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Then they will pay vehicle owners to lease their cars short term instead.

Evil... And I'm almost certain it's what they'll do. Owner pays for purchase, upkeep, parking, and insurance, covering all the capital outlay, depreciation, and risk, while Uber skims off the profit. It's sort of "insurance in reverse."

And almost exactly like the taxi model they replace.

What is "evil" about instigating a more efficient use of capital?

Where do you get efficiency out of their plan? People tend to underestimate the true ownership cost of their cars, and Uber uses that to make them believe they're making a lot more per hour than they actually are.

Capital sitting idly in driveways is inherently inefficient. How is that hard to understand?

> People tend to underestimate the true ownership cost of their cars, and Uber uses that to make them believe they're making a lot more per hour than they actually are.

That isn't an argument about its efficiency though.

Maybe the marginal value of a car self-driving itself somewhere is $1 and the marginal cost of that driving is $0.99—it's still more efficient for that car to drive than not. Whether the owner thinks their profit is $1 or 1 cent doesn't really matter.

More likely they would just own the cars themselves.

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