> You have to realize how small the group of people is who can regularly afford to hire other people to perform services for them (which is what a taxi is).

You will note that I picked a specific use case: going to the airport.

For anyone who flies (and lots of people fly for one off events--so you aren't automatically "well-off" just because you have a plane ticket), transportation to the airport is particularly painful because you have a fixed time deadline.

Most of the options really suck--ridesharing is actually the most cost effective of the bunch.

If you take your own car, you have expensive parking and get the joy of the shuttle from long-term parking (often longer than a ridesharing ride). If you order a shuttle, it will be slow and have multiple people and tends not to be well time controlled. If you call a taxi, it may not show up as you don't have tracking or the ability to penalize them. Limos work well but are ferociously expensive if you can't split the cost.