By Jesse Adeniji, London-based social media activist. I have read a lot of emotional comments about the UBER license non-renewal in Lond...
By Jesse Adeniji,
I have read a lot of emotional comments about the UBER license non-renewal in London.
Now, relax and understand the issues. It's not as simple as you think.
Societies are complex systems. And comprises of multiple systems. So we know these systems interact and have dependencies/inter-dependencies. When they impinge upon one another, they create tensions. Tensions can be creative or destructive.
As we are now at an era where there is a fast paced technological advances and knowledge explosion, systems collide at a faster rate and produces what is known as emergence - new realities which may not be predicted.
Therefore, in innovation management, (not innovating new things) the core of the work revolves around understanding how new emergences have an affect on the ECOSYSTEM. The BALANCE needed to have a nearly ordered system.
Types of technological companies.
1. In innovation management, we have these tech brands which have become so big and powerful, but really have no assets of their own (unlike Apple, Microsoft, Samsung with products) beyond the technology they provide to AGGREGATE existing services.
We call them "Aggregator" or 'Platform' brands. Facebook for instance, has no content of their own. They provide the platform for us to provide our own individual content which they now 'monetise'.
Google has a platform which searches millions of content from other people and businesses, aggregates them and make them searchable. What they trade on, just as Facebook and Twitter does, is your PERSONAL INFORMATION.
Who owns the legal rights to your personal information ultimately? Not these companies. Your family and government does.
2. You look at a different type of tech aggregator platforms built to take advantage of actual brick and mortar and other physical assets in the current social milieu. AirBnB, and UBER fall into this category, as many others.
AirBnB has no hotel or house. It's just a platform which aggregates the resources/property of other people, provides essential service design, payment methods, basic ground rules and marketing.
UBER relies on a similar system.
So where am i going with all these?
Society.
How we currently construct society privileges government at the center, citizens who work and pay taxes, corporations/companies which do business and pay taxes. And these taxes are used to provide social safety net, order and infrastructure.
Let's take the UBER example.
For hundreds of years, the London City authorities have evolved a transportation system in which the taxis have played a vital role.
To evolve this system, the government has taxed generations of citizens (note that citizenship or humans predate business or corporations) and have spent that money to build road infrastructure, road markings, founded transport/traffic police to deal with issues arising from road use, build landmarks where people travel to using those roads, and have a system to regularly maintain it from people's taxes.
Not done with that, the psychological and business sides of things have been taken care of as well. The London city government evolved the peculiar Black cabs and instituted a training system aptly named THE KNOWLEDGE. It means to drive one of those cabs, you need to memorize at least 70% of core London streets and have at least 1000 hours of study. People who drive those Cabs actually start off buying a scooter, sight read road names and streets and trot around London for up to 4 years before being prepared to write the test.
So when you hail a London cab, all you need is tell them the name of the street and you can hop in and sleep off. And you'd be confident they will get you there.
If you want an intellectual conversation or even a walking history of the city, a Black cab driver is your man/woman.
These cabs and drivers therefore, have prepared London to become the great tourist and business destination it currently is. They are part of that discourse in no small way.
They also generate wealth for the city. Banks pay designated manufacturers of these black cabs and get insurance businesses insure it. Then they offer it to drivers as their tools of work. These drivers pay back in installments to the banks and insurance companies, then pay their taxes. They are VISIBLE IN THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM so they pay their due unfailingly.
SOCIAL CONTRACT BROKEN
These days, we now have corporations making bucket loads of money in the city and have developed the habit of breaking the social contract via TAX EVASION.
They found a way of registering offshore companies and rerouting taxes out of the system. For a while it they could buy up the government and get away with it. But in the last 10 years, with the financial crash of 2007, a new spotlight is emerging on this wicked and unconscionable practice.
We ended up with a toxic social situation where profits are privatised and problems socialised. You see, we have had 8 straight years of austerity in the UK because banks played poker with our money and crashed the economy. They got the bailout from our collective future income, continued to pay themselves massive bonuses, while working people of the UK take a pay cut and work extremely hard to make ends meet.
It also meant governments at all levels have to find money to maintain even the most basic responsibilities.
So with UBER, they provided alternative to the now expensive Black cab journeys (which became so because government taxed honest small businesses more as the big guns evaded paying taxes) alright but the society lost out.
A. UBER claims it only operates the tech aggregation and not the assets, so the drivers aren't their employees. As such drivers can do business and also find a way to evade tax altogether. It's a loss of revenue to the city.
B. Because of the lax security system in UBER as against a highly regulated one for the Black/Mini cabs, there have been increased rates of crime - assaults, rapes, murders. NOW THAT COSTS ALL OF US MONEY. POLICE WORK REQUIRES TIME WHICH IS PAID BY US CITIZENS THROUGH THE GOVERNMENT. UBER isn't chipping in, and we pick the bills.
C. Roads maintenance, pollution level issues, are other social costs which is passed to the tax payer.
So the decision of the London City council via the TFL organisation was borne out of many considerations which are complex. But when pared down to the basics, it is a government fight-back against the corporations leeching on the system.
When you see that the government eventually picks up the tab for the job losses in the whole value chain (it has to pay maintenance cash to unemployed citizens), they want a system that contributes to the till.
It's the same with AirBnB, every murder case, rape case, fraud case exerts resources from the government, and we ultimately pay.
I think UBER's license will be re-granted. But not in its current form where they pay so little by way of taxes, are not responsible for employees and generally leech on the system.
WIDER PROBLEMS.
There's a growing clamour for government intervention with the power of Google, Facebook and Twitter as well. As the digital economy increases and becomes all encompassing, these privately owned companies are becoming unwieldy behemoths with conflicting powers challenging governments.
But in the real sense of it, the government owns the rights and privileges to their geographical space, the citizenship of the people within it and their identities/personal information.
The last US election is one flash point. Social media has become another lingering issue. Rogue states can exploit the know-how of online dexterity to undermine the electoral processes of other nations.
Germany doesn't use Google or Facebook infrastructure in their official system because of US espionage.
The EU is enacting laws which will protect citizens from the shackles of User Agreements which is usually foisted on us by these tech companies.
Theresa May at the last UN GA already set the ball in motion to regulate these tech behemoths. 'Hate Videos' must be taken down immediately she says.
But these stance creates a massive problem because what constitute hate and free speech in the light of liberty and academic research is a grey area.
And as we have witnessed with climate change, Western tech companies do not have regards for non-Western cultures. So we have a racist configuration to the problem on a global scale.
Facebook chooses which country or nations to stand by during national disasters. Sierra Leonean people are not deserving of 'Stand With' badges. Nigeria is not deserving even when Boko Haram has murdered over 30,000 people. But France is shoved down our throats with a death toll of less than 20 people.
China accepts no Facebook, Google or Twitter. Instead it has her own clones of these services. And has created billionaires out of them.
Japan didn't even accept UBER into their country at all. No messing about. They have had a taxi culture for ages.
Aggregator tech businesses aren't going to stop. But they will have to evolve to understand the anthropological and societal differences and adapt to their demands.
And they have to employ diverse, culturally acceptable work force to show that. And they have to rely less on the one-size-fits-all models they deploy globally.
The age of the monolithic global brand model is gone.
UBER will come back, once it has understood the concept of ECOSYSTEMS and society.
London-based social media activist.
I have read a lot of emotional comments about the UBER license non-renewal in London.
Now, relax and understand the issues. It's not as simple as you think.
Societies are complex systems. And comprises of multiple systems. So we know these systems interact and have dependencies/inter-dependencies. When they impinge upon one another, they create tensions. Tensions can be creative or destructive.
As we are now at an era where there is a fast paced technological advances and knowledge explosion, systems collide at a faster rate and produces what is known as emergence - new realities which may not be predicted.
Therefore, in innovation management, (not innovating new things) the core of the work revolves around understanding how new emergences have an affect on the ECOSYSTEM. The BALANCE needed to have a nearly ordered system.
Types of technological companies.
1. In innovation management, we have these tech brands which have become so big and powerful, but really have no assets of their own (unlike Apple, Microsoft, Samsung with products) beyond the technology they provide to AGGREGATE existing services.
We call them "Aggregator" or 'Platform' brands. Facebook for instance, has no content of their own. They provide the platform for us to provide our own individual content which they now 'monetise'.
Google has a platform which searches millions of content from other people and businesses, aggregates them and make them searchable. What they trade on, just as Facebook and Twitter does, is your PERSONAL INFORMATION.
Who owns the legal rights to your personal information ultimately? Not these companies. Your family and government does.
2. You look at a different type of tech aggregator platforms built to take advantage of actual brick and mortar and other physical assets in the current social milieu. AirBnB, and UBER fall into this category, as many others.
AirBnB has no hotel or house. It's just a platform which aggregates the resources/property of other people, provides essential service design, payment methods, basic ground rules and marketing.
UBER relies on a similar system.
So where am i going with all these?
Society.
How we currently construct society privileges government at the center, citizens who work and pay taxes, corporations/companies which do business and pay taxes. And these taxes are used to provide social safety net, order and infrastructure.
Let's take the UBER example.
For hundreds of years, the London City authorities have evolved a transportation system in which the taxis have played a vital role.
To evolve this system, the government has taxed generations of citizens (note that citizenship or humans predate business or corporations) and have spent that money to build road infrastructure, road markings, founded transport/traffic police to deal with issues arising from road use, build landmarks where people travel to using those roads, and have a system to regularly maintain it from people's taxes.
Not done with that, the psychological and business sides of things have been taken care of as well. The London city government evolved the peculiar Black cabs and instituted a training system aptly named THE KNOWLEDGE. It means to drive one of those cabs, you need to memorize at least 70% of core London streets and have at least 1000 hours of study. People who drive those Cabs actually start off buying a scooter, sight read road names and streets and trot around London for up to 4 years before being prepared to write the test.
So when you hail a London cab, all you need is tell them the name of the street and you can hop in and sleep off. And you'd be confident they will get you there.
If you want an intellectual conversation or even a walking history of the city, a Black cab driver is your man/woman.
These cabs and drivers therefore, have prepared London to become the great tourist and business destination it currently is. They are part of that discourse in no small way.
They also generate wealth for the city. Banks pay designated manufacturers of these black cabs and get insurance businesses insure it. Then they offer it to drivers as their tools of work. These drivers pay back in installments to the banks and insurance companies, then pay their taxes. They are VISIBLE IN THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM so they pay their due unfailingly.
SOCIAL CONTRACT BROKEN
These days, we now have corporations making bucket loads of money in the city and have developed the habit of breaking the social contract via TAX EVASION.
They found a way of registering offshore companies and rerouting taxes out of the system. For a while it they could buy up the government and get away with it. But in the last 10 years, with the financial crash of 2007, a new spotlight is emerging on this wicked and unconscionable practice.
We ended up with a toxic social situation where profits are privatised and problems socialised. You see, we have had 8 straight years of austerity in the UK because banks played poker with our money and crashed the economy. They got the bailout from our collective future income, continued to pay themselves massive bonuses, while working people of the UK take a pay cut and work extremely hard to make ends meet.
It also meant governments at all levels have to find money to maintain even the most basic responsibilities.
So with UBER, they provided alternative to the now expensive Black cab journeys (which became so because government taxed honest small businesses more as the big guns evaded paying taxes) alright but the society lost out.
A. UBER claims it only operates the tech aggregation and not the assets, so the drivers aren't their employees. As such drivers can do business and also find a way to evade tax altogether. It's a loss of revenue to the city.
B. Because of the lax security system in UBER as against a highly regulated one for the Black/Mini cabs, there have been increased rates of crime - assaults, rapes, murders. NOW THAT COSTS ALL OF US MONEY. POLICE WORK REQUIRES TIME WHICH IS PAID BY US CITIZENS THROUGH THE GOVERNMENT. UBER isn't chipping in, and we pick the bills.
C. Roads maintenance, pollution level issues, are other social costs which is passed to the tax payer.
So the decision of the London City council via the TFL organisation was borne out of many considerations which are complex. But when pared down to the basics, it is a government fight-back against the corporations leeching on the system.
When you see that the government eventually picks up the tab for the job losses in the whole value chain (it has to pay maintenance cash to unemployed citizens), they want a system that contributes to the till.
It's the same with AirBnB, every murder case, rape case, fraud case exerts resources from the government, and we ultimately pay.
I think UBER's license will be re-granted. But not in its current form where they pay so little by way of taxes, are not responsible for employees and generally leech on the system.
WIDER PROBLEMS.
There's a growing clamour for government intervention with the power of Google, Facebook and Twitter as well. As the digital economy increases and becomes all encompassing, these privately owned companies are becoming unwieldy behemoths with conflicting powers challenging governments.
But in the real sense of it, the government owns the rights and privileges to their geographical space, the citizenship of the people within it and their identities/personal information.
The last US election is one flash point. Social media has become another lingering issue. Rogue states can exploit the know-how of online dexterity to undermine the electoral processes of other nations.
Germany doesn't use Google or Facebook infrastructure in their official system because of US espionage.
The EU is enacting laws which will protect citizens from the shackles of User Agreements which is usually foisted on us by these tech companies.
Theresa May at the last UN GA already set the ball in motion to regulate these tech behemoths. 'Hate Videos' must be taken down immediately she says.
But these stance creates a massive problem because what constitute hate and free speech in the light of liberty and academic research is a grey area.
And as we have witnessed with climate change, Western tech companies do not have regards for non-Western cultures. So we have a racist configuration to the problem on a global scale.
Facebook chooses which country or nations to stand by during national disasters. Sierra Leonean people are not deserving of 'Stand With' badges. Nigeria is not deserving even when Boko Haram has murdered over 30,000 people. But France is shoved down our throats with a death toll of less than 20 people.
China accepts no Facebook, Google or Twitter. Instead it has her own clones of these services. And has created billionaires out of them.
Japan didn't even accept UBER into their country at all. No messing about. They have had a taxi culture for ages.
Aggregator tech businesses aren't going to stop. But they will have to evolve to understand the anthropological and societal differences and adapt to their demands.
And they have to employ diverse, culturally acceptable work force to show that. And they have to rely less on the one-size-fits-all models they deploy globally.
The age of the monolithic global brand model is gone.
UBER will come back, once it has understood the concept of ECOSYSTEMS and society.
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