>We can't have a rational, dispassionate debate about whether I should have rights. I can't argue for my existence, I want it.
Effective rhetoric, but that's about it. In practice, people take their self-serving policy preferences and enshrine them into their identity and then proclaim that any attack on their policy preference is attack on their right to exist
I don't know what Uber thinks its end game is. Uber's "lets burn money to capture the market and own self driving" stratagem is economically absurd. In the limit of driverless cars, capital can be turned directly into labor so anyone with capital will deploy a fleet so long as it is profitable. Talk about a red ocean. The self-driving dream investors pin their hopes on is a siren. Ironically, Uber will only be able to maintain value in those futures where driverless cars don't work out.
Commodities do not have network effects. In general, if you are replacing labor with capital (in the form of automation) you will not get the network effects of a two-sided market - which is basically a market failure caused by our previous inability to convert capital into labor in a manner that scales. If you are replacing a two-sided market with automation you are going to need another moat.
Effective rhetoric, but that's about it. In practice, people take their self-serving policy preferences and enshrine them into their identity and then proclaim that any attack on their policy preference is attack on their right to exist