I think the only way the argument that they're ripping off riders makes sense is if you look at it as a long-term thing: by burning money to give riders unsusta

I think the only way the argument that they're ripping off riders makes sense is if you look at it as a long-term thing: by burning money to give riders unsustainable prices for years, they sabotaged any more-realistic alternatives to improve mobility. I'm not sure I buy that, personally. I don't think riders are victims. Uber to me has always looked like a way to subsidize a bunch of cheap rides for riders with some wildly-optimistic "one day this will be profitable and we'll be the biggest name in the space" plan. Even self-driving cars didn't seem like the answer - that's a massive investment in a vandalism magnet, like the scooter companies but dozens of times more expensive (maybe running a scooter business helped them realize this?). The problem with trying to profit off "scale" with something like Uber is that the service still has to be delivered one-on-one. Things like Uber Pool are the closest they can get to scale, but suffer from a "why am I paying for this" problem as the experience suffers and the cost can't be that low (since their base rate is artificially low already).