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The same is mostly true in the US.

The US taxi system in most cities was an abusive cartel holding on to a market solely through a government protection racket, and that's the nice description of it. Uber and Lyft destroyed the cartels, delivering a far superior service.

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This narrative is funny for a couple of reasons. The first being that Taxi companies were never super-profitable nor, generally, did they span multiple metropolitan centres. Uber/Lyft radically centralized Taxi service replacing a supposed "cartel" with a much better capitalized and politically powerful duopoly.

As for the superior service, I'm not sure that will last once the VC funding runs out and these companies have to actually turn a profit. Uber/Lyft is MoviePass writ large.

Taxis and food delivery are rather low margin businesses. I really wonder how much profit they can reasonably extract even if the markets are big.

Are we forgetting that taxis often refused to serve minorities and minority neighborhoods?

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