Trust is , supposedly , the new currency of the sharing economy . It drives , to excuse the pun , data intensive sharing companies like Uber , the controversial transportation sharing startup now valued at $ 19 billion . Uber drivers get reviewed and are dismissed if they score badly and are considered untrustworthy . Even Uber users get scored by drivers and might not get picked up if they are n't well reviewed . Everyone gets rated on Uber . Everyone , that is , except senior Uber executives themselves . Last Friday night , at a dinner party set up by Uber as an off-the-record briefing , at Manhattan 's exclusive Waverly Inn bistro , Emil Michael , the company 's vice president of business , proposed a dastardly scheme to compromise one of Uber 's leading media critics . Michael suggested that Uber use its vast collection of consumer data to `` dig up dirt '' on Sarah Lacey , the founder of the Silicon Valley news site Pando . Over a dinner attended by leading technology pundits , Michael suggested that Uber could spend `` a million dollars '' to hire a crack team of researchers and journalists . This investigative team might , he said , snoop into the personal and family life of a critic like Lacey who has relentlessly exposed many of Uber 's creepiest features -- particularly what she calls the `` asshole '' misogyny of its CEO , Travis Kalanick . Earlier this week , Michael 's outrageous and perhaps even criminal idea was leaked by the Buzzfeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith , who attended the dinner . This , of course , has generated a massive storm of outrage amongst the technorati . Peter Thiel told CNN that Uber was the most `` ethically challenged '' company in Silicon Valley . While The Guardian 's Dominic Rushe rhetorically asked whether Uber is Silicon Valley 's `` worst company . '' All over social media , people said the same thing : Emil Michael was the ultimate creep ! The crowd had spoken . Michael 's reviews were universally abysmal . He should be yanked , dismissed , fired . But that 's exactly what has n't happened . In spite of the popular outrage over Michael 's behavior , Travis Kalanick wrote an unapologetic 12 part Twitter `` apology '' which rejected the idea of firing his most senior business executive . Uber investors have mostly remained conveniently silent with a few -- like the normally outspoken Jason Calacanis -- explicitly defending Kalanick and , by implication , Michael . In The Circle , his brilliant satire of technology companies like Uber , Dave Eggers coined the Orwellian phrase `` Sharing is caring '' to describe the hypocrisy enveloping Silicon Valley . But , of course , in the sharing economy of multi-billion dollar start-ups like Uber , sharing is only caring when it comes to dismissing lowly drivers or customers . Trust is only the convenient new currency of this economy when it suits Uber . Otherwise the `` new '' economy appears to be ominously old , with a rejection of transparency , democratization , openness , accountability and all the other buzzwords of the Internet revolution . We the people , however , may have the last laugh . The New York Times ' Farhad Manjoo wrote that Uber 's `` toughest challenge '' now is improving its dubious ethical behavior . While Dov Seidman , the CEO of LRN and a deep thinker about business ethics , notes that the principle challenge now of a successful startup like Uber is to scale its morality . `` In the past , technology entrepreneurs created and sold devices , '' Seidman says . `` Today , they create and sell platforms for human behavior , which in turn raises real questions about the social and moral implications of the behavior -- and their underlying values -- on their platforms and about the responsibility that they have for these behaviors . Tech entrepreneurs are obsessed about scaling their business models and products . But they should be just as , if not more , deliberate about scaling their values on their platforms and in their companies . '' Travis Kalanick should listen to critics like Seidman . If Uber is to succeed , it needs to scale its morality in sync with its fast-growing business . Firing Emil Michael would be a beginning . It would say that Uber really is a trustworthy company . It would tell the world that Uber , and Kalanick himself , is beginning to grow up .
Uber under fire for alleged plan floated by VP . The company has been accused of using its power to force drivers off the road and into a partnership with Lyft in order to boost profits. Keen : Michael should be fired .