... for being woefully outdated and not inline with market economics
Most, if not all regulations should serve and protect the citizenship and not private interest.
That Uber so vehemently lobbies against sensible regulation, like an obligation for commercial insurance, speaks volumes.
Yeah, I think this is something a lot of folks overlook - regulations exist because society has decided its interests are better served by making folks play by a certain set of rules than by hitting peak market efficiency or whatever. Now you can argue that a given regulation is not the best way to achieve a societal goal (for instance that limits on cab numbers don't reduce congestion much) or that they have worse externalities (medallion systems squeezing out the little guy in favor of big companies that can afford 6-figure medallion prices) or that the lost efficiency isn't worth society's goals, but straight up saying that they're "inefficient" isn't a case for anything.
This is technically correct, but is forgetting that society is often wrong about what serves its interests.
For some popularly unpopular examples: homosexual marriage being illegal, a drug war instead of drug treatment programs, putting fluoride (a neurotoxin) in the water.
Edit: those are current laws, for more popularly unpopular laws see slavery, the 18th amendment, the banning of blood transfusions, etc, etc
But society (and times) change. If there was a regulation that said 'the rightmost lane must always be reserved for horse-drawn carriages', we'd all be laughing about it.
Then everybody is worse off. It's a negative spiral that either ends in a monopoly or a stalemate with money being wasted on holding off the other party's attacks.
(assuming that Lyft is engaging in dirty tactics as well, but the argument works similar if it's one-sided)
Regulation is to come to terms with drivers being dishonest about pricing to rip people off, and concerns about sexual advances on drunk passengers.
Any one who argues against it should at least be prepared to have an answer to these problems.
I'd love to know how many Uber drivers actually have an appropriate drive-for-hire license (in jurisdictions which have one). I wouldn't be surprised if it were far, far less than 100%.