Departing Uber CEO Travis Kalanick
If the name Travis Kalanick is yet to stir your fury, I’m afraid you’re very unfashionable. Hop aboard the “call out” express and know that this guy is to Silicon Valley as Bernie Madoff was to the finance sector — or, if you prefer your devils local and more currently despised, the Mia Freedman of disruption. Which is to say, of course Kalanick, the co-founder and CEO of transport giant Uber, seems genuinely unpleasant. One does not boast, as he is reported to have done, that one’s company has a secondary function of babe procurement so reliable, one renames it “Boober”.
Then again, one does not shape what remains the world’s most highly valued start-up without performing actions at least as bad as bragging about the ladies. I’d say that building a business on the backs of broke drivers was always questionable. I’d say that contributing about as much in tax to a nation on whose infrastructure and economic health your business depends as, say, an individual heart surgeon, was always taking the piss. I’d say that a PR declaration of your commitment to workers — who, in some estimates, take home about two bucks an hour — while piloting a program for their future erasure is a cynical, if standard, act of annihilation.
[Off the Mark: ‘philanthropic’ Zuckerberg should leave democracy to the professionals]
There is a good deal written about the “toxic culture” of Uber; allegations about its frat house-style harassment of female staff trouble the principled investor class as it had its principled riders, who were, in any case, already cross with a business chief who had joined a Trump advisory council. It may be true that Kalanick is the type of twit who leads strategy meetings in a Bros Before Hoes shirt and finds solace less, as is the preference among his Silicon Valley fellows, in modified Buddhism and more in the plot of Animal House. It is almost certainly true that Kalanick’s unspecified period of leave from the company has been taken to redeem it as an investment prospect.
Kalanick has likely not returned to his boob-less existence to retain us, his consumers. We, a precariat growing in number, are very likely to keep buying what’s made cheap by other members of our class. We don’t reject clothing sewn in Bangladesh simply because we can largely not afford to do so. We won’t spurn Uber, a company that uses AI to determine exactly how much the consumer on a stagnant wage is prepared to pay, for the same reason. I mean, seriously. If the deaths of more than 1000 women at Rana Plaza was not sufficient to move me to check my garment labels, allegations of the workplace harassment of a handful of women in San Francisco is not going to prompt me to delete the app.
If you see my admission as the product of an unprincipled mind, cheers to you. I will endure your lecture on individual morality and even follow your advice if it is accompanied by a per annum donation of around $20K, which is about what it would take for me to scale the moral high ground. Like many people, I can currently get to where I’m going, in work and on the road, only if I buy cheap clothes and cheap rides. Unlike the investor class, and like the vast majority, I am unable to make powerful ethical statements with my money.
[Rich, white finance sector men build their own ‘safe space’ on a floating tax haven]
Kalanick’s move to quasi-retirement is a classic US business manoeuvre. It is made not to truly uphold ethics, but to bolster the business community’s belief in the possibility that ethics and late capitalism are simultaneously possible. Get the dirty man out and replace him with a clean one.
Where many investors want to put their money is in an Elon Musk, his eyes beyond this earthly horizon and his heart committed to the notion that renewables and profit will coincide. Where many investors want to place their faith is in a Bill Gates, a chap apparently committed to the health of Africa’s most immiserated, but equally committed to patent law, which places pharmaceuticals beyond the reach of many.
It may turn out, of course, that Musk, a man whose influence on economic policy now approaches that of Gates, will deliver us all the batteries we need. “Progressive” investors, and the consumers eager to identify with this class, want to believe that there’s a hack so ingenious and an individual so pure that we can live in a post-Kalanick utopia. But, just as my consumer morals are determined by my income, even Musk’s are driven by the race to profit. To urge a capitalist to be truly good is a bit like reasoning with a lump of coal. Don’t ask it to be clean. Its filthy nature has been determined in its very creation.
I am very unlikely to boycott Uber, with or without Kalanick at its helm. Uber is very unlikely to sacrifice profits to tax or to its workers. The behaviour of both consumer and capitalist have already been determined by time.
But, the investment community, and those many who admire them, will make an “ethical” sacrifice to believe that individual goodness can shine on through. You sacrifice a Lehman Brothers. You throw a Madoff behind bars. You switch CEOs and make a good night’s sleep possible for those who will continue to believe that you can reason with a lump of coal.
“To urge a capitalist to be truly good is a bit like reasoning with a lump of coal. Don’t ask it to be clean. Its filthy nature has been determined in its very creation.” Pure gold. Thanks HR
Love, love, love this piece! I am one such professional of the middle class who does consciously try to put ethics at the forefront of much of my daily decision-making; always ask “why”, and follow the money trail. And yes, the needless death of over 1000 exploited women at Rana Plaza was more than enough to put a stop to my unnatural wanting for retail fashion – for good. Don’t lose too much faith in Humanity, HR.
P.S. I’ve never used Uber.
Nice to know, Gwen. I’m a blue collar member of the working class, taking care of aged and disabled Australians and whilst I don’t have an unnatural hankering for retail fashion, I find I have to replace items of work clothing a lot more often then I’d like due to the throwaway quality of the product – the nature of the beast, as I’m sure you know. Despite being well aquainted with the horror of Rana Plaza, I shop at KMart and Best & Less because I can’t afford to shop elsewhere. I console myself with the knowledge that Choice assures me KMart aren’t too terrible, ethical fashion wise, though it makes me wonder how terrible the others must be, given the throwaway nature of the products I mentioned earlier. I haven’t been able to follow the money trail on Best & Less. I like to browse in Target and Big W, but they’re usually a little too expensive for me, especially for work clothes and shoes. You go through lots of pairs of shoes, standing in water, supporting people to shower for a living.
I haven’t lost faith in humanity, but I’ve none in capitalism. Even less in liberalism: capitalism’s softer, social face. Liberals think we can change the world one individual choice at a time. Clearly, we can’t, because here I am, working in THE employment growth sector in this country, and I can’t afford to buy fair trade, ethically sourced clothing. Call me old fashioned, but I think things like Rana Plaza should be impossible by law, not by personal preference determined by income. But then, I’m backward enough to think caring for aged and disabled Australians should be a basic service like town water and roads, too, not a means to build profits and/or non-profit monopolies. Bring on the social democrat’s dream of a Job Guarantee with the government as employer of last resort, and perhaps it will be. Bye bye, most of Centrelink and all those highly profitable job search network corporations. It was NOT nice knowing you.
PS: I’ve never used Uber, either. Can’t anyway, in the small, regional town in North Queensland I lived in until recently because it didn’t exist. Neither did public transport, so I drove everywhere. Having a comprehensively insured car is a job requirement for an in house aged care and disability support worker, so you can drive the people you support around. No car, no job. Here in Newcastle, NSW, I use buses and trains whenever possible. Such a luxury to be able to do so. Can’t do it for work, though. Have to provide the car.
‘Bros Before Hoes’, that provides a thumbnail sketch of Kalanick’s character, all you ever need to know about the guy in a snappy three word slogan.
I refuse to buy clothing made in Bangladesh, never use Uber. Taxi drivers work long, often unrewarding shifts & deserve our patronage.
I feel sorry for taxi drivers ( haven’t taken a taxi or Uber for years- too expensive) but surely the massive cost of taxi licences was unsustainable business practice.
What’s your middle name, may I ask?
Whist it may be hard to offer a lecture on individual morality to a member of a profession that was Uberised way before the taxi industry, I shall attempt it.
When the internet ruthlessly gutted the revenue model that employed journalists, at least the journalists had enjoyed a good run of fully-paid employment with all its attendant conditions.
When Uber ruthlessly gutted (with uniform Government connivance and much media cheer-leading) the revenue model of the taxi industry it killed the working lives of those who were already Australia’s lowest-paid, longest-working, least organised and most precarious workers. These workers swam in a sea of radio-company and taxi-pool company sharks, and competed daily against subsidised public buses and trains.
Yet somehow these workers managed to pay off cabs, pay off mortgages and educate their children. Let me assure you that no Uber driver will ever achieve any of this. The lowest-paid Australians have been replaced by – even lower-paid Australians.
Multinational Uber is exploiting Australia’s “reserve pool of labour,” the Australians sacrificed on the altar of the Non Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment, to run a slave racket. Their sickly PR spin on their model is, well, sickening. It pays little tax in Australia, natch.
But well, here we are in Australia, eh? John Howard’s nasty idea of an Australia in which the lowest-paid are pitted against each other, an Australia in which Howard hoped that we would all be too busy exploiting each other and blaming each other to notice where the blame really lies – in our almost uniformly atrocious and disconnected politicians.
And so it has come to pass: whether it is poor Helen who cannot afford not to exploit someone else, or that Hipster taking his unethically-sourced Uber ride down to the deli to buy his ethically-sourced Kenyan coffee, this is the Australia in which we choose to live. One hopes those whose jobs are next to be Uberised will not squeal too loudly.
Well said, G. Very well said.
Lovely!
But, this is not really an individual lecture. It’s one that decries a purportedly “deregulated” form of capitalism that regulates the wealth right up.
My point is, none of us can make a claim that everything we consume is “clean”. People like to say they shop at farmers markets and avoid everything but the ABC etc., but I’ll lay money down that some of the money they lay down is for goods and services that exploit people.
I mean. No one was able to find a device on which to type “Helen should not take Uber” which was made in conditions not actually worse than even Uber.
We believe consumers can change things through the act of purchase alone. My contention is that even the nice capitalism is a bad capitalism. And that the low income worker must not be held to account for simply surviving in that system.
There is something else you might consider, Helen. Previously, when you caught a taxi, you paid the driver the fare and went on your way.
Now, when you catch an Uber, you pay the Uber driver and then your taxes pay the unemployment benefit of the taxi driver you used to take. Most taxi drivers are now supplementing their meagre earnings this way. So is that Uber fare really cheaper? Good luck making rational decisions in the market-place, Helen.
And you are aware, of course, that the number of permissions the Uber app demands of you are second only to those demanded by that other data-hoover, Pokemon Go? Good luck making rational privacy decisions too.
Hi, G. Again, I appreciate your comments. But, surely it is obvious to you that the fate of other workers is foremost in this analysis.
Yes, I feel bad when life requires that I travel to the airport and I pay an Uber driver $50 directly from my personal savings than a taxi driver $80. I am conscious that in choosing not to work for another ninety minutes to pay the difference I have impacted another person’s future.
But, as CC says above, what “choice” do I have if I am perpetually adding working hours to pay for the good thing? I am simply not paid well enough to Be The Difference. I have a budget. I have only 24 hours a day. How do I make clean choices?
A lecturer used to ask my class “where does your lunch come from?” This is an old trick by leftist professors who wish to prompt all their students to see that not one of their “choices” to eat has been ethically clean.
I would like to add that the taxi industry has itself become a site for the investor class. People driving on plates and in cars they do not own earn about fifty percent of the fare before tax. I have met many Uber drivers who have moved from driving taxis because they had no choice if they ewer wanted to see their children. They don’t like the diminished conditions, but they like the more flexible work hours.
Of course, it is not sustainable. Just as the conditions in which many taxi drivers have worked is not sustainable. It’s been a long time since the taxi you rode in was fully owned by the driver. But, we’re talking about relative enslavement here.
Few of us make a “choice”. This is my point. As workers and consumers, we work within very narrow parameters. We can’t buy or work our way into a more ethical world. We can, however, change for all what it means to be a worker and a consumer.
HR, that really is the key point, isn’t it? “As workers and consumers, we work within very narrow parameters.” The set up of modern society, as it stands, makes it increasingly difficult to live ethically (without disappearing deep into bear country). And the sneaky funnelling of wealth, presents challenges to following the money trail. Not to mention, an increasing shift of tax burdens to the individual – as in, Uber, you earn revenue from our roads infrastructure, but don’t really want to put your fair share back in recognition of this.
Hey, anything to build discussion and encourage critical thinking is better than no discussion at all.