$5 flat group rides, $8 flat single rides anywhere in the city. The glory days.
Everyone happily paid the way for the behemoth that squeezed everyone out of competition and then started recoup the ROI aggressively, and no one recognizes oneself as a part of the problem, just like in the current AI pandemonium.
I was happy to take VC money to uber to parts of town I wouldn't have otherwise for that period of time. Only my local bar lost out on selling me like maybe 20 drinks over the year or so.
I'll be the first to bemoan these companies but there are many, many locations where even with today's higher prices and level of service they come out way cheaper and way more reliable than incumbents.
It's getting shitty, I agree, but still feels like a net improvement to where we were over a decade ago.
It's almost like consumers are just as greedy as the very corps they revile...
Corps don’t act on their own. The same people that work in corps are consumers
When I first learned about Uber ~14 years ago they were offering free rides in my city.