This reminds of a thought I had a few months ago: how have there not been more thought pieces relating Uber-the-business's recent/relentless PR-debacles to Nietzsche's Ubermensch concept? I guess I'll give it a go.

Uber/Travis and his execs seem to demonstrate the belief that they are "overmen" in that they seem to believe that they transcend the rules of society and are destined to shape society and its values rather than the other way around (probably something not too uncommonly shared with HN readers…).

A few fun/funny/serious examples (in no particular order):

1. They outrightly express resistance to laws-as-is, and regularly threaten to ignore and sometimes do break those regs as necessary to conduct their business / benefit themselves and their consumers.

2. They hire lobbyists and other high-level political actors to change the laws they don't like and/or influence lawmakers - not atypical for a large company, but they did this earlier than most companies at their stage, with much more specific agendas in place and with a lot more PR surrounding it (the last may or may not have been their doing, hard to say). They have a belief (probably well-founded) that they can use the political process to make the law bend to their will. “Creating New Values” as any good uberman should.

3. They call their central system “Godmode” which implies that they, the viewers, are like God (a bit of a stretch I know…couldn’t resist)

4. They are proud that using the data in Godmode they can track, predict and identify specifics of other human being’s behavior.

5. The whole “we’ll pay our own researchers to smear journalists” thing - another good example of Creating New Values and constructing narratives.

6. The general feeling that Uber (perhaps correctly) operates against “states” and “sovereigns” and “systems” more than corporate competitors (who even writes about Lyft anymore these days…)

The funny thing is that after thinking this through, all (good?) CEOs of major corporations basically operate like this (and so do many other tech-leaders - it is often associated with libertarian-leaning individuals like P. Thiel, etc.) - the difference is that Uber (1) has a name that calls it out and (2) seems to be especially prone to doing this in public and (3) sometimes appears to relishes their “overlord-iness” a little too much. You can call it being crass or being honest.

In any case, they seem to be getting hip to the system and playing nice which of course can be viewed as just another level of the game, etc. - still, glad to see them do it because I overall think that playing nice is best (especially when you can afford to do it) and with a $40b val. and a couple billion raised, I think they can spare some good behavior, at least for now =)

Note on Uber: I think Uber is a great business and has a significantly net-positive impact on society, and I reserve judgment w/r/t whether TK and the other Uber execs are good or bad people - I can't conclude they are good because they run a good business, and I can't conclude they are bad because they say stupid things in public.

Note on Nietzche: In Thus Spake Zarathrusa, the "uberman" concept is (maybe) considered a positive that humanity should work towards in the absence of belief in God, and I think it can still be understood as such. The fact that history has attributed some very negative actions to the belief in this concept (Hitler, Leopold & Loeb's murder, etc.) is, in my opinion, not definitive but at the same time not entirely insignificant, but I'm also a Christian that believes in capital-M Morality so I'm biased against nihilism in general.