This is why taxi licenses were created originally: there were taxi wars. People were getting shot for picking someone up in someone else's 'turf'. Taxi companies fought over turf and drivers and with guns and billy clubs. Add to that a few passengers getting cheated and robbed and eventually a city would step in and bring it under control with licensing and regulations. That the licenses eventually became a valuable item and an industry in themselves is a different story.

Uber and Lyft are re-doing what the original drive-for-hire people did that got them regulated in the first place.

I think this is the basis of Snowden's disagreement with the NSA -- the NSA could have taken a defensive mode and worked to make the country and its people more secure but it instead took an offensive mode and made crypto-weaker and found software bugs and used them to break in rather than working to have them fixed. The long term effect if this choice is a less secure country and a country with a shit reputation.