> Is this hypothesis completely incorrect then? Pretty much yes. A local taxi services usually pays for their drivers and a few dispatchers. In my city they'd

> Is this hypothesis completely incorrect then? Pretty much yes. A local taxi services usually pays for their drivers and a few dispatchers. In my city they'd even introduced basic mobile apps around the same time Uber popped up. There's not really many places for money to go to waste. Uber removes the dispatcher and then introduces software engineers, translators, product managers, SREs, executives, scrum masters, marketing, sales, etc. From a customer perspective Uber is often worse as well. Pre-booking simply doesn't work. A traditional taxi company will make sure they have someone available at the right time for the booking. Uber just hopes someone will be available 30 minutes beforehand. Uber also doesn't seem to make it obvious to the driver that it's a pre-booking as they often show up 15 minutes early and angry that I'm not ready for them.