Your point would be stronger (and just as valid) if you deemphasized the moralization with respect to skirting laws. Yes, it's important to illustrate where the "energy" is coming from, but most people will pigeonhole your entire point as curmudgeonly anti-progress.
But indeed, our community is in a sad state of affairs. The technology industry got taken over by the LA business model - hipster home runs. Money and social recognition made it easy for us to look the other way, and to even mislead our friends down this broken path of mass media 2.0. Most "startups" purport to deal with technology but are essentially just creating CRUD CRApps, inserting themselves as the new middlemen, and whitewashing it as empowering individuals.
Sure, but that doesn't mean your argument won't be perceived as such. The knee jerk reaction is to think "yeah but those laws are obsolete", and identify with the direct connection between driver and rider (as the "sharing economy" whitewash encourages).
I for one don't mind the obsoleting of taxi regulation by direct summoning (which itself solves most of what taxi regulation was a response to), but I also don't perceive Uber as looking to eliminate regulation - they are hoping to become the new middleman by owning the market, buying "appropriate" public regulation to create a barrier to entry, and then enjoying the security of a public organization with the accountability of a private one. Actual P2P empowerment would consist of a bona fide application that directly interacted with driver app, with appropriate reputation system etc. But of course there's inherently no "scalable" profits (aka rent) to be made off of that, so investors aren't lining up.
But indeed, our community is in a sad state of affairs. The technology industry got taken over by the LA business model - hipster home runs. Money and social recognition made it easy for us to look the other way, and to even mislead our friends down this broken path of mass media 2.0. Most "startups" purport to deal with technology but are essentially just creating CRUD CRApps, inserting themselves as the new middlemen, and whitewashing it as empowering individuals.