Kids have that insidious tendency to grow up, and to sometimes make their ideas become real.

Sounds lovely and pithy, and Id love to agree with you. But is it, really? Didn’t Uber replace exactly this system, meaning it was, in fact, reality for decades?

Yeah and the system was awful for consumers

I am waiting till someone builds a taxi app that would work exactly as IRC servers worked 20 years ago and Uber dies in it's own monocultural misery. Now that's capitalism.

They tried that in Austin. I think they had a year to grow market without Uber or Lyft, and once the ridesharing companies came back, the companies were decimated.

What part of "VCs subsidize riders" is Capitalism?

All of it? It's not like the VCs aren't expecting a return on investment. They're literally Venture Capitalists. You don't seem to equate investing (which this is) to capitalism, but you're mistaken.

Reality is what we choose to make of it. In the case of the US, reality is crony capitalism running a yearly trillion dollar deficit, billlions wasted on military contracts like Zumwalt, and overspending-underperforming healthcare. Let’s leave the buzzwords and ideology aside.