[arrosenberg]

No, not really surprising. Uber used classic anti-competitive pricing tactics to drive competitors out and consolidate market share. As the marginal acquisition cost of a customer declined, they had to start burning more and more cash to keep their market share. In order to stay solvent, that money had to come from somewhere. Some of it comes from VCs, but alot of it comes from the "efficiency" of squeezing drivers, offloading the cost of maintenance and insurance, etc.

The only innovation was exploiting regulatory sluggishness to nationalize the taxi monopoly instead of a series of regional (and heavily regulated, for this and other reasons) taxi companies. I'm also not sure that Uber has a significantly better idea of what demand is compared to the New York taxis who have been doing that business for ~100 years now. None of this is to defend the taxi companies either - Uber blew up in popularity for a reason, but they aren't profitable because their economic model doesn't work if they have to pay their workers fairly.

Food delivery seems more straightforward as a largely unnecessary middleman, but comes from the same broken, VC-subsidized model. They acquired customers using anti-competitive pricing models, then they lost customers as they started charging the full cost of service. In addition, the food delivery companies have less incentive to perform, because the restaurants take the blame when something goes wrong. None of that is efficient, or worth the tax being placed on them. I don't think very many restaurants are benefiting from an increase in business, and the companies aren't making money by lowering costs - they add huge fees to every order, so things cost 50-60% more than they would if you picked it up yourself.

[kqvamxurcagg]

"their economic model doesn't work if they have to pay their workers fairly." Bingo. Enjoyed reading your take on this. You should consider publishing an essay on this.