[ExactoKnight]

Naked Capitalism made a good argument that Uber cannot experience economies of scale with its costs the way Amazon could when it scaled. Why? Because Amazon's fixed costs were... well.. fixed.

Unlike Amazon, Uber faces massive variable costs in driver recruitment/onboarding, legal regulations and local advertising.

Seriously. The rules needed to onboard a driver in Alberta, Canada are completely different from New South Wales, Australia. You can't automate driver recruitment/onboarding in either of these cities because these markets have passed actual legal regulations to allow ridesharing that require unique, but idfferent things (e.g. like market-specific commercial drivers licenses, background checks... or filling out registration forms made by the jurisdiction).