[savanaly]

Not disagreeing with you, but to expand on your point: the type of regulation that Uber is ignoring is easier to ignore because it doesn't impact the customer. If you ignore the health regulations at your diner, you're sure as shit going to alienate a good portion of your potential customers because in addition to being illegal, an unclean restaurant isn't desirable.

But what Uber did was notice that due to regulation, the taxi drivers were receiving wage X, while there existed a lot of people that would be more than happy to do the same job for less than X. Find some loophole in the legislated price floor that allows you to employ that section of the supply curve and you've got a big profit opportunity. You can't cut corners in an existing, fairly efficient market, and call it the same thing.