>Are companies offering to pay you to drive people around, with little barrier to entry, in a tough economy where it's getting increasingly difficult to afford

>Are companies offering to pay you to drive people around, with little barrier to entry, in a tough economy where it's getting increasingly difficult to afford living in urban centers, not also an incentive to own a car? You'd think so, but Uber drivers aren't exactly rolling in money. In fact, if they aren't smart about it (i.e. if they don't know how to pick their routes, their customers, and opportune times where 'surge pricing' is in effect), they'll lose money from fuel costs + wear and tear. Seriously, if you think it's easy to make money driving Uber, try it. My buddy is a truck mechanic and he sees it all the time. Lots of truckers now are independent contractors who own the truck. Some of those guys will spend as little as possible on a truck, get a couple gigs make some "decent" money. Inevitably they'll go in for maintenance and repairs and get hit with a $15,000 repair bill (or more, there is no upper bound) and watch all their profits evaporate. >More so, since the problem isn't so much about car ownership, but rather about the number of cars actually on the road at any given time That's a problem today in major urban centers. Do you know what people do? They take mass transit. I make that decision all the time, and sometimes it's just not worth to grab a cab or an uber because I know it's going to get stuck in traffic and a trip that should take 10 minutes, will take 50 minutes - even when work is willing to pay for my transit. In a world with unlimited taxi/ride-sharing licenses, an equilibrium will be established, and price will fall. There is no downside. The current medallion system is there to protect capital investment of medallion owners and (to a lesser extent) the income of operators (thought, if they are contractors they make no money anyway).