The emergence of the ride-sharing company Uber from nowhere to become an enterprise valued at $40 billion in five years of existence is astounding in its own right. 

What’s even more astounding is how Uber achieved such a hugely successful business in the highly regulated world of personal transportation: by telling regulators around the world to shove it.

In a Wall Street Journal interview last year, Travis Kalanick, Uber’s founder and CEO, explained why he doesn’t ask for regulatory permission before entering a new city. “We don’t have to beg for forgiveness, because we are legal. But there’s been so much corruption and so much cronyism in the taxi industry and so much regulatory capture that if you ask permission upfront for something that’s already legal, you’ll never get it. There’s no upside to them.” 

Now, Uber is coming under pressure from around the world to accede to the regulators’ oversight. After an Uber driver was accused of raping a passenger in New Delhi, the Indian government issued an order barring Uber from operating in the country. India joins Spain and Holland in putting the brakes on the app-based service. 

Uber is unsafe, argues the established transportation order—the taxi owners, the limousine services, and even places like UPS and FedEx. They want Uber subject to the same strict regulation they have to endure.

But Uber has been fighting the regulators and entrenched business interests by hiring lobbyists and promising to regulate itself.  

If this all sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Uber and Lyft together with room rental service Airbnb are not unlike small dairies and farmers selling their goods and services outside an antiquated regulatory system that favors the entrenched corporate business owners. And like the transport businesses, the big dairy and other food companies have sung the same song—unregulated food direct from the farm is inherently unsafe. 

There’s been no farm equivalent of Uber or Airbnb, however. No one confident and well financed enough to simply tell the regulators to back off and figure out how to regulate sensibly instead of applying the same draconian measures to everyone. The closest I have been able to find is Desert Farms, the California distributor of camel milk that I described last May. Its founder, Walid Abdul-Wahab is trying to raise $250,000 from private investors to expand the business. The offering is made on a private web site open to potential investors. 

In answering questions posed on the site by prospective investors, Abdul-Wahab seems to have departed considerably from the approach he was taking last May, when his focus appeared to be primarily on raw camel milk. Now, his focus seems to be primarily on pasteurized camel milk. It’s understandable from a business view why he would shift: Whole Foods and other retail outlets are willing to carry the pasteurized variety, but not the raw variety. Whereas last May Abdul-Wahab had expressed confidence about being able to distribute raw camel milk without regulatory concerns, his new-found interest in pasteurized camel milk suggests a shift in approach, and reduced interest in challenging the regulatory establishment. 

Around the country, many tiny farms and dairies continue to quietly do their thing, as regulators in various places plot actions to derail the private enterprises. As we know, prosecutors in many places are reluctant to come down on small farms. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen, much as cops periodically conduct localized sweeps against prostitutes. The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund worried aloud last month that the pending Food Safety Modernization Act could well be used by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to come down on raw dairies. 

While we know that prostitution is the world’s oldest business, we have a tendency to assume the transport and room rental services came out of nowhere. That’s because certain areas of commerce have been highly regulated during our lifetimes. But it hasn’t always been that way. Privately available room rentals and even transport were long a staple of the private economy. 

Take room rentals. Before the 1960s, people commonly rented out rooms in their homes to travelers and others. Sometimes with board. (The term “boarding house reach” derives from renters reaching across dinner tables for bowls of food.)

Or take transportation. Hitchhiking was a common way for many people to shuttle between towns and cities, or even around cities, in addition to taxis and buses. 

Or food. Before the advent of supermarkets after World War II, people commonly grew some of their own food, and obtained the rest from farm stores and small retailers (bakeries, fish stores, butchers) who bought from nearby farmers. 

The financial wizards who are monitoring the Uber and Airbnb phenomena are confident they won’t be stopped by a bunch of bureaucrats. There’s just too much money at stake. 

I wish I could say the same for farmers.