Hello taxing Uber's revenue!

What? You thought getting rid of jobs gets your business off the hook for helping pay for civilization?

Well, that line of reasoning assumes that taxes on Uber's revenues would be commensurate with and used to offset losses in wages for drivers. So, in that sense, it's still a real concern that cannot simply be waved off.

That said, expecting Uber to continue to pay drivers after the advent of safer, cheaper autonomous cars is silly. Bring on the autonomous cars, I say. And, while it's someone's job to ensure an economic system with opportunity for all, it isn't Uber's job any more than it's yours or mine.

> And, while it's someone's job to ensure an economic system with opportunity for all, it isn't Uber's job any more than it's yours or mine.

Agreed! That's why government exists, to create a social safety net, and to extract taxes from corporate and personal income revenue to support those services.

That might be the reason you accept/support the existence of government, but it is not clear that is why government exists. Your statement assumes a two things:

1) People want "to create a social safety net, and to extract taxes from corporate and personal income revenue to support those services."

2) People are getting what they want, or at least supporting government in the hope they will achieve the previous point (#1).

I am not sure what level of support either of these two points garners, but I am certain that it is not 100%, and it may be that less than an outright majority of people support both.

A more plausible explanation of why government exists (in my view) is that like any other monopoly, it has used tools including propaganda, suppression of opposing views, and incentivizes for collaboration to build and maintain its strength.

Facebook paid £4,327 in corporation taxes. Uber's scale allows them to do tax optimization so I believe they will pay a similar amount of taxes. The government obviously still gets it's money from income taxes on the employees but if you don't have employees the only thing that remains is VAT which is likely to be lower than incometax+vat.

Taxi drivers are also suffering due to Uber.