The taxi industry was (is?) insanely corrupt. There are literally state-sanctioned limits on taxis and artificial markets for medallions that made early purchasers absurdly rich.
All of this medallion nonsense can just as easily come back with Uber whenever they feel that competition has driven down prices too low. With a wink and a nudge, all the large players will play ball because they can.
As for what it is today, these companies still aren't profitable which means you're still living in a halo of speculative investment supporting you're current quality of service. The only viable remedy is to raise rates, which puts the service as a more expensive solution that could actually cost more than taxied ever did in the long run.
I sort of agree with your broader points. But this statement mangles the definition of corruption beyond recognition.
You’ve clearly not used both a taxi pre-Uber or an Uber. I’d wager my annual salary that a poll of users would rank the user experience of app based ride hailing as superior to that of the previous options. Uber didn’t even start out cheaper than taxis. They just slowly won out by being better. Cheaper just helped them grow faster later on.
You know this is extremely unlikely, so it's not good to base any argument on it.
> Uber didn’t even start out cheaper than taxis.
When Uber came to my city about a decade ago all rides were free to the passenger. So much cheaper than a taxi.
In Brazil during their worst recession in decades, they had something like 300k drivers. This dropped the prices to the point where so many more rides occurred that everyone made more money and the customers were happy because the prices were low. That’s what they are going for, not some sort of moat based on raising prices.
The only reason to have prices below costs is to gain market share so you can do one or both of those later.
What costs do you think Uber has left to cut that they haven't at this point? Maybe workforce.
This is all a common well known business tactic, which many businesses have used in the past to establish market position. It's what they'll do with that market position people are worried about.
In the past they did this to achieve market dominance over taxis and lyft because they were drowning in billions of dollars of VC money, and the whole point of getting all that money is to become a market leader as soon as possible, even with loss-leading strategies.
this sounds like you don't understand the concept of a business model.
This system has two fix points, one at the normal taxi price and much much lower. Point is , the second fix point needs the majority of the population to stop using a privat car…
When corruption is enshrined by the law itself what other way do you have to fight it except to have the corrupt play off against each other.
The taxi industry existed for centuries (perhaps longer) in the cartel form. It's amazing progress to see that their power is no longer absolute.
The picturesque London Taxi driver lives on even today.
Many of the 21st Century's worst attributes aren't due to society falling apart in the digital age.
Online life is exposing the seediness of society, which wasn't reported in old world media.
Lying on the internet is... difficult.
And yet it is done many many times a day