Ignoring the benefits to taxi drivers, and focusing on a pure economic standpoint, Uber/Lyft did clean up the market place by busting local government taxi comm

Ignoring the benefits to taxi drivers, and focusing on a pure economic standpoint, Uber/Lyft did clean up the market place by busting local government taxi commissions which had previously created both economic minimums and maximums around fixed prices and fixed number of cars on the road respectively. This lead drivers to focus on only a certain type of trip, and reduced the total number of rides people took due to a higher cost, uber pool further added to the later one there. This said, every tragedy of the commons scenario that was previously avoided by regulation happened, the streets of major cities are almost entirely cars for hire, where it's nearly impossible to make a living wage working as a driver on only 40 hours a week. This right here is the cost of neoliberalism, yes more people have jobs, the economy expanded to meet a more desired demand, but the workers in the field are largely worse off than had they all been protected in other industries alongside scarce resources being even more competitive than they were previously.