It's not clear, though, that this benefit is positive. The article seems pretty clear on the fact that Uber has pulled a bait-and-switch, offering drivers a liv

It's not clear, though, that this benefit is positive. The article seems pretty clear on the fact that Uber has pulled a bait-and-switch, offering drivers a living wage only to drop their rates (and thus their wage payout) substantially once they had garnered the network effects you describe. It is precisely these network effects which are both benefiting Uber and working against the drivers. By training users to go to Uber for their ride-sharing needs, the drivers now have to also use Uber if they want to get passengers. Sure, you have a bunch of individual drivers' business cards, but you're probably _less_ likely to get a ride from any of those drivers than if Uber had never wrangled them in the first place. Meanwhile, the drivers have invested a good deal of money and effort into an industry in which they may not have chosen to participate if Uber hadn't recruited them.