Rolling the Line

In early August of 2013, Seattle taxi drivers slow-rolled their way through downtown in an act of protest, hoping to pressure the Seattle City Council to, basically, enforce the law on Uber and Lyft, which they saw as a threat to their livelihoods. We all understand how it turned out. The taxi drivers could hold up downtown traffic, but no-one could hold back the tide.

But the problem that the taxi drivers had wasn't really the technology. By the time this protest happened, Uber's practice of evading, or simply ignoring, local laws and regulations was pretty well known, although the proof, in the form of a batch of leaked company documents, wouldn't come to light for years. The simple fact of the matter was that many people didn't care; they liked the lower prices and ease of use that ride sharing applications offered, and that was more important to them than whether or not the rules were being followed.

The fundamental disunity of the United States results in a lot of situations like this, where people are protesting what they think they have the most (or any) control over, even when that's different than the actual problem at hand.