If the things that Silicon Valley companies did were done by black people, they would be in jail.

The avatar of such behavior is, of course, Uber.

Here is a roundup of their latest hits:

• An Uber executive arranged for the medical records of an Uber rider who was raped by her driver to be stolen so that they could imply that it was a setup by a competitor. (See also here)
• He showed the files to the CEO and a Senior VP, and was only fired when the story broke on the news.
• Uber used a  compensation algorithm that systematically underpaid women.

The obvious question is why do people patronize such an awful company, and I think that answer is that we have seen 30 years of idolizing behaviors that are at best dishonest, and at worst sociopathic.

The point here is not that Uber is a bad company peopled by criminals, though it is, it is that Uber  is merely the apotheosis of what is a larcenous culture.

If we had serious enforcement of corporate criminality and antitrust, many of the tech billionaires would be in jail.