True, that's quite scummy, but surely it's an example of under-regulation, not over-regulation. This scam (not sure that's the right word since what they're doing is perfectly legal albeit morally reprehensible) literally cannot happen in places where taxi fares are fixed.
In my opinion, I'd rather not have to research the taxi legistlation of countries I visit. Uber provides a globally uniform service at an uniform price, and like it or not, taxis do not.
That's fair, I guess. It seems like a relatively minor point in the grand scheme of cultural differences you will have to deal with whenever you travel somewhere else and I find it hard to relate to the desire for standardisation and uniformity that I notice mostly from people in the tech community, but I'm not going to pretend that variations in taxi legislation are a charming cultural quirk worth preserving, so nothing makes my opinion more valid than yours.