Uber rose on cheap capital, regulatory war, and freelance-driver labor exploitation

Evidence

On February 19, 2017, twenty-five-year-old engineer Susan Fowler published an essay about a “very, very strange year” at Uber, the ride-sharing company that had redefined urban transportation and symbolized the new app economy. Just three years earlier, Uber had raised $1.2 billion in funding and boasted the largest valuation for a private tech company in history. By pairing GPS-enabled smartphones with an army of freelance drivers, Uber promised consumers convenience and cashless transactions. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 501