Republicans are slowly embracing the techno-libertarianism emanating from Silicon Valley. First it was the about-face in the battle between Tesla and dealers, and now the GOP is all about Uber.
A recent petition launched on the GOP site hits all the Republican talking points – "unions", "strangling regulations", and of course "liberal government bureaucrats" – as a way to illustrate how big government and a unionized workforce are killing our freedoms.
Yes, local governments, the taxi industry, and the agencies that oversee them need to get with the times, and Uber needs to do a better job of policing it's workforce and working with the established players. But the only thing this petition does is collect your name and email, and then – you guessed it – ask for money. No solutions are offered, no plans are outlined, it doesn't even give you the option to contact your local legislator. So what we have instead is yet another hapless soldier in the transportation wars, and there are plenty of those already.