> Traditional taxi drivers own their taxi medallions

That's not really the case in a lot of places - drivers 'rent' medallions from Taxi companies, as the medallions cost many times the annual income of a driver. Although, their value is droppnig due to ridesharing apps.

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Why say "ride sharing"? It's not sharing a ride. You can't use uber to basically organise carpooling. It's buying a ride.

Yes you can, I turn on Uber Driver every night on my commute home from work and they only give me riders heading in the same direction. You can do this up to twice a day on Uber.

You certainly can, at least in some of their markets. The vast majority of my Uber/Lyft rides are carpool rides, frequently there are 3 of us in the car with the driver.

It's called Uber Pool, and Lyft Line.

"Ride sharing" is a common term for Uber and similar companies because when Uber first started you did, indeed, share rides.

Now it's more correct to call it a "ride hailing" platform, but the original term still sticks.

Medallions are a US permit, this article is about a ruling in France.

The same system exist in France: taxi driver must own a medallion ('plaque') which they purchase from someone retiring, rent from a taxi company, or get issued by the city (this is theoretical in large cities: very few new medallions are created).

Anecdotally, the taxi company owning the medallion are not allowed to rent them: so instead they rent cars to their contractors, and lend the medallions to their renters.

Mut Uber drivers are VTC drivers which are governed by different rules.

> either a contractor can subcontract, or they're not a contractor.

This doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. I often work as a contractor. If I decided one morning to send a friend into a clients office to fulfil my duties, I would not even expect them to be able to gain entry to the building.

Are you a contractor, or are you an employee of a contracting firm? I've been both, and it is a meaningful distinction.

I’ve been both a contractor directly for companies, and contracted through contracting companies (being an employee for a contracting company is usually called being a consultant, which I’ve also been). In either case I would not assume that I could arbitrarily sub-contract my work out to others.

The ability to subcontract is one of many tests for whether you are an independent contractor or not.

In which jurisdiction? How many tests are there? How many do you have to pass?

It’s a pretty ridiculous assertion to claim that you must be able to sub-contract to be a contractor, and I’d be surprised if there was even one jurisdiction in the world where that was true. It would mean you could never screen contractors.

I would argue you aren't a contractor then