Uber and the almost all the rest of the gig work companies were built up on blank checks written by VCs and a pie in the sky idea that self driving vehicles would come along and zero out their labor costs. Billions of dollars later, and fully autonomous vehicles are nowhere near the ability to operate outside of mostly static and carefully controlled environments. Uber and Lyft are still losing stupid amounts of money every quarter despite jacking up prices and paying peanuts to the drivers. Here's a crazy story. A couple months ago I flew back into SFO after midnight and needed a ride back to the parking lot a few miles away because the shuttle didn't run that late. I opened up Uber and all the prices were somewhere between $80 and $100. Then, I saw an actual TAXI waiting in a line. I asked the driver how much for a ride to the lot six miles away. The answer was "about $30". I'm like "let's go!". The driver said he couldn't take me and I had to go to a taxi in front of the line. The rode cost a grand total of about $25 and I threw in an extra $5 as a tip.