Oh - I was and still am absolutely against Uber's tactics in expanding to cities. I still do not use Uber unless I travel to countries where that's the only option.

Yes, a lot of startups are only successful because what they are doing suddenly isn't illegal anymore because it's being done with an app. Cory Doctorow has written about this in his book Enshittification

Aah yes that scrappy $1.7 trillion start-up.

I think we're far past calling the 7th largest stock on the S&P owned by the richest man in the world a "startup". Startups can't do something like this at scale.