Exactly. And that is something we human beings adapt to without noticing it. Telephone operators, newspaper boys, lumberjacks, meter readers have all disapeared. There were thousands of people who earned their life with it but eventually switched to new careers.
This will happen sooner or later and for sure there will be companies and individuals that will be affected by the change, but that is not enough reason to stop the development. And this is not Uber specific topic either. If not Uber, some other company will one day work on this.
What they are actually eliminating is work, which is very admirable. After that it becomes a question of income redistribution. Ideally the income should be only partly eliminated (in a way that balances welfare with motivation to find a new job). But that's a societal choice the US would have to make.
> But doesn't this business model entirely eliminate someone's income to be cheaper?
Think about this problem from Uber's perspective. More than two thirds of a fare go to the driver in most cases. Let's say eliminating the driver allows them to cut prices by 50% to account for purchasing a crapload of cars. Now imagine someone else builds self-driving technology (or licenses it) and copies the Uber business model.
A competitor building self-driving cars for-hire is instantly cheaper by a ridiculous margin. Uber would be overtaken by this competition in no time at all. This is unquestionably inevitable. Uber can't say "pay double (or more) so we can take the moral high ground and employ a bunch of fallible humans" because a.) humans are worse drivers than computers and b.) humans just cost more and nobody would pay to have a human driver.
Additionally, if Uber ever goes public, they're legally obligated to maximize return for investors. You can't keep human drivers around as a purely feel-good exercise.
> But doesn't this business model entirely eliminate someone's income to be cheaper?
A lot of business models do. Horse carriages eliminated income of (most of) manual porters, and cars eliminated income of (most of) horse drivers.
Unless you are a worshipper of Ned Ludd, that's how technologies work and will always work. Something new replaces something old, and people whose income depended on the old stuff have to look for different income.
This will happen sooner or later and for sure there will be companies and individuals that will be affected by the change, but that is not enough reason to stop the development. And this is not Uber specific topic either. If not Uber, some other company will one day work on this.