[yummyfajitas]

Of course there's a difference.

In a taxi you can rip off a firangi or fail to pick up a black passenger at your leisure. With Uber, this will cause your ratings to drop below 4.3, or your acceptance rate/cancellation rate to drop below/above whatever threshold they use. Then you get kicked off the platform.

Uber is providing the necessary regulation of the system that governments fail to provide.

[gotothedoctor]

Since taxis also operate via apps & the drivers are the same people, this is simply no longer true.

While I'll agree that Uber used to provide a higher quality experience (nicer cars etc), this is no longer the case. The rating system is also broken-eg it now offers too much power to drunk customers. Uber now operates only to benefit itself-not its customers, not the drivers and certainly not the public. Perhaps you'd prefer to be regulated by the whims of a corporation & their pursuit of profit extraction rather than the democratic legitimacy of government, but thankfully, most of us would not. Hence, even if its taken some time for local & national governments to get up to speed, Uber is being banned, taxed, and forced to abide by the public & workplace safety rules every other company must follow.

[yummyfajitas]

Perhaps you'd prefer to be regulated by the whims of a corporation & their pursuit of profit extraction rather than the democratic legitimacy of government, but thankfully, most of us would not.

On the contrary, most of us would prefer this. That's why yellow cabs are losing market share everywhere that men with guns don't take away their right to choose.