- Two French Uber executives were arrested in Paris in late June, charged with running an illegal taxi service. A few days earlier, protests by French taxi drivers had rocked Paris. At issue is Uberpop, an app that matches riders with drivers who don’t have professional licenses or insurance. The French government says it violates a number of laws regulating taxi service. Uber insists that this facet of its business is part of an informal “sharing economy,” not a taxi company.
This French kerfuffle is but one skirmish in a global conflict. During the modern era, the nation state has been the most powerful force in society. This has been especially true in France, which invented the modern bureaucratic, administrative state during the Napoleonic era. It is a conceit of Silicon Valley that technology now allows us to vault over all limits, including those imposed by the state, ushering in a utopia of freely cooperating individuals. Thus the feel-good notion of a “sharing economy.”
The trial of the Uber executives is scheduled for late September, unusually soon in a country where investigations often drag on for years. This suggests that the French government is eager to demonstrate its ability to exercise control over multi-national corporations doing business there. I’ll be interested to see the outcome, given my skepticism of a techno-capitalist future that promises freedom from politics.
