This seems to be how Uber's pulling it off: the costs of a worldwide Uber-dominated oligopoly are far away and intangible while the costs of the current atomized regulated oligoplies are present and clear.

When Google was picking up steam back in the early 2000's it seemed wonderful because there were so many immediate benefits. Now, 10-15 years later it's clear how much power we gave them and what opportunities we lost in doing so. Instead of "free" stuff we could have worked towards a model of privacy and reasonable subscription fees where user-tracking and advertising weren't the default business model of the internet. But we didn't look ahead, we just said "Give us that shiny new thing!"

I hope I'm wrong but Uber looks the same to me, it's that nagging feeling of somebody's gonna have to pay the piper.