry. Either they don't have a pricing meter (and thus journey price is agreed before hand) or they do have a price meter and all Uber drivers are regulated like any other black cab driver.
They can't ignore laws just because those laws are inconvenient to them.