I feel like you're trying to paint the inverse picture where the taxi company is the 'little guy'.
> It's no different than what Wal-Mart did to mom and pop shops, or what Amazon did to small retailers, or what Starbucks did to local coffee shops.
Mom and pop shops rarely had regulators preventing Walmart and Starbucks from touching their market share. We're talking about very large centralized taxi companies that run entire cities. Most cities have 2-3 large companies dominating the entire city with a few minor players running limo services. Even in small towns the companies are hardly small friendly businesses.
My father drove taxi for years for multiple different taxi cartels and they all paid their workers poorly, withheld funds for weeks whenever customers used credit cards, and often only hired new drivers within their family/network. He loved the freedom of driving but hated the companies. He only enjoyed it when he could become a broker aka owning his own car and being able to distance himself from the company.
I hear similar stories from every Taxi driver I speak to, which is often. They see Uber/Hailo technology as liberating.
I see neither Uber nor the Taxi companies as the David vs Goliath. But Uber-style technology has given drivers the opportunity to make higher wages AND be independent from local cartels, while opening the door to new entrants in the market both for new drivers and new tech, even decentralized tech in the future.
So I do agree that the tech/news industry should make sure the real issue being debated is technology vs the nature of regulation, and stop looking for archetypical narratives. Instead of trying to reverse the narrative in favor of the other side.