It's easy to be cavalier if you ignore the effect on Taxi workers. Ride sharing replaced a stable, unionized, middle class career with low-paying, low-benefit gig jobs. It ruined people's lives and destroyed a stable field of work. This wasn't a technological innovation -- it was a legal one, where they figured out a way to evade regulations to undercut the current system and drive down wages.
Telephone operators and travel agents used to have stable careers.
This wasn't a technological innovation
If the technology is so insignificant, why didn't taxi companies develop ride-hailing apps? Either it's actually complex, or they decided they had no need to improve service because of their oligopoly.
Telephone operators and travel agents used to have stable careers.
I don't know if you've ever been to a medallion auction but they went for over a million dollars each in Manhattan before Uber came along. Most of the medallions were bought up by holding companies that then leased them out to drivers who paid up front and had to hope they made enough money that day to cover the fee. In San Francisco, I remember a driver told me that his up front fee was $100-200 per 8 hour shift depending on the season - that's over $100-200k per year ROI and SF's medallions were a fraction of the price of NYC.
I seriously doubt many lives were ruined by the fall in value of taxi medallions. Very few are owned by actual drivers and that's where all the money is.
https://www.investors.com/news/uber-loss-q3-revenue-slows-ub...