Uber and Lyft call themselves Ride Share Aps. Thise companies neither share rides or are aps. They are websites and corporations that nsert themselves into the process by owning the means of communication between users and providers of a service.
And the communication between the above mentoned parties is the only service they offer. They don’t exist to provide service. They exist to profit off of the work done by others through the least expensive, for them, way.
Websites and aps are cheaper to make and maintain than cars.
These corporations don’t share. They buy up competitors. (https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1R50KZ/ - Uber buys rival Careem in $3.1 billion deal to dominate ride-hailing in Middle East.)
I would like to say first off that computer dispatched drivers are not sharing rides. They are providing a driving service. But if you call it sharing, then it is easier to justify not paying the drivers.
Ride hailing is more accurate way to describe these internet based services.
In a June 30, 2022 article in Wired Magazine a new model for driving services, Worker ownership of the commnication stream between customer and worker, is presented.
The artice starts by saying:
“KEN LEWIS MOVED from Grenada to New York City in 1989 at a time when he says employment options for immigrants were limited. “You either got into construction or drove a taxi,” he says. Alongside grad school study, he drove a cab and remembers being alarmed at drivers footing the bill for all their expenses, from gas to vehicle repairs.
“Then in 2011, Uber came along and everything got worse, as drivers ran from the yellow taxi industry in the hope of finally making more money for themselves and their families,” he says. “We invested our life savings into buying cars, but actually, we were just buying the tools to exploit us further.”