I don't think so. The article wrote that Uber, "skipped the difficult process of finding legitimate efficiency advantages" It sure seems to me that the author is claiming that Uber did not find efficiency advantages, or at least not any "legitimate" ones. This isn't the only place where the author essentially claims that Uber and Lyft provide no value:

> The narratives Uber has successfully manufactured are the key to how $80 billion was created out of thin air and key to the subversion of the market discipline that would normally limit these resource misallocations and welfare losses.

Apparently Uber's $80Bn valuation was "created out of thin air" and not, you know, building and engineering an internet based ride-sharing application.

> Uber is the breakthrough case where the propaganda-type narratives that dominate partisan political coverage successfully developed a multi-billion dollar private company from scratch.

This is just a small excerpt of a whole section that essentially tries to claim that Uber and Lyft's sole reason for their valuations were the narrative and hype they built up around their brands.

Personally, I think this author thinks that Uber and Lyft are going to be the next Theranos - the way he tries to attribute the former two's valuations with a narrative and propaganda rather than their product seems very similar to how Theranos was covered after its collapse. But unlike Theranous, Uber and Lyft actually have a product. One that may not turn out as well as its later investors as hoped, perhaps. But it's not going to crashing down to the bottom like a company that actually fakes having a product..