Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the medium term, they get public transit systems shut down or reduced in service by pricing fares artificially low for a period of time. This enables them to then exercise monopoly pricing power on the market (or oligopoly with Lyft or whatever local competitor) and ultimately harms the lower classes. Thus the $5 splurge for an Uber instead of the $2 bus hypothetically becomes the $10 Uber with no alternative shor…
> In the medium term, they get public transit systems shut down This sounds like grade-A bullshit. At best rideshare services reduce the use of personal cars and compete with taxi services, but they can't or won't compete with mass transit. Moreover the upper or even middle class aren't exactly the target market of public transportation services. If anyone was switching from public transportation to rideshare service…
You state with no evidence whatsoever that rideshare services "can't or won't compete with mass transit" while the truth is that millions of people decide between the two on a daily basis. In places like NYC and SF where transit is viable, it is widely used by the lower, middle, even upper middle classes. It has become much more prevalent to simply take Lyft to work every day (some employers just pay for it) which leaves less people on MTA or BART. That hurts funding for maintaining extremely expensive public transit systems which often leads to cutbacks in service during tough times as "we can't support the long hours with so few passengers"
Yes some of the lower class benefits from ridesharing (in the short term at least) and I acknowledged there were two sides to the argument. But ultimately if people get some cheap rides for a few years but then have to choose between expensive rides or degraded public transit, then they've almost certainly lost out unless driverless cars or some other innovation saves the day.