>>Its very hard to run these businesses if you play by fair rules and don't cheat.
Yes, exactly why the taxi industry has survived despite not innovating. Their protected status (your idea of 'play by fair rules and don't cheat') allowed them to be lazy and not give a shit about their customers.
I find this amusing, 'Fair' seems to be a word with different meanings to different people based on where they stand.
A journalist thinks, Uber is fair and innovative but a ad blocker is unfair and cheating. Steve Jobs collaborating with other CEO's to drive down programmer salaries is unfair and cheating, while Uber offering the same to drive down driver salaries is perfectly fair to us.
I imagine a job market where companies bid for programmers who would work for least prices. A global kind of a platform which consistently drives our salaries lower.
I find this amusing, 'Fair' seems to be a word with different meanings to different people based on where they stand.
From one of Raymond Smullyan's books: There was one Japanese diplomatic code the US code-breakers couldn't quite figure out during the war, but they settled on an interpretation of "Pro-Japanese" as a working theory. Years later, one of the US crypt-analysts met a Japanese foreign service member and found out from him that the code meant "sincere."
Yes, exactly why the taxi industry has survived despite not innovating. Their protected status (your idea of 'play by fair rules and don't cheat') allowed them to be lazy and not give a shit about their customers.