The experience is much better as you've mentioned; the question in the article is whether a company needs to exist around making the experience better.
Now that the ideal experience is available, the question is whether people are willing to pay for it.
Right now - it's being paid for (all salaries, etc.) by shareholders as the company runs a massive operating loss.
The question these articles lay out is that - at least in theory - this can't last forever. No one's hoping Uber fails - they're just saying that a company eventually needs to make money, and they don't see a path forward for Uber to do that.
A bank wouldn't keep lending to a borrower that could never pay them back; at some point - without a fundamental change in economics - this situation will happen to Uber.
Yeah, this is a more nuanced critique that could definitely have teeth.
That said, I'm kind of skeptical that it's really true that shareholders are keeping the whole enterprise afloat? Here I admit I haven't delved deep into their financials, but isn't a big part of their operating loss related to huge R&D spend for self-driving plays, outsized engineering dev teams that might eventually be reduced as the app stabilizes, etc.? It seems like riders have been willing to shell out a lot more money for the experience, which I would imagine leaves plenty of margin. They are essentially a global taxi company with good market position and value added. It seems hard to believe there is no way to operate that company profitably, even if they're not currently achieving it. It's not like they're being strongly pressured to reach profitability either, though, so this isn't a particularly fair litmus test as to whether they're capable.
Anyway, you raise a good point that it -could- be true the Uber model is fundamentally unsustainable. I was reacting some of the hotter revisionist takes you see, where Uber was never a good idea, offers no value over a normal Taxi, is a big brogrammer pyramid scheme, etc.
Now that the ideal experience is available, the question is whether people are willing to pay for it.
Right now - it's being paid for (all salaries, etc.) by shareholders as the company runs a massive operating loss.
The question these articles lay out is that - at least in theory - this can't last forever. No one's hoping Uber fails - they're just saying that a company eventually needs to make money, and they don't see a path forward for Uber to do that.
A bank wouldn't keep lending to a borrower that could never pay them back; at some point - without a fundamental change in economics - this situation will happen to Uber.