The US should be blessed that Saudi is so bad with its money and so willing to subsidize Americans.
It destroyed the money of people who had bought up medallions. That's it. Having medallions was not a long term solution when the city can now charge rideshare services for miles/minutes/rides on the road without any hard cap for politically connected incumbent players.
The financially-sustainable transportation market. Companies without endless amounts of capital that actually have to break even or make a profit to keep the lights on.
It's not just the medallions, they're literally selling the service itself at below-cost in many places and have been for years.
Same reason they pretended to work on flying taxis and self-driving cars. The multiple for high tech companies is greater than the multiple for taxi companies or even basic Web2.0-style one-trick app companies.
Since they're public, its any shareholder and the public market. But that also means they're probably not still raising rounds like they were.
Is it? Or are venture capitalists just footing the bill?
Whatever model of "price" you use needs to take into account the fact that not only are Uber and Lyft lighting enormous piles of Saudi money on fire to "gain marketshare" but that the actual drivers are being paid peanuts. This isn't pure win, it's more like Nestle handing out free baby formula in Africa to destroy the "domestic market" so to speak.