This is a valid point, but doesn’t it seem like it is tremendously easier to get a ride somewhere in some random suburban area or even a semi-rural area? New York or San Francisco had plenty of people who would’ve been willing to drive cabs who couldn’t afford a medallion[1] but it seems like in less urban areas what was lacking was just the exact product Uber provides: a dispatching system that connects people who need rides with people who are willing to drive, without requiring those drivers to paint their cars yellow and incorporate their own formal business. It lowered barriers on both sides of their marketplace, especially on the driver side, since it was no risk to become a driver - if you never got any rides, you hadn’t really invested anything.

Anyway, isn’t that a good thing for those areas? I think a lot of people just didn’t have any convenient way to get around besides walking or waiting an hour for a very infrequent bus.

[1] (I was going to say “couldn’t get a medallion,” but since they were rentable and thus served as investment vehicles, it’s really just a matter of not being willing to pay the price those things commanded on the market)