[hylaride]

Uber is absolutely a scummy company, but the taxi industry was/is a scummy industry. Google "taxi corruption" and you can find many, many instances of politicians being bribed to maintain the medallion systems.

In Washington DC, there were multiple cases of taxi companies bribing politicians to introduce a medallion system. Even when many of them were caught in stings, they still kept trying (with "good" reason, many of them would become multimillionaires overnight if it passed).

Uber was so successful because we consumers had little choice, though the ride subsidies were definitely helpful.