The point is that the "local laws and regulations" were an unjust monopoly. Ride-hires definitely improved the taxi experience from what it was before.
It was a deliberately tightly restricted market to ensure taxi drivers could make a liveable wage. Now the industry is filled with people forced to work two or three jobs to survive and a tech company is capturing profits off the top. That might be a better outcome for customers but it sure doesn’t seem like one for the workers involved.
It's amazing that one could care to care about maintaining regulatory capture to such an extent that consumer harm is seen as preferable.