>spews "sharing" nonsense
People forget that is how Uber got into this business - they started skirting medallions (which was an artificial market in the first place) by telling regulators that these drivers were headed in a particular direction and just picked up a fare.
Uber is absolutely a scummy company, but the taxi industry was/is a scummy industry. Google "taxi corruption" and you can find many, many instances of politicians being bribed to maintain the medallion systems.
In Washington DC, there were multiple cases of taxi companies bribing politicians to introduce a medallion system. Even when many of them were caught in stings, they still kept trying (with "good" reason, many of them would become multimillionaires overnight if it passed).
Uber was so successful because we consumers had little choice, though the ride subsidies were definitely helpful.
Then Uber comes in, knowingly ignores regulations everyone else played by, spews "sharing" nonsense, pricedumps on fares, temporarily attracts drivers and gets many hooked on loans for the recent-year cars Uber demanded, uses money and popularity of pricedumping rates to lobby politicians for official acceptance, then IPOs to keep the scheme going (and so some people can cash out).