And indeed Uber has been a catalyst in several EU countries for taxi deregulation. They had to leave Finland because it was illegal to be an Uber driver without having a ”traditional” taxi license; a legislation change will come into effect this summer that greatly deregulates the taxi industry. So I guess they succeeded in being disruptive, but I agree with the other commenter that Uber is probably not the best example from corporate ethics point of view.

> uber is successful in Europe.

But Europe was an expansion market for them, after they spent a while working out early kinks in the US. I think the post you are commenting on meant success as a startup, which is very different from successfully expanding there.

yeap, the ones who didn't ban are the ones who didn't apply all these useless strict regulations.

In Germany, it is still not possible to take an Uber ride, for example. Besides, if it started in Europe as a small start-up it would be killed right away with tons of regulations anyways. So the only reason that you have Uber in Europe is that it has become a giant company in the US, due fertile environment, and thus could afford all these legal battles to enter the market.

South-East Asia is a different story. It has nothing to do with regulations at all. It is just a completely different mindset there. The fact is though, businesses in those countries can easily flourish as well.

I'm not really convinced by his arguments, a lot of European countries have a higher free market index than the US and US taxes are more complex than a good half of European countries.

I think he overestimates the impact of regulation & "culture" (what does that even mean in a place as diverse as Europe?) and underestimates the effect of having a large market in the US where everyone speaks the same language and have more or less the same culture.

For every Theranos, there are 25 Stripes, Dropboxes, and Mixpanels.

It’s not a good trade off at all.