I talk to most of my Uber drivers and almost always ask about the economics. Most of them seem to have a good grasp on the fundamentals and fall into one of two categories: subsidizing the car they already have and supplementing income or driving full-time in a car dedicated to ride-sharing. In the first case, they’re pretty obviously easily covering the marginal costs. In the second case, I can’t know, but they should able to evaluate it on their own pretty easily, just like the local snowplow operator.

I don’t buy the narrative that the company is built on the backs of a bunch of exploited drivers (assuming you believe taxi drivers are not exploited; if you believe they are as well, that’s probably a different argument than the one I’m refuting).

> it's important to note that the reason for all three of those improvements is billions in subsidies + exploited drivers

First, they're not exploited drivers. You could claim any worker is exploited at any and all times. It's not a statement with any grounding to it in this case. They are not being held hostage by Uber, this is the best labor market in two decades. You could claim all workers at every big and small company are all universally exploited. The person making $15 / hour should be making $30; the person making $30 / hour should be making $60.

Second, almost every major tech company you can name exists due to initial venture capital or investor subsidies (including Apple, Amazon, Google, Salesforce, Workday, etc). Amazon bled a lot of red ink before they turned seriously profitable (not nearly so much as Uber granted), because they were investing massively to achieve scale. It was venture capital and investor money broadly that subsidized that build out and enabled them to have low prices. So what? It was widely claimed for 20 years that they couldn't generate a substantial profit, and now they are thanks to opportunities they grabbed hold of (perhaps Uber Eats will be that for Uber, or any number of other things).

Here’s your political agenda.

In the entire Anglophone and Francophone world the taxi industry was awful. In the US they were and continue to be racist. They lied about availability and scheduling and they did it for decades. Many people on this website are familiar with the area that used to have the worst taxi service anywhere in the US, San Francisco. Taxi service in NYC existed in large parts of the city in theory but good luck getting a taxi driver to follow the law and actually take you there. And everywhere, absolutely everywhere, the taxi regulator was useless, completely captured by the taxi companies. These awful taxi companies lobbied to keep supply artificially low and prices high, for decades. In France the taxi drivers attacked Uber drivers. Uber’s civil disobedience was completely justified if it broke taxi monopolies.

In countries where taxi service was good and regulators not completely captured Uber has not done much. I’m aware of only one country, Japan.

Fuck the entire taxi industry, with their exploitation of tourists, four hours of saying someone will pick you up in half an hour, racism, tax evasion and broken credit card machines.

That’s the political agenda that supports Uber.