Uber's innovation was in removing a hails requirement for a mutual line-of-sight between the passenger and a cab. This increases the number of cabs accessible to a user. It also allows cabs to move towards users, which is analogous to providing an index to speed up a locality of reference problem in a computer [0].
It is an innovation that works on purely economic grounds.
He was insinuating that Uber's innovation was cheap workers and then slurring these as "gypsies". It's easier to point out somebody's smear than it is to describe their misunderstandings related to innovation and domain knowledge, so my attack was on his method not his content.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locality_of_reference
Edit: You can't honestly downvote me based on a discussion from first principles of why something was innovative or can you? Sigh.
As a response to your original post, I would argue that the term gypsy is widely considered derogatory, and that I was not saying "how dare you call somebody a gypsy". I was saying that I felt that he was purposefully using it as a derogatory smear. I think it's fair to assume that he was using it as a smear and I think it's interesting that you wish to defend him by accusing me of the same thing that I accused him of.
You're perverting my intention which was to point out that he was normalising a smear as a negative externality to defending his anti-Uber beliefs and that this isn't okay.
